all right foreign ER the May 3rd 2023 special Board of Education workshop and meeting the board meetings are recorded and live streamed and uh to kick off tonight's session uh let's all please stand for the flag salute absolute pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice all right thank you we will move to announcements item two do we have announcements from any board members remember Robinson thank you madam president um I know that we're we're headed into an evening where um there's going to be a lot of dialogue and discussion and I love that thank you I wanted to let people know that even though there were in excess of 100 emails in my email Bank I tried desperately to respond to each one if I missed you I'm sorry um but I I do try um the other thing I want to just mention is that during the night you may Wonder well how come they meaning the board didn't take care of that already and it's because we don't talk to each other between board meetings we can't we are restricted to dealing with your business in front of you so the fact that it may seem like oh my gosh why couldn't they have already taken care of that it's because we are mandated by the brown Act to do the Public's business in public so that's all I have to say thank you see no additional announcements we can move to our consent calendar um do we have Let's see we do have one speaker card for consent calendar um and I'll call up Julie 3.
for approximately 59 month period they are a new gas supplier and they are about 35 percent lower per therm versus PSEG if you annualize that that's about over a hundred thousand dollars in savings per item because we went through that bid process with co-team for a second and Page 11 you see interstate and times we've seen them before they are our maintenance and our repair vendors for all our buses they do great jobs times is for us smaller buses they turn off buses around very quickly not good they keep our buses on the road as you know our special needs population continues to grow and we need to keep our buses safe and rolling in the middle we see Goose town you guys do our two-way radios for both the district and our buses and on the very close second from the bottom is critical Response Group they do our annual maintenance for our digital floor plans which is very important for our Safety and Security they work closely with uh Sergeant no Sergeant Miller and US Cliffside Park Police Department page 12 on the topic in Fogerty and Hara you'll see me um Steve Fogarty a little bit later talking a little bit about ethics right below that is inside Investments that's our monthly lease on a three-school trailer the good news is next year next year meaning the Year we're talking about here is 23 24 24 25 that lease cost of 30 39 000 will be decreased to 25 000 per month which is about 170 000 savings in the middle of the page we talked about approved energy who's our new gas provider third from the bottom we have a new because we have our new gym floor we want to keep it in good maintenance good shape good repair so we have a gym floor maintenance vendor that we're going to be bringing on for 23.24 so that's good news for the uh which again we want to make sure we button up and keep that floor in good shape um and that's pretty much and there's really two resolutions on pages 14 and 15.
Zach Hudson okay we also have guests with us so sometimes my left will be handing your certificate Sometimes some of our guests from the right will be handing you my right we'll be handy certificates first up Miss outwell will be presenting the Columbia Education Association scholarship is that what you want coming up the Columbia Education Association offers two two thousand five hundred dollar scholarships to Columbia High School seniors one with the intent to pursue a degree in education the other two a senior pursuing education at a trade school the scholarship for an award in education is being awarded to Brooklyn a strike the scholarship for an education trade school is going to Sam Donovan you guys is Miss ogil Oglesby here the Columbia Kiwanis scholarship okay you have that one oh okay Ms Myers to join us the Columbia Kiwanis scholarship this is a one thousand dollar scholarship awarded by the Columbia Kiwanis to a deserving senior at Columbia High School this year's winner Gabrielle Livingston [Applause] Columbia PTA scholarship the Columbia PTA recently awarded a four 500 scholarships and seniors will be attending college next fall I'd like the following scholarship winners to please come forward Paxton Reed Natalie Sturm Kate tenis and Drake Wittenberg [Applause] Columbia 21st century Lions scholarship the Columbia 21st century Lions club offers a 1 000 scholarship to a CHS senior who plans to pursue a degree or certificate from a technical trade school or Community College congratulations to this year's recipient Sam Donovan [Applause] at this time I'd like to introduce Sergeant First Class A.G AJ Gentile with the Army National Guard for a special presentation do you want to do this I don't have is there is there anything hey class I appreciate for me having me uh to go ahead and introduce two students of yours Jeremiah budleman and Austin McClintock please stand up and come forward foreign [Applause] scholarship to any state college or university in Illinois by serving one week in the month by serving their country and community so give it up for them [Applause] next we have the Columbia volunteer fire department scholarship and Mr Matheny is here come on over this is a local scholarships that awarded each year to seniors playing to further their education in the fall each scholarship award is for 750 community service is a factor in the selection process please come to the front to accept your award when I call your name and please hold Applause till I'm done with all Misha Derrickson Alyssa Harper Gabby Livingstone Olivia russler Kate tenis and Brennan White [Applause] Derrickson Livingstone Kate all right thank you the Monroe County licensed beverage Association awards a one thousand dollar scholarship to one student from each High School in Monroe County selection criteria includes ACT SAT scores essay school and Community involvement and grade point average congratulations this year's recipient Natalie Sturm [Applause] the Ladies Auxiliary of Turners Gymnastics Association awards scholarships to seniors pursuing an undergraduate degree based on a number of criteria included being a child or grandchild of a current or past member in good standing congratulations to Hayden habermill Olivia russler and Kate Tanya so each one of 500 scholarship [Applause] in addition congratulations to Natalie sturms being awarded a 250 scholarship [Applause] Miss Miller next we have the State Bank scholarship and Miss Miller will be presenting State Bank is awarding two scholarships to CHS seniors based on a one-page essay applicants wrote on how our fintechs how are fintechs impacting the banking industry I should read them scholarship amounts vary for the awards given and was open to all Area High School seniors winners from Columbia High School are the 1500 scholarship Grace Anderson and one thousand dollar scholarship Natalie Stern [Applause] now we're going to look at senior departmental Awards each department recognize one outstanding academic student for achievement the department winners were nominated by the teachers in that department first agriscience Maddox Corbin [Applause] business education Lindsey Glover [Applause] English Paxton Reed [Applause] family and consumer science L.A King [Applause] Fine Arts Sam urin [Applause] German Tom kenningstein [Applause] industrial technology Kyle Rose [Applause] mathematics Bradley Bernard [Applause] Performing Arts band and Performing Arts choir Olivia Ellen two [Applause] physical education Carson Janey and Sam urin [Applause] science Drake Wittenberg [Applause] social studies Brooklyn a strike [Applause] Spanish Addison Miller and Technology Lindsey Glover [Applause] is Miss Miller from the Columbia American Legion here she's here also okay next from the Columbia American Legion Post 581 and Ladies Auxiliary unit 581 we have MS Miller presenting you'll get a certificate from Dr Bellinger and and the envelope from Ms Miller the Columbia American Legion Awards six 500 scholarships to graduating seniors who are children or grandchildren or veterans and planning to attend a two-year or two-year or four-year College University or technical school this year's winners are Carmen Deirdre Sam Donovan Olivia Ellie Alex reckenberg Natalie Sturm and Kate tenus [Applause] and she's getting a picture taken in there okay are you presenting the next one for the Robert Holden Memorial okay David yep next we have the Robert Holden Memorial Scholarship Bob Holden was born and raised in Columbia graduating from high school in 1965.
um the donation letter is in your drive and it states that the funds are to be used by the Berlin Boylston school district for the facility assessment of Boylston elementary schools the donation letter states that it may be expended under the direction of the school superintendent with approval by the board of selected the board of Selectmen did accept this donation for 35 000. for this facility assessment at Bes to be expended under the direction of the superintendent on their need on January 17 2023. so now we just need the school committee to approve it we are going to go and two more well one more it is we received a grant from the Department of Education it's a nutrition equipment assistant Grant and these funds were applied towards a heating mobile cabinet for our Berlin Memorial School and lastly in the drawing you will find the fiscal year 22 audited financial statements these are standard review that need your approval yearly and that they're in your drive for your workout and those are my updates I don't have a budget update at this time except later fiscal year 24 budgets approved yeah all right you're welcome that brings us to business side it's pretty quick um so uh Julie is there anything on the scholarship award very often or is it too early for that um I checked with the um so we'll do that in June yeah so a will move to June thank you all right uh the school committee calendar can I have a motion to approve the school committee calendar for the school year 2023-24.
student volunteers will be super supervised by BHS staff and will help to spruce up spaces and just create a cleaner School environment the BHS music department concert will be held on the evening of May 23rd in the auditorium and then the National Honor Society is holding a 5K race on Mother's Day to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma lymphoma Foundation registration is open now also for the National Honor Society we will be inducting new members and that will be held on May 25th in the evening in the BHS Auditorium the BHS grad walk takes takes place on June 13th with graduate graduates visiting all schools in their caps and gowns the BHS graduation and festivities will take place on Saturday June 17th with a Car Parade for the 2023-2024 oh no I'm sorry for the 2023 graduates um the ceremony is starting at 11 15 in the morning um scheduling for the 2023 to 2024 school year is well underway the Administration has determined how many sections of each course that will run next year and the next step is building the skeleton for the schedule AP testing began this past Monday May 1st and continues through May 12th next week Mr Tong is holding a study session for the AP statistics Exam right now which I'll be attending after this report so thank you Mr Belden for moving me up um finally in May 1st was Bobcat destination day so graduating seniors were closed to Showcase their Pursuits for After High School I proudly wore my University of North Carolina Wilmington sweatshirt around school thank you all for listening today so are there any questions for Caitlin before we let it go to her study group all right thank you Caitlin thank you congratulations thank you so much goodbye um so bored I'd like to change up another item on the agenda we do have families here who are involved with the um the student Spotlight which is talking about the recent French Exchange program I'd like to move that to next and then I'd also like to just we only have three people signed up for public speaking I'd like to let them all speak at the beginning right so that they don't have to sit through our rather long agenda tonight if that's okay with all of you that's an exception is that okay so take a motion to um move uh item six to the next item on the agenda second I have a sec do I have a second Amy's second okay um all in favor all right okay so we're going to do the student Spotlight on the French exchange students thank you Mr Belinda I really appreciate you doing that what did I just say I got Mr Poland on the brain I mean it elevated him I have more hair than he does sorry Mr Belden sorry Mr belanda so Mr Belden thank you for doing that I publicly as we get ready to begin I want to thank uh Mr Renda uh Mr brego Our World Language MLL coordinator and certainly Mr Johnson Our World Language teacher who came to us in the very beginning of the school year with this idea and we're just thrilled that we were able to plan for it and safely properly and um enrichment wise plan for a really incredible experience for all involved so uh Mr Renda or Catherine would you like to come up and get started floor is yours thank you no yes perfect okay I think this is good so this is just a quick presentation to just sum up what the exchange looked like um as John said I think it was my first day I had to kind of start a little bit later in the year as I finished up in a previous district and Mr Renda took me around whiskaneer and when I met Mr Johnson that very first thing was I really want to do a French exchange can we please do that and I was like absolutely um and really you know I stand up here with you as well as Mr runda kind of telling everything that we did and that's great but it wouldn't have happened at all if it wasn't for Mr Johnson and all the work that he did so I just want to commend him for that foreign do you want to tell us a little bit about the school that joined us you can come over here so they can hear you on the mic so um thank you thank you for allowing me to speak here about this um so this uh this school this this particular teacher's name is Eve Gust he's uh he's a teacher in a school in central Bay southern part of France we started our Communications uh about three years ago um and we shared projects there was a platform where we could share projects the students they could give feedback to each other and it was just a great way to have that interaction and then two years ago he uh he then approached me a year and a half ago and he said you know why don't we turn this into why don't we take it up a notch and I go well what do you mean and he said well what's why don't we try to have a Exchange program and I said well I was little hesitant I didn't know how to you know how to be received here in this district and I had never done anything to that that level and so uh but I did know that he had already done this to seven other schools throughout the United States so he was you know a veteran he knew what he was doing and I said all right well let's make it happen so there's a lot of communication back and forth this school here um there are two schools it's a private school grade eight uh the students that came over here there were 48 of them and it was rigorous for them to come over they had to write essays they had to there was this uh a lot of criteria for them to fulfill and they got it's based on a point system and finally they had to be able to they were they were chosen and I didn't know how big I had talked to Mr Renda I said well how many can we receive you know well logistically and uh well let's go for let's try 30 and uh and so we we tried that and it turned out Eve their school they had a number of students of long waiting lists because they really want to take part in this experience and then that all depended on how many families here in Brookfield in the whiskaneer that were willing to receive them and to take them on for an entire week well sure enough we got all the way up to 48 and that was the max that that school would allow to go because that would give them five chaperones and I think that was the maximum that I think Dean you were pretty much willing I think any beyond that and I don't know it was a lot to take on um so um they they came over they they spent a week in New York first and then uh they brought it there's a charter bus brought them over to whiskaneer and they spent the entire week uh with their host families and they also were able to Shadow our students every day Monday through Friday through all their classes they took the buses or their parents drove them they had their breakfast at home they had lunches at school they they did everything the students had after school extracurricular activities um they would they would sit and watch or I don't know if they were allowed to participate I don't think so but they're at least able to watch and do that and then what was amazing for me was just the community it just it was it was an honor really to just uh of a privilege to to see how the community came together especially the families they they just took Hospitality to a whole new level they were involved in all sorts of activities and events after school uh evenings there's this this uh app called GroupMe app and that just they were just once they set that up it was hard to catch up it was hard to they they were posting uh videos and pictures of everything they were doing and my wife would say why is this thing ringing all the time all the time because there's something being posted and it was amazing we had to narrow it down there's a uh whoever did this was I can't remember all the people that were involved in creating this video here but there were just hundreds of pictures and all sorts of videos and I had no idea how to narrow it down but um yeah it was amazing um so the community that was involved it's just great to see that this opportunity brought out the community and then of course there's the authentic cultural exchange experience for them for their students and for hours for the families for the extended relatives for everybody involved in the school so it's just it's a privilege and and um you know once I'm done speaking here this evening I already have a a meeting set up with that other teacher to start planning for next year's that's the exchange part where you know we're depending on that but of course I need to present that uh he saw he's salting the oats that's what he's doing right now isn't he yeah I am but uh should we show the video now can we thank you I was not planning on talking that long but that's okay yeah it's it's a process so you summarize it as best you could um so this is our video um that tried to recap all of the Great Moments so we'll take you through that let's see here I can go [Music] there's a teacher in France we started corresponding and sharing our across from our students process with each other watching no I'm gonna have you guys start by introducing yourself and sharing your name and how old you are or what grade you're in okay my name is the outside France how it works so they can be they can be open to all the changes and for us teachers it's good to complete because we see how you work and if there is something good maybe we can take some idea and and do the same at home so that's why it's it's good exchange for the kids and for us 10 minutes before the school is beginning you know the fact you you send someone speaking and say oh today we're gonna do that so I like it and maybe I'm I'm gonna try to do this we have a lot of rules the Ambiance can we say ambiance it's really it's sweet a lot of people free you know they can move around foreign [Music] speaking people that often like native French speakers so it's a good experience to try to like broaden our understanding of the French language and culture oh yes I have some big Taylor Swift fans amongst my tour guides right now I really want my students to see that they are French speakers that they can use the French that they have and that they learn in the classroom and and use it to be understood by an actual French speaker my name is Frank I am the Headmaster family very good the panels are really kind and there's cool it's really cool so different from friends they realized the kids realize we are different we are um but we are we are the same we are different but the same I don't know how to say that [Music] when you walk through [Music] [Applause] so we've got just a little bit we have a few um students who have taken some time out of their evening to you know like how better to hear about it than firsthand from students so you guys can come on up and I think that we've prepared a few things already so it's not too off the cuff but we just we want to know how was it and anything you can tell us about cultural similarities differences a little bit of what we saw in the video and your most memorable moment so however you guys want to start that or whoever wants to start or I can pick one of you and we'll go for it what do you think whatever it is you got it let's go get up here yeah you're taking charge over here okay like what grade I'm moving yeah all right hi I'm maroon and I'm in eighth grade so how was it for me I had a great time with them we went to a lot of activities however if I had to say something it was hard because a language barrier it was a lot of Google Translate from a cultural lens what were some similarities and differences they were pretty similar to us whether that be the clothes they wore or the music they listened to but if I had to point out some differences I would say they're very good at soccer they're very polite and they're very eager to see their friends and my most memorable experience with them would be going on the hiking trip I really got to socialize with them and get to know who