six incidents of violence same from the year before zero incidence of vandalism three incidents of substances up one from the year before weapons were doubled two from one and then the HIV also Community had 25 other incidents that led to student removal which is down from the air before okay Smalley had zero across the board last year and hit again Smalley had 15 total had five acts of violence which is the same as the year before one act of vandalism and then two other incidents that led to student immobile which is the same as the year before and then nothing again at Lamont Annex the same as the year before questions you're welcome anybody have any questions I have a I have a question about the student removal um it says other incidences but that is not including the vandalism correct incidents other than than what you saw above yes I don't know if you can answer it or I could I could try these are all the incidents that have been reported what's the estimated number of incidents set up dirt an average I could take a try I we we are required to report every incident of HIV violence Investments that's been reported I'm talking about those that are not because they haven't been reported to to either right that has not been reported up to the immunization you don't ever hear about it yeah that you'll never hear about so it's hard to quantify something that hasn't been reported or there may be any industry Norms on how those are estimated I know what you're saying great question overall the numbers look good what do you treat the improvement too especially Foundation that's huge and huge so uh Mr Smith and his administrative team did a great job last year with condensing study halls which allowed him to free up teachers from from look uh being in charge of a study hall class and instead he was able to put them in the hallways our student rep is is nodding specifically by the bathrooms right so in my opinion that went that went a long way the hallways were quieter you know it was great for our numbers in addition quiet hallways are great for teaching but you know of those 15 cases whichever are you seeing Trends in the violence and vandalism yeah and it's um I can only answer for for hibs because that's sorry that's my area that's my area I don't know about violence and vandalism um but hibs the um I would say the trend as uh you know as I've been reporting to you guys monthly is um you know the uh social media bullying and then we do have like that was nice here thank you you don't think that um and also you know what happens in the larger areas in in lunch in uh in gym class where it's harder to manage the the larger number of students interesting um actually it's not a question but more of a compliment to the entire team [Music] thank you um size of our district okay I am blown away at how professional all of our staff and every building administrator from Dr Friedman a little way down have been in dealing with issues and I I have to say working in the orange District myself you know we Face a lot of challenges I can't tell you you know if someone who doesn't work in education looks at the scholars they say oh my goodness on the look of the amount of children we have in the district and to only have you know less than 30. I'm looking at Community right now is there any instruments now one incident I want to commend principle and I I think I know that the court thanks you so thank you thank you um furthermore Miss High's question as far as trends go I just thought of another trend as far as how the principles deal with the hibs as well as the areas of violence and vandalism I think their approach with students is completely remediation based rather than punitive um it's we're getting less repeat offenses and that's something I've noticed too that there is this um just the mediation that the veterans counselors and often with the kids too and that's where it's going to make a difference and I have to tell you being in a different School District I saw the 77 I was like oh that's high for the high school so I thought and that was all combined so now with the breakdown it's like the numbers the lack of numbers are impressive yeah any other questions or comments all right thank you thank you thank you all right guys at this point we are up to committee meeting reports trying to tackle them in order if that's okay so the first one is Mr Dawson's report from education which I will read uh so like everybody else we met on Monday and uh our discussion really centered around for multilingual Learners ages 18 to 21.
so I mean we're currently in the process of doing the design okay so so we did it we talked about it our meat and one of the things we brought up was you know can this be a multimodal path because that you brought that up and I didn't think that was a good idea because it was part of the discussion right we were looking at that as an option right yeah I I get that but in the meantime as we discussed this time is fleeting and our kids are still walking on the side of the road on 135 to get to school and winter is coming so if you add this alt again you look at the formula could be an issue I'm not saying there will be but there's a potential of an issue of somebody getting hurt and we're trying to keep that from happening and I've said that I if not once a hundred times so everybody's disagreeing Joe well I understand it's that we we have this apple money we have other monies that are available let's let's just utilize it let's get it going Joe it can't you can't just drop a sidewalk somewhere I know there's an engineering design but we've been talking about doing an engineering design and I know Doug's up to his eyeballs and other projects and I get that I understand that but this should have been a priority a year ago Joe it was that's when you appropriated the money if I could just jump in here too I you know I think that um first of all I mean I obviously wasn't involved in any planning for what sidewalks got done when but I would certainly think that sidewalks that are for approaching schools when children aren't uh you know eligible for a free bus that those should take priority um so you know I don't know that High Street would fall into that category I think you mentioned that as the second one I mean I think it would be great to put one on High Street for a lot of reasons um but I think priority should be given to sidewalks that again are for students who approach a school and then you know in terms of 135 I mean I think that the traffic on 135 has probably changed somewhat dramatically in the past I don't know 10 years whatever but um it's uh it's pretty bad um and you know the kids have to the kids coming out of say Olive Street or Edgewood and and I have a granddaughter who is involved in this so I just want to put that out there um but um that the children coming out have to cross the street so that they can walk towards the traffic so now they have to not only do they have to walk um along 135 without sidewalk but they also have to have to cross I have a video that that I actually took last year that is a happen to drive up behind the kids when they were crossing and I sat there for a few seconds I'm like nobody's stopping for them and so I recorded it it's a minute 30 seconds even after I started recording before anybody stopped to let them go across the street I do not believe that people um we're doing that intentionally I think they thought those kids were trying to take a bus waiting for a bus um and there's no crosswalk there there's no crosswalk there's nothing okay and so we gotta you know it's just some we need to do something and I don't think that can I understand you can't drop a sidewalk right right it's it's a dupe it's a dual issue but we need to do something crosswalk at least those kids are having to I mean some of them come use bikes right there's some bikes I know that Mrs manyani is um yeah she's a crossing guard there so she has an information in terms of numbers of students but there are certainly several um and then I mean are there alternatives to for now to either putting some kind of a temporary crosswalk there putting something along the side of the road I know that uh you know I think I had mentioned at some point about when you get off of 495 now in Hopkins and they have all those um you know orange uh they're not cones they're you know stanchions maybe would be the right yeah yeah Milford has the same thing now yeah mine I don't know if something like that could be utilized to keep the kids but again it is it's a it's it's a problem when it snows it was a problem last year when I watched them working on building those houses on 135 and now they put up some fences because they're under construction and it pushes everybody further onto the roadway yeah sometimes the traffic is actually beneficial because it forces people to go so slow sometimes that at least uh that's that's not a terrible thing unfortunately the traffic seems is on the the traffic that would slow uh drivers tends to be on the wrong side of the street my understanding is that they're going to put there's going to be a bus stop there now at Edgewood a permanent or temporary um I don't know the answer to that but at least temporary Edge where's that right next to the state park oh on that side of the road I'll double check on that but that was my understanding so you said that we're moving forward with the West Union Street sidewalk so what's the timing when do we think um you know figuring out so you know Doug's timeline is a go out to bid over the winter and then break ground after the marathon 2024.
now we're seeing uh students get off the bus at 7 50. so it's really it's been pretty easy for us for you yeah like I said I will be coming back uh next next board meeting talking a little bit more in terms of data in terms of looking at tardies and attendance and that sort of thing to give a more concrete specific uh to see if that has changed anything um just anecdotally looking at kids as they get off the bus in the morning um it I will say and I said this to Dr Braille it's hard to judge teenagers any morning whether it's 45 minutes later than it was before but it's a pretty typical look they're good they always say hi and but it's a lot of you know air pods in and walking into the building and so it's hard to really engage from that perspective I'll be able to get more data from that um during the course of the day you know I like I said I hear a mixed bag I think one of the challenges has been a couple athletic events right is some early dismissals and some kids that have to leave because uh whether it be golf or there's a couple other sports set to leave a little bit early um and miss some some class time so that while it's the only thing I can definitely point to seems is certainly a negative because kids are missing class I don't know how long that's going to last and how long that's going to perpetuate it may it may change as you move forward um but you know I did I did get a call from a parent who was um a little concerned because the 45 minute uh late start time later and her child was only out to the bus 10 minutes later than they were the year before and I think what I explained was basically we have consolidation of routes of you know you have fewer buses and so that it does take a little bit longer sometimes to get around um but that was the only call that I got in terms of that but I'll have more specific data in terms of tardiness and then some other things and some information from staff I haven't had a faculty meeting yet we don't have that to the beginning of October so by the time we have the next meeting I'll be able to get more information from that specifically so can um the number of missed classes be part of that data I have I have all that including also some additional stuff that um Mr Baldwin and I have talked with Mr post Ms DIA uh in terms of Transportation what it costs some of the costs for buses because we can't we're at this point using very few I think I only saw on the list one or two um school buses everything else has been land jet or uh Connecticut limo for athletics yep so that's another part that I'll share for regular Transportation can you figure out maybe what the earliest pickup time is for students or maybe the average pickup time in the morning for high schoolers sure that would be Miss Dion yeah we can do that okay thank you absolutely so we we were told that when the Athletics wouldn't be affected by the school start times is there anything specific that got in the way of that well I don't think it was ever said that Athletics would never be affected I think it's it was one of the conversation was as we talked about Healthy Start times at Athletics anything could if you're playing a team and another in another town that has an earlier dismissal than we do which is there's certainly numbers um right now the biggest issue we're having was golf but they oftentimes do leave early um anyway uh that's just kind of what it is um you know that I know for example and again Mr Baldwin can speak more to this in terms of Athletics um but for example we were at the mercy of Sacred Hearts field because we were playing a team at Sacred Heart and Sacred Heart said you can have the field at three o'clock if you're gonna play the game and the T other team had no other place to play the game so to get down to Sacred Heart for three o'clock we have to get the kids out earlier so they can get there so that was one case certainly this year um so it might be venue specific but I'll be able to share all that data um you know for the next meeting any other questions okay thank you um yeah actually very similar to uh what Mr Renda had said it's a 10 minute difference instead of 8 30 it's 8 40.
um this was a conversation that was led by Miss Heist Heist yeah you have trouble hearing me so we were thankful to have Mrs Griffin and Miss heisterman uh come and have a discussion with us regarding the best support for our multimedial Learners specifically ages 18 to 21.
okay so would it be oh that's right we have to wait yeah because we can't do that work yeah so would it be possible for us to talk to the school committee about doing maybe a temporary pickup for those kids during the winter time I understand because that's what's happening like that came out of the trout last Traffic Safety Committee that conversation it was a conversation but there was we didn't we didn't make a decision that we were going to sit down and talk with them about making a temporary making a temporary stop for those kids for the winter well and so many of those kids want to take the bus right well that's the other reason and I mentioned that at the prep study committee probably none of them right so putting a temporary stock there does no good if they don't want to pay the bus fee to take the bus well I think they were well first of all if they're going to put a bus stop there because of a safety issue I don't think they're going to be charging anybody so does the scope of work um I know we had talked about putting in a crosswalk Beauty Center as well is that included in this too so crosswalks are included I don't know the exact location okay but because that's going to be more the engineering yeah was the design to be on the eastbound side I didn't think they're looking at that Joe okay as part of the design okay because there is a sidewalk already a third of the way down and I think it stops at that 24 Karat it does Nursery there so from that point on they would still be you know walking on the roadway from that point to Indian Spring Road but then you'd still have to have some kind of a cross oh absolutely yeah but you still need a crosswalk and it would be ones that you know you know solar power so people would see the stop or whatever potentially a sidewalk also on the seniors the community center right right well I don't think this is going to have two sidewalks going down right but you need to get I don't know that you want the inner I don't know that you want the crosswalk right at Olive and Franklin and 135 I don't either I don't right so if anything so I would you know if we're if they're coming from Olive Street you know there's a sidewalk in front of the community center and then somewhere there is the crosswalk to the other side where there's already a sidewalk yeah you know I'm I'm you know I'm not an engineer so um but just I you know I'm nervous about putting a crosswalk there I I yeah it's like positioned especially if it's going to be one of those Hawk signals you know people come flying around that curve it's tough sometimes you know you'll land it to your point I I think that's an interesting idea is what if the on the eastbound side the sidewalk really only went from say the community center to um the sidewalk and then the into the to the where it currently ends on the westbound side and then you put a crosswalk somewhere in the middle yeah it moves and I just want it down it makes it much shorter distance that you actually have to create sidewalks and I would think that the public the Traffic Safety Committee could take a look at right similar to what they did for Cadillac park right in that they looked at where is the best place to put the crosswalk and the most line of sight I would think there at that intersection you'd do a similar kind of thing determine where is the best place to put the crosswalk for safety for people to get from the community center side to the other side I mean unless we're thinking of putting sidewalk on the whole east side but I I don't know about crosswalks and where they're going to located right part of the design that's being the engineering and we have an engineer right right yeah but Michael that might read the cost if we're trying to only you know get to the part where the the sidewalk picks up on the other side and that would be great if it's the safest option right yeah absolutely but but so I mean I'm not going to compromise safety no no no no no we're not asking and to that point too in terms of the order again of things I mean maybe it should be reconsidered whether High Street comes next or Cedar Street because Cedar Street again we have students walking to the high school over there right and have we ever looked at um you know sidewalks that approach schools yeah I think what we'll have to do to make the West Union Street happen is take the money that was going to be part of High Street and move it to the the concern with Cedar Street right is it's a Scenic Road and that's gonna there's gonna be a lot of evil or design or between stone walls and trees and you know all kinds of stuff for Cedar Street I do think some preliminary work that was already been done for proceeding we did some work already we started looking at yeah the other I mean there's a section near the end of towards the high school where Union Street come you know so we could prior to their land takings we could prioritize that oh yeah but I I will say this you know and I appreciate everybody's thoughts our DPW is slammed oh oh don't disagree well everybody says that and then everything else becomes a priority no no no no no so we need to respect them we need to respect the work they do and we need to respect their time their time with their families and their energy speaking of there's sidewalk work being done on nope Pleasants not pleasant yeah there's one that goes toward you guys is that us or is that the state that's the state okay okay Michelle quarterville yes quarterville yeah well that's interesting yeah there's some sidewalks being fixed there I'm noticing that as I drive it's ADA compliance because it looks like I think they are I think they are because they were doing like some ramps and stuff yeah so okay all right but that's the state work okay yeah okay so that's another venue too that's how Framingham we're able to get all their sidewalks in on the ADA compliance Federal Federal grant money the state can't do anything for us on 135.
and honestly the bus is coming to our lot at about 8 30 2 ish and we just unload them because by the time those little kindergarten features go from the end of the sidewalk all the way to their low class it's about 8 40. so there really has not been much of a change so what time are you loading the buses so in the afternoon we are beginning our bus load around 3 25. and our last bus has been rolling out around 3 47 right now so uh we're pretty amazing what they've accomplished with 1100 students moving and the parent pickups remain steady about 134.
we do have some programming that we're currently offering as required up until the age of 21 but we've known for prior discussions that uh students that are coming into the district later in their educational careers they have a more difficult time and inquiring the information uh to really graduate so for the coming year of roughly 18 to 20 students have been identified as part of this population that may struggle to stay on Pace to graduate before uh the 18th age of 21 at which point we're outside the scope programming so they walked us through a few different options uh that they had considered uh and presented one from the path that they were intending to pursue that had to do with an alternative program that would make ESL construction available to them at different times outside the regular school day but with more structure and with more Focus to ultimately allow them to get through the program and attain their GED so the committee was strongly endorsing the program that was presented and we are hopeful that over time with a number of other supports that the team is finding that will be able to better serve this particular population and hopefully improve our overall performance in terms of graduation rates it was a very spirited discussion and I think that actually took us well beyond the 30 minutes of that is really all that we discussed during education foreign okay governance will be quick new policies which are both mandated by law so there's there's really nothing to discuss on our and there one of them has to do with the development of school threat assessment teams uh by districts um they're now mandating exactly how that has to be done but the other if you haven't heard is of all that was passed by the New Jersey legislature a couple of weeks ago stating how sick leave can be used they could change how people attention to I guess all public employees maybe can use sick leave you can now use it to care for sick family members like if your kids are sick you can use them to attend your kids conferences at school things like that so as I said at the meeting being a teacher the real only difference is that now teachers won't lie when they have to take care of their sick kids they can actually be honest about it because let's be real if my kids are sick I'm staying home and saying it to me also we don't have to do that anymore um the other thing that we very briefly discussed was how we plan to approach the Strategic plan which is up at the end of the school year Dr Freeman agreed to get us a couple of proposals one which will be from school boards there there are other companies that do it so we're going to get one from another company as well and see what each one has to offer and which way we also talk very briefly about our desire to get as many stakeholders from our school Community as possible involved in that strategic play and kind of hear from them what goals they'd like to see in there and what what they think we need to improve on so that we can put it into the plan so that was really all we talked about mostly as you said because education didn't run long so we tried to stay on schedule but luckily we didn't have any questions for me all right then next well done sir thank you you're on HR yeah and that's you again is it that's not me so join as report for the HR committee as with all of the the HR meetings we started by reviewing the open positions and transfers from within the district really just to go through the plans for the administration and to kind of affirm how our coverage was with the teaching and staff in general and how we're performing relative to the budget or any positions that needed to be involved with just uh in support of trying to fill our open positions we will be hosting a career fair in conjunction with ESS and we're going to do it here about program it should be mutually beneficial because it'll have the opportunity to either attract people into or from the Bound for a community that may be willing and able to help us in schools which is great and hopefully we can continue to find additional candidates we talked a little bit about the special education program in general how that is staffed what opportunities we might have to adjust how we're resource there in order to both better support community members or CST members and really fulfill the mission of that group which we know it's been under a lot of stress for the past few years so we got some positive news there um and the last discussion that we had had to do with the content supervisors So based on some uh work that was done over the summer uh we started to understand how much more work uh become the ability of the existence advisors so noting that we would need and potentially address any uh address anything from a drug perspective that may recruit over time just based on it and that is it for our HR related discussions questions thank you so operations I have let me Begin by saying I have not been to such a proactive complex operations held in a while I want to thank Mr Gorski tremendously explaining a lot of the intricacies that I'm going to try to go forward um Mr Gorski at any time if you feel that you need to chime in please I want to I wanted to service to the hard work that you've presented so about submitted we first started talking about Rod Grant applications Bound Brook submitted 14 broad Grant applications in the state totaling around 11 million 236 000. it appears that only the boiler Replacements were approved the bathroom there were bathroom Renovations roof roof upgrade costs security projects they were not one of the issues that was concerned that was raised by members was why some districts some similar districts greater than a 40 reimbursement Mr Orson can you explain that a little bit into the board so they understand that part yes thank you Mr zuku school districts reimbursement costs generally the average is about 40 but it's based on state aid percentage to your total revenues and downbrook was somewhere slightly above 60 and there were some districts that were similar to Bound Brook that got greater than 40 percent in person more in line with their state aid ratios but Bound Brook received 40 and we're we're basing this off of the general announcement that went out but we don't have the actual um letter again from the state or the preliminary eligible cost letters so we had invited the architect of record of Mr Richard to the operations committee meeting and he explained that we should be patient we should wait for the actual award to come in the mail on the state there's a chance that they could correct what's been previously reported and if not we we will certainly reach out and appeal on our behalf because the more the state reimburses us for the project obviously the less we'd have to um thank you sir appreciate that so that was the wrong part we also talked about the our the IRS response to notice of a priority or payroll tax penalty so Mr Gorski notified the committee that despite a thorough and well-ranked response requesting and Abandonment for new Clause of IRS penalty assessments improperly or late paid federal taxes going back to 20 20 through 2021 to 911 so and that through 2020 2021 after nine months of IRS time extensions that our request was denied Mr Gorski recommended to the committee to appeal enrolling with the assistance of the district's auditing firms tax tax attorney it's not cheap but I think I think that the uh the fee will be well worth it because um I think that the the abatement is something that we definitely need to apply and communicate another thing we talked about was a technical assistance infrastructure Services agreement from box 5 19.
