those employees are all 20 hours or less generally speaking um it's some of our lunch uh lunchroom and playground AIDS bus aides and now sub secretaries so that's not going to have uh you know any kind of neg any kind of concern as to the salary budget we will make those adjustments and as far as energy goes I did put some detail here but you know we did lock most of our Commodities fortunately when we saw a dip in the markets I will tell you that you know I don't have a crystal ball I got a little bit lucky because we we purchased when oil was down to about 72 dollars per barrel and it's now at 90.
[Music] I is [Music] [Applause] at the beginning of the school year one student ambassador is picked from each grade level students apply to be an ambassador by either writing or drawing about what having cougar Pride means throughout the school year our student ambassadors help with weekly and monthly Raffles by passing out prizes to Winners they also help with other events such as our reverse week and teacher Dojo Tuesdays our student ambassadors are a great asset to our pbsis team they exemplify what it means to be positive respectful have integrity be dedicated and empathetic at school 15 we have created lesson expectation videos each lesson is designed to teach students our expectations for each area the expectations are in bullet points as well as videos modeling the correct way and the incorrect way of going upon our expectations at the conclusion of each lesson there is also a quiz or a kahoot game that the students will play to check for understanding these lessons are reviewed at the beginning of each school year and then again at the Midway Point as a refresher okay so today we're going to be talking about the mindfulness okay can anybody please tell me why during the day at any point in the day can you start to use mindfulness what can it help you do right what's the matter [Music] because when we walk into a classroom unless it's in absolute emergency and you need help immediately then yes you could have run it but if you look over here this is where our classroom expectations are just to use kind words just await your turn and follow all directions right we know that we don't just run into a classroom and start yelling at the top of our lungs to get the teachers attention right you would walk in and sit down and maybe raise your hand and then I wait for me to call on you okay all right thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] cougar Pride at its best folks I want to take a moment to really a huge shout out for starting off strong for starting us off strong this school year school 15 thank you so much I'll take a moment to grab your certificate and we'll call you one by one and we'll do our thing yes Dr lujendo Batten Walker [Applause] Miss Gloria Davis [Applause] thank you Miss Anna Rosa Pena Duarte [Applause] Miss Aaron saber [Applause] Mr Robert temesco [Applause] Miss Tara Purcell [Applause] Miss Shelly Betsy [Applause] Miss Karina Vega foreign Tunis [Applause] I was so confused yeah we don't respond anymore [Music] all right three two one beautiful thank you [Applause] I didn't even have to tell School 15 to leave they're gone [Laughter] presentations all right we'll move to number 13 on our agenda we have a presentation by our assistant superintendent Miss gusilevic you start it just hit slice good evening Commissioners it's a pleasure to be here with you today I actually have a number of people coming up to present so this is our yearly recap of the summer programs that are primarily federally funded and we have multiple programs and this year we had a very exciting um new initiative working together in collaboration with Mr gengaro's aspiring administrator program and given the increased needs that our students were facing in these post-coveted years we were able to marry his program of aspiring administrators with our summer programs across the district so there will be more people than usual coming up to speak but these are all aspiring administrators who helped run and coordinate our programs as well as some of our District administration who also was participating with them so it was a really great integration of existing principles supervisors and aspiring administrators so I hope you enjoy what they all have to say oops and I just realized we're not on the first page yeah let's try that again come on and now we'll try the slideshow from slide number one okay here we go so the first program that we're going to hear from is our jumpstart Title One and title III program foreign okay good evening Administration and Commissioners it is my pleasure to be here tonight to talk about our summer programs my name is Kimberly fusotola and beside me is Francis Vidal and we were responsible for the jumpstart Title 1 and title III programs this summer as you can see we had many other colleagues with us as coordinators some that could not be here tonight the program we're speaking about covers uh title one which was in school 17 and in school 12 title 3 which was in school 17 and we're briefly going to discuss um Title One at school 12 and the accelerated academic summer support program in school two the Jumpstart program is one of our favorites it is where the students who are just about to be going into kindergarten but are not there yet have a chance to come in and get that individualized attention to work and develop some social academic behavioral skills we had about 18 at school 17 for the Jumpstart program and at school 12 we had 19.