they are and a lot about what they do in France hi I'm Izzy um so my personal experience with hosting the French students was something I definitely will never forget in the short week that I got to spend with with them they became some of my closest friends and I'm so grateful that I got I got the students that I did because we truly bonded and became a family so some of the differences and similarities that I noticed which was similar to a rune um we had like the same fashion trends music tastes like we played the same Sports um and language is definitely a challenge we also used a lot of Google Translate um their dress code was a lot stricter than ours and the school the school buses they didn't have the big yellow school buses like we do and one of my most memorable experiences was my students Ann and Lucy came to watch my skating competition the Friday before they got to leave and it was just so nice to see how like excited and happy they were to go and support me and we just had a great time and then the next day was like when we had to say good uh sorry when we had to say goodbye it made me realize how much I really bonded with them and how much I was going to miss them thank you hi I'm Anna and I'm in eighth grade um my experience hosting the French like students it was really wonderful actually on one of my French students was fluent in English so like the um oh sorry the like language barrier wasn't really like a problem but it was like super fun and I got to a bond with my students and we like became really really good friends and some cultural similarities and differences are like the size of their school is like way smaller because they're a private school but like overall there isn't really much like difference like again going off of a rune and Izzy said their music tastes are the same and then the um like fashion trends are the same but my most memorable moment was the campfire that took place the day after the French students arrived um everyone got to like meet each other and it was just super fun being able to like see everyone for the first time and I just really enjoyed it so I think again a big thank you to all of you for being open you know opening up your homes opening up yourselves to the different experience and would you do it again yeah okay awesome thank you guys for joining us foreign just a quick wrap up now is like a big meta seed to everybody Board of Ed members Dr Burrell Dr Mann um I mean Renda of course right Keith which we already said but again the host family's huge wouldn't have happened they wouldn't have had a home to stay in without that support the students PTO had a part teachers had a part secretaries had a huge part everybody right from I can't even name them all but just a huge thanks to everybody there and I think one other thing I'd like to share from the flip side of things I had a bunch of pictures in here in case the video didn't work but they're there if you want to go through them um but there was a letter that a French student wrote to their family when they were leaving so I'll just read that quickly to you so I said hello Jewett family I'm just writing you a little letter to thank you for welcoming us this week it was one of the best weeks of Our Lives we are so happy to have fallen into such an incredible family and we are so happy to have met you um Mia Chloe CJ Mark and jazette thank you again for the activities and the time spent together thank you for everything thank you Mark for these superb breakfast thank you Chloe for your superb humor the funniest thank you Mia for helping me in middle school thank you giusette for your sunshine and thank you CJ CG for your kindness I leave you on this uh on this letter I will miss you all when I return to France hope to see you soon bye um and I think again that's we've been talking a lot about the world class of Brookfield and I think this is just a beautiful way to celebrate that is we're really making it a world-class experience and bringing other students here for other parts of the world and then hopefully we can you know they're excited reciprocate for next year so thanks everyone for your time and thanks again oh I'm sorry no no I just want to make it if everyone just give a nice round of applause to Keith for the amount of time and effort he put in I mean countless hours after school and times you know he'd say can I meet with you I'm like I think you can handle you got this and um but we did meet a couple times but seriously he was there many late nights trying to put this together and to help obviously of Catherine also and also the staff and the families that were on board it was a little tough we were bringing chairs to classes to make sure we had enough spots for the kids to sit and things like that all the logistical things that does take a lot of time but it wouldn't have been done if it wasn't for Keith so thank you so much Keith for making this happen and I am the administrator on that trip to France I should have said the board members were already lobbying for chaperone Duty yeah I went a lot I won a chaperone to Saint Tropez there you go thank you all for coming tonight this was uh very exciting to hear about we've been hearing the build up on this for most of the year and so it was great to see how it came together so thank you thanks everyone bye-bye okay so we're going to move on with the agenda next up is public comment um as I mentioned a few minutes ago we're going to do all a public comment at the beginning of the meeting this evening I just think it's fair with only three people here and just for those of you who are going to speak we have a we have an agenda tonight you would have been here till 11 o'clock waiting so so uh so the uh so I'll do it in the order um and Mr Korea where's Mr Korea um I'm gonna I'm Gonna Let You Go first but you signed up for two slots one at the beginning at one at the end I'll give you two slots here in this front-up session too unless you want to do it in your first segment I can do it okay whatever you need okay um Andy Korea 45 westmere road is this on you can hear it okay yeah so um I just wanted to come and talk about something I saw on the Press and remind the board that the Boe code of ethics require board members and superintendents to respect all national state and local laws and regulations pertaining to education and public agencies there was an agreement that was listed in an article recently over the weekend that was put forth by the administration and apparently drafted by Council and reviewed and not vacated by the Boe that violates the individuals with Disabilities Act and potentially Connecticut fraud statutes the way the agreement is written is codifying a predetermination of an individualized education plan decision and placement prior prior to a proper legal Ida compliant planning and placement team meeting and that's you know knowingly illegal for some of the roles of folks involved and there's recent examples of other knowingly illegal behavior and as a contract is requiring silence as a legal consideration to provide what by law would be right by a right per idea so the silence requirement the district is aggressively pursuing by forcing an outplacement while threatening a lawsuit provides a private benefit to individual administrators and Board of Education members to avoid the shame of facing relevant feedback on the performance in their roles and how it impacts the safety of children that silence protects careers and reputations that the concealment of such concerns concerns that would be up for the public good is dangerous to children in late 2022 federal federal law was passed to rectify a similar risk to adults by Banning the enforcement of non-disclosure agreements regarding sexual harassment in the workplace the non-disclosure attempt is some here is similar to threats that primarily women face in the workplace but is aimed at elementary disabled children Additionally the contract stipulates that the parent choose an outplacement service provider that makes the district eligible for excess cost reimbursement for the state of Connecticut so in this agreement Brookfield is intentionally overpaying for the education of a child that excess cost is discretionary spending it's no different than if we bought a coach a truck for winning a championship submitting for excess costs intentionally here would be fraud will employees and Board of Ed members have qualified immunity that immunity is at risk with Reckless and Lawton Behavior such as knowingly going through extraordinary lengths to enforce this more than one person working to codify the intention of doing so is is say like in an outplacement agreement is conspiracy to commit fraud my advice is for the board Brookfield Board of Education to immediately rescind the threats if any lawsuits cancel the agreement and exercise its rights under the Boe bylaw 9-15 attorneys to terminate the services of the attorneys that were involved in this both the general War general counsel and special ed attorney and disqualify their firms their firms for a quality of service and work with family in good faith regarding appropriate Services of course it's relevant to incorporate the other poor performance of the administration into the portfolio of failures that have far exceeded the need for termination for cause thank you thank you okay next up is Jeremy Farrell Jeremy I need name and address as you start uh hello my name is Jeremy Farrell 13 South Lakeshore Drive uh okay I'm going to keep this quick a bunch of the people that I wrote this uh that I wrote this with in mind do not seem to be here last month there was a lot more people at this Board of Ed meeting with a lot of concerns regarding the content of LGBT books within our library and it seems that already that moment has partially passed they were angry they came here they shared and they're gone personally I don't get to move on and neither do other members of my community as somebody who is LGBT as somebody who walked these halls and as somebody who walked these Halls not knowing they were LGBT this stuff lasts and it has real lasting effects we don't always get to move on what don't we get to move on from well last month we heard a lot of this is a not an attack on LGBT people that is ridiculous to even portray it as one but what I would like to say now for anybody who's listening for anybody who thinks that way high school students are smarter than that they're better than that and we need to give them credit they are going to notice that the seven most challenged books in the country are LGBT they are going to notice that the only books brought up last month were LGBT and they are going to notice that the book people are angriest about has gay in the title from their perspective I don't see how this could feel like anything except an attack on LGBT people and they are going to have to wake up every day knowing that this attack could return at any point whenever anybody else wants it to I beg everybody listening to this to be aware of what we are actually doing here of the fact that our actions have real consequences I recognize you may disagree with me and I completely understand but please think about what I am saying here care enough to consider what I have to say and how this could affect our students I think we have to consider the ramifications of these choices for the students who walk these hallways thank you thank you and our third speaker is Shannon Reilly Shannon Riley 11 Deer Run Road um good afternoon Board of Education um I was actually um reading through the different pieces of um like items in the agenda and one of the things that struck me was as we were changing policy that there wasn't the move to using gender uh inclusive language and I wanted the board to consider that that as they're changing policy instead of in specific the challenging curriculum policy where in the section under instruction students may be found with any racial ethnic or socioeconomic group within all nationalities and as it currently says within both genders I would encourage to change that to all genders and to switch any use of like the his her to the inclusive there or themselves use of that language okay that's all I have to say tonight thank you so much thank you okay that's it for our public comment unless Mr Korea had a second topic okay good I did promise him Andy Korea 45 West Western Air Road so this comment is about the public participation policy and specifically the prohibition about speaking about Board of Ed members as well as I understand staff and students of course but senior executive leaders particularly building principals or District level department leads and you know uh administrators that have their own contract that are not part of the Union right in general I agree that you know parents and residents should go up the chain but there's been several incidents issues persistent issues that go up the Chain by several parents that go nowhere and don't get addressed including writing to the board every time I've I've come up here and spoke about something with the board I have gone through the chain and written to the board and it's been ignored we also have misconduct we've had misconduct on the board we've had board members that have lied we have board members with the ethics violation we have a board member with that light under oath during the ethics investor ethics hearing we have a board member that went around and questioned why didn't the Ethics Committee come to the board of Ethics come to them and ask them we've had a board of ed attorney during a the initial term here for the board retreat to go over FERPA foa and the laws make a lie lied about that board members misconduct we had the board board member say he understood how that could happen and three board members that knew about that didn't speak up I wrote to the board and asked them to correct it they didn't correct it we've had investigations where children have been harmed and the board did not act in good faith to make sure that the investigation was was complete so and recently as a result of that we've had a child um have an interaction with a gym teacher that had that had the board followed up on on the feedback probably would not have happened right so by silencing public to come out and say you know these are problems right the way this board has acted over the past I'd say four years increasingly there's been about eight incidences in the past 18 months the way this board has acted here I'm making it so that parents can't come out here and say this board member did that why did you do that right these issues continue and we're not able to protect children exercise our First Amendment right to redress grievance because things get written to the board of ed otherwise would be addressed if it was said out loud so as you look at this you have to remember that there will be other boards and they should be able to citizens have the First Amendment right to be able to come out and say you know this should be changed there is no credible reason to say you can't speak about a board member if you've already written to the board board about what that board member has done we also have a board member that sleeps in meetings and another board member laughs when they see it right so yeah so if somebody's going to sleep during the meeting and maybe they won't next time if somebody says that you know you didn't vote to protect children but you were asleep so I'd ask you to look at the wording I will send a follow-up written comment to point precisely what I think needs to be changed thank you okay um next up I gotta make sure I get the order of this right we've moved it around a couple times next up is uh written correspondence okay the career wrote with concerns of how Capital requests are handled and regarding an outplacement agreement violating a code of ethics Dawn DeCosta wrote regarding mosaics at Huckleberry Jamie klavins wrote regarding academic issues at the high school debka case wrote regarding a PPT Sherry stironowski wrote regarding the BPS website Christina Zimmerman wrote regarding school start times and Athletics next year Marnie mcniff wrote regarding a policy Christy rondini wrote concerning a social media post Aaron Scalera wrote regarding a professional development slide Irene Korea wrote regarding policy 6146 and 614-6.1 bylaw 9325 and class Rank and the following people wrote regarding the removal supporting the removal of books from the BHS Library Tara Carr the Brookfield Children's Advocacy Council Kathleen jowdy Jennifer ackerly Debbie Pizzo Rachel alagna Joyce Woodfield Jim Fisher Elizabeth shaker Austin Montero and Nick Schmidt and the following wrote opposing the removal of books from the BHS Library Leslie Ruggiero Sean hathorne Michelle Sands Ray de Stefan Laura Orbin Phoebe Holmes Shannon Reilly Ronald Orban Kathy Van duzy Aaron Zimmer and Jillian Doherty that's it quite a lot that was a lot of emails to respond to this month um all right so next up is board minutes board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on April 5th second moved in seconded anybody have any comments on the board minutes all in favor aye all right next we got all of us all the subcommittees I think reported this month so uh we'll just go through oh no we're skipping you John I want to get the kids first all right well then do the superintendent's update thank you so much it's a lot to keep track of tonight so I haven't missed it I have a number of items to share but I um speaking of AP testing and students that are here that need to get home and study we have Dia in Sharia here tonight and Mr belan is going to talk with them with Mr neuhausel who's also here and there are two of eight students in Connecticut the Andrea um that are going to the international science and engineering Fair on May 14th in Dallas two of eight students in Connecticut only eight in Connecticut are going two of them 25 are from Brookfield High School in the whole state of Connecticut we're so proud of them uh their project description and their picture as you can see has been passed out to you I'm going to turn it over to Mr belanda and Mr new hustle to introduce the kids and talk a little bit about the project all right uh good evening board and uh superintendent and Dr Mann uh I'll keep this brief in terms of introductions I did pass around a a one-page it's actually the whole thing on the back side it's actually covered one of the other students that's going as well I have the whole brochure in my office if you'd like to see it but we're very proud of sharia and and Dia and so what I would like to do is introduce Mr neuhausel so all I've done in this process is really listen say yes and process things to make things uh happen and so I really uh do appreciate all the work that Mr new house was put in he of course will then turn it over to the students say he didn't do anything so this is just a little bit of humble as we pass it on downs I'm passing into him he'll talk a little bit and then we're gonna have the the girls talk a little bit about their project and you have a description front of you so Mr new house to you good evening thank you for having us my name is John Newhall I'm a technology teacher here at Brookfield High School and I've had the pleasure of helping coach uh Dia and Sharia through the Connecticut Science Fair it all started in the fall when uh this is my first year in Brookfield uh teaching here and wonderful school by the way wonderful District to work for and as I was walking I came across a former student Sharia who at my last school her and I worked together on the science fair and she had done very well in the middle school she had gone off to the high school I was still working at the middle school continued that science fair experience anyways I ran into her in the hall and we started talking about the science fair something that was both near and dear to our heart and she talked asked if it was possible that the school would sponsor her to compete in the competition so long story short spoke with Mr Blanda he gave me the nod we put together a group of kids that wanted to participate and really like Mr Landa said I was the next level of just kind of listening and helping them navigate I did most the administrative work well I did some of the administrative work with them filing paperwork and kind of coaching them through how judges think and what to think about with topics and presentations but they are the true scientists when we look in our society and wonder what's going on in our world they are our bright future they are here to carry us to that next place and just a a nod to Dr Mann the equivalent of going to ISF is the equivalent of going to the Olympics it is 1500 of this world's best Minds at this age and there are prizes up to 250 000 I have a former student that won fifty thousand dollars and is going to MIT for her work with with Alzheimer's disease and so hopefully these two will carry on in that that same light and I'm going to turn it over to them hello everyone I'm srijanalagada and I'm diag and our project was on Parkinson's disease so we created a machine learning framework for Parkinson's Disease severity prediction biomarker identification and Drug discovery I could really talk about my own motivation of going forward with the project topic we both come from a rural Village in India where we don't really have access to a lot of medical treatment so a couple years ago a close family friend of ours got diagnosed with Parkinson's disease really late and he figured finally figured out that it was a progressive Disorder so he didn't really get the correct diagnosis in time to get enough or effective treatment so he's still trying to you know combat those symptoms those Tremors but he really isn't able to get the full extent of treatment that he should have so that was really my motivation of going forward with this project we wanted to create a framework that could really diagnose the disease to a high accuracy within a short period of time so I could give it away all right so the first part oh do you want