no it's it's our that that section is our road which they're still not sure of 100 it's really weird it's like a little small slivers are the state and then summer it's funny all right so where um where's this conversation leave us so we think we you know we're moving ahead on the West Union you're gonna have the engine do we have is this a Consulting engineer that yeah so they'll come up with a plan we'll look at it at some point hopefully soon I just don't know if they can move any quicker I know well I'm sorry can we have that conversation with the school about making a temporary stop there for the kids to get picked up absolutely and we as a board will not be looking at the plan for the sidewalks on 135 will we it'll be that'll be nice it'll be the well I would think you should probably you know see it but it's DPW and Traffic Safety Committee they're going to look at the safety issues and sure and we'll maybe you know give it our blessing but yeah okay okay um I don't want to hold anything up because we feel like we have to have a discussion and we're not moving forward yeah let's get an update um and so than the other one you had on your list was High Street right but then are we having some discussion about changing the priorities or like I said I think probably to do the West Union Street piece we're going to have to take the funding that way so then what does that mean for High Street and Cedar Street and High Street we have to push it push it off so then given the the latest I think what you're saying given the latest estimates that we're looking so we're looking at West Union for next year but after that we're not sure at this time what else is next on the on the schedule or what we have arpa funding for or um well we don't just have to use arpa funding we can look at you know other other pieces too well and I also think to to Brandy's point right and and complete streets and all these other things if West Union isn't going to get done until next year sometime we're not going to be looking at doing High Street or Cedar Street for at least another six or nine months after that so as we're working on the comprehensive plan we're working on I'm sure Doug you know knowing Doug he has a long-term plan for Stuff at some point we'll come back and reevaluate and say okay where are we seeing the pinch Point that's the problem Doug doesn't have time to do long-term plans oh you know I told you we're doing so many things we're not doing anything well and it's it's impacting our ability to anticipate things coming down the road I mean what are we going to do about fields you know that obviously that's not like a public safety issue but I probably had more complaints about fields in the last two weeks than you know anything else what kind of complaints which is about the maintenance of them scheduling issues which isn't necessarily you know in our domain who's in charge of it no DPW oh even the scheduling is DPW I thought this don't the schools don't schedule their own well the schools will schedule the school teams but they and then they have the right to bump whoever is scheduled which is why we're looking at a Parks and Rec Department who can take over some of that from BPW but we got dams we got to worry about we got there's awesome you know DPW things takes care of all the maintenance of the fields too pretty much yeah the school department doesn't take care of any of theirs they take DPW takes care of the trash take care of the maintenance of the fields sometimes we have like some of the youth organizations will help take care of of things so so he does some stuff like for one of the fields is it possible that that's a discussion that needs to be had with our schools that it does you know that trash may you know the minimal day-to-day you know obviously they don't have the equipment to mow the Lawns and to do that kind of stuff but do we really need to be sending our Public Works people out to pick up the trash around a football field or around a baseball field or well I will say Jim and John Murray have have tried to help with that but there's some you know I I'm not sure about this but I think there's some contractual Arrangements that may prevent some of some staff from being able to do the trash and so we're kind of left up to doing it maybe it's time to the fact that the matter is I mean I can attest to the school department doesn't have the bodies to do field stuff yeah right we can't even put people in the schools to clean them at the end of the day so I certainly know that that was the case at minda so it's these jobs are challenging right you want to talk about not making a lot of money and trying to live and it's hard to live around here and then have some jobs so what do you want to do with this question is this another future agenda item or do we want to is there something I think a lot of this will be discussed during the conference of planning process do you really think we'll get into the details of who handles the trash no but I think but I think it will help us prioritize what we talk about that's very long term which ones that we right but can't isn't there an interim yeah you know reach out to the school and gym and and yeah tell you we've had very candid conversations Gemini we've had a lot of them over the summer because we were talking about Cedar Street it's actually put a strain on mine and Jim's relationship and it you know it yeah he's got the same issue that that we do so we don't have enough bodies in DPW Administration police fire basically anything the schools can say the same thing about their staff so do you see this as a long-term it's been a long-term project in fact one of the projects that you wanted to do as part of the you know when we did The Retreat is to do more of an organization like a bigger Cemetery Department no bigger uh even larger yeah okay oh okay to do that study to make sure okay the Staffing is not a comprehensive plan issue yeah no so but that's the so if you come up with a plan though that says okay we need x amount of bodies and it's going to cost x amount of money then that's a very Frank discussion right the community is going to have to have right right okay okay all right so all right so let's go back to the sidewalks then I think so we have a plan I mean I think we have an understanding about West Union and then the question I think in terms of I'm still thinking there's interim stuff to be done before the comprehensive plan comes out which I presume will be a sidewalk plan with dates and things like that right they can't do a full sidewalk plan no I think it you know during the comprehensive plan process as we get feedback from the Community will be like oh well really we think it'd be good to have sidewalks here and then that information might be put into a long-term plan about where we want them and then based on what we're doing and where we have funding how can we sort of marry marry those two lists and and information I guess I thought okay so you're saying you don't you guys are not seeing that out of the process comes a sidewalk plan with a schedule no oh no I mean I would be really careful about like you know trying to come up with lots of plans yeah before we come up with the comprehensive yeah like I feel like no no no I'm thinking as part of the comprehensive plan the end product would be no we'll get the good feedback on the open space will get feedback on amenities we you know one of the goals or one of the things might be ensure that there are sidewalks in these specific areas potentially so my point right now is on an interim basis then what are we doing in the next few years well I think to Michael's point right we're doing West Union Street because it's going to cost more than we thought yeah we're gonna do that first and then my recommendation would be once we do that we sort of take another review and say okay based on either complete streets or access to schools then we go to that but I think that's in six or nine months or six months once you West Union Street is going that's my suggestion all right what would anybody else think I'd prefer to move have something in place a little sooner than waiting well I think because of the funding mechanism because we're going to have the the West Union is going to be more expensive it's I think we're going to have to wait I think so I think I think we're way ahead of ourselves if we start planning Beyond West Union Street at this point let's get that done let's get it done all right so I just want to just make sure that at some point we'll restart the process and talk about next priorities may be involved with complete streets the chapter 90 funds you know how that works and because I know Doug is making he's prioritizing that when he knows those projects you know so we should probably look at Doug is going to whatever priority of the day he is whatever crisis so just as long as we have an understanding we're going to kind of revisit this and try to do some okay [Applause] um follow up and join me with the planning board so I wasn't there so oh yeah we had a meeting yeah yeah who wants to I mean I think it was you know I thought it was a positive meeting and we came out with just a few things I think um the um and we had a discussion about naming a representative from the select board so I don't know I'll turn it over to to you guys uh and like Joe did you want to say anything about follow-up oh graciously Claudia allowed me to yeah put your mic on oh sorry about that um I'll be representing the board when it comes to sorry that was good catch thank you um when it comes to sit down and talking with Peter and being part of that that group too do the things that need to get done so just to kind of give context because when it this is in in specifics to the MBTA communities and looking at options we had talked I thought Peter did a really great presentation and outlined the issues and outlined what our needs were going to have to be to meet the MBTA communities law I think that um you know the next steps is really seeing what what options we have to um to comply with keeping as much control over over the zoning and just to kind of anyone that's watching that wasn't watching our joint meeting MBTA communities is really just a zoning zoning exercise we don't have to build any units to meet the state mandate for for MBTA communities but we have to zone for it and it has to be by right so we have to expect that anything that we do Zone could potentially be built but maybe we can look at areas that have already like Cirrus has already been developed other areas possibly have been developed and we can plan to have a proposal or a couple different options for for us in the planning board to look at that would meet the needs with the least impact on the community I think is what we came to the conclusion on and it's the change in paper change more than anything else well hopefully so you'll know and so you're Joe you're going to be meeting with Peter and yeah Peter and Trish yes uh at some point and then are we still we had talked about I think our first meeting in November as a potential is that is that a good for the report is that that's what yeah that may be rather early okay there's possibilities what did you guys have anyway we don't need to hold hard and fast to it I think that was just some discussion of possibilities no before we get into what did you guys have for that I don't have a date for when they're going back there was no date um all right and I'm just gonna throw this out there I mean certain members of the planning board were trying to say that this is going to be easy because we have these certain areas that we can just Zone that way um you know maybe part of Pleasant Street or this my question is what if we don't comply or what if we don't comply by December 24th by December of 2024 because it's a larger discussion and with everything else we have going on in town we can't come to an agreement or consensus I think I think we talked a little bit about that I think you know the idea I just wanted to bring it up for this group we we aim to do it and then if we don't meet that deadline the chances are would be because a lot of communities can't right um but that certainly our goal would be to meet the deadline yeah and then I think like you know the ramifications of us not complying I guess it depends on for how long so if we were so say we were because we have to comply by by the by December of next year by 2024 if 12 31 20.
and what time is parent pickup it runs simultaneous yeah so 325 for both have you had any issues with subs or uh no I mean there's you know we're always going to have some some coverage issues but I have to say been we've been doing great you know we have our uh four building Subs uh and we have some great long terms in that we've hired so we're looking pretty great okay thank you all appreciate that all right why don't we move on um next on our agenda is public comment um the board of education does welcome public comment each speaker has up to three minutes to provide input to the board and at the start of every meeting a maximum of 20 minutes is allotted for comment on any item included on the agenda for the the meeting at the end of each meeting time is allotted for comment on any item under the board's purview um and that would also include overtime you know overflow time if we ran out of the 20 minutes so um just an important Point discussion of school personnel any individual students or individual members of the board is prohibited by our policy so we have three people we should we should be able to do this within the 20 minutes and I'm just with one of the people did not put down the topic I'm just going to do all three at the beginning if the board's okay with them okay so first up is Mrs stepniak short Oak Drive and this is my third time speaking so I'm hoping third time is the charm um good evening I know that all of you are invested and dedicated to our values and our school districts School District might come and pertains to the recent resignation of one of the board members um and um what I was going to say is the board member was elected as a Republican it is my belief in conviction that this vacancy should be filled by another Republican member of the community with the five members departing in November we are in desperate need of someone who is knowledgeable in finance maintenance and operations and someone who works really well with parents and legal Guardians we do need a partner right now from my seat and because of the con conc Ern we right now we experience lack of collaboration and of an opposing view which is apparent if you closely follow actions of the board lack of accountability and refusal to take necessary actions poor attitude and continued refuse of listening to the parents and lack of transparency um I hope for your understanding and thank you for your time thank you and have a good night next up is Mr Montero all right Austin Montero 17 Dairy Farm Drive also commenting on the board of ed vacancy that just popped up and you know it's a thorny issue I'm not going to get into how it was handled but I want to talk about first after speaking with the state yesterday they referred me to this should be a local Charter a town Charter decision so with that I just wanted to read two different parts of our Charter c2-6 and appoint you to a vacancy in an elective office Shall Serve until a successor elected at a special election or at the next regular Town election qualifies and then the bylaws of our board if if a vacancy occurs on a board of ed it shall be filled by the remaining members of said board until the next regular Town election at which a successor shall be elected for the unexpired portion of the term the official ballot specifying the vacancy to be filled so without going into um you know some back and forth on how it was handled and the timing of everything I like to talk about moving forward and what AGA just mentioned I believe this must be a republican seat she was Republican um on the border now we have five members that are going to be gone in the next few weeks so to me that is a tough decision to make with a whole new group of people coming in I think the best decision will be to make the people of Brookfield their voice heard or at least weighed very heavily in this decision and again if it's not filled by a republican I feel this would be a very political politically driven move which I don't think will be a great thing to do um so a couple ways we can weigh and measure this would be I think to choose um with the way in measurement to choose at the same time to have the people of brookfield's voice as part of this to either go with the 2021 election results we had somebody with 31 less votes than the exiting member um they can fill the seat and that's a lot of the people of Brookfield speaking for her or we just had a primary last week Republican primary the top vote getter in that I think those two folks should have first and second right of refusal to this vacancy and then after that if they both decline I think we're due here for a special election for this seat I think whenever we can give the people of Brookfield more say in a decision that is this important I think it'll give us all much much more trust in the board and in our local town government and I think that is lacking I know that is lacking in this town so if we can do that and bring back trust that is our top priority that is my top priority and I think that this would be one huge step forward together to do that so I thank you guys for your time and I hope to speak to you guys more about this soon thank you thank you and our third uh public speaker is uh Mrs prendy hi it's Anna prende seven Crossroad um I've been here a couple of times I think and I always kind of feel nervous but especially today when I walked in and I recognized some people I'm like oh I'm between friends because I do know half of the board and I don't know I feel like half of the staff but the topic that I want to talk about you kind of just shut it down because you said not talking about uh um School personnel and I don't want to talk about school Personnel but the handling of a member of this District the worker has affected my family correctly that's why I sent an email to the board of ed last week and I didn't even hear an answer back that hey we got it or we heard it or heard you so that that's why I'm here um as the handling of the job of my husband has affected my family greatly and for a couple of reasons first I want to talk about the schedule and second the salary not knowing the change of salary and the change of scheduling has put everything uh in this area in my family and the thing that hurts the most is the person that we are talking about has nine years of experience in this District so seeing the new stuff coming in I am happy and excited for them because I have worked in the district the kids are marvelous the teachers give a hundred percent the administration give a hundred percent but My worry is like the administration in the office is not supporting these employees you are losing good workers and I feel like if they are targeted they will find a way to get rid of them I'm sorry to say it but that's the point that I feel at and that's all I have to say at this point I have much more to say but that you know like being the spouse kicks in and I don't want to put that in here because I get very very emotional and having three kids in the system and being around the system and having an eight-year-old asking why is that it's not a head custodian is a very uh hard question to answer okay you're getting into individual personal matters and Mrs brendy you probably saw all of our reaction we never received an email from you so could you could you could you resend it that would be helpful for all of us so ah yeah okay thank you okay so that's it for public comment um let me get my agenda I had it there it is sorry all right so next up is uh to welcome our new student representative Ava Canton so welcome Ava we look forward to having you at our meetings and hearing what's going on in the schools and so I guess the question I have is did did your principal tell you you know give you a training on what what to expect or you're like here going oh my God what am I going to do well so we were supposed to have a meeting this morning but two minutes after the bell rang the fire alarm went off um but it's okay because I talked to him briefly about it so I have a good idea and plus I know a couple of the people who've had this position before so I have a pretty good idea of just what to go over we really really value your input and insights and to the extent you can stay and listen to the meetings we would love to have you and you can participate give and give input to us all as we have some of our discussions but we're also all sensitive to the fact that high school students have a lot going on and so if after you give your report if you need to up and go that's perfectly fine so I just want you to know that we welcome whatever time of yours that we can get so go ahead so a lot of what I have to say overlaps with what Mr bolando was talking about before as a senior in high school my class advisors Mrs Howe Mrs nidri are doing a lot for the senior class they're calling it like the senior experience um we have the painting for our senior parking spots which was supposed to be this weekend but the rain date is October 7th so seniors just come in for the whole day to paint their spot and all the designs are pre-approved by Mr Buckley so everything went through him um we're also going on a senior trip in October on October 6th to Lake Compounce for their Halloween like Phantom Fest um and again this is how and Mrs Nigri um along the student government are working to coordinate this um we also have a cloud Fair coming up that was supposed to be today but um the fire alarm thing kind of also set that back but it's going to be rescheduled I think to next week um Tuesday okay perfect um so yeah that's just where all the different clubs um set up tables where all the students come in they can get a look at all the different clubs that our school has to offer a couple things just related to the start of the new school year um we talked about this before but the new school start time uh like Mr volando is saying I've heard a lot of mixed things from students for me it seems to be working out fine and the only thing I think is as a student involved in athletics and I'm also working a job there's sometimes little like back to back where I don't go home between practice and work or school and work um but that's definitely something I can adapt to and from the teacher's perspective I've talked to a couple teachers who said it's nice to be able to like they can say bye to their kids in the morning or like send them off on the bus before coming in here um there's also as we see the roof construction so a couple teachers in that Wing were displaced but I think they're getting used to it by now it's an adjustment but I think they're making it work and the new field it looks really nice um so yeah going off of that into Athletics I wanted to say I'm on the dance team for the high school I'm a senior Captain so I can speak a little bit to what's going on for the Athletics for our school we have our first home game on Friday which is really exciting with our new field um and yeah in terms of dance team we had our first performance at the convocation earlier this month and we'll be at the game on Friday I'm also in a couple clubs for the school I'm on youth commission which is more of like a town government group um we're planning our candidate Forum which is going to be on October 10th so tomorrow at ilt all the different IELTS are gonna go log on to I think a Google me or Zoom where Mr Belinda is going to give a quick presentation just so some students have some background information going into that Forum we also organize are in the process of organizing our career fair which we did last year which is a really successful event so we're excited to do that again um I'm also in National Honor Society and we're just getting the year started with collecting dues and we had a Dairy Queen fundraiser in August and I think that brings me to the end of everything I had to say but I'm really excited for this position thank you welcome welcome nice job Anthony thank you hit a home run on the first first step back well that's great have a good night have a good night Ava thank you all right written correspondence um agastapniak wrote regarding the digital Locker Andy Korea and Robert Scalera wrote regarding the Director of Business and operations proposed hire Irene Korea wrote regarding the BHS main entrance Melissa Yeager wrote with questions about CLE s Construction and Food Service Peter Girardi wrote regarding the budget for cles Denise rice wrote regarding concerns at cles a student concussion at cles work being done at CLE s and an incident report Elizabeth Pryor and Gene Jaquith wrote regarding the demolition of Huckleberry Andrew and Jennifer Baum Laura Glenn and Jennifer Berlin wrote regarding bus routes Kristen de Sousa wrote regarding the opening of clas concerns Nick Schmidt wrote regarding cles Jessica Hanson wrote regarding clas opening and arrival and dismissal Tanisha Hutchins wrote a letter of concern Elena Lopez wrote regarding a BPS Facebook post Alana Kavanaugh Elena Lopez and Chris Dickinson wrote regarding the board vacancy and Andy Korea wrote thanking Sharon buchell for her service on the board that's all I have okay thank you approval aboard minutes I'll move that the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on August 16th the special meeting on August 21st first and the special meeting on September 14th second okay moved and seconded any comments or at the Pro's tenants for the minutes okay hearing none all in favor all right okay it's passed next is our superintendent's update Dr Burrell all right thank you Mr Belton first I'd like to welcome quesadilla to our table here tonight welcome Casey you'll hear from Casey she's got a couple of updates tonight that she'll be sharing regarding the budget and some back office support I do want to share with everybody a lot was said about cles so I'll stay away from that that's been kind of a every meeting update from me but specific to um Center School it will be turned over to the town this week all service contacts to maintain Center School have been turned over and taken care of to Mr Tedesco the oil tank has been emptied we actually receive a credit on that oil oil that Mitchell took back all supplies and materials have been moved to Candlewood Lake there was while the lower library was being finished the library books were still there there were still some other materials everything is out of the school now I think Dave we just moved some