2006 and what was your favorite memory of homecoming when you were a student here I would have to say just the sense of community energy that's in the build a building and Wildcat Community that's what homecoming's all about bringing everybody together our Wildcats I'm here with Mr Perez from the class of 2011. 2011. what was your favorite memory of homecoming week as a student here going to the football game and playing soccer another Soccer Star here if you Mr Carrasco Mr Del Rio faced off in soccer who's the best out of you three pride myself yeah sorry guys I take his word for it all right Wildcats I'm here with Tyler Belding Tyler Belden from the class of 2002 2002 just a shade over two decades ago what was your favorite homecoming memory as a student here my senior year we won our football game against West Aurora and it was the first game in many years that they actually let us play at night the return of night games we got a night game next week we're gonna win that one too it's neon night we'll see you there Wildcats I'm here with Dave Peter Dave Peter from the class of 2002 2002.
would be like to make a motion to enter into executive session what I do I'll make a motion thank you Sam oh second all right second group call please Adam Hampton yes Kelly Moyer yeah Craig Meyer yes Lisa Schumacher yes Tyson search Maureen Krieger yes we're gonna enter an executive Session 8 pm here there are a couple of action items possibly resulting from our executive session this evening so girl welcome to come back and see how that turns out all right we just concluded our executive session we are back in Open Session we do have a couple items for Action as a result of our executive session I believe we have a motion on the table Mr Hampton [Music] Mid-State tractor regarding the procurement of equipment in an amount up to 25 500 motion on the table do you have a second kiloseconds a roll call please Adam himkin yes Andrea Corey yes Kelly Moyer yes Greg Meyer yes Schumacher no price and search yes Noreen Friedrich yes all right motion passes I think we have one other motion this is Corey actually okay the board finds that student s shall be excluded from participating in school sports for the remainder of the 2023-2024 school year I have a motion on the table do I have a second twice in seconds okay all in favor any opposed any absentions all right that concludes our islands for Action would it be like a make a motion to adjourn ing thank you second all right all in favor that concludes our meetings thank you very much
what we're recommending tonight the four Cent increase for the board to consider and take action on next month would raise that tax bill to 15 10. so it's a seven dollar net increase totally going to show there that if we did nothing it would go down we think this is an appropriate time to make that type of a change it would be a seven dollar increase on a three hundred thousand dollar home so what would we use that money for we'll go to that next slide and so the goal of the tax rate again I spoke earlier about our operations fund is really where the paint is it's where we pay for our utilities out of and what could we do with utilities that would be different we started this at Walnut Grove we put in a solar array Walnut Grove to offset its utility cost and we brought that building online and we're operating it very efficiently Dr long has been approached and we have advertised an RFP for an energy savings project it's a guaranteed Energy savings project other schools have gone down this path before other schools are getting great returns from this typically in an energy savings project you would take the savings that you receive from lower energy bills and you would pay off that debt for the solar array or whatever it is the efficient item that you put in what we're proposing in this budget is that we pay that off from our debt service account and so if this budget is successfully passed in October um we would bring back to the board early in 2024 a project that would include geothermal HVAC system and some solar energy it would be at multiple sites throughout the corporation we anticipate it being just below about 20 million dollars um but the key is the annual estimated savings and that operations fund would be about one million dollars beginning in 2025.