to talk about motivation okay I'll talk about motivation so one of my close family members was also diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and I used to live in India and I grew up with him like seeing him all the time and it's really sad to see how he's progressed into the disease and like just how much it's affected him and how he can barely speak now so for both of us it was a very personal project and and that's why we pursued it and we're happy with our results so the first part of our project our framework is biomarker Discovery so we used differential protein analysis to identify the top 10 uh proteins that you could that are differentially expressed in Parkinson's disease and the second part was a severity prediction where we took a XG boost machine learning model and the modification that we made to it was that we iterated through different uh parameters so that's like the novelty of our project the last part of our project was a drug repurposing module so we used existing machine learning models and Frameworks such as deep purpose that has like a CNN model and we use that model to come up with drugs that have a high binding binding efficacy um to amyloid beta proteins so we identified 10 drugs that were clinically validated as potential treatments for Parkinson's Disease so yeah and we would uh like to thank our Mentor Mr newhousel he really guided us throughout the whole project the timelines um the paperwork that we have to submit and stuff like that so thank you a lot and he also taught us that it's not just the clinical aspect of our project that was important it's the fact that we're able to communicate that idea communicate our work and communicate our impact to others Which is far more important so thank you so much for that [Applause] so yeah what these they said because um you know I know they're going you're going on the 15th 14th they leave for Dallas yep and so they're certainly here to ask any questions but I'm sure that you might get a some short quick answers because they want to get back to AP review so I turn it over them and just I just I appreciate how proud everybody is and we look forward to seeing what they do so would you mind if I talk to you yeah all right I wasn't sure if there was questions for the kids great job ladies study well tonight another incredible like I told you at the beginning a lot to celebrate um so I do have a number of things that I'll actually at the end of my remarks invite Mr Bland to back up for uh for uh an update on uh a topic of Interest the most um so the first thing is just a little reminder regarding Communications uh there have been a number of recent school Communications in the last week or so the state of the district essentially the district's newsletter uh in the springtime was disseminated last week the budget flyer was also disseminated last week to to all and both of those documents are posted last night at the town meeting of the hearing uh the hearing that was held the for the town budget which includes the school budget the referendum was voted on it will be May 16th polls will be open so it's important that everybody gets out and votes on May 16th Tuesday May 16th 6 a.m to 8 P.M I believe that's the uh hours of the polls yesterday I also sent out an update regarding the correct program review for special education department the correct folks uh were with us for a number of weeks collecting all sorts of data and they're now reviewing that data analyzing it and developing a cogent report they will be here as our guest on June 7th to share what they found um I now like to invite Mr post up to the podium talk a little bit about the school security reimbursement Grant we're really excited about an opportunity uh that could come back to the community thank you uh last week we applied the first school security Grant actually it's two parts uh one part is a multimedia communication Grant which as part of the police radio project the part that applies to the schools that allows us to communicate with First Responders is eligible for this grant so that's about 182 thousand dollars or if and it's a competitive Grant so we're not guaranteed to get this our reimbursement rate would be 33.93 which means the town would get back 61 752 if that one is approved the other piece of it was uh just a regular school security project you're in and we applied for projects that where funding has already been approved for us it's all capital funding projects that we've talked about before such as security film cameras Open Door alert alarms uh walkie-talkie repeaters in the schools bollards uh that added up to 265 thousand twenty nine dollars and applying the same rate to that if we get approved and awarded this it would be eighty nine thousand nine hundred twenty four dollars going back to the town so in total it's about 150 000 that would come to the town if we get approved so we are hopeful Ken I really appreciate that thank you and I had a lot of help from uh Eric and Joan thank you Eric has always work to get all the information they needed heck of a team thank you really appreciate that work and I know that the community does as well um brief update on kindergarten enrollment right now last check with Mrs ferius we're at 137 students um uh registering in the process of registering for kindergarten that is uh shy of at this point of our projected enrollment but we still have a long way to go and we continue to monitor uh kindergarten as we know is always a tricky number and uh with that we also are really cognizant of our Pre-K numbers and we're taking a look at that as well a quick update on spring standardized testing you heard about the AP testing going on at the high school and they didn't get the students home as quickly as possible for studying BHS has completed uh the school day sat with skaneer is in the middle of s back testing and Huckleberry starts the S back testing next week so just everybody knows families are all well aware of this but I just want to make sure the board was aware the Panorama survey uh a parent survey and a separate staff survey were sent out last Friday so those end of year surveys that we conduct each year those are out and feedback will come in over the next few weeks we'll use that as we build programming and school Improvement plans over the course of the year we talked about the science and engineering fair and we're just so proud of the students and then lastly I want to invite Mr belanda back up regarding the there was some public comment on it tonight and a number of emails over the course of the last month the BHS library book reconsideration update Mr Blanda has some facts and just kind of an update on where we're at with any recent challenge that the high school may have received thank you Dr Braille um and a conversation Dr Burrell asked me to just very quickly summarize where we are in the process in terms of you know according to board policy and regulation so at this point there have been three actual formal requests for a reconsideration form uh one person who did not request the form but must have copied it from someone else and then submitted that so we do have um four forms uh three were actually returned fully completed they are all three are on this book is gay is the one they are challenging and looking for more information we did have an initial discussion as part of the regulation once a form is returned completed we have a discussion with that particular person to go through the form to make sure we understand uh the points that they're asking or things they have questioned on we have had that first meeting with uh one of the people that submitted the form we have a scheduled another meeting for someone else that filled out the form hopefully by the end of this week if not it'll be first thing on Monday and then we're still pending to hear back from the other person who submitted the form to have that follow-up discussion to review it in terms of the committee itself I did have to order the book I want to remind the board that this was the e-book which of which we had no copies it is an electronic book and so uh I did have to order several copies for us to read concurrently rather than that's the best way to do it so I did order copies of that book The Review Committee is going to be five people and I will sit in an advisory role administrators library media Specialists we have a social worker as well as somebody who is a non-humanities elective teacher to get a different perspective on all these things and I will hopefully be meeting with the committee tomorrow right after school while we'll review the charge of the committee to talk about looking at the selection piece that's in the board policy and regulation we will read the book and then we will follow up with the discussion afterwards connected to the whole part of the policy as to why this book was selected does it meet the criteria that the board has put in place or made suggestions for and then we'll also get into specifics of the particular form that and the challenging pieces and develop a rationale whether we support or object to the book being kept or left in and then I will present that to the superintendent I don't have an exact timeline on it we are trying to move this relatively quickly because we want to read the book but I also want to give the team time and so when I meet with them tomorrow to go through the book and the process we'll talk more about timeline probably two and a half maybe three weeks I think from start to finish at the most uh we'll be able to have at least from that first form and as additional forms get submitted we'll talk about that process there but we at this point that's where we are thank you very much I know it's a lot of work for everyone thank you and that is all I have for the superintendent report thank you very much thank you I just have a question of the Panorama survey if we didn't receive it because my concern is this happens to me every year right now you didn't receive it it was scheduled and was disseminated I believe on Friday right Eric well Eric would it say panorama on it for the parents yeah it would have come okay we'll look into it joy and we could we could always do a reset no problem thank you for that well I will say for any of you watching this if you are a parent and you think you should have received it and you haven't you should let us know right because that's how we find out if there was a snafu somewhere sure so thank you okay okay all right um all right so next up on our agenda is our reports from our subcommittees and we'll start with facilities I'm giving it back to you okay so we met on Wednesday April 5th we reviewed the school did reports um there were no questions with the new work orders one question regarding the steam pipe leak in the BHS locker room tunnel it's an isolated incident and it's a completed repair so it's not a concern moving forward and we don't foresee it as being a problem in the future on April 12th the board of Finance approved the capital for the high school guidance roof and the maintenance truck so that's good news Capital project updates so the HVAC control project the high school nine exhaust fans are left and the project will be completed soon in the next couple weeks there'll be a training session value engineering is doing the Diagnostics we will need a cost estimate for phase two the locker room project demo is underway there's there's some asbestos material that they're looking to Abate a lot of work was done over spring break when the students were not in school and they continue to have bi-weekly meetings and we're still on track to finish the second week of August the electrical service at with skinnier is still on track to do work over the summer paving at the high school middle school still on this is pending a budget approval for the budget vote in May cafeteria flooring it was skinnier they pulled sensors out of the floor that passed Monday to conduct the moisture test seminar room seating we're still trying to find someone to do that work security items camera updates are done door sensors for the high school are in but not no ETA yet the following Monday the security film on the ground floor at the high school is scheduled to be installed we have some Ballard options repeaters have been ordered we want to discuss other options in regard to the teller window at the high school because that would put us over budget building condition study they're coming to the high school and staying on site for two to three days and they'll give us an in-depth survey to fill out our lovely Media Center update the project is out to bid there was a scheduled walkthrough on the 12th and the bid date is on the 25th it will take 16 weeks to get the materials a whole roof tear was repaired we didn't have any new business we did take a tour of the locker room after our meeting after we adjourned at 6 30.
so this is the two-year progress report so I guess that means the initial visit would have been 2019 2019. okay video thank you so much Antonia I really appreciate you taking the time no no problem guys no problem at all thank you and uh um I I look forward to working with you guys on some of these other projects and uh getting your concurrence on the educational specs which Drive most of these projects so thank you you're going to see it again real sure real shortly I'm going to talk through the timeline that we we discussed today so awesome thank you thank you I want to jump on my other call all right all right bye-bye so my um were we going to try to put something on the calendar then to um yeah right so the the big one that Antonio mentioned was the um Danbury High School science lab improvements so um he he mentioned he has a June 30th date that they have to have that all up by the state so just working backwards from that date that would mean we have to have our ads back in front of our full board by uh that June 7th meeting that's a workshop meeting so it looks like this would be the headline for for that one I you know I'd have to work with uh Kevin to see what else uh is teed up for that date but you know going through the ad spec we know takes takes a good you know it's it's usually a full meeting um so if we were to have it in front of full board by June 7th we wouldn't even to have it approved by this committee um at least a week earlier um which means that would be around uh May 31st that would be the Wednesday before I I know we have something else that night so a day or two on either side of that would probably work as well uh May 30th or June 1st and that means the Ed spec would be delivered to you guys probably that Friday prior which would be around May 26th so we we really are in a quick timeline here because now we got to get that full Ed spec put together um and really just about three weeks three and three weeks in a few days um so yeah and I think this is our last site so if we do want to do it we should probably plan to schedule a special sites uh where Antonio could come back and talk us through um the ads back and and obviously what you know we'll have you know Dan and and myself and uh Cara will will have a a big hand and putting that together so we'll all be able to to describe what's in there how does um so how does that look on everybody's calendar for availability Wednesday we have policy did we want to try to do it before that or possibly on Tuesday anybody wanna I'm away that week but if you have enough you know people to carry the meeting and hold it up on me because I don't want to hold this up Sir yeah I know that's just big or Tuesday 30th looks good for me yeah policies at six on Wednesday so we probably don't wanna put anybody through a three-hour committee session on Wednesday so I'd say Thursday the 30th is probably the right date okay that's good for me all right Thursday is the first Tuesday the 30th Thursday yeah okay you're talking May 30th right yeah by June 7th we have to have it before the board yeah so it'll be that Tuesday the 30th for a committee and then it'll it'll be on the full board for Wednesday the 7th okay great thank you okay I'll have uh Carey Pompano send out invites tomorrow yeah thank you okay and then um I just want to give a little bit more description to to a few of the pieces in here um so this came about uh in the ad hoc committee uh there had been some questions about um the knee ask report and the accreditation issues so um uh Michelle and I talked and we really thought it would it would be the right time to get an update on some of the construction projects in here um the other one that Antonio mentioned was the health services improvements um so uh rich jalbert and I were over at the nurses station at the high school last week and just trying to get a sense of of what it was that they wanted the initial so the way the report describes it is there there needs to be an increased um uh uh Provisions made for privacy so the way this initially was interpreted as um more of like a bed space where you know you would draw the curtains and then you know sick kids could be in there but be private and not have to be kind of in the same Quarters at least have some level of privacy uh but we went and talked to the nurses they said no no we actually don't don't use the bed space a lot sick kids generally go home uh what we need is consultation space uh so we came back and kind of re reorganized it so we kept the bed space it there's two beds in that back room now and what we're going to do is improve the consultation space because that's really where they wanted more confidentiality during that you know that initial sort of intake where you know the the students describing you know the issue to the nurse um so we've we've changed it now so that the the new plan is going to have better consultation space more privacy there and then they'll still be the two beds in back um if if kids do you need to to use them but but generally those beds aren't getting used so it's it's now putting a premium on that consultation space in that sort of middle third I don't know if everybody knows how that nurses station set up but that middle section will be it'll be opened up that hallway is kind of a waste of space when you right when you walk in there's that long hallway that goes down to the right gonna eliminate that hallway I think these are again the sort of professional plans and just sort of open up that space create create more room for the consultation and and um uh you know for the nurses to talk to the students so that's the plan on that one and uh how are you doing that see through like like petitions or things like yeah there's some discussion now about whether it's it's going to be a sort of you know just a partition or like a three-quarter wall or a half wall or something but um the architect's figuring something out with that so the the plans are still still getting finalized all right um can I ask one more question those drawings to be completed um I would imagine within the next month or two we're getting real close on it um yeah the city says they're gonna complete this one during the summer so um yeah the final plans should be should be ready in the next few weeks anybody have any questions on this particular area no thank you members no I'm good all right I'm good all set thank you okay and then kind of part of this um we wanted to just address um one of the issues regarding a few of backlogged items that um are so what related to the report here uh Rich jalbert are you on I see you there I'm here okay thanks Rich uh you'd put together just a kind of short list of a few projects that that were were you know I don't know if we're missing parts or what the what the issues were do you want to quickly kind of talk through that that four or five item list on the the that were highlighted on that uh that backlog list sure um the uh the first one I had was Mill Ridge Primary second grade bathroom leaking and that was repaired during uh spring vacation uh Park Avenue room six uh Sync has not been functional since start of the school year um I know the plumber came out with Oracle Rooter over spring break I think they were able to get one of the club one of the clogs um but there's still ish with room six um I think they had according to the head custodian about four or five different clogs um C building there the staff bathrooms near the main office and that whole stack um you know we get backups in the sinks as rust colored water in there and and I'm I'm thinking Antonio alluded to some of the bathroom Renovations that need to take place for the niosk report um it probably need to break into the walls to fix this um I actually have emailed uh Paul Salvatore just to look at some of these issues and see if there's anything he could do uh the city is still I think has one plumber um so just trying to help out however I can are you talking about old seawing rich yeah right out those bathrooms right outside the main office yeah most of those were um most of those we uh we did do a lot of work in them a few years ago when we originally started talking about um renovating some of these bathrooms so a lot of them the piping was fixed in a bunch of them so I'm going to have to investigate those a little bit more if if it's still becoming an issue because that's one of the first ones we hit and then we went downstairs and then we started in d-wing so we kind of jumped around just doing repairs but uh we are doing e-wing completely over this year but I'll look into ceiling and see what's going on with them is that something that could get scooped up with the science lab since they're all in c-wing yeah I mean I don't see why not um it might be something that we can just take care of ourselves I'd have to check and see what the backup really is um if it's just the nipples that are going in through the wall again um or if it's farther down because we did replace a lot of the piping um from the traps into the walls and even fixed some of the piping in the walls so it just could be farther down if it's farther down then yeah we're gonna have to do a wall opening a complete wall