easels finally we got some final easels that we were repurposing that were new to Center School that we brought over and are using over at Candlewood Lake and like I said the keys will be turned over by the end of the week so um we're excited about the opportunity to really move forward with centers with cles now Huckleberry I sent the board a picture earlier today all but one cinder block area is is down now and so the real cleanup now begins to move the materials off site and begin the north parking lot in the driveway the other part of the driveway um another update for everybody we collaborated Casey myself and Angela forgel along with Mr Roland met with Aaron and Tracy from the health department last week there is going to be we're already preparing for it you heard Mr Renda mention it there's an uptick right now in covid and they're anticipating a big up Tech uptick in fluent RSV so we're just all preparing for that what's really nice about the guidance from the State Department of Education and the Connecticut health department is that they are really turning over uh responsibility for districts to look at CDC guidance look at State Department guidance work with your health department to really develop your own mitigation strategies and so while we'll follow recommendations and they're the classic recommendations we all have we are not going to have any kind of a mask requirement or mandate or anything like that so it's just important and we'll get a letter out on that in each of the principal newsletters in the coming days but I just wanted to make sure everybody knows that we're paying very close attention to that however whiskey near did have an uptick probably about 10 cases right Dean with about 10 cases this uh yeah but there was about 10 between staff and students there's about 10 10 12 cases this week so there was a lot at whiskaneer not so much as Center or the high school say again yeah just this week so I wanted to let everybody know about that so we're paying very close attention to that and we'll get a continued information out to everyone really important for everybody to know the security task force we have a meeting scheduled for the end of October on the 26th the two main focus areas the first one will be cles we'll have two months under our belt we invited not only Dr pepsaski but um officer Kelsey our SRO there to come with us and really talk through okay we have two months under our belt what does security look like there there any needs we have uh are we in a good place um uh Eric will talk a little bit about without getting into the details of security technology and how all that's interfacing uh at the new school in addition to that the other agenda item we'll be talking about Iroquois they Supply natural gas they're located behind whiskaneer there's some requests going on with Iroquois in terms of increasing their production as I understand it and so we're going to talk about that as well from a security and safety standpoint next thing I wanted to talk about was just engaging with parents and our Educators and with students I'm going to be starting a advisory Council for the superintendent called them just initialing it speaks students parents Educators advisory Council to the superintendent looking forward to getting that started I've talked with Rebecca Newman we're going to be working on getting system-wide PTO to together and some representatives from there to help me each school has a a climate committee working with folks from the climate committee and really working on community engagement improving communication hopefully developing more trust and the perception of more transparency I think the board is quite transparent in the administration and the teachers are quite transparent but making sure everybody feels that that's the case and ultimately having that trust like the established relationship that we talked about with Mr post with the board of finance and so forth so we are making sure that our community is supporting resource allocation for our students ultimately is what our job is here so I'm really excited about getting that going then my next couple of items I want to and first invite up Mr melanda just to give a quick update on the book challenge that happened right at the end of the school year and you could give us a quick timeline of where things are at thank you Mr Blanda thank you Mr Muriel um so the book reconsideration process for the book fun home tragic uh tragic family tragic comic um was submitted in in may we started the process uh it has been we've already selected the committee um we actually used three three new members we kept some members and brought some new people on including mental health and um and some other people as well to to give a different balance and different perspective for this uh this time so we can use the same group the book has been read we had a scheduled meeting I feel like this is a theme for Monday but because we had to leave early because of water uh that so that meeting was canceled um but that was going to be that that was the scheduled big at least hour-long discussion um you know for an initial discussion on you know now that everybody's read the book we'll go through the um text the library selection process and talk about alignment there if there is or there isn't we go through the weeding process and talk about does this book qualify for being weeded or not based on um the criteria and then we also go into the um the actual form itself um which ends up being I think it's 12 or 13 Pages worth it's gonna take a little bit of time as we get through and we'll go Bullet by bullet through that as well it might take more than one meeting but that meeting is scheduled for next week um I think it's Tuesday or Wednesday we're going to have that first meeting I'm going to take my time with it not to slow the process down but because it's such a significant conversation and we're not taking it lightly but everybody the entire committee has read the book and has all taken notes on it and ready to have that discussion so I had hoped to have something for tonight liked but I apologize we could not have the meeting on Monday that was scheduled so I had to reschedule it because we left early so that's the plan where we are now I did notify the the group of people that had put the reconsideration form in I notified them last week of our plan meeting this week and now I'll let them know that we're planning to meet next week I'll follow up with them probably after this meeting or tomorrow to let them know that where we are on track okay thank you thanks Mark um I'd actually like to invite Mr Roland up now to share a little bit about what's going on with um his progress so far on special education strategic plan and the second program review and uh upcoming report from Craig thank you Dr Burrell good evening everyone um the two points I'd like to make tonight uh in my remarks are the special education strategic plan is ongoing um one of the points that we're going to use is a special ed PTO meeting on October 2nd to engage parents and elicit feedback and to uh begin to form that parent committee I've had multiple parents reach out to me that's going to be part of meetings throughout October in addition I have regular meetings with the principals and with our special education supervisors to create subcommittees and committees in each building around special education and start forming things like a mission statement and a vision statement that align with our district strategic plan so that's happening beginning October 2nd conversations are ongoing and uh in addition to that in in the November meeting um Dr corvo will be back to speak about the specialized program review so in speaking with her regularly uh weekly she's completed her portion of the outplacement portion speaking to our out of District placement schools as well as the parents and together we've talked to the parents and called parents just to inform them of what the purpose is of the out of District placement portion of it in addition she's concluding her interviews with school staff in the specialized programs so on the November 15th Board of Education meeting she will be here to present her report on the specialized program review and I will be collaborating with her on that as well as presenting a more broad update on our progress in this strategic plan as well as some data on ppts I've attended parents I've reached out to parents who've reached out to me and just some of the programmatic pieces that we're incorporating from the correct program review that Dr corvo completed at the end of last year so that's my brief uh portion for this evening and I thank you for your time and your and your attention thanks Bill and then finally for the superintendent report I asked um uh Dr Mann attended a conference today um and uh well I'll let you just well thank you all right so on the heels of I'm hearing about where we are with our special education program review and strategic plan and a follow-up to the board's August meeting where we dissolved the subcommittee where you dissolved the subcommittee of the board on equity and inclusion and gave direction to Dr Brill um to you know kind of handle it at a district level and then a school-based level I wanted to give a brief update kind of where we are at that with that um so you know we're currently laying the groundwork with the principals we've asked each of the principals to begin considering how this will look will it be inclusive of a school climate committee or will be a separate committee they're going to get some parity on that and we'll talk about that as we go through the next couple weeks and thinking about how to include be inclusive of um you know get gathering information from faculty and from students as well as from parents and then today Catherine Abrego who is our world language K-12 coordinator and I attended a diversity equity and inclusion Symposium held by the State Department of Education and hosted by the commissioner and it was a it was really um it was under the idea of kind of cultivating meaning part meaningful Partnerships among um you know District leadership as well as teachers and so it was we took the opportunity to be present and listen to a lot of ideas that were shared with by districts that are currently doing some having some interesting practices and getting some ideas and one of the takeaways that I had was um I can't remember from which district uh shared it but the idea of you know taking um data that has been collected which is one of the things that the subcommittee did a lot of um a couple years ago a couple years back and um so we'd obviously have to update that data but using that as kind of the the foundation and crosswalking it with uh the mission statement and the Strategic plan and kind of seeing you know where where we are as kind of like a a starting point so um it was really helpful to go and just kind of get some ideas uh as to how to give direction to the um the building principles but then also as we're thinking about speaks and maybe having a district-wide convene of these um these are these building level committees so um we're excited about starting this work and um you know it's kind of the ongoing embedded nature of what we do you know it's uh We've we've been hearing a lot about uh having involvement from all of our stakeholders so that's what we will continue to do so thank you for the opportunity to update [Music] and that concludes the superintendent report okay thank you thank you questions for Dr Barrow okay hearing none we'll move on um uh next up is the assistant superintendent so and just for everybody's uh memory we talked at the last meeting about alternating the uh assistant superintendent and the director of special education to uh and student services to alternate give us reports uh in alternating meetings so this is I think the beginning of that correct it is okay although I'll be back again next month so just as a little preview um so I think I'm going to invite Bill up now oh okay you guys want to Big leave all the principals by themselves right um so um this uh is this presentation that I'm handing out so that members of the board are able to not crane their necks too much although I will probably better um we'll do that for the audience at home and around me um is a follow-up as we said on the um I know it's really a check-in on the board's request for information on our social emotional learning Focus including the ruler approach uh in in the schools and kind of just where we are uh coming out of all of the work that we've been doing over the last many years so I do want to just preface uh my presentation with a reminder that much of what I'll be referring to throughout this presentation is kind of inherent and implicit to what Educators do as their everyday work I mean teachers get into the the profession because they really want to help kids grow and develop you know we when I was in graduate school one of my professors I went this was for my masters of arts in teaching for English and um you know he he was our the focus throughout the entire degree program was that you don't teach subject you teach kids we're not here to teach English we're here to teach kids we do it through the vehicle of teaching English so all of us are here even as a central office administrator I view my main mission is to help support the development and skills of students um and so that's really what you know any whatever whether we're talking about social emotional learning or we're talking about math or reading or science or any academic skills we're talking about um you know skill development and um it's you know we have a variety of different tools um that we and and approaches that we do use ruler is one of the ones that is kind of codified uh in the last eight to ten years um the again that kind of implicit nature of an educator that looks to support students and make sure that they are ready and available for Learning and if they are out of you know and teachers are able to kind of tell implicitly but again just like when we brought in rubrics for making sure we had objective grading practices ruler does um this kind of brings to the the Forefront of our minds you know the general practices that we want to be looking at and some specific approaches that we can use in order to uh you know make sure that our students are with us and available for Learning and are in you know a a solid place so with that last year we brought in an attempt to try to begin to quantify a little bit the the efficacy of ruler but also because it's not just ruler that we that we use for our uh to make sure that our kids are doing are doing well and are ready um but so we use we brought in the Desa we presented this you last November and um we were a little bit late to the game the death is really a full year screener that you're supposed to that teachers are supposed to use three times throughout the year we administered it twice in February and then one again in May but just as a recap this is taken from that presentation that you were given in last November the Desa identifies these kind of soft skills right and it there it's aligned to the castle Frameworks the castle Frameworks are National Frameworks that integrate academic and social emotional learning it's kind of the foundation for School counseling but it also is something that again is just foundational to all educational work um and the benefit of of kind of exploring this and administering the Dessa um is that there are many event benefits but one of the ones that I've really kind of seen um is that it helps keep in our the Forefront of our minds um that we are looking for uh to make sure that intentionally looking for the skills that our students are you know ready and available for learning so this second slide just kind of shows you the the various areas that the Dessa uh focuses on self-awareness goal directed Behavior personal responsibility self-management social awareness decision making relationship skills and optimistic thinking and I did wanna you know me I love my strategic plan alignment I didn't want to let the opportunity to go by without uh kind of calling out where this aligns with the work that we're doing in the Strategic plan and um frankly the castle Frameworks you know which uh are specific to um self-awareness self-management I just have my cheat sheet here responsible decision making relationship skills and uh social awareness or so are kind of nicely crosswalk with our Brookfield Seas which we are in the midst of working on fleshing out and making sure those dispositions have specific characteristics and we're clear on where they are at each grade level but this work that we're talking about right here and even just the conversations of us having uh talking about social emotional learning um help us move forward in our work with our strategic plan not only with our Brookfield C's but also that that portion where the portion of the graduate is explicitly integrated into curriculum at all grade levels and across all subject areas we know we're not there yet but this is part of that of doing that work and then finally the idea of research-based instruction and assessment practices that are assured for each student are designed and implemented the Dessa is a research based and normalized uh a screener tool and it's something that you know our students are or every teacher was able to reflect on with our students this is just a brief review of What ruler stands for so recognizing emotions in oneself and others understanding the causes and the consequences emotions labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context and regulating emotions with helpful strategies and so that's just what the acronym stands for and I I wanted to also just review quickly that the way that this screener works is um that all teacher the teachers do the Dessa mini which is a seven to eight question um you know mini screener for each one of their students and if the results of that warranted then they would go in for any individual student to a lot a deeper the desk of full which is a 75 assessment or 75 question screener um but each one of these questions is directly aligned with those dispositions that we referred to earlier the other thing that is really important to point out is that this is a very contextual screener it asks teachers to specifically think about the context of the in the of which they are with the student so for example at the high school if they're using ilt it's those those teachers as they see their students within ilt So within their that you know dedicated time during the middle of the day we understand that that doesn't necessarily extrapolate to everything every part of a student's life but it's that teacher's observation of their of that student's skill dispositions in the past four weeks which is one of the reasons that we can't administer it until or we can't take time for it until at least we've had we've had at least four weeks of school so it's very specific to a time frame and again it is it's an opportunity to kind of just get a snapshot of where uh you know a student is we um however did decide to use this screener screener tool as with aggregate data we're not digging down into specific data for any individual students or even classes of students we looked at we brought this to you because we're getting used to this we wanted to make sure that this is something that we are interested in continuing to use and get used to the uh you know the calibration and make sure that our teachers are comfortable with it and so um I wanted to share with you because I was trying to kind of think about how I could share this data with you that would be somewhat meaningful and so I'm going to share with you the data that that we have gleaned again this is a very kind of large you know about a 55 000 foot view of um what's going on with the results of our uh screener um but we are using this more as Trend uh information this is not going to give us any specific you know details on um on any particular students but it is looking at you know more Trend data so this first bar graph that I'm sharing with you is the entire District overall you'll see the pre and the post results here and so the green is the students that were identified as having overall strength in those seven or eight areas the blue is having very typical and strong skill dispositions in those areas and then the red is the need for instruction so those students who have demonstrated in two or more areas that they you know could use some specific instruction on that to give you some context just that were kind of clear on the percentages um 25 in the end so obviously the left hand is the pre which was done in February the right hand is the post which was done in May um and so we for that 25 that represented about 560 net well it represented 569 students in our district the 71 in the typical was 1587 students and the uh four percent in the red was a total of 90 students throughout the district I do want to let you know that I only put um total total numbers on this slide because in the individual uh grade level slides the numbers are so small that I didn't want anything to be identifiable at all and so um particularly in that need for instruction range so I I kept with percentages for the rest of the presentation but I just wanted to give you a sense of how many students were talking about and it's about 22.50 um and so this kind of again just shows you that for the most part across the district our students are demonstrating pretty strong dispositions and skills in uh their social emotional competence the next slide is an elementary report remember that last year we had CES we had ajs and we had fifth grade at WMS so I'm not calling this yet a CLE s report because that would be not exactly true but these are all the grades that would have been represented at cles had we moved in last year and again you kind of see you know across the across the way where our students are um and the you know pre and post changes which were not significantly different from pre to post but there were some changes some of the uh you know sections went up sometimes the need for instruction went up sometimes the strength went up and sometimes typical went up across the pre and the post for K through five the next slide is WMS which but just the current WMS 6th 7th and eighth so again you'll see that our in our sixth graders were in the lowest need for instruction and had the strongest typical and strength across the um across that particular cohort and our eighth graders were demonstrating a little bit more need for instruction um than the other the rest of the school however still significantly strong in the overall social emotional competence across the school and then our high school students which is the one true one that is consistent it's 9th through 12th um you know we had again very strong results across the board in terms of what the Dessa social emotional competence results were showing for both the pre and the post um so I wanted to just highlight those so now kind of what does it all mean right because uh you know we I gave I did share this with cape the other the other night and when you know we've talked about the fact that when you're looking at this very kind of aggregate data this trend data it doesn't give us anything kind of specific to sink our teeth into however what it does offer us is show us a few kind of General ideas right now and also puts us on a path for where we want to be by the end of this year um and now I think the number one takeaway is that our teachers are seeing positive social emotional competencies with our kids across the board that's pretty much what this is showing that the teachers feel that the students are demonstrating these skills and these are the observable skills from what are from what they you know can see in those past four weeks so the majority of our students appear to be prepared and available for learning when they're in that particular context they're ready to actively develop skills and creativity critical thinking collaboration communication and change making um you know that's our Brookfield sees we are well poised to um help continue to develop those skills um and again with those if you're thinking of that castle framework that integration of academic and social emotional um they are they are part and parcel of a whole they cannot be uh pulled apart if you if you can't just do one and not do the other it's just how Learning Works um one of the other takeaways is that there are specific instructional strategies and activities that we can employ to enhance this skill development specifically that is one of the benefits of being a part of this state-sponsored cohort is that we are afforded resources through aperture which is the company that employs death that does the manages the Dessa where teachers and administrators and can go in and pull specific lessons or ideas from the platform that is shared with us and I'm going to actually share one of those with you at the end of the at the end of this presentation and so there it's not as though we just kind of are winging it and hoping that kids are you know demonstrating this and that it could be a totally different aspect this year we are able to intentionally do some of these uh different you know do some different approaches and different uh skill building activities um the ruler approach which is one of the aspects of what we bring into Brookfield particularly pre-k through eight ruler at the high school is a is a different look uh it doesn't it's not exactly the same um you know it's it's because there it it gets a little bit um juvenile for kids to come in and put themselves on a mood meter um so teachers do it in a little bit different ways like kind of really checking in with their kids for example during ilt which is one of the reasons that we decided that Mark and his team decided to have it done through ilt but the ruler approach as it's used pretty ubiquitously pre-k through eight um is a foundational part of our school system and while I don't have I don't know if any of us have pre-data we don't have any data from before in implementing uh ruler we can certainly see that it is not doing any harm it's it's certainly supporting the work that our teachers are doing in fact um Tracy dressel when the Pre-K teacher during uh new teacher orientation when we went over ruler was thrilled because she is so excited to do to do some of the ruler things like the mood meter with her Pre-K kids and she couldn't wait to she saw that on the agenda and she couldn't wait for Dean to come and give her his presentation because she was all about it um teachers and support staff intentionally focus on student availability for learning within the classroom pre-k through 12.