so these look really really good but our heating oil is locked at 258 a gallon propane at 229 a gallon a diesel fuel at 269 a gallon and gasoline which we use in some of our vehicles at 252 per gallon so all of those will enable us to meet our budget for this year and electricity we you know have had been you know reviewing the market working with our consultant we did lock through October of 2024 which will take us through the end of this fiscal year at 11.7 cents per kilowatt hour it's hard to look at that number relative to where we were but that it will enable us to meet our budget as well so you know even though Energy prices are up we did lock these Commodities so we'll be in good shape meeting our budget we did increase the budget for those line items because we knew heading into this year it was going to be difficult in terms of energy prices the only commodity we don't have locked is natural gas which we use for heating and a little bit for cooking we looked at it with our consultant and the recommendation was that prices are just not attractive to lock in we'll stay on our market rate with ever Source it's worked for us the last four or five years so we hope that that continues so that's the finance report obviously as the year goes on we'll continue to update and then I'll hit the medical benefits report very quickly and we'll see if there's questions I only have the report through July 31st we don't have the August numbers yet for medical claims but as of July 31 claims were about 1.07 million we're expecting them about 1.1 million dollars per month we started the year with a Reserve balance of two million 50 000 which is a little over um it's almost two months claims 1.9 months worth of claims we ended the month at 2 million ninety nine thousand in the reserve so that Reserve is reasonable you know we would like to be at two months or above it's just a little bit under we hope that continues and with that are there any questions [Music] sorry then that's okay it's a night um I know you say it's not that big of an impact but you have do you have some numbers for the increase in the wage less than ten thousand dollars probably closer to five yeah it's really going to be minimal now that's only a half a year yeah and the employees that we have to raise most of them are going from 1550 to 1569 so that's why the impacts minor I'm just wondering if we budgeted for these incremental well we this one came as a surprise but generally speaking the the salary budget increase for this year was three percent you know across an interest Union contracts different but we do have some non-union contracts so we budgeted three this is not going to impact that it's not going to move the needle and um so this is the first time Connecticut made this economic adjustment to wages the the minimum wage Grew From ten dollars to Fifteen dollars over four years that was scheduled so I really didn't pay attention and didn't realize that this was going to happen so did come as a little bit of a surprise to not just me but everybody that that learned this was happening it's a 4.6 increase it's it's pretty substantial it is that's why I'm asking so you're saying it's not going to impact but because it's only 40 people okay yeah but 40 people ads over time if we didn't consider budgeting for these surprises that's all right well you know for next year's budget I'm assuming this is going to be an annual adjustment so we'll have to you know look at our crystal ball and figure out something it'd be nice but we we you know because we have increased and um negotiated with the unions we are above the 15 and really close with most employees to 1569 so you know I'm hoping that this doesn't become a budget problem every year it's going to need a little tweak so that economic indicator adjustment is when does that come out we will it be out by January when we budget um or are we just going to take a guesstimate because if it's like the CPI it could go way up and I doubt it was going to come way down but it could but how do we prepare well I can't tell you I have to look at the law but it the law says that beginning in 2024 hourly minimum wages in Connecticut will change yearly in response to a national measure of inflation in the labor market called the unem called the employment cost index so I don't know what date these are going to be set each year the governor announced it on September 18th to be effective January 1. so we could presume it might be the same every year but I'll look into it some more this starts January 1 we're not even going to be hit with the you say when you say it's back on January 1.
we found that the home-based schools School 17 and school 12 is where we saw the most students but also Sila a and Sila Bay of course the Jumpstart program it is basically just a way to prepare our students for kindergarten give them the jump start they need before they enter kindergarten learning how to express themselves learning how to follow classroom procedures working with others using materials appropriately and reading books recognizing numbers letters and so on and then we have our Title One and title three programs both of these programs focus on math and literacy both curriculums concentrate on reviewing and reinforce reinforcing the skills that were taught in the previous year Title One program again was held at schools 12 and 17. typically we also have one held at school four but due to Renovations we just kept everything at 17. um additionally we do have three classes that are held at the boys and girls club and title III program was held solely at school 17.