opening we'll have to put this we just sweep that into the um the addition upstairs as far as Park Avenue goes we're gonna have to look at a couple more drains though because I guess uh after he opened up that one and six I believe there are I think like three or four more out there as far as clogged drains go so we have to take care of that thank you Sean um uh there's a work order for Ace smoke detector and hallway keeps on going off um I'll I'll say um as of this report that work order was still in progress although I haven't heard of it going off in the past two or three weeks yeah we were out we were out there a couple weeks ago so Mikey might have blown it out and I did actually call Simplex to go out there because that's a Simplex panel so we had to get jci out there so they might have uh they might have addressed that already great great thanks Sean um Hayes Hayes Town Avenue School the uh one of the handicapped restrooms it's one of two staff restrooms I guess has been down a while um any update on that Sean you know what number that is or when that came in roughly uh it's work order 7690 it's marked as completed but uh there's they're telling me that it's still not working well if it was marked as completed then they've probably fixed something in there it may just be broken again but I will follow up with uh the person who completed that tomorrow instead of 7690 uh yep uh March 21st was the work order okay foreign rich I don't know if you know the answer to this um I after the board meeting last week we had a teacher from Rogers Park come in and talk about the water in uh the science area um it's been turned off all winter I guess it the pipes freeze so they turn it off in the winter and then it gets turned back on as soon as it warms up but it hadn't been turned on yet and I guess she does a lot of biology projects that use you know plants water and stuff like that um and I talked to Brian I know it's a little complicated to get it turned back on do you know if that was successful I think we turned that on last week I'll check with Bill he had the work order to go do that okay thank you Sean yeah we got to shut that down because of an outside wall um see that or we have a we wash the floors for you in the winter right right just the way that it is where the wind blows it blows on that outside wall that goes up high yeah and it just freezes everything we've had an issue with that for years we've tried a bunch of different things to try to remedy it but um the easiest thing was just shutting them off unfortunately so until we figure out something else or get some insulation in that block wall it's going to continue to be an issue Sean is that something that we could we could allow the custodian to do um just as soon as it warms up yeah I mean I don't see an issue with that um I mean you got to get up on a letter and get in the ceiling I don't know if they're gonna like that I know they don't like ladders sometimes so um depending on what kind of valve it is it's ball valves not a big deal it's a gate valve I'd rather have them not touch it just for the fact that they could snap it and leave the key inside and then we have a bigger issue so okay all right we can just put it on a uh I'll just put it on a PM so that um you know when I start opening up buildings we'll just start like outdoor buildings we'll start doing that so I'll just put that on the April PMs and that should take care of the issue great it's March too too early well it would have been this March I mean it's just you know you get these cold blasts I mean it depends on how cold it gets and dips down you know I mean here it is may I mean usually I have my air conditioning on everywhere I'm just turning it on at the schools in at Beaver Brook so you guys you know the Heat's down they're going down now but if I had to heat off totally in a bunch of places there'd be a lot of complaining because of the fact that it's you know 40 degrees out in the morning so right okay this is a really tough time of year with the with the heating um you know we were getting complaints about rooms being too high and you know at the ACs meeting somebody pointed out that it was 96 degrees during April vacation but we've we've hit 35 36 degrees overnight a few nights in the past few weeks too so we try to monitor on the controls as best as we can uh we adjust the outside uh set point for instance Beaver Brook was getting hot today so we just adjusted the outside set point down from 60 to 50 so the the boiler wouldn't come on and unless it got below 50 degrees all right how are we doing on the recalibrating I know we had some HVAC issues on you know being able to maintain the temperature not just how are we doing on that I know that we were kind of updating or addressing certain areas when Lauren and I went I think there was an incident where that was an issue one of the scores any complaints on that on being able to maintain the Heat or the air con you know the temperature and even temperature in this space or is that we're not having any issues like that right now we were actually getting um at our last ACS meeting we were getting some feedback on the uh I'll call in the inner classrooms at Broadview Middle School uh there's there's no windows in the classroom and they're relying on on you know the the thermostat and the and the Heat um but going back to what I said about the temperature getting down to 35 so when the when the temperature is 35 overnight the boiler's running all night long and then when it does go off on outside air those those pipes in the in the rooms are still hot so it takes a while for the rooms to cool down so it it makes this time of year very challenging to to keep the room a consistent temperature what about this art um in a class with um some sinks also that are turned off other than just the science lab and they also drain like they get clogged something with clay let's say traps yeah is that was I know that was also brought up earlier Rich wasn't that that we had that was in uh was that capital or was that one of our our budget projects for this year I don't recall which list it was on which school was that it was it was the clay traps I don't I I I think it was all the schools right oh well then Danbury High School um I'll say two years ago uh we purchased a bunch of uh new clay traps and and Sean's guys installed them and we've been keeping up on the maintenance so not aware of any issues at Danbury High School I'll have to look at the other schools here are those two uh together like you know that was the outcome of the of the issue that we have with the insulation on the exterior wall so I guess when they shut down the science lab and I think that's what we were really looking to figure out because obviously the you know they have to carry five gallons of water into class for the almost the entire year they shut it down I think they said like November and then they're back up maybe in April so but I think it was the was there was an art class also affected you know shut off during the school year but yes there was something about an art room absolutely Michelle yeah I recall I think it was it was one of the middle schools because we hadn't visited the high school okay yeah but maybe it was when you mentioned earlier training issues at Park Avenue you had mentioned three or four more I don't know I will I'll have to follow up with that and uh if it is a clay trap you know my guys can should be able to clean it out um and take care of that so I'll have to follow up with that and like I said one of our lists I don't have it offhand I think it was in our maintenance list for this year included um a small budget for cleaning out some of those traps because I think some of them need to be replaced too so and I can say Lauren and I had gone to you know several schools and the feedback on on the work that you're doing and hitting the warranty items really every school that I can honestly say we visited had you know zero items or were being addressed either through security or you know the plumbing issue obviously that we share with the city so you know just wanted to make sure I let you know that you know we got really positive feedback I'm sure also add to that thank you and that's largely the richest credit I mean he's been fantastic on staying on top but some of these these you know just day-to-day maintenance items so his team his team does a great job thank you you fix it and then it breaks right away well we were there three weeks ago I don't think it's old you know we do what we can you know thank you I I feel the pain and appreciate your effort anybody else have any other questions or do you want to keep going Mike um yeah so I'm gonna just talk at a very high level about um the security um RFP that we had and then we can break into executive and I'll get into a little bit more detail about it so uh Michelle as you you know you've we're on the the um the selection committee uh we had a public RFP that went out back a couple months ago um for an emergency uh operational response system and it's uh really was looking for a technology that would really coordinate a whole number of features everything from Panic buttons and and this kind of thing you know emergency alerts um to uh police and fires so we had uh four really high quality responses uh to that RFP um and then in February we had a day where they all came in and they all pitched and uh you know did demos live demos of their products uh and then we all went back uh and and discussed it um you know talk talk through the features that we liked it was a a really uh well-rounded committee I thought it had people from the police department Emergency Operations at the city um some teachers assistant principles principals uh Dan was there uh making sure you know it would it would make sense for the high school um and then you know people from RIT Department because these systems all have to tie into you know our existing systems um so I feel like we really got a good perspective on on the needs and uh what was going to make the most sense for us so uh I could tell you know talk a little bit more about that selection process but I can say that uh we have gotten down to uh what we believe is going to be our finalist uh we're working through some questions now on contracts um just some really kind of technical issues about um you know payments and just the way you know that the systems work and and you know a lot of the the minutia of a contract so uh but we're at that point and we we fully hope to be making an announcement probably within the next two weeks um officially uh awarding the RFP so that's exciting a lot of um great points of made by so many different people on on security and how to you know where everybody is at a given rate right it's one of those things where it's like unless you're living in it you don't like people think have spent years of their life thinking about these these you know questions and um you know raising issues that you're like wow I never really thought about that like how would that work you know so um I'm just glad there's other people out there thinking about it and Building Systems that you know we can literally plug into Danbury and that will will work for us and keep our kids and our schools safe so anybody have any questions on this any committee members nope you would go to Executive session okay so move to go to Executive session second by Bridget okay move by Michelle OBS second in my friendship actually so we're an executive session then right yeah
a lot of people here I thought so too okay well you may suckle back I actually thought I saw Julie here um okay well see no additional public comment for consent calendar uh do we have a desire to pull any items or a motion I'll move it off into the consent calendar okay I'll second that motion okay we have a motion by member Lando and a second by member Robinson any other discussion on consent um Julie I called you up for a public comment we have not voted yet so if you would like to speak on consent calendar had to read my get my reading glasses yeah so I wanted to talk about the one additional head count that you've got from one of your programs one of your um I believe the IEP programs so I'm just here to encourage this board and everybody to we need to really step back and you know last um spring Diane brought a presentation here and she talked about you know over 2 000 children you've got on these IEP plans these state-sponsor disability plans there's it's a trend line you went from like three percent ten years ago up to 20 it's got to be 24 now I want to know how many kids are you know basically fundamentally disabled we need to have that conversation so and just adding more head count more nurses and more Wellness is just too much so just wanted to raise that to everybody's attention and see if we can have a conversation about that one thank you all right thanks for the comment um we have a motion and a second for consent calendar um uh let's just start off with a roll call Vote with Mr Lando Orlando okay uh the item is unanimous just a list of field trips and some fun things yeah uh all right uh let's see we're moving on to item four which is our board Workshop um sorry um can you elaborate on making oh yeah yeah I would like to move that we uh suspend the rules and consider item 4.2 before item 4.1 uh on account of a lot of people with kids being here getting them their chance to speak and home on a school night second [Applause] um okay so we have a motion to suspend the rules uh to move item 4.2 up to be heard first um and we have a so we have a motion by Mr Orlando in a second by member konkin um so it's up for a discussion simply one additional comment that if you have the means to stay um and listen to our give input into our uh discussion of grading philosophy and practices it will be interesting and useful and I would love to have some extra public input but I know what we're all here for so is your microphone working because I can hardly hear yeah you need to you're it's not sensitive enough so you're gonna have to talk really close to it tonight okay thank you did you want to have any other discussion okay all right um so if there's no further discussion um we do mine's too sensitive so I'm gonna actually move it away from my face uh we can let's do another roll call vote uh we'll start we'll start with um with you and Sterling distance you made the motion Amanda what 10 aside Dolby I Robin Robinson I konk and I all right okay so with that we're actually going to move the workshop topic which was inform it is informational only on homework philosophy grading philosophy and practices and local assessments another thrilling topic for especially students to speak on if you want to stick around after we move our 4.2 item up to be discussed first since that is most likely what brought you all out here tonight so thank you for bringing that to the table Mr Lando um so with that we are going to move to item 4.5 4 I'm not completely numbered sorry 4.2 okay I just said it I just don't have my stuff fully numbered um and this item is a discussion action item special board Workshop facilities Master Plan update consider Elementary Surplus capacity and prioritization of Elementary School master plan projects presented by Julie Kissel and before Julie gets up here and starts there's a few things that I want to go over just a little bit of History how we got here and why so Chico Unified passed its first facility master plan in 2014 and that really gave us the opportunity to pass two bonds major e and major K as a result of having a facilities master plan um at our meetings that we had just I don't know in March we heard from all of our schools we asked all of them to come forward and talk and we have as a result of our bond measures we've been able to touch our Comprehensive High Schools we've been able to touch our Junior highs we've been able to touch several of our elementary schools but it was really clear that we still had some Elementary School sites that needed attention and those were Fairview which is not an elementary school site but that facility still needs a lot of work Chapman Citrus Hooker Oak Park View Rosedale and Sierra View so hearing all of that and hearing that there was some discrepancies between the facilities that we have in the district the community and the board tasked Julie Kissel in the facilities Department to find ways to renovate these schools as soon as possible we want them tomorrow their job was to develop options to get as many schools renovated as quickly and as cost effectively as possible quickly so our students can be in them cost effectively because we do have limited dollars we only have so many Bond dollars even when we go out for a new Bond we will have limited dollars and we want to touch as many schools as possible so miss Kissel and her staff looked at the facility's data they did the job they were tasked to do they provided options for facilities they were not tasked with putting an emotional political or really even an educational value on our schools and we know that schools are incredibly important to their school Community our staff our students our children the graduates people that have have ties to the schools are passionate about their schools and we've literally as Miss Robinson mentioned we've heard from hundreds of you and that's exactly what we want we want that passion we want your involvement but the board also owes our community due diligence to look at all of the options that are out there so I do want to really thank Julie we may not always like the options but at least they did the work to give us the options so tonight our facilities team is going to present those options and our board may make some decisions and the decisions that the board makes will guide our facility master plan which Julie will bring back in the fall and um just kind of thinking out loud here a little bit we have a lot of people here tonight that want to speak and we do have an option that is option six that is status quo so I do want to throw out to the board after you hear the presentation and you hear the data if that is the direction that we're leaning let's try to save the emotion of all of our speakers that are lined up here tonight and try to get if that's the way that you're thinking in your mind and you get to vote I don't let's think about ways that we can get to that vote and let people relax and move on if that is the direction that you're headed we could suspend the rules we could limit our number of speakers to the 30 minutes that you have designated on the agenda so there's different ways that we could get there but just something for the board to think about in the interest of your decision and the time that we have tonight so with that I'm going to turn it over to Julie and let her do her presentation and Julie I do want to thank you and your team I know it has not been easy but thank you for the work that you put in to give us these options thank you very much good evening board thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about this important topic tonight I had also created a review to discuss with you prior to the presentation but thankfully superintendent Staley has already created that review for you so we'll jump right into the presentation so the goal for tonight is to answer a request by the board to prepare examples of what the open structure program could look like if the Hook Road campus is repurposed so we will be providing some options which you've already seen that we can walk through together to provide high quality facilities for all elementary all elementary schools student-wide the following options are presented for consideration toward this goal uh reviewing the guiding principles that have been brought forward to the board both in March and in April The Guiding principles are right sizing addressing our elementary school capacity concerns keeping the commitments to our community that we've made with our bond dollars planning for the transitional kindergarten integration adequate planning for sped accommodations and facilities and Safety and Security the board requested the following information what options are there for the open structure program do we house will they will they be joined with an existing site will they remain unchanged uh the time frame for the relocation will there be a guarantee of program enrollment possibilities and what would the transition look like these are the questions that I left with at our April 5th meeting and was tempting to answer for you in the following options option one is a co-location of the Chapman Elementary School population as well as the open structure program in a large capacity Campus of 672 students the second option to a is providing the open structure program at Neil Dao in one class per grade level option 2B is for two classes per grade level which is the current program of the open structure program option number three would be a split of the program with a portion of the students going to McManus and a portion of the students going to Neil Dao 4A is open structure program at McManus at one grade per class one class per grade level and then 4B is the two classes per grade level at McManus option five is um eliminating the open structure program from [Music] the district and number six is the status quo option where we leave the open structure program at the current Hooker Oak campus [Applause] we present this slide of the model loading scenarios that were presented to the board previously of the small mid-size and large campuses that are utilized as a planning tool for the master plan there's discussion about how additional capacity on those campuses can be realized with higher loading in each classroom and utilizing specialized spaces as regular classrooms as well this slide shows the options um laid out along the top and the Surplus capacity that would be realized by the implementation of those options the first two columns show the current enrollment and the pre then the second column shows the projected enrollment in the year 2930.