that was recommended by all the professionals assist in the district with a security incident for additional services that may be considered upgrades to the district server and Hiking infrastructure so the committee recommended the item report we also talked about purchasing manual to Student Activity manuals Mr Morris will presented to the committee significantly revised purchasing manuals [Music] we also talked about a quote for a change order for electrical wiring and swallowing we also talked about the New Jersey Department of Health and safety evaluation of school building checklists basically to our checklists were brought up to date Mr worskey presented a completed school facilities checklists for each building as required annually by the department we also had an issue Mr borski can you the acronym p-e-o-s-h it's an organization that deals with occupational health and safety for public employees and there was an anonymous complaint to pios about the temperatures in the district Athletic Field House and we had a surprise visit from a few ocean sector and overall he was very satisfying with Mr Molina and my responses but the state of New Jersey is now requiring a heat illness prevention plan from school district so we're one of the first that had to prepare such a plan and with the help of our occupational engineer Dr Richard Lynch we put together a plan that is feasible that we can actually accomplish that will better protect staff and students going forward thank you sir finally the last part of the meeting where he talked about a change order Mr Universal presented change order number seven pertaining to additional proposed work for RG the committee here for them to do all the work contained within the change order but very reluctantly recommended the item as an action item for tonight's consideration committee expressed their dissatisfaction with the number of change orders and the costs for this project and I say that the entire meeting that camped off a very interesting the uh uh other than that Mr President I don't have any other operation notes if anyone has any questions foreign [Music] additional work being done by the administration and I just want to give some kudos to the business team um and Mr Malika as well because they were able to cut that change order down from thirty thousand dollars to about fifteen thousand five hundred so um you know I think part of the discussion that we have regarding change orders was how some of these calls start to accumulate over time and there may be the need for us to go seek outside help or be a living Mercury I'm just thankful that we have a team that's willing to be able to well and just uh that's interested in how our so that was very appreciating and Dr Freeman excellent your team is Right On Target that way so we report appreciate that all right any other questions or comments on operations on the extracurricular Adam sure yeah our army wasn't quite as long I don't have as much of it what's kind of cool about these ad hocs is that we're learning a lot and things are progressive so it's it's more about getting to know what's going on and learning a little bit more about status Mr steel came and share the athletic coaches the people meeting their teams um both positive feedback and some negative feedback um I think it's it's great that we're able to take a look at this and really um kind of get an overall insight as to how things are going throughout the different sports organizations and figure out how we can collaborate and cross communicate um get coaches that are doing best practices in one area um you know helping other coaches that might be able to use that best practice we also talked a little bit about strength [Music] and we love our athletes across the board and looking into and work with that um I know when it comes to the athletic facilities space and size has been an issue in the district of working and organizing all out of the district on the fields in the space it's not always super seamless that we do have coaches like you know if we if we can communicate and collaborate as best we can right now that's the best approach and I think what we're seeing is the coaches at least in this fall season are doing a really good job of sharing the spaces but we can continue to look into other ways of other spaces that might be available down the road the other issue that came up was Transportation um you know we've got teams going to different locations playing in different schools we need transportation to get those athletes to those places so we'll look into different opportunities and options that we have with Transportation whether it's collaborating two teams with a bus route of some sort or getting more Transportation so more to come but we're learning a lot from the feedback organ excellent job and he said any questions releases [Music] for my part the only thing that I would add and I thought you did great because you summarized up kind of on the athletic side we've really coalesced around three ideas of things that the board and the administration really could be doing because they're endless relationship between our desire to grow the number of programs and the participation of the programs versus some of these constraints so you know as it pertains that things like facility limitations or Transportation those may be elements that you see in future board meetings we're likely creeping into our long-range planning as we go through that activity yeah really good discussion all right my position all right thank you actually they need every other month and the next meeting okay great thanks all right at this point we are up to item number five sure we are open to the public for agenda items only so in accordance with District policy 0167 that governs public participation board meetings members of the public will sign in at the podium or online provide their name address of group affiliation just noting that public participation is limited to three and five minutes in duration and no participant basically more than once in the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic if you have anyone from the audience I see no one brushes Tom when you have a chance to check online uh I always get this wrong agenda items first symptoms I always get it wrong uh I am seeing none online okay thank you so we are now up to item number six yeah so I'm gonna try and make one up on the Fly and say Mia was Board of Education approves the meeting minutes from our last public meeting this would have been we have a date okay very good so no minutes to avoid this evening all right so we have number six we move right to 7.1 clear results that the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in District Personnel resolutions 7.2 to 7.51 may I have a motion thank you Mr Bell the second second thank you Mr zumko any discussion uh questions item 7.15.
if we go to November town meeting and it doesn't pass town meeting and we have to push it and make changes or do whatever we need to do to bring it to say annual town meeting in the spring um you know that that Gap is not a huge a huge gap if I guess it depends on kind of what where your question is because if if we don't if we don't comply we're not eligible for state grants we're not eligible to or at least that's what they're saying right but but what if and possibly litigation from the from the attorney general our attorney general has shown very quickly what if the community what if the community doesn't support this no matter what we do and we have this great plan and the community goes but we don't want more zoning like this we don't want to comply as a community that's what they made it for so that's what I'm saying right we we you know are we're saying we should bring it to Springtown meetings so we bring it to Springtown meeting and it gets voted I mean I don't know and then we bring it to the fall of 2024 and I do I think I just I think it's our responsibility is that what you were yeah it was saying if we could bring it to the spring the first time to the spring 2024 to the annual and then should it not pass or should it need to get tweaked then it could go to the special town meeting in 2024.
I think that that is one of the things that we are seeing with this uh again Trend data is that the T the teachers are comfortable with this language and comfortable with this idea and again this by administering the Dessa or talking about these kinds of things whether it's through ruler or um you know through developmental counseling lessons or even other different programs that we could bring in it helps teachers it helps remind teachers to be intentional about this and not just kind of have it be something they do implicitly because by calling it out and making them very aware it helps them recognize if a student is off and then that student it doesn't matter what awesome lesson you had planned for chemistry that day the student isn't available for learning so that's what we want our teachers to be aware of and then um and also you know this this kind of dipstick shows that we're ready to take the next steps in capacity building so what are those next steps they are um that our school-based teams will reflect on the approaches that they do including at CLE s and at uh with skaneer using resources from ruler and from aperture and then at the high school what they can they can glean from using aperture for all students again we said that this is you know we're looking at Trend data this is a tier one approach that we're taking we're not looking to pull kids um to tier two or tier three interventions specifically based on this we will continue to implement Odessa with three teacher screening windows for the 2324 school year so we'll do fall winter and spring the first one is going to be starting on October 9th I'm ready to send out a parent letter this week or maybe the beginning of next week um which will include a form for parents if they wish to remove their children from the screener they won't have to go back and forth through email they'll just be able to attach a form or fill out a form so that's going to be sent out next week but it'll also give us the opportunity then by the end of this year to have 18 months or two administrations of the um Dessa mini and just kind of get a sense of where things are and we also should have more information about where the state is in terms of supporting it through this cohort um utilization of available resources included including the ruler crosswalk which again I'm going to show just at the end of this presentation and an opportunity as we embark on fleshing out our portrait of The Graduate as one of our Pathways our professional development Pathways um really kind of using this as another resource to develop those dispositions and then as we go through because we will be maintaining this data we'll be able to compare the cohort results from previous years so similar to what we do with our student achievement data we'll be able to kind of you know continue to um house this data and look at year to year development so the last and I apologize because this is hard to see but maybe you can see it better than I can on my screen but the last uh page that you have and it's definitely going to be hard for you to see on that little the little slide that I gave you is one of those resources that aperture provides and actually this is just hot off the presses because they just did this this summer but this is an example of something that I think can be really valuable for our district that does do you know does subscribe to the ruler approach so what you see at the top of the columns are the eight dispositions that are assessed through the ruler so self-awareness self-management social awareness relationship skills goal directed Behavior personal responsibility decision making and optimistic thinking and then on the left hand side you those are the various ruler skill building activities and so for example if you were interested in doing incorporating The Meta moment into your school building you can see that the meta moment which is here the the work of the metamor you know everything that the meta moment in corp encompasses also incorporates all of those aspects of the Desa or aperture you know so in other words you are covering Castle um skill building in in the use of the meta moment so they did this work for us by crosswalking ruler and the Dessa so that we can then kind of reference this and see where we can get kind of the most you know impact so that's just one of the resources that they provide and again these are teacher resources that can be used as PL as PLC topics or grade level topics or Department level and even at an admin Council so that's where we are with this presentation you ready perfectly happy to take questions good question um for the Dasa mini the screener so like for example for items like one and six in particular so like who deems like what's important like for number one remember important information so is that part of their training so yeah teachers go through a academics or is in their personal life like or is it a combination of both so it would be what they observe basic based on the context of you know where they are observing the students so for ilt or homeroom or in their morning meeting you know it would be within that context so the teachers go through a brief it's about an hour-long training um to review all of the different items and to give them the specific you know the look fors for each of these item Banks and then they're very you know focused on the context of which they are in which they are assessing the student so the serve as an important role at home or school I just it one in six are just difficult for me to kind of don't seem like really subjective well I think that's one imagine how being a teacher myself how I would really look for that so I think that that's one of the difficulties of trying to quantify something that is more qualitative um but as I said you know based on the this is there are um four or six different decimal uh iterations um because you're not supposed to give the same exact one at each uh for each one so this is one of the this is for our training purposes um but they you know I think that based on what they what we have learned from the folks at aperture um and the State Department of Education um you know their research has they've been able to call down the 75 item screener to these seven or eight sometimes they're eight many questions that are you know and with this kind of uh with the preparation that the teachers get right before assessing um it's supposed to be you know it's supposed to be research based so so I had a question on the data and you know I'm a data house so uh um if I kind of summarize this about four percent of our kids are in need of some sort of instruction but it varies actually healthfully across the grade levels right so as as high as 10 percent if I kind of scan across this so the two questions I had when you when you say the the first question is school-based teams reflect on approaches are they actually going to come out at a grade level and say okay I have a grade that has a lot more need for kids to have some sort of training and here's three or four specific things we're going to do is it actually get that specific or is it more of a general where we're taking it well this has really only been reviewed with the ad with the district leadership team um so it's really been only at that level of conversation at this point but certainly I could see I mean and this is not reflective of any interventions that are happening with this is you know inclusive of all students and um so it's not necessarily many of these students may be getting some specific interventions and we're not looking at a specific student level no no we're not I guess it's more of a okay in third grade we ought to be focusing on these three things team really wants to come say something but yes absolutely you're on the right path yeah District you know the grade levels and even um you know cohorts K2 could um look at this platform and pull some things or also go to their training with ruler or with um you know other you know intervention aspects in terms of counseling and uh do some general just kind of expanding on it my my thinking is that you know the kids in these grade levels are experiencing different things and therefore they need different strategies so I was going to help I don't know if uh Dr Mann remembered we when we did this last year and again this is just one shot right where do we go through but as we go through continue to do this we I know I spoke with our mental health staff and we talked about exactly what you're saying um is if we see large pockets in maybe certain grade levels that um that we could focus on because again six the difference between a fifth grader and eighth grade at the time or a difference with a sixth and eighth grader and the things that are that they need to work on could be totally different um yeah and that's a good point too eighth grader going into the high school maybe exhibiting some different behaviors than an eighth grader at the beginning when that eighth you know the eighth grade group felt pretty comfortable an example when you looked at our our data the sixth grade you notice is like three two percent four percent three percent and our highest happens to be in eighth grade six to seven percent because as kids get a little bit older they may be less to participate you know in class or for whatever reason maybe a little more Moody whatever um and maybe give a little more attitude at times so again you know sixth grade I look at or fifth grade you would look at it maybe where they want to make sure they're following the rules more as as teachers know I mean that happens as it goes up and again it's not a knock on any grade level it is what it is that's what I love about middle schoolers but I just want to make sure that uh you you knew exactly what you were saying is what our thought process is to be able to make sure that this is successful or useful I should say as we move forward sure and I think the best way to make things useful is to have something concrete that the teachers could say this is something we can do right that will help improve the situation so my second question is is this is all about kids being ready to learn right have you correlated any of this with any of the standardized testing we have not yet but um as we and I think that I would be a little bit uh reticent to draw direct correlation lines um but I will be as I'm preparing for next month's presentation um I am going to have have that be part of my exercise of looking at the third through eighth grade um particularly uh the 11th grade sat data is a little bit of a different animal um but certainly I would that I'm going to be interested in to see based on their Readiness to learn are we seeing that as another one shot one you know one snapshot of their assessment in SBA Ela no it's it's funny I spent had a chance to spend an afternoon looking at the states database and I actually dissected it by cohort by grade right so you could see the the fourth the fifth the sixth and how they were doing and and uh over over time over the four years that they had published what caught my eye on this report is the there was a big bump up for most grades in Brookfield that's a you know attributed to the recovery coming out of Cove had and that's what we had hoped for and I am looking forward to your report on that when we get there but I just it caught my eye on here that some of the grades that didn't bump as well happen to be the grades that have the higher score here and I just I think caught my eye so I definitely suggest you look at that absolutely so yeah and they're moving on right there yeah and look also looking at this and like for example the numbers are very low in the high school but one of the higher ones is eighth graders and now they're gonna be ninth graders so right so be interesting you know it's a different world so when you moved to high school from middle school so we all know that anybody else informative report thank you thank you thanks Dr man my pleasure I'm saying okay so we're going to move on to subcommittee reports um and we'll start with finance and and Rosa there's two Finance reports there if you could maybe cover both of them yeah okay so uh our first of the meetings I'll talk about um and I'll kind of talk about them concurrently um was on August 14th uh the bulk of that meeting was talking about how the fiscal year was going to close out um at that point it had only recently just closed out so um and as you know we were looking we ended the year at um about a four hundred thousand dollar over budget mainly due to special education substitutes health insurance um and so at that point we were trying to figure out as I keep trying to use Bob's sayings all the time but how do we land the plane right how much do we ask the town for in an exact number um and so we were having that ongoing discussion all year where we would finally land and we ended the year at that point in August we were estimating about a five thousand dollar Surplus so it's a very small amount um after what the town had given us as an appropriation by our September meeting that was 7 000 a little over seven thousand dollars so um it's um which whenever you're talking about sort of a fifth nearly 50 million dollar budget that's um very very close so we thank the business department um for their really hard work and communication on that so thank you um at both meetings we discussed the current year that we're in I'm already looking to be over budget due to less staff turnover than we usually budget for uh issues with athletic transportation that we heard about um particularly the driver shortage also keeping an eye again on health insurance special education special education transportation um and then finally the year-end audit at our September meeting was currently going on um so at our October meeting we will have an update on that so we'll have that and that's it questions for Rosa sweet so the 400 was from town okay yeah it was we had a special Appropriations we asked for I think 397 um and only ended up needing 390 and I by the way I did send Ken's updated report to the board of Finance so there there happened to be meeting concurrently with us this evening so there I believe uh that