what was your favorite memory of homecoming when you were a student here my favorite homecoming member was playing West Aurora out on that field and have an interception and ultimately winning the game on homecoming congratulations we're going to win again this year is this is this picture you right there that is looks like from my sophomore year good old number nine the shoulder shoulder pads look bigger than you little Wildcats back in the day pretty good no I mean let Coach Bell didn't tell you all right homecoming it's the best week of the year and it's even better the more you get involved we're gonna tell you exactly what to do each day on Monday we have Pajama Day pajama day just roll out of bed it's late start you just got to be here by 9 15. wear your pajama pants what do we have going on that night moving on the football field be there movie night on the football field Jaws classic movie head on out to the football field on Tuesday get festive going with their Under the Sea theme we have Beachwear Beachwear pull out that Hawaiian shirt put some Flowers in Your Hair sunglasses bring a beach towel what else do we have going on on Tuesday we have dodgeball that day dodgeball and Bishop Jim sponsored by BPA on Wednesday we have Clash shirt day last shirt day different shades of blue depending on what class you are in what class are you with sophomore sophomore we have a deep blue looks just like the ocean class of 2026 if you're still looking for a class shirt you can stop by the bookstore they're still on sale for 15 and what do we have going on Wednesday night soccer game soccer game and a tailgate sponsored by PEP Club and then on Thursday unique one this year we have floaty day floaty day get out the the wings an inner tube floaties and then what do we have going on that night I think we have a volleyball game we do a volleyball game also Mr wildcat in the auditorium sponsored by the drama program and then Friday maybe the best single best school day of the year what are we going to wear to school that day we go where we go where Wildcat gear favorite Club favorite shirt favorite sports team then we add the pep assembly into Food Fest bring cash for food into the parade into Powder Puff into the football game Friday night against Streamwood be there to support the team we're gonna Rush the field again foreign Wildcats make it a fun Friday and make next week a memorable one get involved attend all the events dress up each day it's gonna be an amazing week let's go Wildcats [Music]
and those are guaranteed Energy savings from the company that's how this project works and it's a state ran an organized project the state if they if they fall short of providing those Energy savings they have to come up and write us a check and so we will get that back we're going to provide some more details of this again as I said Dr Long advertises this RFP he's going to bring that back for consideration for the board in October a lot more details at that time on what this project could look like but we wanted to share because it's a big component as we created the 2024 budget anything left out there Dr long that wanted to add thank you all right two more slides always like to share operating budget and cash um and this is our operating cash balance at the end of the year and you'll see it went up slightly last year our budget also grew a lot last year last year and so um well it went up you'll see it's coming right back down in our projection for this year and part of that is that while I've been talking about property tax cap losses in 24.
so we're not even getting a full Year's worth of this increase right in this year's budget it's six months okay all right for small favors I guess and then with regard to medical benefits my favorite topic um so do you re I think at the end of June we were in the 800 High 800 we ended June it like the high 800s do you remember where we were a year ago because I mean is this million 64 or whatever is that in keeping with last year or are we teeing up another year of hold on hold on is that in there I have no it's not in there but I have a sheet nope last year's Celeste July's claims were one million 139 okay right so we're in line good thank you um firstly uh faith and glad you're running again who knows we miss those great comments assuming you're successful uh we'll continue for many years um I'll end on a positive note uh Vin um are the uh the companies that you locked in these Energy prices with are they going to still be in business because these locks are incredible so I just like to give you a comp compliment there because well you can find these prices anymore you know the fuel oil diesel fuel heating oil that's East River Energy they're very large company and they hedge so when we you know they had what whatever we lock at so don't worry about them and propane this year we locked what FF Hitchcock which is a local company so I yeah we're not putting anybody out of business with these trust me the East River Energy and all the principles they're going to do just fine and they always do fine prices go up prices go down they still make money yes yeah then correct me if I'm wrong but I think one of the things that might be getting missed here is the school's government pays about a dollar less in taxes for the rate so when you're saying 250 for a person sitting and watching TV it's more the equivalent of like 350 a gallon or something like that so that's one of the pieces ruined in my high note sorry just want to explain it that people if they go looking for 250 a gallon they're probably not going to get it that's a great point and that's why we Supply fuel for the buses that's