uh Mr Lombardo is going to be appointed as our affirmative action officer 23-24. and then as I mentioned um Steve fogel'll be doing an Ethics presentation and this is the resolution that coincides with that ethics presentation that Mr folby will be presenting a little bit later on so that's pretty much the reorganization Mr romancino I don't know public or anyone in the meeting Ford public has any questions in regard to the reorganization so we're going to ask for a motion to accept the real reorganization that's correct and who's that that was uh Mr Drew may I have a second if I may please second that's Mr capanum if you like them to take a vote if I may Mrs Abreu yes Mr capano yes Mrs Fredo yes Mr Garcia no it's in the Drew yes Dr pontelyana yes Mr Ring Court yeah Mr Russo yes yes all right Mr Roman Gino so now we're going to ask for a motion to close the reorganization and open the regular meeting okay I'll second all right that's Mr Russo and Mr Ring Court okay Mr romijino I believe you want to do right so you don't have to take attendance again no do not have to take you have to take the role so I want to just uh welcome everyone to our meeting tonight uh just a few quick things um I just want to thank Mrs Foster uh for running the Middle School Honor Society induction last night it was a great program uh Mrs Foster handles the high school which we had a couple weeks ago last night was the middle school so thank you Mrs Foster just to note that we have two upcoming events May 23rd we have our academic awards at the high school and June 6th tentatively we have our athletic awards also at the high school so we'll confirm the dates and the times of those events and just a reminder also we are still registering for September uh new Pre-K students to the district and new kindergarten students to the district so that registration is ongoing if any anybody has any questions about registering a Pre-K or a kindergarten student they can call my office for more information and registration information okay so at this time what I would like to do is recognize some of our teachers and educational Specialists who are here with us tonight each year the Department of Education always recognizes teacher of the year throughout the state of New Jersey it's been going on for many many years in Bergen County I would say 99 of the districts celebrate teacher of the year and the way we do it in clipside over the years we've had many different formats we used to pick a teacher in each building Elementary School school three four five six middle school high school then eventually it came down to what we do right now and that is we asked for nominations from the stamp itself from teachers to nominate other teachers their peers who they feel are doing an exemplary job in the classroom out of the classroom with the community and so on and so forth so we asked for nominations pre-k through six we asked for Middle School nominations we asked for high school college so this year we have four recipients and the first one I'd just like to talk a little bit about is Barbara scorda so congratulations Barbara Barbara Olivia has been with us for about 13 years uh you know I say about so I don't have to get exact my father's been with us about 13 years uh started out as a podcast title one teacher at school number five correct and from there she moved over to school number six where she is right now part of a team teaching math uh as part with nine teachers in in grade six I hear wonderful things about Barbara from other staff members and from students and from parents and I want you to know that in all the recipients should know that the letters that I receive nominating their teachers are really saying some wonderful things about the people that they work with and that's a lot of the people that nominated you and there were a number had great things to say about them you should be very very proud Barbara also works at our after school program she's a supervisor at school six and I know most recently Barbara has done her internship uh for guidance at school number six for Middle School yes so I know she has an interest in guidance so Barbara if you come up thank you [Applause] our next recipient is from our Middle School Patty bonoma Patty's been teaching in the Middle School her whole career she's been with us for about 15 years teaching math in our Middle School she also spends a great deal of time working with our 7th and 8th grade student council I know there's a lot of activities that go on in the middle school she organizes the students to do different fundraising activities they give service to the borough they can service to the uh the school itself I know Patty's also involved with uh organizing the eighth grade did A Dance each year for our eighth grade graduates and so Patty I just want to congratulate you and come on okay I'm going to move on to the high school so the high school this year is a little bit unique in that not only do we have teacher of the year recipients in the high school but we also have two people who were nominated for the Governor's education I'm going to stop there for a second we have two people that were nominated for two different things Kim Shore was nominated as the governor's educational specialist of the year and uh Carmine cabreri was nominated for the Governor's teacher of the year nomination so not only did these people receive that recognition they are also our teacher of the year for the district Kim Shaw has been with us for about eight years I know Kim is very active in the high school as a guidance counselor she's also involved with a program with Mr Lombardo called Heroes and cools kids uh kids from the high school do mentoring for kids in our elementary school and I know Kim also does coaching with us and she's a vital part of our guidance department so Kim congratulations thank you very much and um and last but not least Carmine I had mentioned that Carmine um uh also received the governor's recognition award con man has been with us for about 15 years has been in the high school taught some social studies but more recently or most recently I should say he's really been a vital part of our special education department of the high school has taught a variety of subjects related to special education I know he does a great job with our kids up there and is a great asset to that program in high school also everyone knows that Carmen Carmine does a wonderful job as a coach has coached a variety of sports and uh we want to congratulate him for this award so Tommy come on foreign thank you very much Okay so just want to make mention to the board that um this week I emailed you the board self-evaluation for the 2000 22-23 school year when you have time you can look over that self-evaluation we'll approve it at our next uh May 24th meeting but if you want to bring any bring up any discussion about it Feel Free at the next meeting to do that I wanted to just give you time to look that over if you haven't had the time to do so uh before I move on to the consent agenda we have a very small one tonight any comments questions from the public okay so if I could look at the consent agenda quickly uh first resolution we are appointing Brianna gordio who will be a grade five teacher for us next year at school number six this is beginning uh with the September 2023 school year uh second resolution Simona ardolino we're also appointing as a grade six teacher at school number six beginning with the 2000 23-24 school year Mr alfano the third resolution we're going to strike okay um fourth resolution I'd like to read is uh we are recommending or I am recommending to transfer John Lombardo from the high school vice principal to middle school vice principal effective July 1st 2023 we then have a list of um athletic recommendations these recommendations are for our fall and winter sports so we are appointing the following coaches to the following Sports at the negotiated salaries which are stated um in the agenda so that's page two and Page Three I believe there are two or three openings Mr profito had told me about that have not been filled yet for the fall and the winter so we will uh repost those if necessary and then at our June meeting or probably July meeting we will appoint the spring spring coaches as we did last year on page four we have the second reading of the following policies and regulations I had given each of you a synopsis of the changes in those policies and regulations at our last board meeting um so the second reading Will Make Them official and then we have a excuse me a number of uh HIV cases that were investigated and we are just stating uh that we went through each of those investigations and there is no Finance right or don't I have it really the finance for small Medina was the reorganization okay so that's it Financial mid-may okay let me get back on regular meetings any questions uh from the board or the public on the consent agenda motion to accept that was Mr Garcia who was the second FMA please Justin the Drew was second okay I'd like to take a vote if I may Mrs Abreu yes Mr capana yes Mrs Fredo it's on page two I have to recuse myself for Courtney Lynch Courtney Mr Garcia yes missed in the Drew Dr fontiliano yes Mr Rancourt yes Mr Russo yes and Mr yunizzi yeah yeah Game of Thrones Gina will close this portion then reopen for Mr Fogerty okay so motion to close motion to close no making one okay that's Mr Russo Mr capano thank you everyone in the audience appreciate it and congrats to all the teachers before we break we just want to thank everybody that was here this evening but also we have an individual in this room that has served this district for a long time and he announced his retirement at our last meeting Mr Walker you've touched a lot of people's lives thank you in the 19th in the 19 years that I stood on this Podium I'm nothing but great things my daughters went through the middle school and still to this day they're in preparatory school and they still talk about you so much a lot of people's lives not so much like our superintendent but you did a great job and we wish you the best of luck did you say anything about him no please don't get him started it's unbelievable I laid on you thank you so much thank you thank you okay thank you very much for coming to
with only 33 students in his graduating class due to financial reasons after graduating Bob was not able to complete college and work out jobs until listing in the military after basic training he was sent to Vietnam where he gave his life on May 7 1968 eight days before his 23rd 23rd birthday for 500 scholarships are being given to CHS seniors who plan for to further their education at a college University or technical school these scholarships are given in the memory of Mr Holden and other CHS alumni who have served our country this year's recipients are Grace Anderson Paxton Reed Kyle Rose and Kate tenis [Applause] thank you Monroe County Fraternal Order of Police scholarship officer roach will be presenting the Monroe County Fraternal Order of Police Officer scholarships to seniors interested in a career in law enforcement or related field or children of law enforcement officers this year's recipients are please come forward Riley otherton Alyssa Harper and Christine Wallace [Applause] do we have a rotary member next we have the Lewis Hutch slothly Columbia Rotary Club scholarship and a rotary member will be joining us to hand it out this year's scholarship is open to any Columbia High School seniors who'll be attending college in the fall applicants needed to respond to three essay questions to receive this two thousand dollar scholarship congratulations on this year's recipient Kate tenis he's in the back [Applause] our next record our next record recognition will be present a presentation to our German Honor Society new inductees Delta Epsilon Phi the following students have completed at least three semesters of German with a 3.3 grade point average and have an overall grade point average of over a three please come forward when I call your name Riley Bernard Olivia Ellie Kayla joltz Tom kenningstein Brooklyn a strike and Paxton Reed [Applause] another Columbia Kiwanis Vicki Smith the Vicki Smith next we have the Columbia Kiwanis Vicki Smith Key Club scholarship this is a one thousand dollar scholarship awarded to a senior Key Club member at Columbia High School Key Club is a service organization and members participate in a variety of community service projects throughout the school year this year's recipient is Christine Wallace [Applause] the writerski marching scholarship award s the scholarship is named in honor of former CHS band teacher Mr Craig reuterski this year's 500 scholarship is being awarded to Olivia Eli who has been admitted and enrolled in the college marching band program [Applause] she's in there getting pictures oh and then also the music booster senior scholarship this one thousand dollar scholarship from the Columbia music boosters is awarded to an outstanding senior Who's involved in the music program congratulations to Riley Cleburne [Applause] the Seal of by literacy program students have the opportunity to be recognized by the state of Illinois for earning Proficiency in English and one additional language is part of the buy literacy program two honors are available the Commendation toured by literacy and the Seal of bi-literacy these two honors require test scores in both English and a second language we're awaiting a couple Apple results for a few students however these students have already earned the accommodation toward buy Literacy for Spanish please come up when I call your name I have several so please hold your applause Max Barthel Braden Bergman Dallas forgey Emily Holmes Taylor Martin London meinhardt Ben Scott and Abby venhaus [Applause] the students being awarded the top honor of seal by lettuce versus Spanish are and again hold your applause to the end Joseph Kaya Lauren herb Carson Janey Addison Miller Evie Moore Nolan pashia Ainsley Schroeder Kate tenis or in vote and Drake wittenbrink [Applause] can you take them over can you take them over to the side Dr Ballinger please students have earned accommodation toward bi Literacy for German Bradley Bernard Kayla joles and Paxton Reed [Applause] thanks Mr Waddles and Harris the Thomas H Moore Illinois Electric Cooperative Memorial scholarships are being awarded by Mr Alan wattles and Mr Joel Harris the IEC Memorial Scholarship program Awards fifteen two thousand dollar scholarships annually to deserving students in the Electric Cooperative family entering College to assist with educational costs this year's student will also be recognized at the ice annual meeting in Springfield congratulations to Hayden habermill [Applause] final one okay and we have our last one the Edgar Zimmer Family Foundation scholarship Edgar Zimmer supported hundreds of Monroe County Youth with college scholarships for decades before his death in November 2006 at the age of 102.