they're representative on our committee will give them an update on how that landed so and that Surplus money goes right to the general fund yes do you know how hard it is to end up within seven thousand dollars from where you were in in June to where you ended up in August well done guys that was uh Ken left it all on the field this year thank you Ken I love it okay so next up is uh personnel and negotiations um and there's actually nothing to report it was all done in the executive session there were no motions taken so um and uh and so the topic we were talking about was strategy and negotiations relative to collective bargaining so um and as those usually are done they're often in an executive session so next up is policy okay the policy subcommittee met on Wednesday August 16th and um really the two main items that we focused on was continuing to discuss policy 6162.51 the survey of students we've spent really kind of extraordinary amount of time on this survey just really getting everybody comfortable with um opting in opting out what kinds of surveys there could be what parents rights are in those situations so I think we're in a good place now and and we're ready to send that to the board we also had a lengthy discussion on policy 6563 School library media and the reason we had that discussion and presentation was because of parent feedback and the recent requests for reconsideration and a petition that we received to make some policy make changes to that policy so Mr belanda and Mrs Roca from the BHS library media center came in to talk to us about um how the request for reconsiderations went how the review committee's Review Committee was assembled how they deliberated what factors they considered and then Mrs Roca um really did a thorough review of how she does her Acquisitions of the books in this media center we talked about every issue that was covered in the um petition and got lots and lots of great feedback and input from Mrs Rocca so we actually met again tonight and continued to discuss that and we'll have um we'll have a new policy to slightly revise policy to bring to you at our next meeting then we um we talked about the current school year Communications just briefly and um the potential ribbon cutting ceremony for Cle s which will still be a little bit off into the future as they finish to finish finish up all the work that has to be done and get the parking lot ready [Music] um but I think that was about it okay thank you any questions for Debbie okay hearing none uh next up is facilities okay got a lot to report so we did meet on September 6th but I've been updating it since then so I have all the updated uh reports so building condition study Mr post reported the final report from Marx acubo has been received and distributed to us um they'll be using the report to develop the 10-year Capital plan for the community's review at our next meeting on October 4th and the full board's consideration at our October 18th meeting we asked that technology Pro projects as well as non-structural projects to make the schools look better be included in the plan we asked for a review of the past five years Capital plan and history of the maintenance vehicle request we feel we need to like package a story better and we'd like to see it as more like little projects like for example doing sections of the roof out of time um we'd like to see technology playing a role embracing quality upgrades to the other buildings possibly adding natural light to make the buildings look less dingy and doing some Hardware upgrades and we'd like to get feedback from the community and the NBC here at the high school the guy in swing roof as Mr belanza stated work has started um so they had their pre-construction meeting on the 14th of Barrett Roofing architect Tom Hibbard Casey and Ken they met and prepared the staging areas prior to construction or work um however it was determined that the ground condition outside the guidance Wing is unsuitable for the contractor to move equipment materials so the start date was pushed to this week and the work has officially started according to Mr Hibbert the OSHA regulations restrict students and staff from occupying the guidance Wing during this portion of construction so the staff did have to take from their classrooms and offices what they needed to work with and go elsewhere during construction it's estimated to be completed in 10 days but that's contingent on good weather so an update on our capital projects the HVAC the project is complete Mr Caldwell reported that the high school HVAC project is complete in a waiting warranty sign off he also reported that the scope of the project did not allow us to connect to all of our HVAC units and that funding for this should be included the first year of the 10-year Capital plan so we have the letter from Jules and AV sent and Amy sent the warranty over the Heat this winter should be much improved and the new system will give us a lot of information on diagnostics in order to fix problems that arise locker room we're still waiting for the inspection to take place so we can begin to use it construction is finished other than two doors and a bench that are not in yet we're hopeful we'll be able to use it this week Paving it's complete at the high school the middle school is very exciting looks great we actually gained 10 spaces at whiskaneer and they're all aligned at BHS we replace some pipes under the sidewalks near the main office also Stadium track and field we heard um that they've done a lot of work there on Saturday 23rd they resumed work we lost some of the front feel for most of the time during this part of the project but if the weather is great next week we might be able to use the field back for next Friday then work would resume the following Monday High School restrooms they completed two more and there's a surplus Surplus Surplus for the next set so that's good electrical service at the middle school is still an active project we're trying to be proactive it's not a project that we need to do right away we want to switch the Old Gear with the newer one we're ready to go out but eversource said no because they said we need a socket so we need a minimum three-day shutdown of the building so it may need to become a summer project and we need to consider heat and any storms seminar room seating there's no change with that flooring at the middle school we need to add that to the budget for next year security upgrades door alarms are done we just need the training cameras and security film have been installed broken windows have been fixed repeaters have been ordered no concrete barriers yet High School auditorium entrance to make a Sally Port is up next so as you can see we've got a lot done so Paving parking lots lines Fields locker rooms Etc and a new school and a new school the air conditioning here unfortunately there has been no progress in getting the contractor and engineer to review the project and report on why the bid came in so much higher than the original quote um the project cost has doubled a key component that drove the project cost higher was a structural specifications to support the equipment on the roof so the committee requests that Mr call Will engage another engineer to review the bid specifications we had only one sole bidder Edgerton they also give us the specs but CES came back with structural design changes so this included opening the roof and in order to do the CES said we need to get a structural engineer so we haven't been able to get untouched Edgerton so a lack of response from engine is forcing us to move forward without them Casey Ken and Dan have met to review and determine what the next step should be delivery view the specs and prepare to go up back out to bid for that which school was that again here that's right yeah this room about like Dr Brill said all the materials have been moved from CES to cles and we have vacated that building yes turn the keys over there wasn't any new business we had some miscellaneous discussion we got an email from select women Tower car regarding the turning over CES to the town so like I just said we and Dr Brill stated we pumped Mitchell Field pumped out an estimated 800 gallons a product from the heating oil tank and hopefully you'll get that credit back the heat can be turned off and everything's been moved and we we did request additional information and Clarity regarding the additional truck or replacement truck we discussed the youth commission and their Grant the benches that they selected need to be mounted somehow and the installer is going to look into finding the price for the mounting plate Mr Caldwell reported that he was working with the contractor to install the bench selected by the students no word yet on the timeline for the removal of the Portables at whiskaneer and playscapes for cles have been manufactured I heard that they should be arriving shortly that's it lots of report a lot of upgrades okay any uh questions for joy okay thank you thank you for the thorough report and by the way just one one input um because I've been talking to the capital committee chair the capital committee was only another no they were only appointed through the end of August so the board of Selectmen actually has to go take an action on either reforming or extending so so that we're kind of on hold on actually having a capital committee meeting and for the board in terms of our timing and joy it's just perfect all your report thank you it's a lot there um I talked to Mrs Carr I think it was just yesterday and shared with her that at that early October facility meeting we'll be in case you'll have a Casey and Dan will share a um Capital Improvement plan 10-year plan and then if it uh committee has any input certainly we'll make those adjustments at the committee meeting then hopefully bring that from the committee meeting to the October 18th board meeting where the board could review it and the timing would be perfect if we can take a vote on it at that meeting and move it forward um and I know Mr Belden the formality of that committee on the town side the capital committee but we want to as a board get our share our department if you will plan out there for the town to conserve okay all right that's it for subcommittee reports uh next up is the consent agenda which are new hires resignations transfers degree changes and the June financials second and seconded uh uh Dr Burrell any comments you'd like to make super brief uh to Rachel Cohen Carolyn Reinhardt and Kayla Denault want to congratulate them on continuing their graduate work as you can see their degree changes here other than that nothing to report okay most of these these reports are always long and especially coming out of the summertime yeah coming out of the summer time so any questions from the board okay all in favor aye okay I just took care of a page and a half of our agenda um all right so we're on to new business now um the uh the first item is the Board of Education board member vacancy um we actually met as a board as a special meeting last week to kick off the board vacancy process but our policy requires that it be formally announced at our next regular board meeting so what I'm doing is announcing tonight that we do have a vacancy on our board um and with the resignation of Mrs bhuto we we are accepting applications through September 29th by mail to the uh to the by hard copy mail to the school offices or by email to Boe brookfieldps.com I'm sorry or dot org right yeah and screw that up and uh and uh we will all have access to the applications we will then schedule interviews and we've established the dates for interviews for the opening on October 5th and on October 12th and deliberations on a selection process would happen after that the position uh per the town clerk will be the served until uh until December early December of 2025 or the remaining two years on Mrs bhutoster and that's not just for clarity that's not our decision that's a that was a town clerk decision on the term with consultation at the state I know that's been a point of discussion but and people keep asking me why did you make that decision we didn't so and uh so the uh um so we have deliberate we have interviews and deliberations ahead of us and we invite anybody who would like to apply to that position to apply and we did get input as you know tonight from the public on how we should make that selection which of course we will take into consideration so so that's the announcement next is our Athletics update and there we have an action to receive a report from our athletic director Steve Baldwin hey Steve thanks for being here Mr Baldwin good evening um tonight's a great night so it's actually my favorite night of the year I'll get to that in a second um I'm going to start with these slides just a few things from last year a few of our championships cheer one that's WC Championship dance came and then runner-up in the state and obviously baseball was state champions for class style and girls the cross was in the final four last year tonight we had our Class Act pledge night where the students go to Chick-fil-A and sign the Class Act pledge that they will act right at games they get a t-shirt they get free fries and a free ticket to all the games we actually had anybody want to got so many kids we had there tonight 600. wow wow 600.
okay so is it my understanding there's going to be two individuals taking this so Canada was care Workshop I had the same question it was actually workshops delivered by District Personnel but it was two different audiences and then um the other question is uh 719 the conference request I made a video right that's 2200 for the conference yes it is yes and that's just this is for personnel we have uh Samantha sort of organization she's going to get some additional training to reinforce what she does is she's acting at this point okay that's the cause but you can see it is it any other questions okay here one can we have a roll call please one of the Personnel action items tonight is the retirement of Mr miladoff so he served the district I.T director for about 15 years correctly and the approximate year that I've worked with Mr milanov and it's been my pleasure to get through some complex I.T issues we serve the business function of the district with the highest professionalism thank you [Applause] so you know we're going to ask you to come back yes this is up though yes it's been us um yes sorry thank you Miss hi yes Mr bomber yes yes motion passes thank you we are way um be resolved that the Bible report of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in District education resolutions it's 8.2 to 8.20 we have a motion thank you Mr Bowen a second any discussion about yes yes Mr Boomer yes yes thank you item 9.1 the result of the founder of the Board of Education proves the resolutions as outlined in rewarding action resolutions this is a 9.2 9 9.29 thank you may have a motion motion thank you second I'm gonna give it to Mr minhas any discussion uh yeah uh item 9.4 the nursing Services plan okay uh two questions it's to my understanding into my knowledge has not applied to schools and school nurses however FERPA does and I do see mention of workouts so is it just we're mentioning HEPA just because it's a commonly used now I'll tell you what this report that is put to the board approval each year so the standard standard uh exactly and then the other question is is um you know it's well put together a plan but I didn't see anything regarding uh the plan for special needs kids or disabled kids or anything okay so let me look in and I'll get back to you thank you Mr Ross any other questions uh yeah just uh before we get several donations a year this month um so thanks to everyone for those donations today we had at the Oak Tree project s um there's a third one as well yes supplies [Music] any other comments questions [Music] yes this casino yes yes uh yesterday um take it takes a little as high yes foreign uh and subject to the same stipulations and limitations so we have no questions for this evening's meeting we actually do not have any HIV cases to review so we don't have a need to go into detective session unless there is something so confidential that meets the requirements so at this point in Europe 16.1 I'm very interesting emotions
and I guess it's up to us to create something that we can communicate to the public that isn't going to impact them in a huge way and I think if we communicate that and we're able to show that um you know that that's that's on us and and the planning board to kind of craft it to work and I thought people were pretty optimistic about being able to put together an acceptable plan but of course we won't know until we actually come up with something and see it concretely but we had like a number of different kind of scenarios the other thing they we discussed was that they did not want to uh jeopardize the downtown area with this with the zoning changes they didn't want to see we didn't come to consensus on them zoning downtown we had mentioned that as as like something that you know if we could avoid that we we should well there was there was one planning board member and that you know just like we didn't come to consensus but there was also discussion I mean and early on with the MBTA it's like oh when originally they said it had to be within a half hour of the train State a half a mile of the train station we had brought up and it was mentioned in our response that well we might not have the space in a half hour so and a half mile so could it extend further out and that's why they changed it from just a half mile around the train station to allowing it to be in other location up to you know certain percentage in other locations of your community because we were looking at the the Mills project as potentially helping us because of the density that that building was going to have and Joe one thing I'll remind you I I'd suggested multiple scenarios so when you guys go to put I mean give people some choices you know like to the downtown question I don't you know I'm not sure where you know what exactly her objection was to that but you know have a couple scenarios that's how I'd put it together and people can kind of look at it and say Hey you know but but I thought it was generally positive and we got a direction to moving and all right and the only other thing that did come up was we also talked about other interim close-term actions we might want to take before the comprehensive plan whether it's zoning or housing and I think there was kind of a consensus a lot of discussion about housing maybe inclusionary zoning but that is also something under consideration so I I kind of thought about that afterwards and I know I know housing is a big is a big issue I know inclusionary zoning I mean like I said we got it to the five yard line we got it all the way to the planning board for a public hearing right before I went to town meeting and the planning board had some major concerns about some of the some of the things around um the inclusionary zoning so we had decided not to bring it to town meeting yeah we could have still brought it to town meeting but that's another that's another story but you know I do really feel like I want to be careful about what we do in sort of an interim way before our comprehensive plan is completed or at least directionally where we're going with the comprehensive plan because I think anything that we do that undermines the work that that our consultants and our team are doing um really runs contrary to why we're doing the comprehensive plan so I would just I would just caution things like interim zoning and and things like that I would second that um other so who would be yeah who would who would be doing that well zonings the what the like if you're talking about an interim zoning who would be doing oh so you know I just thought like were there certain issues that people thought were more short-term by that I meant like within three years that we should think about doing that we see is lack things that are lacking I did not there wasn't a lot of really concrete specific stuff Trisha talked about some tweaks which I think in some ways the planning board kind of does that anyway like every year they seem to be doing something so she talked about that and some of it had to do with this I recall a certain type of uses so things not in my mind huge big picture thing so that was one thing and then you know we did talk a lot about housing and Joe talk about inclusion arizonian I think you know so those were kind of the things I remember as being identified so that's I and I asked kind of like so what else we got short term because we're leaders here and we've got all these housing issues what what do we think is short-term I did not get a lot of concrete specific things other than those so um so maybe there'll be other things so we did talk generally about continuing that process um but I don't know Joe did you having to add what's your thoughts now on this uh there's going to be a lot of work that needs to get done number one um for well to sit down and make a a strategic plan as to how we want to deal with this zoning change whether it be written it's not about the MBTA or the MBT oh first of all the MBTA yeah you know that that that aspect of it other planning I mean they yeah that's part of the comprehensive plan and I hope it gets done that way all right so you're sounds like you're kind of Shifting and I mean well I'm not shifting but it just affordability and affordable housing to me in inclusion Arizona one and the same for me and and I said it at that last meeting that you know if we had an inclusion having zoning bylaw that would have been a great tool for the planning board to use one that when a developer comes into town and threatens a 40b well guess what folks we have inclusion every zoning if you can't go by these bylaws and then find another town that's uh willing to accept you okay you know I'm tired of Ashland having to bow down to these people coming in and saying this is what we're going to do and you can't do anything about it well then we need to get either a safe harbor or two or ten percent well you're right but as we every time we if we if we if we only go 10 percent every time where these buildings were losing ground I agree 100 we're losing ground it should be at least a minimum of 15 if not 20.