uh actually that this is the first week first read sorry yep first read uh does anybody have any questions that we looked at that you have locality yeah I've looked at it I don't have any questions all right all right yeah it's time to so we're just starting from earlier yeah the only thing that's different uh is still second Tuesday's most months I think uh you don't want to guess at this time of year over the town meetings and things it's kind of we do the best we can schedule but I'm on the flight I need to change uh the time is moved earlier I think it's the time is at five o'clock right now but that's not set in stone the committee can discuss and figure out whatever the committee wants to do uh I think five o'clock is good with Administration right yeah um what's it the official work date three four right yes so hanging around till 6 30 is tougher than hanging around till five yeah until five would be great just because we get here so early yeah and then my only hesitation aside from my own but it's like if someone's going to come to a meeting with her called the comment like people get out of work at five so I would hesitate to be right at 5 maybe 5 30 it would have a lot more leeway for people to get here but you know um to participate and watch okay so that's not the first read so you've got it there the drive take a think about it and we'll put it on for a vote in June yeah yeah that yeah that could be one of those weeks yeah I think it's it's you know school committee night a month yeah [Music] since getting a different unique years yeah yeah what yes usually yeah once February we know this too right main with the top maybe who knows otherwise usually the plus two coaches usually I mean I know when I coach I pick around yes I would say to make it easier for this principles the staff another reason we schedule the whole year yeah I mean I would do four but like I kind of do hear what you're saying I just feel bad like the prince so like if we have a principal that lives an hour away they're not going home you know what I mean and then it's just and you know like for our staff that it's a long day we have a lot you know but I think five is a good compromise um because I think if you do want to make a public comment you've got to plan ahead and I don't know I mean I think 5 15 might be a better company conference to a lot of people to leave work and actually I sit out the door maybe we can move public comment on the agenda do we have to do it first so we can always have it on the agenda maybe we could have it on the agenda for like the 5 30 thing do it after the reports or something like that yeah sure so I mean I'm just saying that way we can because then we're out of here like everyone can go home and have dinner yeah I'm a big proponent for meals at their appropriate times [Laughter] until later like between the reports and the business items might be a decent thing to do just because uh we actually discuss what's going to be voted on before you you know we get reports like Nancy just gave me in fact yeah I can see that work all right I mean the reports are really just for us usually updates you know if somebody wants to listen they could live stream in but I mean like when there's a boat coming like so we can do it just like right before we do the votes all right um yeah so think about that a lot of big discussion next month uh the policy subcommittee that the policy there the grievance process so this one Lori's not here Lori has all the information on this would you guys have questions for Lori do you want to hold this one do you want to vote on it now process it's the third time we're seeing it yeah [Music] that's there yeah yeah no that's one yes you want to take the vote you think yeah all right I thought are you good with it Jess yeah so let's let's have a motion to improve the uh policy AC non-discrimination policy including harassment retaliation agreements process for Title IX complaints so Jess a second sorry Julie all right let's talk about it uh and it would have any discussion I think it's thoughtfully done it's really specific all right any others just do you want to say anything no I mean I'm just happy to see that you know two people in case of conflicting interests yeah all right then all in favor aye aye all right I guess all right motion passes um I have a motion to approve the seventh grade out of state field trip and there's a deep trip with the application um so the seventh grade team um has an out-of-state field trip to Roger Williams Park Zoo and they like to go on June 2nd they'll use their content knowledge of ecology to complete a scavenger hunt consisting of questions on specific exhibits riddles in a collection of photos they must take they really love this part of the trip and they will also get some free time to visit the animals in their small groups with a chaperone they chose this suit because most students have not frequented it and they plan to be back by two o'clock for a regular bus and parent pickup oh so we just have to vote because they're technically including the states even though it's probably closer than yep okay I was just thinking that and I only had one question but I think it's going to align with our conversation later just about money being used for field trips on Student Activities to funds um how I mean I guess it's a greater conversation that money is not earmarked necessarily for field trips so is it is it the particular classes money the classroom that's what I just saw the class of 2020 there's a fee yes 25 no there's that and I think it says the student funds right yeah it's both yes both as I'm saying and it's a bigger conversation like if they have an active Student Activity account and they the teacher wants to have a field trip well it doesn't the student doesn't the class have like officers that decide what to do with their Middle School where is the funds come from because like upper grades is raising fundraisers yeah so you saw the elementary age kids that raise money K to five it will stay in their class accounts the whole way through and then when they leave fifth it comes up to to Hunter right down and then it goes into that class account but someone's there like there's an advisor or somebody there is it the teachers decide what the money is schools yeah no I think it's a bigger conversation like so seventh grade gets money taken out because they go on this awesome field trip let's say the sixth grade I don't know I I don't know instead of the Student Activity account money should that all be outlined where should so year over here if they have a field trip each year should that money come from Student Activities or should I certain activities fund like the prom graduation student that's what Student Activities is for right field activities is for field trips and for activities anything that the students do outside of the curriculum aspect yeah it isn't our field trip to curriculum well I guess so yeah I think it's a bigger Department principle in them superintendent yeah okay whether which bucket falls into yeah but I can we don't we I can tell you with next year's budget because I'm familiar with it we did budget for filter right okay I know and I honestly in all the schools I've been at I've never seen field trips be funded from the general budget it's not responded from Student Activities okay so like you said the Money Follows them each year yeah and through funding raising and I don't know if they pay class fees because they're pretty young they will in high school yeah so they so that's early so that's usually what pays for it or the class advisor kind of just you know figures it out how much each family owes okay I don't know how much they have into the account at this particular time and then if they receive donations that are to be earmarked that's when they go over to the business office to be held so then they won't be used mistakenly on something appropriately does that help a little bit yeah yeah yeah I'm very familiar with that now yeah all right we have emotional approved the seventh grade out of state field trip so moved second absolutely all in favor hi yes nothing major passes okay um they have a motion to appoint Joseph Michael back I hope I said that incorrectly as the bbrc district treasurer for 2023-24 hello Julie second Megan any discussion just for Jess and Lisa he's been doing it for like 10 years more and more maybe more um he's lovely um he does it for another District so he's experienced I believe he's retired from he was some type of accountant of Finance or he had some type of job applicable to being a Trevor but I don't believe it's a full-time thing right it's a part-time thing he comes and writes the checks every other week yeah reviews everything that's done so that's his position now then yeah he's been doing it for years yeah and he doesn't usually come to the meetings I know uh I had never met him and I signed the warrants and finally the last time I was there he just happened to be there um so I got to meet him and he was great and very experienced uh all in favor aye aye yes all right motion passes uh now I have a motion to uh approve the excess and deficiency [Music] Megan yes second Julie this is what Nancy just talked about yeah yeah any additional questions for Nancy all right all in favor yes okay motion passes they have a option to approve the oil bid at three dollars and four four two cents per gallon from dense cable Julie Jess any discussion oh David hi I guess it passes and they have a motion to approve the MIAA Wellness grant for ten thousand dollars really second Megan uh any discussion on this thank you and these are our grants who applied for Grants is that Nancy excellent thank you very much yeah that was awesome uh all right all in favor aye aye yes all right motion passes um may have a motion to accrue the Nia risk grant for ten thousand dollars all right may I have a notion to approve the Mia risk grant for six thousand dollars stop moved thank you Julie I have a discussion on that no discussion no all right no nothing go ahead and talk about it all right okay all right I guess all right motion passes uh and now in a motion to approve the acceptance of the nutrition equipment assistance grant for four thousand thirty nine dollars Jess any discussion on this one I have one thing that's specific just to the kitchen and food service all in favor aye aye against all right motion fastness um before we get into so the next two are cash donations right not grants they're actual donations um so I've got I've got our fundraising in cash uh get all public gifts to the schools kcd policy so I remember going through these policies and updating them last year before with uh Bob and uh uh the kcb public gifts to the schools was last approved and updated in 2018.
to look at the demo so far and that's it are there any questions for joy okay hearing none we'll move on to policy and Communications okay the policy and Communications subcommittee met on Wednesday April 19th um we started off with the discussion of policy 6162.51 survey of students and we made what we thought was our final round of changes and little adjustments to it and thought that it would be ready to bring to you tonight for a final read and then I think a day or two after our meeting we got a packet from Cabe with a brand new survey policy for us to review so so we're sort of uh back to square one with surveys part of being change makers yeah yeah so no survey of students on the agenda for tonight um we then started to dive into a bunch of policies that you see on the agenda for later this evening um these are all required policies that we didn't current don't currently have and we'll be suggesting recommending adoption of capes versions that's the grading and assessment systems and weighted grades challenging curriculum Advanced courses or programs eligibility criteria for enrollment and graduation requirements so you'll see those all I'll talk about them all a little bit later on we then talked about um the policy for Public Communication public participation along with the regulation that goes with that and the meeting conduct by law and those are also on the agenda for later this evening um we spent a little bit of time on the budget flyer made final changes to that which as Dr Burrell mentioned was sent out to families last week and talked a little bit about the state of the district communication that Dr Brill also set down last week so it was actually a fairly quick short meeting but a lot was packed into our time wow I can see it right here yeah a lot of paper yeah okay any questions for Debbie all right we'll move on uh Kate Mike uh we start our meeting talking about the switch of curricular tools from my math to illustrative math document and Mark Hewitt and James Fitzpatrick detailed a committee that was formed as a result of SBA scores and student data around Philip since 2017.
this slide discusses those model option capacities and their costs and then the tiles to the right show the costs estimated for the various options one through six this slide summarizes the information on each of the options presented the board also requested out the April meeting to investigate the historical building process which we have done so we provided what the criteria is and what the benefits might be of a historical designation there is an application process that the district would go through and if approved it would go to the city of Chico to also approve then we talked about the prioritization of the remaining elementary school campuses which is needed for the development of the Master Plan update and we have this slide which you've seen before that has important data that we thought would help the board in their decision making for prioritization yes so I can hear me um just to clarify that this um slide shows the population of the students that are currently enrolled in those schools that's correct and just to clarify for those that aren't familiar with some of our our terms unduplicated means they fit the criteria for low socioeconomic um they are classified as an English learner eligible for free or reduced price meal or a foster youth okay but it doesn't include the low socioeconomic that we get our lcap funds enhanced right it does it does okay that I I thought I understood that it did okay thank you you're welcome thanks for asking we were also asked to provide some assumptions regarding scheduling and available Bond dollars regarding this implementation schedule that we're asking you to designate for us so assuming that the district is able to pass a 225 million dollar bond in the future and an assumed allocation of 15 of that value allocated to Charter Schools would uh culminate in a total of 190 million dollars available for the next projects of the master plan again yes I'm sorry guy had to ask this stupid question and get an answer so I figured somebody else might be curious um it says assuming the 225 million dollar thing if we know that we need 425 million why don't we just go open it for 425 million so I know the answer but I'm going to let you tell everybody else what that answer is well that's a good question uh go ahead Jacqueline I can take that one so there is statute that is a unified school district we are only allowed to assess sixty dollars per 100 000 assessed value of property so depending on the property value within Chico Unified boundaries that's the constraint at which we can issue a bond thank you so it doesn't necessarily always match the need it's the ability yes that was a surprise fact for me so I figured well because it is constraining that limit to how in how much debt we can carry has a significant impact on how long it takes us through a facility's master plan to implement the different phases that we have out there I just thought it was important that we all know that I have a follow-up question to that my goodness my microphone is sensitive um when or what is the constraint to then go out for another Bond so at what point would the district be able to justify or allowed to go out for another an additional Bond so there is a maximum debt that a unified school district can have so as we much like a home mortgage as we pay down the principal on our general obligation bonds that gives us what we call bonding capacity or the ability to issue future bonds so you have to kind of pay down your principal before you'd have capacity to issue another Bond and so in this scenario if we were successful and it was the the most amount that we could go out for this is too many variables to for you to like give me a firm answer but would we be looking at four years later we might be able to go out for another Bond six years later what what is what would be the general layer measure e measure k and a potential new Bond and 24 on top of each other so when you pay down principal in all three then that gives you the bonding capacity so how we've structured measure e and measure K have a direct correlation or impact on how our ability to be able to go out but you're probably looking at six or eight years six or eight years okay roughly thank you another important Instagram oh to remember is the answer to Caitlin's question was six or eight years out after we've passed the first successful Bond important thing to remember um since we're on the money topics option six uh the status quo option uh says that doing so would have an estimated Bond impact of 50 million dollars can you explain where that figure comes from yes so that um jumps to the conclusion that we would not be incorporating the Hooker Oak campus into the master plan implementation so we would not be performing a master plan project on the Hooker Oak campus does that answer your question I'm sorry it adds 50 million because you would sorry about that hook out of our future cycle of improvement and rebuilding right one of the advantages to taking the Hooker Oak campus um repurposing the hookero campus means that you would not be spending the 50 million dollars to modernize that campus renovate that campus so if you're putting it back in then the money goes back in as well can you explain a little bit better that figure for Hooker Oak specifically um last time we had a facilities master plan discussion we talked about Citrus we talked about just doing a light touch on Citrus because the alternative would be to completely demolish it and rebuild it and there are additional costs now associated with with new State Engineering requirements that make that project way more than what it would have been you know even six or eight years ago I think I think that's the timeline that's correct the the replacement cost comparison to the modernization cost comparison per square foot leads you to a complete tear down and rebuilt to to make a cost-benefit analysis of the Hooker Oak campus right so that leads you to a complete rebuild of the campus that would be comparable to the other campuses we have modernized so different from what's shown in the 2019 master plan significantly at a cost of an estimated 50 million five zero yes sorry I can't hear 15 versus 50 sorry okay um Julie thank you for all your hard work on this um I understand and we talked about this a little bit at our meeting a month ago that option number five could have some very serious benefits for Chico high and Inspire high schools could you please describe those yes our meeting on March 8th the board was received information that the implementation of the chico High facilities master plan would be impeded by inspire School of Arts and Science being located in the current footprint that they have now on the chico high school campus it is um that current footprint in the master plan includes significant Career and Technical education facilities to provide offerings to the high school students at Chico high school that would be similar and comparable to those provided at Pleasant Valley High School on the chico High campus what would those be do we know um yes medical pathway Sports Med pathway Arts teaching Academy Ag and Natural Sciences to name a few yeah go ahead so finding an alternate location for inspire School of Arts and Sciences has been on our to-do list for a number of years they the board had decided to place them at our Canyon View future Canyon View High School property several years ago they have designed plans to move to that campus however the project is too expensive and the funding is not available and not available for the foreseeable future so the likelihood is that they would remain at the chico High campus until another viable opportunity comes up so what would some other viable opportunities be for inspire High School so they've been doing a great deal of fundraising they they hit a really tough spot during covid trying to raise funds for their project so that it has been a slow a slow go for them but they could get a funding source somehow if they are actively trying to do that so they some money could come in and then they could build at the Canyon View campus or elsewhere they have a grant from the state to build but it does have to be on a field app compliance site in order for them to use those funds so they're not able to use those funds at a commercial site if they were to buy a commercial property for their school so they would have to have a School site then you'd have to have a School site in order to use that yes if we had a campus repurposed because we have Surplus capacity in the district at the elementary level and we surplused a campus it could be um offered through the prop 39 process to inspire to be housed there so um they have some source of funding that amounts to something like eight million dollars for construction either renovation or new construction yes and I understand that this pot of money has a lifespan of some kind where it might go away yes a couple three years if it's not used somewhere yes can I get clarity on what that those sources of funding are and I hear they're in the neighborhood of eight million dollars Jacqueline feel free to chime in here if that's true so the grant money that Julie was just referring to that's the that's the money that Inspire has that's in addition to their allocation of measure K and any fundraising money they have to be able to secure a location a permanent location for their school and that's about eight million dollars and how long do they have to spend that at a school site before it goes away completed by 2029 their School site has to be completed by 2029 and when would it need to initiate a 2027 they'd have to be in contract under construction so for at least 50 percent of that Grant amount so if we want to move Inspire high school out of the Portable Buildings that they're in on Chico High campus we will need to find a school site for them by 2027.
I'm sorry uh Mr Randazzo Mr Randazzo will be presenting Edgar and Bonnie Zimmer recognized the potential of the Youth of the community and the importance of Education to assure a strong future for their beloved Monroe County first his private foundation made scholarship and tuition waiver grants and then in 2002 Edgar established the Zimmer family scholarship program at the Greater St Louis Community Foundation perpetually providing scholarships to help students receive a post-secondary education to feel their choice at the accredited college of their choice Mr Zimmer's Vision created a partnership between the high schools and the county and the Community Foundation that annually Awards scholarships to students of good moral character academic promise who have proven leadership or entrepreneurial spirit with demonstrating Financial need at the college level they will attend Awards this year vary between four thousand dollars to six thousand dollars per recipient per year right per year four thousand dollars to six thousand dollars per recipient and scholarship recipients will be eligible for Renewal consideration for a maximum of twenty four thousand dollars over the four years congratulations to this year's recipients Alexa maulding Sam urin Natalie Sturm and Olivia ellick [Applause] congratulations to all of our students on their outstanding accomplishments you're amazing on behalf of the administration faculty staff and your families we're proud of you good luck with your future endeavors we will now be called on in groups to complete your checkout in the gym to complete your checkout you must have all your first through eighth hour teacher signatures all your fees paid and your Chromebook
I do remember looking at it we thought it was fine at the time um this one says superintendent has the authority to accept all gifts and offers in the case of gifts from industry business or special interest groups no expensive advertising promotion can be involved uh with the donation gifts that were of all changes to school sites require school for approval and it says uh it doesn't say gifts will automatically become the property of the school system any gift of cash which is what we're involved with here uh whether or not intended by the donor for a specific purpose will be accepted by vote of the school committee handled as a separate account and expended at the discretion of the committee as provided by law thank you so we need to look at this I'm going to take this to policy so committee uh Lori hopefully next week and we do need to update it because there was I don't know if you guys are familiar there was an issue recently with a cash donation from 2020.
and they came to the conclusion that it needed to be explored that we needed new tools to be explored so those new tools were Bridges mathematics Eureka Math luster of math and math and focus so this was a 20-person panel that explored in my opinion a lot of different outcomes in the came to the consensus that luster of math served the best purpose going forward over the past year the seventh graders have already uh piloted some of the programs uh not not everything but just the some of the skills and curriculum tools the I think the takeaway with illustrative math is the collaboration that students get with each other they do a lot more speaking to each other there's more collaborative dialogue which definitely covers one of those big Seas and I don't want to take too much weight because I know we're going to talk a lot about that later so I'll leave it with that next we discussed the pdac which is switching from the Ed reflect to the Google Classroom platform to better house the teacher administrator evaluation documents and that will be started next year the next was discuss the k-3 reading program uh probably Dr Matt's favorite subject and basically you you're going to be writing a letter by May 19th to get an extension on the requirement for updating our k33 reading program Dr Bill Rick stole some Thunder on s.a.t and SBA testing so thanks for that uh the only thing I'll add is the the national sorry Next Generation science standards test that's going to be administrated at the end of May grades 5th 8th and 11th and as always well that's our as our new mode of operation or how we end the meeting now is we take everything on our agenda and we bring it back to the to the the four c's and uh it was it's a really nice thing it was mostly discussed about the luster of math and how all those really big two is the collaborative and critical thinking aspects were recovered very well okay well done thank you any questions for Mike I'm sorry I forgot one thing we voted to bring Lester path to a vote today okay unanimous okay excellent okay I forget that all right excellent thank you and hearing no questions uh finance committee okay uh we met on Monday April 24th and it was a relatively quick meeting as I've been reporting um talking about our deficit projection it's down a little bit from last month so um right now um we are projected to be over budget by 573 224 that was as of that meeting the most significant changes month to month were no surprise of substitute costs building repairs custodial supplies kind of the same story that we've been talking about we did get a little bit more in terms of our excess costs Grant Revenue so that offsets some of those estimates which is primarily what was bringing down or what has brought down that that estimate we'll be talking about the pay rate guidelines that we approved and brought forward a little bit later in the agenda so that was pretty much it any questions or comments okay equity and inclusion Amy okay we met um last Thursday it was Rosa myself Mike Dr Mann and also Catherine Abrego who was here earlier Our World Language curriculum leader um it's been about a year since our last meeting so and it's new to Dr Mann and to Mike and to miss Abrego so Dr Mann and was Abrego sort of talked about their experiences they had both dealt with some Equity committees and some issues in their former districts they um talked about their experiences there we sort of went over what we had accomplished here and our last presentation which was last March and sort of the challenges that we had a bit of um discrepancies between maybe board you know expectations and deliverables there it was a not a it was hard to give concrete deliverables on this kind of work and um Dr Mann might be able to expand a little bit but she had sort of suggested that maybe we don't have this as a board subcommittee I think when we formed this in 2020 it was a bit reactive we wanted to be more proactive um I might say maybe we kind of bit off more than we can chew a little bit we brought in community members it was a very large committee I think we discussed how that was sometimes challenging and I didn't even really think about it until Dr Mann said like there's never really been a board subcommittee that has you know eight members of the public on the you know so it was just I think we we dove in head first and you know it was it was a lot and this is hard work this is ongoing work you know and so Dr Mann had brought the suggestion to possibly discuss not having it as so much a board subcommittee anymore but turning it to more of a district lead committee that would be led by her and miss Abrego with some board partnership and they would report out to the board and bring it down to the building levels in the schools so that it's throughout making the entire school system as Equitable as possible making sure that it's inclusive that all our students feel welcome represented including more of our staff we didn't have a lot of Staff we had a few on the board you know on the subcommittee but more more staff at more schools and if you want to you know Dr Mann can maybe expand on that a bit if you have any questions for her but we left it and I'll just say we did Dr Brill was unable to attend so Mike had joked that you know this is my first meeting is this my last meeting that no we will be having another meeting so it's the thought that you'll finalize a thing and bring a motion to the board to dissolve the board committee and then reform it exactly that was the thought but we want to you know doctor yeah but just the idea that of having um you know again this is kind of an ongoing discernment and definitely has um you know falls under curriculum instruction um and assessment and programming you know that's kind of and definitely community and partnership with community and the school district so really just where are we going to be able to have um the most the greatest capacity to do this really important work yeah so that's just you know something that we've we've been talking about a little bit my two cents worth it's a broad topic I mean yeah and so one of the things I'll just give you a thought was um another broad topic we had with security and the way we organize the security task force when we did it was we had topics and then we would just talk about this topic this time and then we would meet another time we talked about this topic right so we made it topical but it allowed us to focus in on those topics instead of trying to boil the ocean right yeah like we were doing before and we had discussed that well it was hard yeah so uh you know you could pick five topics and then cycle through them in a year right and say okay in February we're going to talk about instruction and then when talk about Staffing or we're going to talk about this type of project or that type of project and it's just a way to kind of compartmentalize which life and it's really it's an exciting time also because of the Strategic plan lending us this Focus um you know every you know a news as Dr Mike preferred to I'm big on using that strategic plan to help guide our work so okay it's a great opportunity okay thank you any questions for Amy all right we'll move on that's the end of our subcommittee reports next up is consent agenda I believe that the board approved the items on the consent agenda which are new hires resignations and the March financials second Dr Berlin comments Yes actually it's uh consent agenda is quite exciting uh this month we have a familiar face but new to the board board meetings it's really important we all are aware that Mr post is retiring at the end of September and uh we were able to work quite hard and I have to thank the board members who served as well as Dr Mann and all the other folks who participated in the interview process Dr Mann facilitated the process for us went through a thorough process and Kevin Gervais is going to be our new business and operations director as of September 5th 2023 so welcome Kevin congratulations let's give him a round of applause before I ask Kevin to come up and just say a couple of words and hello is letting all of you know that Kevin he's a familiar face because for four years he worked with Marcia Marion on the town side Marcia is our town finance director and Kevin was her Deputy Finance director and that is really a critical role is leveraging the resources and planning the budget and the committee was quite impressed I got to know Kevin over those four years so when I heard that Kevin was a finalist I was actually quite thrilled that he made it through the The Gauntlet the process that Anna laid out for uh for all the candidates and um and we really had some strong candidates as as things narrowed down we were quite lucky to be honest with you with the Canada pool um to that end Kevin right now is the East Lyme Finance director for the entire town not not necessarily the board of education so he brings a wealth of experience he is looking to relocate to this area of the state as he prepares for getting married in the fall as well so he's got a lot of great things going on in his life someone I've gotten to know over the last five years now I'm really proud of him I'm really excited for him Mr Kevin Gervais Jr you want to come up and say a few words come get introduced go on up we got to get him used to the microphone yes we do yeah thank you very much it's uh really exciting um I know I have big shoes to fill uh Ken's shoes over here um it's like filling in for you know Derek Jeter um as a Yankee fan I could say that um but uh yeah it's exciting to be back after my uh you know it'll be about a year Hiatus down to the Shoreline um and excited to be back working here in Brookfield and I have Ken over here looking for a house in his neighborhood so um you know we're excited to to move to this side of the state and uh start our lives over here yeah a lot of changes this year so yeah does anybody have any questions for Kevin while we have them here or welcome welcome all right no questions I love it you'll get plenty of questions that's fine we'll handle those as they come we're just saving them for you all right Kevin congratulations and welcome thank you very much thank you so much I do have a press release [Applause] I do have a press release prepared that uh it will be sent out after the meeting as well as a note to all the faculty and staff and everything will be going excellent all right all in favor of approving the consent agenda please say aye okay next up we're moving to a new business and the first item under new business is the 2023-24 Board of Education meeting dates I will move that the board approved the 2023-2024 Board of Education meeting dates seconded um so uh we received a proposed set of dates it's up to us to set our dates so uh I think this is consistent with what we agreed to last year which was more months with just a single meeting and fewer months with two meetings um does anybody want to make any comments about that I like it I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you I would like another meeting in right now not for nothing we have too many things at this meeting is an example a lot of stuff comes together in May and uh and it's the one month where we have um usually just think about the things we have to do with compensation with assessment at the end of the year the a lot of items coming together so for me I would prefer to have a second meeting in May but the rest of it seemed fine to me fun with that if you do you do you think let me be very clear I it's it's not mine to choose because I won't be on the board next time for those of you who are still on the board I'm going to schedule an extra meeting for those of you who are on the board so so I don't really really get allowed to say but I'm just telling you we'll talk about it on our executive session later but just getting the timing of the things we have to do is just hard yeah and so I would suggest strongly that we consider that well okay so then is it would it be better than to have a second April meeting and then a mid-may one or something no no because you have to do some things after the future reference right okay in the April in April the month of April short because of the week okay that's right and so if we did like a May 16th that's likely the day after the third the third week in May yeah should be the 15th yeah the 15th um it'll be interesting to see how the referendum works next year because let me think because it's usually the it would be um yeah we might want to do it the 22nd yeah it would be actually the it would be the 15th is the third Wednesday I understand I'm thinking that should we do it on the 22nd because the budget referendum won't be most likely it's done before that the 21st and that would be because that's where you could do like you're approving of unaffiliated pay increases and stuff like that right timing and uh that's that's the that's kind of perfect time for that it would keep you from having three-hour meetings and it's like the one we're having today yeah I think it's a good idea but I don't think you need many more than that the summer months having one per Christmas time effort in September it's too busy you know with the start of school and we're starting after Labor Day this year so we'd be right up again I looked at the rest of them and all made lots of sense and the school holidays made sense um I did compare it against uh Jewish holidays because they're always on we did a check on we did a cross check on all the holidays at the October 4th would be in the middle of it is that an issue okay so the October 4th meeting is potentially we'd have to look at that uh probably because I think the third do we look at October 4th in terms of the Jewish holidays I'm looking up this afternoon [Music] but I would suggest we're very mindful of that one putting this together yeah we could just do just do one meeting on the 11th do one meeting on in the middle of the month in October right right yeah get the 18th to do with the 11th are either one would probably work yeah you could do either one October 11th well so get rid of October 4th yeah just get rid of October 4th keep up the 18th so do two weeks no conflict on the fourth October yeah we're not seeing a conflict with the holiday no I mean I wouldn't recommend it let me take a pause yeah sure but I had my back straight okay Rose as we talk about the 11th and the 18th I don't know if we want to go back to back in terms of no no I was suggesting like either we get rid of but I don't think if we just do one meeting on the 11th oh I see or one meeting on the 18th gotcha yeah let's see let's see I we double checked all these so can't hurt to check again so Rosh Hashanah and yeah not it is not affected yeah 23 were not effective you know thank you it was fourth is clean okay we're seeing on this one it's not but it's one of those long holiday periods that you just don't want to mess with it okay so you guys want to do the keep it the 18th or the 11th for October I would say just keep it on the 18th it's a month apart yeah okay okay so the the motion would be amended to remove October 4th and add May 5th May 22nd right correct okay right Amy would you like to make an amendment motion I will move that the board approved well you'll automate the muscle improvements exactly all right okay I will amend the emotion to approve the 2023-2024 Board of Education meeting dates removing the October 4th 2023 date and adding the date of May 22nd 2024.
is that approximately correct yes either we will or they will have to find a site what's another good School site option besides Hooker Oak for inspire High School within our district yes I don't I don't really have a recommendation for that I assume it could be any site that the board made available for them but it it all is a a painful um effect on families and students that are within the district so maybe Shasta or Parkview or Rosedale or Citrus or something like that in theory yeah and I'm not advocating that we that we do that but um so if Inspire is going to move off of Chico High campus I think that should be clear to everyone in the room it's going to happen by 2027 if they're going to keep their major funding that they have in place so I just want people to understand what we're talking about here tonight inspired and really make its way onto the the formal analysis tonight but but that is in the backs of all of our minds so so I don't know anybody who really likes Inspire being on the chico High campus the buildings are very old and dilapidated as I've heard repeatedly as a board member when I've toured Inspire the chico High faculty and I know at least some of the students in the informal conversations that I've had don't really like it being there because it disrupts their flow on campus and then these timely questions about the renovations that are on schedule for Chico High down the road such as Career Technical education programs that we all really really like they are also a source of funding for a school like Chico high so I want people to know that I'm very conflicted about that and I don't I don't think that the chico High campus is good for anyone in fact I think it's harming both schools with that I'll have you let you carry on with your your presentation Julie um I have oh go ahead yeah so um related to this same topic um with knowing that we wouldn't be able to go out for another Bond measure first uh six to eight years the soonest we really could do any reasonable updates with the chico High master plan wouldn't be until likely after we get the next next Bond measure six to eight years plus down the line is a fair assumption to make there is a there is a a chance that there would be a Delta depending on how the board decides to prioritize the elementary schools similar to what we have right now with uh remaining measure K funds that are not allocated that are not enough to tackle an entire Elementary School and we're unallocated until our last meeting uh there is a chance that there would be funds like that left over from the next Bond that would could be spent similarly to how the board decided to spend the remaining measure K funds so there could be some dollars there but otherwise yes you are correct it would be not until the Bond after the next so what would happen if we were to see inside Inspire relocated by let's say it was 26 or 27 but we don't have the funding to actually tackle the CHS campus for their Innovations until 2030.
I believe right before code would happen where uh the fundraiser was gone for a Nature's Classroom then local business in Boylston agreed to match some funds donated to it very generously uh that Nature's Classroom is canceled because of covid killing everything shut everything down um that trip didn't happen then what was it about a year later October of the following year the organizer of the fundraiser came to school committee said we've got this money want to donate it and apparently that was done for the specific class after that was it 27 class of 2027 I believe so when they made the donation to the school committee it was specifically done for the class of 2027.