I was getting reports while I was sitting there and Mark you said 873 kids as of yesterday 873 kids and 600 were at Chick-fil-A think about how great that is for school spirit incredible and that was tights next year you gotta go it's just it's so much fun uh Mr Blanda Dr Brill came a few years ago it was actually on the news that year but it kid our kids do a great job it was hard for me to walk away to come here but I know that we're trying to teach kids to take things over ownership and I'm like they got this they got this they got this and I left but I still get worried can I ask a simple question how did they find parking 600. I got a couple text messages saying it's I can't find a parking spot you know I'm trying to go help because a couple teachers went and helped out I don't know wow full if it falls on a board meeting next year perhaps we change the venue I was gonna I was gonna also say that if uh if Chick-fil-A can handle 600 students then Dr Dr P could handle uh whatever he needs to in this new parking lots it just it just shows how great our kids are and I'm gonna get into some more of that later um stayed in project so this is actually Eric took this maybe a week and a half ago but we're we're at the point right now where the The Field's done we've been playing on it we got it back um so what what the next part is is they'll start putting the rubber on the track and it was they're actually going to start in the rain on Saturday the guy called me today he goes he's come he goes I'm committed to getting you that game and next Friday and I was like there's no way we're playing at home but he's gonna get part of it done where it's able to cure for a couple days we get get it back for Friday's football game and then they restart next week and then hopefully by the end of next week hopefully there's a lot of rain next weekend so I'm praying we're all praying for no rain roof track so let's go so but that's where we're at um we've been we're lucky we like we had our way to graduation but I don't know like if you look in the papers West Haven Sheehan and there was um another high school they don't have access to their facilities at all we plan that I we Laura from park and rec was awesome Chris Hulk from field Turf we meet every week to do everything we can to make sure our kids are on that field and we haven't missed much we're going to miss a little coming up but we're going to get there and you know it's we're lucky we got lucky because we had some people who did what we asked them to do and get our kids on the field all right so all good news today all good locker room project like um Joy said um a little fuzzy here but this is the piece of the of the benches in the team rooms that they were waiting for and then there's a couple doors otherwise we're just waiting for the inspection uh the middle picture is one of the bathrooms that's the male bathroom from outside I couldn't get into the female bathroom because they have new locks on it and I don't have that key so I couldn't take a picture and then that's the last one all the way to the left is as you walk into the locker room all right so um this year again we were Michael's cups winners this is due to the hard work that all of our kids do um we have a very very strong athletic advisory and you can see um in the last eight years from 2016 to 2023 we won it every year except for 2018.
missionary zoning is never going to get that high though no inclusionary zoning is never going to be but you can give a baseline so just it was I think it was 12 was what we were aiming for so so just real quick I don't know how much Claudia understands so with affordable housing when an apartment building comes in and let's say they have a hundred units and they're a rental if they give if they're only 10 affordable you can only count the 10 units if 25 are affordable you can count all 100 toward your affordable housing number which brings your percentage up um and it's interesting after the planning board meeting I realize how important it is that we and the planning board really keep that in mind about it has to well let me finish about 25 because I remember sitting as a new member when Cirrus came in yeah and someone said well we should do 25 affordable we should really push for that and I was new I didn't understand and we had some other people in place that were someone new and so we only got 10 affordable had we understood better or had we had more guy I don't know what if we had been able to do 25 affordable at Cirrus we would have been at our 10 I mean granted that's you know that's the pass but we need to learn from that we need to learn that as we put any large projects in place and to me large is 10 or above you know and I understand Trisha said you know there's other things to think about sustainability and I get that right but for a community like us where people don't want to see more housing the the quicker we can get to our 10 number and we can have the Safe Harbor and we can say to developers coming in look we want to work with you like we did with Carlos not Carlos you know with uh we tried with Carlos and he decided not to um but with pond with the project on Pond Street and people got upset with us for allowing that but because we did four units there all 20 of them now in looking it back that's not a lot but at least it's help and and then there's also that argument well that's not real affordable and I get that right that if you only get 20 you know you get 25 percent so 25 of 100 Apartments that doesn't necessarily meet the need but it meets the requirements from a state perspective and that gives us safe harbor so there's do we could we use more affordable housing in Ashland of course could we find you know other ways of course but we are working within the state guidelines and if we can push some of these other you know it's it's unfortunate that Chestnut Street is not 25 I mean if Chestnut Street was 25 affordable that would have helped us a lot if the Pond Street project or is that one the one with bench 501 Pond Street so that's you know and we were able to count on right and and you know that's Ben Trask who is who has worked with us right Ashland Woods is 25 so so anyway that's a lot that reminds me one of the reasons I brought this up was that that very Factor where can we come either have a policy or come to an agreement with the planning board that that's what's going to happen you know we talked about and so I think when we had that conversation it kind of shifted into inclusionary zoning which would kind of accomplish that in an official zoning but is there another measure whether it's a policy agreed upon policy that both boards support that's kind of what I was trying to get okay we'll see and that wasn't I don't think that was clear right because when we brought when we brought up the fact that if we could make these 25 and we brought up some of these other projects that had already you know the Homer Street project right let's see if we can work with I don't know if where that's at in the permitting process but can we I mean is it too late to say can we do 25 but you have to do this initially right the minute the developer comes in with a plan that's 10 or more units we need to that needs to be right well it depends on like how much control we have over the over the situation like when you look at like what we did with you AGC and we had a development agreement we were having to do that and that was going to be a 40b anyway and a 40b is always 25 affordable correct so you know you think about those numbers but I but I think part of it is like how much what what is the parcel size like how how many units are they supposed to be putting in if if is the community willing to increase the number of units what that would support right increasing affordability to 25 like so you know and that's and that's a trade-off so if is there is there enough like I think one of the reasons and I and I don't know the specifics so I but I have a feeling one of the reasons 10 to 60 Main Street fell apart was because the financials didn't make sense anymore and lots of things change like you know interest rates have gone up and right and right and the the landscape is really different but like you know mandating 25 affordable for the mill building to me would be a slam dunk but it's like are we willing to to have 225 units or 250 units in exchange for for the affordability factor and and I think the planning board would say no right so well and I think that's where you know your point where the difference is right and but but again part of our discussion at the meeting and that's what we're doing I mean we we could go on for a long time and I don't think we need to right part of the discussion at the meeting and this is to let Michael know is that when we brought up the fact that there were a number of of projects that they did not push to the 25 affordable the response back was well we also have to think about sustainability was one that that I remembered I forget what else she had said but there was there was like three or four things and I'm like you know maybe it was impact on the municipality maybe with schools so okay but and I think some of this will come out in the comprehensive plan but we are currently not at Safe Harbor even though we have a housing production plan because ugc is not moving forward we are no longer forward we still have an issue that's my understanding uh no if they pull building permits then we're right because it's you have to do you have to do no no you have to do show growth you have to show 0.5 growth yeah in the plan so I guess I'll just with that so one of the things I guess that was one of the things I was hoping that we'd at least think about a short-term strategy um and you know and that's that was kind of the continuing conversation maybe it's an overlay District or a few overlay districts where 25 would be helpful to get us to where we want to go and we would have less of a disappointment like why did the planning board not push for that when we thought they could have if we have a coordinated kind of approach that's that was kind of my hope there I mean I don't want to speak for for Michael and the staff but I know that the con doing the comprehensive plan was sort of a huge trade-off to be able to do a lot of other planning things other than what's on the planning boards plate correct so like there isn't the staff I don't think maybe Michael will disagree with me but I don't think there's the capacity to like create an overlay District or a couple overlay districts and I honestly don't think we should until we have a comprehensive plan right so but realistically you're not that far off or we're not that far off from getting to that 10 percent number in fact I think are we at six we're at a little bit under five okay or excuse me a little bit under six we're in the five five ranges but you have ugc waiting in the wings so that's going to get you 180 right we've got one we have 501 Pond Street which we're able to put that on we will have 120 units is that in our plan or not yet it's not it's so it's approved it hasn't made it to the list yet so it's not so will we will we be in Safe Harbor will that get us to a certain percentage for a year so that we can because isn't it once it's permitted or something you can put it on your plan well you have to have a regulatory agreement in place okay so once the agreement's in place you can do that and then really if you know if if 10 to 60 went through at like 1000 units we would have been at our 10 not 1000 units what did I say you said ten hundred oh my God not that many people okay it's not even that late well ten percent all right so I guess I mean Sean Michael uh 501 Main 501 uh poetry is that 15 no it's 25.
no school in the state has gotten this award more than us in those eight years um it's our kids do a tremendous job we are leaders our kids actually go to conferences and teach other high schools how to do this all this work the ciec actually sent me to Indianapolis over the summer to speak in a national conference about how we do things because we do them so well and we're actually still waiting confirmation but I will be on a National Committee along with another student as soon as I get official word we'll make that announcement for that student because it's way more important for her than me all right another big award even bigger Mr Renda School and there's only two middle schools in the state that have been named National unified Champion Awards with Skinner Middle School is one of them with Korean Rafferty that is a major major award um we will celebrate that with a banner in the gym um this just came out yesterday yeah so we're still waiting on some other stuff but had to add that today all right so there is no school in the state that has more people on boards at the ciec than we do and this doesn't even mention Mr Randall I'm sorry that's you're on the cast side it makes everything a competition yeah um but Dr Rand is the co-chair of the indoor and outdoor track committees Mr belanda is on the cast board of directors and the chair of the cic hockey committee um I'm on a couple um it's it's not about me we have Ava wasmuth who is on the student Equity Advisory Board we have Riley McGee who is on the cic's sportsmanship committee and we have Vanessa Greenstein who is on the ciac athletic advisory committee so we are well represented at the cic again our kids do a lot of work and obviously so does learn administrators um that's why we get a lot of great things here all right now to the transportation issue just to go over it um we have been very lucky that we have not missed any games um Debbie is working very hard after the first couple weeks to get us back to somewhat normal and you know it's not it's not all-star's fault it's ever since we came back from covet there's just bus issues everywhere School in our league reached out today and said I can't get a bus till five o'clock so we end up having to cancel a JV game because they can't get there luckily we have not land chat and carriage limo have been very helpful again as I think Rosa said before it is going to cost us a little bit of money but Debbie's going to get us there I know I trust her and we're going to be okay and um I'm going to talk about some other bus stuff when we got to the school start time all right school start time and I put a picture of the golf team there for a reason okay so um and they start out the season very well okay so with fussing I actually have this you're going to be surprised so this year in the fall there's 16 times when students need to leave early of those 16 six are golf regardless of the school time left early last year they left early golf courses have leagues have memberships so and I showed off Dr barildas I showed him the schedule for the state most golf times are anywhere between two and two thirty some three o'clock it's which we try to push it to but most ninety percent of the schools in the state have golf matches before us so no matter what time we get out of school golf's leaving early so for those of you good in math 16 minus six is ten so now we're down to 10.
it's it is 25. okay you push this one okay I just yeah so all 120 units will go towards that so were we uh so is there so thinking of even a short-term thing is there a policy we should have in place so there's clear understanding or so we can't so we can't keep criticizing the planning board if we don't have a clear policy that we're Community we can we can encourage especially based on based on the in the the you know what some of the planning board members said about trying to get interim zoning in before the comprehensive plan is done I mean they're they're obviously looking at something so so why can't we just encourage them when you can if something comes in look at 25 percent if it makes sense we're looking at some creative or looking at Creative Solutions like either using the affordable housing trust or like CPC affordable housing bucket don't take it off right we did that with 12 Pond Street so reach out to people options and we came up with some a creative uh yeah and it worked out pretty well the the the district only required two of the units to be affordable right right so 10 so we talked about at the trust you know it suggested using some of that money to buy the affordability for two more units to bring us to 25 which allowed us to put all 16 on there trust supported that again those are two I'm sorry those are tools that again if the planning board was willing and able to you know take on assistance and having you know to make a decision I guess the one thing I would suggest rather than making a policy or something like that is I think Michael's very supportive of looking at 25 what you know I would say instead of making a policy and you know maybe we can have individual conversations but you know we don't want to necessarily put our you know what we think on the planning board but from a planner perspective I would say if Peter when he looks at these projects can recommend or I don't know if that's possible right he can say you know we're trying to get to this affordable number let's look at what if and he can make that recommendation to the to the planning board and at least have the discussion he you know he can put it forward but it you know it's it would be their decision I understand it's their decision but you know he can remind them look the affordable housing trust is willing to work with us the you know their support to get to our 10 percent and again if it's a hundred units 25 percent are affordable we we get it that they're not all really affordable but it will help us get to our number and it will give us safe harbor so it sounds like we're kind of looking at a staff a staff solution which could potentially so Michael and Peter knowing how we're trying to view things or their own perspective can help implement this process yeah I mean I can direct Peter to you know recommend that um it's certainly something that you know can I ask if it makes so much sense why it's such a problem with the planning board what what's well I'm missing something so one thing is density so they're always going to want if you say 25 they're going to want to build X more units than they otherwise the developer yeah they'll be denser so that's that is an issue when you get in all sorts of other issues and maybe there are other things that people want to negotiate with a developer maybe it's there's other priorities so then but I'm asking about the planning board so yeah that's what so the thing with the planning board would be that it makes it hard for them to negotiate with the developer because they want up the number and and so and there may be people saying density we don't want density here this is bad I understand that yeah so the planning board like starts with zoning in that area right so if there's a 10 overlay um then that that's sort of the the starting position so I I have a question we don't have any kind of um affordable housing overlay anywhere do we yeah no so well like you've got the Pond Street overly District which has an affordability requirement of um 10 10 okay Cirrus had or excuse me the RTD I think had ten percent one of the one of the components there um uh Wildwood which is where 100 Chestnut Street is Right 10 okay that's probably the I'm sorry that's how the developers say oh oh right you're only your overlay is only 10 so right they're happy with that thank you very much right it's already written now so see that's the issue but I I and I would suggest I would see but it's a special permit so you could stand firm on the 25 but you know they're probably plenty board wrestles with a bunch of different issues I would suggest and I don't think it's the time you know I don't think we can do it right now but I think at some point collectively you want to get all your priorities like when you're looking at a development what are you looking at sustainability you know you might be able to achieve your sustainability goals now just through the code through the building code so then you could focus on other things that might be important to you as like affordability and yeah public transportation including those elements but I would suggest at some point and again I don't I don't know if it's now's the right time but again just kind of get all of those on paper and prioritize them what's the most important to you so great interesting okay well that's the um that's the follow-up discussion so um okay um okay the next is the consent agenda and I think Brandy you had a uh item a the uh except regular session minutes from September 6 2023 pull that out of the consent if I have one small edit okay I move that we approve the consent agenda minus item a okay oh I'm sorry uh so this motion been made and seconded okay all those in favor of accepting the consent agenda except for item a say I I consent agendas accepted so a um so in the section where we um I know there were a lot of public hearings and a lot of movement on the meeting minutes for September 6th um in the section that is noted that Mr share noted that they need to open the second public hearing and then we'll suspend to finish this discussion for Mike's Auto Sales for a change in location there was a motion um by Yolanda to open the public hearing and then there was a motion to close it says close the public hearing so it should be so it should be suspend I just want to make sure that it's if you guys got that yeah so one small edit but easily easily I get it so we have accepted so that changed the minutes with that change emotion okay all those in favor of accepting the minutes with that change say aye aye all right minutes are adopted all right it gives us the town manager this brings us to the town manager report Mendez first is related to the bond issuance that's coming up or excuse me I should say the ban issuance of for this last round of funding for Mendes so first of all I think he did seem you know you might not have seen my note today I haven't been able to really check my email just kind of sent one but so s p we had our ratings call last week and so we have been they did their examination so we have been reaffirmed at AAA with a stable Outlook so and uh they you know they pointed out some very um some key points such as so they have different criteria that they utilize um to determine you know basically what that what that is and one of the things that they pointed out is that you know we're in a fluid affluent community in Boston's western suburbs and we continue to maintain our strong financial performance and robust management practices which supports the AAA rating so just to go through the criteria one is the economy so they rated us as a very strong economy that's the highest you can do budgetary performance that's another category they're rated as strong which is the second highest budgetary flexibility they rated us again at very strong liquidity very strong again management very strong and then debt and long-term liabilities they've rated us as adequate which is you know basically middle of the middle of the road and that's really due to our Oak Heaven pension obligation so um anyway congratulations to uh to the finance team and and you know yourselves and the fincom everybody who's done work on on our policies and have followed up on it because that's what leads to to this raid which will lead to us saving money um we're looking at about 17 million that we will go out for after um what you look at after the uh msba reimbursement so after you you have to net it out so what you anticipate the msba reimbursement coming in no we haven't factored those in yet so what Joe is referring to is that um the legislature passed additional funding for existing projects that are in the msba program to handle cost increases many thanks to the Senate President and representative Lewis for their work on that and so we've calculated it out we could be eligible for 3.8 to 3.9 million more which is which is significant but we will go out to Market on Tuesday and um so they'll you'll have to sign the notes that you're meeting on the fourth Claudia have you been through that Pro you haven't been through that process yet no I was just signing the notes it's a really long and arduous process so okay but anyway that's um that's just an update on Mendez um I've got Mendez opening on here but I wasn't there so um you know just congratulations to everybody that was that was part of that uh part of that building and getting that building opening open and um you know I think all of you were able to attend which I think is awesome and a good ceremony and then finally the Attorney General decision so Brandi you just made a comment so it's not a decision they've just they've asked some questions about article 14 from the May 3rd town meeting which was the net net zero emissions in municipal buildings so they've questioned the constitutionality of that so are they seriously is this a serious thing or just some kind of like what they asked Lisa to write an opinion for them so Lisa's provided that she's um unbelievable it it is getting almost silly but I wasn't sure if that was sorry interrupted but I wasn't sure if that was just some kind of routine thing where they say that but no this is unusual she's actually questioning us we've never had we've never had this that's unbelievable so um anyway and then just a couple of other items before you go on so is there so that's the response and so so we're waiting for the Attorney General so Lisa's at has provided them the information that they've asked people had a chance to read through it it was very thorough I mean you know a lot of work yeah she can be thorough and just a couple of other things uh you know we had movie night recently at The Corner Spot and that was really successful I think we probably had over 200 people um you know thanks to Beth and Melissa in the ABA and all the sponsors who helped put that together and then Jen do you want to talk a little bit about the holiday program so the human services and Community Center are once again um planning for their holiday program so that program is sort of twofold they do a Thanksgiving dinner for families in need and then they also identify people for holiday gifts children for holiday gifts and then we match them up with Community donors um to date we have um I think 130 participants meaning recipients of the program um it's just been two days since we started to really put out information to obtain the donors and we already have 37 people willing certainly we're always looking for people who want to either participate and provide the donations and gifts but also if you know families that are in need just get in contact with the human services department and they can match your family and your children up with donors this year we're all so if anyone's interested in participating in making donations for the Thanksgiving meal we're certainly looking for that as well over the last since the pandemic the Ashland emergency fund has really fully funded that program and in previous years leading up to 2020 we did have people in the community that were donating parts or pieces of the meal and that was super helpful and it allows us to sort of stretch out the emergency funds donation to the to the food pantry throughout the whole year and if people are interested in participating either for the Thanksgiving meal or for Christmas how do they what do they do to say I'm willing to support a family so all they have to do is reach out to human services at ashlandmass.com or if they don't have access to email they can certainly just call the food pantry um or actually anybody at the community center can help and it's full out Human Services and then Courtney um or other staff would send you a Google form just to fill out sort of um there's options you know you can either adopt um a child and sort of do that or you can do filler presence so we found people um feel more comfortable just sort of picking up things along the year and then bring them and then we fill them in um some people will do um gift cards for teenagers you know they're sort of sort of certain um things that people feel most comfortable with and we've tried to be a little bit more flexible than we have in the past just to meet people where they are quick question are they you are we still utilizing the Boston food bank for some of the uh food supplies for Thanksgiving um that's how we get our food or um you know for the yearly for the year I think I think I that will certainly utilize we have Partnerships and we reach out to the the grocery stores um last year we reached out to Whole Foods and sort of tries to see if they're willing to give us donations which many of them are and then we purchase it okay Ashland emergency fund gives a donation as well thank you speaking of the community center um I wasn't able to make it to the community center reopening but how was that I don't know if other folks like is it good yeah it was odd we had 100 people it was so busy it was great to see yeah it looks great and it does look great oh my gosh they did such it's like refreshed and and I heard that I don't know if it was from you or someone else that as they were making some repairs they found that there was stuff that might not have been done correctly the first time so so but it was great you know just it looks really refreshed and it's just really nice you can tell the people that go there all the time are very excited yeah they're super excited and then we were able to um sign up about 20 new people who had never come oh that's right so that was as that was one of um one of the initiatives that Candy Wilson really wanted to do is sort of bring new people in and sign them up have the fob so that they can start to use um the activities right away yeah so that's awesome candy and her team did a great job they definitely putting all that together it's much brighter over there it's very I don't think I realized how dark it was until now you don't and so now it's brightened I mean I thought they put in new woodwork like new wood paneling and it's like no but they just painted it differently yeah yeah it's a little less furniture too so it feels a little bit more accessible yeah the items that were found not not all of them yet so but they're now on the list they're on the list let's go and then just uh looking forward to Ashland day on Saturday no it's New England it's Wednesday it's true with that so that's what I have okay so I guess that that brings us to board reports so we'll start with Claudia go ahead work our way all right just to uh just to piggyback on the community center reopening I I stopped by as well and I think the one thing that I would have to say really the energy in that building was was palpable there was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm there was all kinds of different things going on and uh so it was very very nice to see and it did it looked looked beautiful I hadn't been over to the left in a long time when you go in the front door so um but it was it was much brighter than what I remembered um I had the opportunity to stop and and do a little uh sending Sunshine last week with Natalia Melnick and uh there you know there was a that was a nice event down at Corner Spot um it actually happened to be at the same time as I think the final night for uh you know guess at the mic what if it's not open mic thank you go open mic and uh so it was nice some nice background music and uh there were you know probably when I was there probably about 10 people who were filling out making cards the hearts actually were were there um and so you know I I managed to do a few you know it helps if you could draw which I can't but you know the sentiments there the sentiment was there um and then I did I attend the the traffic study committee uh last week and I I just want to be clear that I do not in any way shape or form think that um I understand how overworked many of our departments are throughout the community that and certainly the public works department they do a yeoman's duty and and there is there's always an emergency in public works always right um so I just want to be clear that that uh I certainly appreciate all the work they do and um you know I I just raised some issues because I feel so there's significant safety issues um and then last night we had a school building committee meeting and this was the first in the new building um you know I too was at the opening and gave tours all afternoon um they were I think six of us giving tours it was one right after another uh uh you know hundreds Jim thinks that probably about 1500 people came through oh really wow that's right and so it was really nice it was it was certainly a proud moment in our community um and you know again a big thank you to our community for supporting it and especially at the level that it was supported um and then just to talk uh briefly just to reiterate a little bit about the the amount of work that certain individuals put into making that building a reality for our community I mean initially uh really Jim had a lot of work to do with the legwork up front in terms of getting us into the whole SBA process that that's you know a significant amount of work and it was it's huge for the community right millions of dollars um and it doesn't hurt that we have uh I happen to have the Senate President in our community who you know does a lot of things that that we benefit from so um and then Dr Kyra who did really the omen's work on writing um the educational plan um I think that you know the the the entire thing the thing that's one of the most impressive things about the building is that every space was done with intention everything was intentional um you know we lived in a building for many years that was maybe intentional when it was built in 54 and 56.
times we have to leave early and six of those we would have to do last year now minus two more which are unified which would have to do last same as last year because those events always start early because um some of the kids with special needs it's hard for them to wait around so they always take them out of school or get them to a vet so they can get home close to a regular time now we're down to eight two this year were because of special circumstances like Mr belanda said before we were playing um Notre Dame and they were at the mercy of Sacred Heart University and they said you have to start this time so had to let them out last week in football a scheduled game on on a holiday where we had to be back before Sunset we couldn't move our game to Thursday because we played on Saturday the week before so you have to have so many days between couldn't play on Saturday because we still had to it was still part of the of the holiday so we had to play early so now we're down to six so when we look at it you know you know listen kids come to me all the time our bus is a three I gotta get out I'm like you have plenty of time like they want to get out they want to get out early it's just in the kids nature but we can't do it because obviously we're a school so again back to the start 16 events in the fall really it's six and that's and then when you look at those six um I think three or four were cross-country a sport that doesn't have lights and and the distance for them to get there so now it's three and then those three are distance games so it's it's not as bad as it appears and there's reasonings for it but like I said golf was getting out regardless early because that's just the norm and then obviously with the Unified is that clarified a little bit thank you for having me all right um now to I always do this every year get to um some things that people are bringing up and I'll go I'll go um one by one of new sports with interest um and I think for for the district the first thing that we really need to look at is adding a spring Unified sports um we have fall and winter we do not have anything in the spring we were looking at that progression and um we just couldn't do within the last couple years budget but for and you know I'll talk with Bill about this but I think this is something very important for our special needs kids to give them that opportunity in the spring that they don't have um Esports program I talked about this last year this is like evolving so much and like I never thought it was going to go the way it is but there is so many college scholarships available for Esports which I never thought that that was going to happen and schools have like 75 to 100 Kids in their programs and it's very cost effective you know it's not a huge there's no Transportation need obviously when we look at adding new programs we where we are with transportation we have to think about you know maybe this is a good one because we're not going to add Transportation but it also it's going to you know it's a program for some kids that who may or may not have played Sports um track both men's and women's track teams are growing and Dr Mann can help me out with this because she was a track Superstar so in track you have running events throwing events jumping events so that's three main events you have two coaches so from a pure supervision standpoint and teaching kids it would make sense to have three people one for throwing one for for um jumping events and one for running events it just helps complete our programs and helps those grow and again that's another thing that looking at adding it doesn't add towards transportations adding a coach um every year I ask for a strength and conditioning coach just something I like to have so our kids can be in the weight room all year supervised our coaches salaries as we know are not the best in the state it just would just help get our kids in the weight room help us compete um a ski team I mean we had it a couple years ago a very large number of kids have have shown interest in ski I believe that's something we need to look into um we could look as maybe possibly starting as a club I did have somebody who was going to volunteer to coach and do it he was also coached the paparag but then he resigned when he got a new job kind of kind of hurt that but I'm still looking into options for those kids and a student came to me last week about women's flag football there's that's on the rise in in a lot of schools it was just something to look at so just wanted to make everybody aware of programs that kids are asking about or what we kind of think our needs are and Steve this would be something you would share uh you and Mark would work on and then as part of budget processing about next year you would prioritize what you know what you're thinking about correct okay well sorry and Dean because it involves with Skinner um and last um I was contacted by this company Capo health they come into schools and they do um heart monitoring they do EKGs and Echo Carter grams they work with students and parents insurance and they do this at no cost if somebody doesn't have insurance they cover it um I spoke with superintendent assistant superintendent um what's our doctor's name I forgot Dr Garcia um Mr Roland and the principles and we feel like we would well we are going to sign up to do this voluntarily for kids um it's it's one more step in helping you know prevent anything bad from happening you know I put impact testing on there because we still do that um I just really no bad thing about this again it's voluntary kids don't have to do it parents don't have to sign up for it we're going to send all the information home I put it all in your packets for you if you have any questions you can certainly email me um again I there's nothing bad about this you know if they catch anything they give it to the parents and you know the parents go to the doctors it's just like our impact testing where somebody gets a concussion we have data where uh you know even if somebody's not an athlete all the 8th graders take it in health class this year we're going to do with the 11th graders in health class and we always have data to help the parents and help the kids and that's it great idea thank you Steve Dr babsoski said I can act like I'm a new teacher and go home normally Steve one question um so they come to you yeah they will they're going to come here I believe it's November 13th and 14th and they will set up and um we're gonna set them up in the team rooms in the locker room and everything's done online again it's completely voluntary if parents want to do it I mean I might do it yeah let's get my health card like their database that they keep it in or it's something that they release to us they would give they would give all the results to you to the parent oh okay yep and and if obviously if something came up they'd report it to the nurses how are they funded say it again you said this is no charge so how are how are they funded they work with they work with they work with the insurance insurance companies yeah so they deal with insurance 100 no pays no anything yeah else okay nobody gets charged that was our biggest question when they said it was free thank you great idea thank you everybody thanks Steve great great stuff I invited Mr belanda to uh just as a Segway um from Mr Baldwin's reports that give a status update on the athletic program review yeah so Dr Bill asked me to give a status and athletic program review we've worked with ciac um you know Mr Baldwin and I just have to put some finishing touches on Final self-study reports we've got all surveys done we've got draft stuff all different all four or five of the dimensions essentially done we had to put some finishing touches on it I spoke with ciec and they're likely going to come out probably the shoulder season between um the end of The Fall season beginning of the winter season well they'll come on site they'll have they have an athletic director is willing to come on board and I think at least one other coach and I think somebody else from ciec will come and do a walk through and identify and and help us really enhance our programs and make sure that we are if there's any suggestions or thoughts or input you know we did student surveys we did athlete surveys coaches surveys family surveys it's a little last spring right all last spring yep all done and so they'll go that information and give us some some highlights just kind of like a knee ask visit very similar to what that was a couple years ago for those of you on the board and that happened give us some highlights and some possible recommendations my conversation with um Glenn langerini who's the executive director of Cass who's in charge um he anticipates a ton of highlights like this is more of a highlight than anything else so I'm really looking forward to that I mean based on the Michael's cup I mean you know just when Michael's cup because you know to have that kind of record is pretty impressive so there's a few other things that they'll certainly make suggestions and Steve and I may ask hey what do you think about this so um we're excited to have them come and uh that'll happen in between Seasons so I want John asked me to give an update on that if I may just to add to that um just the concept of the ciac program review it was one of the spotlights in at the niask National Conference last year because Connecticut is the only state that has a formalized process like that it was actually I think Chris and Niehoff is the one who actually started it about 10 or 12 years ago Carissa is now the the director of the national Federation of High School athletics and so she is trying to and Glenn has continued it but she is trying to make it a more National um you know kind of at a national level highlighted at a national level so what we're engaging in is something that has held up as kind of like the gold standard for program reviews oh good yeah and and personally as a former High School principal about 10 or 12 years ago when Carissa first put this together um I invited ciec down to conduct a review for us and it was incredibly helpful now the highlights and accommodations are wonderful it's affirming but the recommendations going forward um things on how you work with your coaches um things about training things about the number of sports you have all those opportunities for kids give you great feedback and gives the community great feedback so when we think about our priorities over time how could we build budgets going forward to continue supporting the athletic program so exciting stuff thank you Mark thanks okay looking forward to that so next up as a technology update from our director of Technology Eric Conklin okay good evening everyone um before I start the technology update I have to tell Mr Baldwin um that if anything ever happens with a ski team I'll be your man I'll uh volunteer to be coach oh and Esports too I mean it seems fitting but Esports yeah I don't get paid I don't need to get paid the ski so um so just a few updates I want to provide for you tonight um Joy you mentioned in the facilities report uh the last time you guys had met the uh repeaters were ordered uh those are actually completed um so a fun little update for that project both schools have them a couple Kings to work out um little things to figure out but again those are for more reliable and consistent radio communication throughout the buildings so we're excited that that is done and uh in use for the start of this year uh Smart Boards uh for whiskaneer uh we just recently awarded that bid um it just came in uh we're shooting for installation in October which is about the same time we had them installed last year um once that is done um every classroom in the district will finally have a smart board um and so we're very excited um to have that done and then we'll look uh in the next year or so to start um the new cycle of upgrading the older boards so it will be a never-ending process but we will be 100 Smart Board um really interactive touch whiteboards some we have different models but uh we're really excited about that uh we finally have a new phone system it has been many many years in the making we've switched over to voice over internet which is the new standard for phones uh cles was completed over the summer as part of the project um due to some various delays with um transferring of phone numbers between carriers uh the high school uh whiskey near and TSO central office did not come online until um September 7th but um I have to say uh that thanks to the work of our vendor the support of all of our staff and administration I think the entire process went incredibly smoothly you know only only minor issues maybe a phone not working here or there um excuse me um maybe some some work on the auto attendant we did have a major change everybody got a new extension um so there's some learning curve um next coming up though is some training for everybody training's already been happening our vendors been working with each main office and showing them some of the things on how to use the system um and then the next big thing is we'll be switching from physical fax machines to an eFax system um and and so we're excited about that um the last the last big thing is part of the contract with the phone vendor was to integrate paging throughout the building with the new phone system cles is done working they're using the new phone system with the pager the vendor's coming back he's taking advantage of the fact that we won't have school on the 25th upcoming Monday and complete that at the high school and whiskaneer so we're going to make a huge step forward with paging within the school and excited about that Eric when you say paging you mean the PA announced the PA announcing systems correct sorry interrupt does that include this all the phones in the classroom so they have the ability to do an all call yes in case emergency yep okay yep absolutely which was which was one of the probably the most important features we wanted in picking our phone vendor so um the district website we continue to prepare to upgrade the district website we still don't have a firm date from our vendor on the upgrade for that unfortunately um it has been frustrating um in light of that we're looking at alternate Paths of maybe a redesign of of our current um you know the look the uh the feel the navigation maybe we need to look at something better there um with Civic plus uh or um uh looking at its entirely different platform together um all together and that'll be a priority of ours um you know you know this fall um the town does currently have the same provider so we are working closely with them uh maybe something of a partnership um in a website platform but we've had the idea of having a um consistent experience across the entire town and so we continue to work together on that as well um along with that um adding updating and changing the content of each School website is actually done by webmasters in each school um and uh and by TSO staff along with me um so this year we decided uh in in light of the upgrade coming um and uh the desire to keep more regularly updated with the data and information that's on the website I'm going to create a Web Master committee that's going to represent some I.T folk and the webmaster chosen by each principle of their building that have experience in updating the website and so we'll be meeting soon to um kick that off the idea is that we're going to keep consistent updated relevant information and a consistent manner throughout all three schools and then finally the full District website the committee will also be an integral part integral part of the upgrade when we we actually have that date and we can do that um I have to note the the consolidation of the buildings as well um the full Tech Team worked hard uh this summer to not only remove all of the technology uh either redistribute it recycle it accordingly uh plan for where it's going to go in the removal of Huckleberry and Center School along with that also required the merging and creation of cles in PowerSchool which then led to the creation of all of our back end systems infrastructure tools resources learning platforms all of that had to have Huckleberry and Center School data shut down closed transferred and moved over to cles it's quite an undertaking and I could go into excruciating detail of all of those systems and all of the things that this incredible Tech team has been working on this summer but um I don't have that much time um and and again I thought this was a good point to just point out the incredible team that works behind um works with me uh that together we do this and together and without each other we can't do this what we do here so that's Kathy colavito in the back I know Mark mentioned her before Barbara McCarthy at Whiskey near down at cles I