I'll second the amendment any further discussion all in favor of approving that Amendment say hi hi uh okay all in favor of approving the amended motion say aye aye that just that gets us through the officialness of it okay so that's that one good job um then the next one is the subcommittee meeting dates the board approved the subcommittee meeting schedule from July to December 2023. second it's been moved and seconded had the chairmans of the Committees had a chance to look at this in advance or no yeah have any conflict still meet on October 4th yeah October 4th has a facility so we're gonna have to look at that but that's that's one of the conflict for sharings all right but you will have let's be frank by the time we get there uh this is this October no it'll be there so um why don't we move it we're not meeting on the fourth one are we just doing on the 18th because policy and Communications are meeting we might need to move it to the next week you know from the 4th to the 11th sure not on that Mike is on that now yeah right or no you switched right yeah okay so it's there's I don't think there's any conflict there you want you're not a policy but not on Cape so we could do the 11th can we move it to the 11th okay that was the only potential conflict I saw I think I think we're great otherwise okay and just as a reminder this takes us through December as the after the elections the first thing that another thing that will happen in December is uh the board will re-elect its officers and then they will reorganize uh committees and I would suggest to everybody who will continue on the board do a committee you haven't been on it's it you know it's always fun to you know touch on all the Committees where you can so yeah okay do you want me to amend yes yep so I will make a motion to amend the um subcommittee meeting dates and remove the October 4th meeting date for facilities and change it to October 11th 2023.
what what does it look like in the interim so it fires off the campus which is great and there's there's but there's no money to do anything with that space or little money some money but not to do the full renovation that we intend yes but it I think you're correct maybe not exactly the years but basically correct however it would then free up those portable classrooms that inspires currently using to Interim House Chico high school plans Chico high school students for instance if you were to renovate buildings in the front B and C the the major classroom buildings and a you could move those students to the Portables that Inspire Us in now and renovate those classroom buildings without having to pay extra for interim housing currently that because it's so far in the future it's hard to wrap your brain around but that's an awful lot of students to have to house while you're renovating on an active campus so the buildings that Inspire Us in currently would be very helpful go ahead one of the reasons why I think I your bike's not on it's the way I answer my phone I push the green button and nothing happens inside joke folks um my focus as a board member are the quad schools the quadruplets we've called them there are four elementary schools as we all heard in February was it February or March March March there are four schools that were all built within a very short time span of each other using the same campus model and they've all been occupied and used for the same period of time and they're all basically horrible um in spite of all of the bailing wire and bubble gum our maintenance and operations folks have used to try and keep those campuses going um they're ready to be rebuilt I think we know that we no I I that's what I see I see four schools at the elementary level that desperately need replacement I also can read those numbers on how much a bond would give us make us available we have four schools we'll be cut off probably only do three in the first round a large two smalls a medium two smalls a large there's a couple of combinations but basically we're not going to get four done out of the next Bond election which means we're leaving one elementary school again to wait another three to five years for its replacement I don't like that I wish that there was magic and we could get more money out of a bomb but we have constraints we can't do it my focus then turns to making sure that no matter what I do to vote tonight I'm getting that fourth School included in on replacement as quickly as possible to me the um the impact of of a repurposing of Hooker Oak right now on those students plus depending on what configuration we were to approve at other schools um it's spreading the misery around with no good reason in my opinion [Applause] compared to the impact on non-cusd students remember Inspire is a charter [Applause] it's an amazing Charter I was involved from the beginning of the formation of that Charter and and what they've been able to do has met the purpose they have done an amazing job of doing what they said we needed to do for a charter they accomplished it beautifully and I you know I am so proud to have anything associated with Inspire being at all connected with Chico Unified I hate that the cost of moving them out to the Canyon View Property is as high as it is um I'm hopeful that they are able to pull things together and and somehow work out the funding between what the state has offered and what they can raise themselves they had some really good ideas before covid for for big massive fundraising that wasn't able to happen because of covid and I'm you know I'm hopeful that that they're able to get back into that to that vein I don't see a need to rush to move them off the chico High campus since we don't have the funding to to really do significant damage to that footprint and um we do have an opportunity to um use what we have available with a bond if it's approved and the 50 million that we currently have sitting there to work on Citrus and Hooker Oak to the extent we can without running into the I mean can you wrap it up we're supposed to be asking questions can you wrap it up I have a question okay okay yes okay and since we don't get to talk between meetings I'm going to talk now um we have we can get to a certain point of renovation without running into the the state saying it's too much you can't do that uh and so I have I missed something am I off in the you know in the analysis of where we are no not at all um the only thing I would add is that in no way would that facility be comparable to what we're trying to achieve at the elementary yes it would not be comparable in special education or transitional kindergarten or the nutrition services multi-purpose it would not be comparable to projects like Marigold or Neil Dao Shasta or what McManus is going to become hopefully shortly can you um Julie Express in layperson's terms basically we have more school capacity grade school capacity in the center of town then we have students in the center of town is this not correct uh yes that is that is the case in the geographical center of Chico we have Surplus capacity we have Surplus capacity that is not in the area that the district really needs it the district really would need capacity in the Northwest where there's the significant amount of residential development however the district and board directed that the district provides Choice her parents to send their students where they choose so we we don't enforce School boundaries unless we have to because a school is over full so yes a great deal of the Surplus capacity at the elementary level is in central Chico Within four or five schools and so one of the things that puts Hooker Oak on the radar screen for possible repurposing is that is that it's in this area where we don't really have an increasing number of students and we have excess capacity yes um I have a question okay um in regards to inspire and I I agree with you Eileen I I believe our priority is with our Chico Unified School District but um understanding like the partnership that we have there with Inspire just as a community member I see what they provide for our community um and I think it's a wonderful opportunity for so many students and I had the opportunity to meet with several of those parents and they expressed just how meaningful Inspire has been for their students lives so I don't want to devalue that by any means but I just want to kind of understand a little bit more like what commitment we do have with Inspire and maybe it's helpful for all of us to know that's a really good question thank you Inspire was established approximately 10 years ago at that time a similar process as trustee tennis mentioned about where could they be located occurred an analysis of each and every school campus that the district owns was evaluated at the time for housing inspire um eventually they landed at Chico high school because we built a two-story classroom building at Chico high and we were supposed to demolish the Portables that Inspire now is housed in they didn't get demolished as planned and Inspire moved in and they've been housed there under a in lieu of Proposition 39 agreement for the last 10 years that actually expires this June 30th but the district has offered to extend it for a year to come up with some possibilities for their future home we will any Charter School in the district can provide a Proposition 39 request for facilities so Inspire does have the ability on November 1st of this year to request facilities from the district and the district is obligated to provide them I have a question about um the the um Bond measure money again best case scenario if we do go out for this Bond next year and we are awarded the full amount um I think I saw a quote of about 35 million that would be allocated to our district charter schools because we would be obligated to give a percentage I know it's a rough estimate but based on the last Bond measure that was the rep estimate how does that money get divided out to the charter schools so first thing is we are not obligated to allocate any portion to the charter schools that will be up to the board to decide when we go out for a new Bond if we are I've jumped to the assumption that it was successful on measure K and that we would do it again the 15 percent is actually 15.34 percent and 15.34 percent of all of the students in our boundary at the time were Charter students so that's how that number was was decided on and then after the bond passed the dollars that were allocated the charter schools themselves have a committee that's appointed by this board decided that they would divide those dollars up based on Ada within their Charters and that was approved by this board so that's how those dollars were allocated to the separate charter schools that were operating and chartered under either our district or Butte County at the time okay thank you that's helpful um follow-up question um uh actually it's it's sort of a question so um with the future need to relocate inspire so that we can build out the chico High campus looking like that would probably best happen no sooner than 2030 unless there was other funding that we were able to piece together to to do that and even then it would probably still not even be as early as 2028 I just mapping in my head um I think it's important for everybody to keep in mind a that Inspire students most of them were Chico students at one point so you know many of the Inspire students come up through our elementary schools and our middle schools and so to me Inspire students are still very much Chico Unified students even though they go to a specialized program that's a charter school that's now separate from the district that's just a personal philosophy but on top of that I would be willing to Guess that many Hooker Oak students and or other students that are um you know are successful and similar programs will probably end up being at Inspire or chico High School so at some point if it was determined in the tonight or in the future or by some other subcommittee over a longer period of time with more research or something that Hooker Oak was the best the campus of the Hooker Oak School was the best option to repurpose for a site for inspire the students of Hooker Oak would benefit from that as high schoolers probably whether they're going to inspire as high schoolers or chico High School and I'm it's fair to have opinions I'm just pointing out that that there are future students that you all have in your homes that will benefit from some of the decisions when they're at height and high school level and I'm not saying that the group's the best option I'm just saying for example there are students who are first grader second graders third graders now that will benefit from some of these upgrades at the chico High campus and as Inspire students in 2030 to 2032.
I don't really remember it but the minutes are there it was approved and accepted so it's with the class there was an issue one of the donors from a business in Boylston was something happened someone had a question that question was confirmed that the money's in the class that still led someone to have some misunderstanding that it was not going to stay with the class person asked for that three-year-old donation money back that's you know not really a good thing uh so I think we need to strengthen the language of this problem is what I'm trying to say and so in you know in finance banking all these different Industries you have these procedures and policies uh they call them different things but basically is know your client type of checks where you do where you verify where the money's coming from is the person giving the money legally allowed to give that money how is the money raised it wasn't from any sort of illicit activity you know money laundering type of thing I don't know that we need to go that far but we definitely should be probably getting more documentation when we get these cash donations so I just want to let everybody know we are going to take care of that so we don't have people donating for one thing thinking their money is going to be used for whatever they decided to donate for then even though the policy says it you know they we're not going to spend that money on something else it's not like a bait and switch type of situation right we're going to honor the donors wishes so I think we just we need to step up the lane if that's what we're going to do with the cre ations we're going to require yeah we're going to require some type of letter from the person and make whatever documentation where like if customer an indivisible person they give a check they write the memo of the checkbook they want the donation for debts that should cover it right but in cases like this where it comes from business or it comes from a fundraising effort and they do like a GoFundMe or yeah something like that right like Pete they're asking people to give money we should make sure that that money they gave was raised you know honestly and when they turn around and give that money to the schools make sure that the schools know what the fundraising effort was and that we use it in whatever experience the fundraiser was done you know so like on the go funding there's I mean usually exactly that would that would be enough yeah but we don't have language in the policies that actually cover that so we're going to have to add some stuff so that will be coming for you to take a look at going on in June the other thing I wanted to say about the gofundme's they're like a really slippery slope Because unless they're tied to a not-for-profit organization when you donate to a GoFundMe it's actually not tax deductible it's not considered giving to charity you know there could be a situation so I I don't know you know the one that the school set up I don't think the school set it up this isn't school this is outside group so we actually that's the best policy yeah you're exactly right so you have to be very careful about how money is moved from groups because sometimes if people are just giving to a GoFundMe it doesn't mean you're giving to a charity so I don't know if a charity was set up and people were giving to that through GoFundMe we're probably not going to get that involved in it because it's soft outside organization they go do what they do we're not involved well just it'll be at the end and then making a donation to the schools that's the point where we need to make sure they're legally allowed to you know we don't want to be getting requests three years later from people saying give me my money back yeah I'm not going to work with you again you know we're not that's not all we want but the next policy kcda covers Community fundraising for school you can look it up online I'm not going to do the whole thing it's pretty lengthy but um so there are certain situations if the committee has recognized the group like a PTO group right they're going to go and do fundraisers that's fine we trust the PTO groups they're going to put the other groups like you know an agents classroom parents get together and they think it's a good idea let's raise some money that someone goes out and says raise money for bbrsd class of whatever people giving money that sounds to them like the schools are endorsing this fundraiser for whatever reason but they are nothing in order for that to happen those groups technically are supposed to come to the committee to get permission to tell them what they're going to do about which Nature's Classroom has done right yeah yeah so we have we do have a policy for that so we're going to look at that one see if we can kind of match and make sure that there's yeah and saw this love and whenever somebody does come to us saying we want to fundraise for this event we can just hand them this and be like all right here's the procedure here's the policy this is what you got to do to make it official I'm just going to add to that I think also it would be important once this is all approved to keep that documentation together including a new fundraising letter that went out the original letter so we all have to have that in one placement that's part of what we need to do yeah we should have uh you know either releases we're going to clean enough to drive for us doing good stuff there and it should be an easy spot to find one other thing and we can fit in this amount into the policy as we would write it is if you have something like a GoFundMe and it said party that is not the school two in the fundraising say they raise five thousand dollars but we the school ends up getting three there has to be wording in there that we're not responsible for the difference yeah we're responsible for what's given to us by that party so we just have to somehow figure that yeah because once that part of gives the school money that party is giving the school money not the 50 different donors like gave them money with the other 25 Bill not our business not our job to wear and saying thank you for the 25 per per kid we appreciate it that's what the channel is for if we got to make sure we're legally on on the ball on this right because we can't be involved I'm not curious like EDF and PTO like those are 503 lives yeah yeah so like me through them like give a b e f they do yeah it could be but bef isn't going to use a GoFundMe because they don't want to pay half in fees that's why I said GoFundMe is our very slippery slope so but I'm curious like because we already have those you guys who already have those set up so if if someone want to raise funds do we encourage them to go through the PTO or go through the bef because you're already set up as a 503 and just have like earmark those particular problems for that particular those groups have they have to spend the funds in accordance to their bylaws I believe so they're set up as a not-for-profit and I don't think they can just say oh we're going to give to Carol and the schools to do whatever they want like no no classroom yes for sure yes they could you say PTO can you help us grants they can do computers or whatever so the first part of the fundraising policy says um you know persons organizations Desiring to conduct fundraising for school programs may do so through fundraising groups officially recognized by the school yeah that will cover BDS PTO yeah right it also what it does allow for other groups so it says or they may seek approval of the school committee in advance of undertaking independent fundraising on behalf of the schools so it does cover that right but I think it's more the part where it's given to the school once it's given to the school then it becomes our responsibility to know what's to be used for and make sure that it is used that way right so we definitely want to keep that in mind but that brings us back to that doesn't documentation and information we have these next two items is in the drive it should be all set it looks okay to me yeah everything's good Nancy mentioned this so could I have a motion to approve the donation from Northbridge cre for thirty five thousand dollars for the bes facility assessment specifically um for Bes facility assessment Jess Julie all right now any discussion here about the letter you also have a letter Nancy gave us a uh information about it so the letter says the letter is actually addressed to the Boylston Town board support selectman says uh uh in conjunction with the superintendent can spend the money um I think originally that was the plan it was going to go to the town voice very yeah but now they're giving it directly to the schools yeah the check is made up the copy of the check is in there as well made up to the district uh so that looks all the important to me but if anybody has any questions about it commissions the two policies oh yeah kcd kcda um the K Group in there covers all sorts of community relations and stuff and for the school committee online policy manual and it's searchable it's actually very easy to use you can go check it out but yeah I got them printed there too um all right so we've got the motion to accept this one uh any other questions all in favor aye aye against all right that motion passes now they have a motion to accept the Nature's Classroom donation in the amount of 6 391.14 6 391.14 I moved Megan Jess anything on this one this the documentation we received on this one specifically says it is to remain with the Nature's Classroom trip for future classes to use if there's money left over after this one all right yeah yeah that won't be good you never know it might match yeah wow can you explain why that is I thought people or is this what does what would what did these funds cover I thought people pay is this just a supplement tuition yeah it's basically cut the cost though yeah so it's 400 to go okay we did a fundraising campaign to lower the for scholarships buses even lower the cost of all the kids okay yeah so nobody's paying over 212 [Music] that's awesome thank you thank you so you still need money to get to keep that 212 per kick yeah so what happens was when I calculated um these there were so many spreadsheets but the muscle in the formula was wrong so the additional 154 dollar deduction from the kids should have been 134.