have Rich Squires and um Seth Craig um Logan white came back to join us this summer very excitingly and uh you may have seen her around the building but Sue Schmidt has even come out of retirement for a little while to uh to give us a hand in the big undertaking that we've had with with CLE s so um and then a lot of the back end stuff nobody realizes the power school the sinking of all the stuff that I talk about is is Denise Walsh and she's supported by Mandy usko and Cindy warpman and um it's it's it's an incredible team so um now I have an entire page here just for cles it has been our biggest undertaking um and it's been it's been exciting work um and still a lot left to be done but um the copiers most of our our 23 copiers that are going to be throughout the building have been installed we await Canon service to return and complete the installation of some of them they're inundated with start of the Year service requests and issues as well I ended up putting together a number of machines and uh so that staff could have them each grade level Wing the upper main office the lower main office the conference rooms the upper LMC all have working copiers and so the staff is uh able to find a copier anywhere they go now um doors Badges and cameras as with any new implementation or project we continue to work through small issues changes training adjustments I do want it no it is important to know that none of the items that we're working on have ever compromised the security of the building uh the building always has and remains safe and secure the security vendor assigned to the school project will actually be on site tomorrow and Friday to work with myself the I.T department and the schools to provide support and training as we fine-tune some of those changes and um gain all of our access to the back ends of all of that stuff um outdoor Wi-Fi we've been working and continuing to work with Ong and their networking subcontractor to provide some temporary outdoor access points on the campus the ultimate plan is to have um wireless access points installed on two poles that will point to each parking lot but those polls don't currently exist yet because of the demolition of Huckleberry and the cabling is not run to get out there and so what we've done in the meantime is it's it's not the prettiest thing but we ran a cable out through the door and put a access point on a tripod and uh I think day I don't know Dr P if you were or you're dedicating someone right now to uh to run it outside ahead of uh dismissal and then bring it back inside it is Dr P doing it so um they were able to get about halfway out the parking lot with it so we're exploring different options um you know we've talked about doing it against the building but we have to test the distance from the building to the parking lot and all of that stuff um so uh it's it's been difficult to add the outdoor access points because no matter what solution we want to look at and do it requires wiring outside whether it's on the poles on the building wherever we end up putting it we just don't have that yet so uh Dr Burrell and I are pushing to um a solution sooner rather than later even if that's temporary and has to be changed later we really want to get some outdoor access point because anybody who's been on campus knows that not only do we not have outdoor uh Wi-Fi but um cell service is um well I should say non-existent yeah it's very limited in that area about the Wi-Fi and the wiring it's really important for the public and the board to understand that is an Ong responsibility with their subcontractor and they need to do that and so we continue to work with them and look at their schedule and so forth and when they can get that done for us yep um and my last update um is uh digital signage the floor projectors that are going into the multi-purpose and gross motor rooms uh the live stream cameras and the loose systems in in the gym um these have been awaiting the the work of Ong to complete specific areas um some of which are ready uh but we're trying to work with our uh the vendor that was awarded all of these installations r b Enterprises on I'm trying to schedule them to come out at a time where they can come and do it all in one time in a consistent instead of kind of doing everything in in pieces um they're ready to go once we get an updated timeline from OMG which I'm hoping to sit down with them tomorrow and and figure out um but that like I said that'll include the loose system that will include the the cameras going into live stream events um and maybe meetings in the cafeteria and the multi-purpose rooms and then uh we cannot wait I know Dr P can I can't wait to fire up all the digital signage and start um you know getting getting messages across the building so Eric can you talk it's really important because we said you know cell service is so challenging in that Huckleberry the old huckleberries Candlewood Lake area which has always been the case can you talk a little bit about um getting cell phones to work in the school and on the Wi-Fi network and how their safety because we all have cell service when we're inside of Candlewood Lake I think yeah for everybody no families to know that we are in contact with the outside world so yeah so a couple things we're going to do long term let me start there and then kind of work backwards a couple things we're going to do is we actually had um them in Huckleberry they're just not plugged in yet at cles we had um uh cell boosters inside the building that used a GPS so you weren't relying on cell phone towers that used a GPS to give a sell signal inside the building that worked on Verizon I heard you can kind of get T-Mobile um and a t might might feed off of it um but uh you know in clas we're going to look at um uh there's actually it was a conversation around the state among Tech leaders about this exact thing um and there are some new Solutions out there to bring cell phone service into the building so we will be looking at that um inside the building now uh everybody does have access to Wi-Fi we'll be posting up we have a visitor Wi-Fi um that is password protected and we'll be posting that password up in all the schools um staff has access to Wi-Fi uh and can access it or log into it anytime just as they could with the other buildings newer phones um probably in the last five years or so introduced Wi-Fi calling um and so we're instructing our staff to all turn that on their cell phones what Wi-Fi calling does is exactly what it sounds like it uses wireless internet to make and receive phone calls and even works for definitely for iPhone text messaging because that uses internet but it actually can send and receive regular text messages as well um so so we have an option our phone system will also have while it runs on our internet our phone system will also have a dedicated back up in the next month or so where should our internet fail for any reason say at the state level uh Power well power would affect everything but um say we have a specific internet issue um there is a failover that will fail over to a dedicated connection with Frontier actually that will provide uh phone service going forward and we're going to have that in all the buildings yeah Eric can you also just uh let the board know and the public know about uh kind of internet speed with the student Chromebooks and how that's going I know you're over working on fourth grade the other day can you tell us a little bit about that and just how it's all interfacing over the first couple of weeks of school um yeah we we've been um working we have found some areas of the building where um speeds are not running um nearly frankly nearly as fast as they should we've done a lot of work with our fiber providers our the folks that install their wireless access points our switches we've narrowed it down to some wiring issues within the building so I'm working closely with Ong uh there are some contractors net Services we're making them aware of um the wiring we found and identified that is is reducing the speeds and um we're gonna sit down probably one day in the next week and review all of their tests show them what we're seeing and come up with a game plan to get everything up to a full gigabit internet which is what we should be at so thank you yep incredible amount of work Eric thank you is there any questions stunning stunning what you have to do to bring a high-tech School online like like I said it's I said well it was our biggest thing I think it's the biggest thing any of us have ever experienced I know that so I did have a question which you may not know the answer to um I was driving up Vail Road in Brookfield and there's been a lot of talk about the new cell tower going up and I noticed it's it's up it's starting to have a little cell you know cell transmitters and transponders on top of it yet but the tower is built do you have any idea if that cell tower will extend cellular up Candlewood Lake Road or not I have been I have been told actually it does so I am part of the town wide radio project upgrade I'm the board representative for that um and that is that Tower is is while it's being added for cell phone it's also was specifically put in for um emergencies well one of the reasons was for emergency radio and communication and based on its location um and the known fact that the Huckleberry area cles area has has been a dead spot um the understanding is that is that it will so when they put the regular commercial cell on there it will help we should start to see better service as well yep because I was looking at it and where it's located is right up you can see right up Candlewood Lake Road yeah it's Clear Vision right up there which is what's missing now Eric on that committee do you have any sense of a timeline of when the sales service part of it might be ready I I do not I'd be happy to have the conversation and uh get the information or what I can be told and shared sure with and and I'd be happy to share an update in combination with your outside uh the Wi-Fi it'll be the best uh it'll be the best uh coverage in the area well and it'll also help with all the you know the pickup and stuff with the apps that we put in so okay board any questions for Eric all right thanks Eric great thank you all thank you thank you I I I became famous showing teachers how to swipe to turn on and off their uh Smart Boards yeah the boards are fun aren't they they're fun yeah yeah okay we've got four new four more uh new items the next item is setting the class of 2024 graduation date I'll move that the board approved the sending of the graduation date for the class of 2024 as recommended by BHS principal Mark belanda second okay moved and seconded so what's the proposal mark s had more time at the podium tonight than I think he's ever had to make sure I get the date right so the proposal is to hold graduation because the last day of school currently is June 13th correct roughly and the proposal is to have graduation on Saturday June 15th time to be determined it's one of those things I've already been working with field Turf we've worked with Laura Murphy has also shared with Steve and the actual the fields of organization has guidelines how to protect your Turf and keep it under warranty because that's a huge piece so we're going to have the ceremony on the turf there's certain precautions we have to take okay one being the types of chairs you use that to be specific so they can't be digging into the ground they have to be rounded bottoms and so we have you know sample chairs coming so take a look at that to make sure we have the right chairs the other issue is the possibility of a stage and depending on the size of the stage and the expected capacity of the weights on the stage there are certain requirements of what you need certain thickness of material to cover the turf before you put the stage down so we have those General requirement the general outlines of what we use this past year it looks like the tip of the chairs that we had rented previously will still work that's something that we do believe that's but they're going to come out and make sure we do all that right because the last thing I want is with that Turf project to avoid any warranty you know if I have to give piggybacks up to the stage hop on board you know board because we're going to get up there but we're going to make sure that it's protected and and those sorts of things but the plan is to have it on uh the 15th so that is the plan okay so the motion is to approve the 15th as a graduation date any questions from the board all in favor all right you got it thank you very much thank you okay next me and I already have it in our calendars uh next is the 2024-25 budget planning calendar I'll move that the board approved the 2024-2025 budget planning calendar as presented by Director of Business and operations Casey diet thank you very much oh oh second second it is emotion um all right Casey thank you very much um and I know it's a very hard last night it is pronounced Dia just in case but I understood um okay so the budget uh calendar first of all I want to thank Dr Brill and the whole board for incorporating into this year's budget this really incredible time that Ken and I are able to have together this month in September of this overlap I thought it was so well planned and it is a gift that not most people in my position don't get to have I never had in a previous position that I've had and it's I'm hoping that it will prove to be very very valuable um and Ken and I have been working great together I'm grateful for that um we will be spending the next um cheese can seven days six days we have together um updating the various budget templates for the 20 24 25 budget and those will be sent out to the district administrators on October 2nd and due back to TSO on October 27th I'm thinking this calendar probably looks very similar to all of you have been through the budget process here in Brookfield which just from a cursory you know first glance at this is an incredibly transparent process I'm one thing that really drew me to Brookfield was you're you're very transparent process of governance and the high standards you have for that so it's outlined very clearly here um so I'm appreciative to to keep that momentum going um so October end of October and November will be sort of internal um Dr Burrell and I working with administrators and department heads reviewing the budget the status quo will be presented to the board on November 29th um the finance committee will meet um several times between the November 29th meeting and December 20th an important change um to this calendar timeline is a move from the um the Board of Ed Roundtable was originally I think in previous years um it took place in November it was moved to the November December 20th meeting uh this year uh proposed so that the board had more time to really sort of review it on their own review it in finance and come to that round table at the end of December with really thoughtful Deep dive questions that we could get into together um December 20th at the regular meeting will also be the continued discussion of the superintendent's budget um moving along uh January 3rd will be the uh Boe public hearing at six o'clock prior to your regular board meeting and then um with the anticipated adoption after discussion on your January 17th I did connect with Marcia on the town side on a couple dates she was able to update the May May 7th um date was the is the date that the town meeting to set the referendum will take place March 2nd working back from May 7th March 2nd will be the board of seleckman's budget due to the board of finance and then the rest of the dates are still TBD any questions that's great this is always so useful as we kind of go into it and it's especially useful this year as we'll have some significant turnover on the board membership and John will scare the Dickens out of him in his presentation on the uh try not to the the first meeting in December and one of the other reasons um that in talking with Casey with a new set of eyes on things um and talking with the team for the December 20th decision for the round table is um we don't typically get a we have one or two people come to the November Roundtable we haven't presented the budget yet so if we if I present the superintendent's uh recommended budget at the first meeting in December the public has something to to talk about you know that what we're thinking about for plans for the following year and so this way they could come out on the 20th and and again deep dive as a as a board of ed looking at the budget but the public has a chance to come out and say Hey you know you put this as a priority why is that or can you can you think about this this is a real need I see that kind of thing thank you yep okay everything will be fixed by that joy we won't yeah all right any other questions on the budget planning calendar carrying none all in favor okay next up is authorization for a signature change for the csde I will move that the board approved Director of Business operations Casey diat as the designated representative authorized to sign the agreement for Child Nutrition programs and to sign claims for reimbursement for the Connecticut State Department of Education School Health Nutrition and Family Services second do you want to say anything about it or sure there's not much to say about this other than it's really technically a formality um Mr post right now is the designated representative for the district um for us to there's various uh agreements reports that have to be certified to be part of the national school lunch program the sponsorship agreement which enables enables us to be part of the agreement has already been signed by Mr post one of his last formal certifications he's had to do um but then there are monthly certifications for reimbursement and then um and then another report in the spring so this just enables me to to act on on the district's behalf in that capacity thank you for that okay any questions all in favor aye okay and uh the last item in new business is uh action on the 2024-25 school year calendar and and this we're receiving A draft copy um we're not acting on it tonight because usually we receive it we get a chance to internalize it and and ask questions that uh to Dr Berlin a staff and uh and then at an upcoming meeting we would actually approve it so uh Dr Burrell you're gonna make any comments so thank you so this is the earliest we've ever brought the calendar forward and I think we've talked about every every year trying to bring It Forward a little bit earlier but this one Lisa could appreciate this this was spurred on a very hot first day of school um and we were 90 minutes late on our dismissal at Candlewood Lake and came back to the office and I looked at an email from a person I'll just leave it at that and I was spurred on by their desire to know if we're starting after Labor Day next year because they were looking at ways to get discounts on vacation and so my response in jest of course was I'm glad you have time to think about your vacation next year but but I looked at Lisa and it got us thinking he said you know what and and Lisa what do you think and she said I got it Boston she started getting right to it so we started playing around with a draft but it's important to know this is not done in any isolation between Lisa and me frankly we put a committee together we have several teachers from the different schools secretaries from the different schools and admin from the different schools and so we we put a start draft out there and then get lots of feedback in every piece of feedback that came back was incorporated because it was very important whether it was something we may have overlooked or a suggestion or an idea key takeaways for this draft as you take it away for the next couple of weeks and then we talk about it again in October is one every bit of anecdotal feedback that I personally have received and that I've sought out and asked from staff and also our team here has heard from staff and families everyone loved the after Labor Day start so that was the first thing that's what I've heard so far anecdotally there's no survey on that so taking a look at the calendar this one does have another after Labor Day start and it Labor Day happens to be on the 2nd of September so it's actually early so we still get going on things it has the same number of professional development days um Columbus Day is still a professional development day students have the the day off but staff is in for professional development we end relatively early similar to the current school year I think it's June 13th and in addition to that what's really I want to just bring to the attention of the board is typically December 23rd is an early dismissal and then the 24th Christmas Eve is a day off that's how our calendars typically run and so many of our contracts are lined up the way December 30 23rd falls on a Monday uh in next year's calendar in the year 24 is it falls on a Monday and we didn't think it made sense no one on the committee thought it made sense to come back for uh a full day or even an early dismissal day on a Monday so we would have a full day on December 20th and then have that full week off um for the the recognition of the holiday so those are some big pieces I wanted to draw your attention to we still have a full April vacation and a short long weekend a short February vacation exercises president's weekend so very very typical and you'll see conference dates and those kinds of things on there [Music] they're not on there at least I thought we had the conference station the conferences I mean it's early but no conversations they're listed on the bottom here but they're not oh they're just not colored they're not colored yep and that's why it's a draft okay yeah if I could just add one a little um part to this is that having new teacher orientation bleed right into the convocation and the start of school that was really really helpful this year because the new teachers were right just like in the mindset of going to school every day and then you know going from TSO over to get their um it just worked out really nicely it really did and we're able to we're going to replicate that again another thing we're doing differently in it there was uh some scheduling conflicts that worked in our favor actually for convocation typically the way the professional learning was scheduled for our paraprofessionals was the first two days that the teachers are back and since we've moved convocation to the last day when the teachers are back that Friday before Labor Day our pairs weren't able to come they were invited to come but it's not a work day for them and so working with Mr Roland he's working with uh with our pairs everybody liked the idea of their pddas being the Thursday Friday so they could participate in convocation as well we can have all of our staff together so that's another uh piece to this so thank you for saying that document had helped me [Music] so if you have any questions now or you want to just digest this and then we'll talk about it in October so or ask some questions in between I have a question right now um it says CLS ends at 3 3 35.
um but there weren't any they weren't we didn't have intentional spaces for for people to receive services or to meet in small groups or um so to be in a building where everything had been you know thoughtfully planned is is really very very um unique I think um and again you know like I said Dr Cairo was did a yeoman's amount of work on that and then you know finally uh Paul Kendall I mean I mean we should figure out something to name after you yeah I'm not sure what but you know maybe the geothermal well we definitely something in that building needs to be named after him I've got an idea he just did a you know he's done a tremendous amount of work I was in there one Saturday when he was in there going through room by room with a punch list and and spotting you know the uh you know the plate around the electrical plug was a little Askew I mean there wasn't a thing that that he missed and hours and hours and hours um if daily um and then finally just with regards to that now they're trying to get the playground going before um the weather gets cold they they need to get it up and then the uh it's some kind of a rubber uh base that will be underneath it has to be done when the temperature is 41 degrees and above so they are really working as quickly as they can to try to be prepared to to do that base prior to the weather getting cold at night so um so I guess that's it for me so thank you Randy go ahead uh so a couple of things Yolanda and I were over at the farmer's market last Saturday for office hours and despite the cold slightly rainy um pretty windy conditions we actually had a lot of people come up and talk to us so um you know I just wanted to give a shout out to the farmers market and especially um Gene Gene Walker who really kind of helped and coordinated all of this and made arrangements for us when when we came kind of came to her at the last minute and said we really would love to be able to do office hours there so she really kind of um helped us out quite a bit so thank you to the to the farmers market and to Jean I was also collecting items before you go on are we scheduled more hours there where are we 14.