why we purchase it because we don't pay tax and if we had the bus company purchase it they'd pay tax and of course that's a pass-through anyway so that's a great point thank you sorry thanks anything anything else uh thank you I just want to add that the wage increase that was a surprise to a lot of uh a lot of folks in school districts and the cave is uh is hearing a lot from uh different districts so I I know we're working with uh representatives in Hartford to try to have better heads up each year for budgeting purposes but we're not the only District that was coffee I just so I'll end with uh it just shows the importance of um why we have our legislative committee meeting that will be coming up so we can discuss these issues that I guess show up and I get I would assume this would have been in the implementer bill because we did not know about this the last time we met with the legislators so they had no idea about it correct so yeah we'll make sure maybe we'll get a schedule from them this time it'll be more known okay thank you you're welcome thank you everyone up next is uh Personnel committee uh Tim thank you Tony um I think there's an executive session after yeah so there's there's two items here under Personnel the first one we had a personal meeting on Monday night to discuss the superintendent's goals for the year um so the Personnel committee met with the superintendent in executive session I I've already heard back in the past couple days I've heard back from a couple of board members so I'm not going to really add anything more to it other than to say I am planning to schedule another Personnel committee meeting just to look through the goals and hopefully we can meet and chat with the superintendent a little bit more that is it for me on that for now and oh I guess one other point is one of the things I heard and that I'd like I'm hoping to get a bit more of is more of what I've said before which is the the smart goals specific measurable achievable and then the second item on the Personnel report is approval of a bargaining unit agreement between the Cheshire Board of Ed and the Cheshire administrative Personnel so just for clarity that's a that's a our administrator's Union and that's about 20 people or so okay so this is not the teachers hundreds but this isn't much of our Union so if you'd like you could go into executive session to discuss yeah we do have a motion okay for that they're going executive session with possible action to follow you can read it so wait a second where's the we have a motion for going into executive session I'm not sure what it's supposed to say oh wait no I don't have that in front of me I have the motion to approve if we wanted to approve it what were you going to Executive session first to review it so okay make them so I'll make a motion yeah to go into executive session to discuss the approval of bargaining unit agreement between the Cheshire Board of Education and the Cheshire administrative personnel to also invite in the superintendent Vincent and the Board of Ed the Board of Education and Vincent messiana and the assistant superintendent uh Marlene Solano I suck him all those in favor the motion thank you we're going to join executive session we ask that you leave hopefully won't be too long but we will be coming back uh possibly the vote and continue the board meeting you can sneak in here too oh you know what we're going to go a different room my bad thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign just reconvene right now to call the store again so thank you everyone for uh for waiting we try to make it speedy so we are reconvening our regular business meeting um pretty much like to make a motion and then we can discuss details thank you Tony that the Cheshire Board of Education approves the collective bargaining agreement with the Cheshire administrative Personnel for the period of July 1 2024 through June 30 2028.
for the language arts curriculum we use a balanced literacy approach and we focus on reading and writing the grades K to two they worked with foundations ready to rise and three to five they were able to experience savvis realize for the first time in the summer program and that program allowed them to gain literacy instruction while also using digital lessons to really engage them Mathematics Curriculum again that really focused on reviewing and reinforcing the previous grade but it also allows them to accelerate their skills for the upcoming grade and all of the K-5 mathematic curriculums we use the handsome hand-to-mind curriculum Hands-On lessons students learning by doing and working together and this is our second year where we incorporated the robotify program which deals with coding critical thinking problem solving and the students really find it to be fun just super fun our Title One program had a total of 207 students and again that was for grades kindergarten through five okay good evening sorry uh my name is Miss Vidal I was the coordinator for ESL cater 5 for the summer program for the district title three program is usually the largest program at 17.
we lost that number I showed earlier in 23 and it was higher than expected and so our cash in the operations fund's taking a pretty good hit and so you'll see we're coming right back down what's really great is that we're still projecting almost eight percent I'm really happy that we're able to maintain that level without projects like the one we're talking about and a budget and the structure that we're talking about I don't know how much longer we'll be able to maintain that eight percent level I think this is a great positive step in a budget that could be built in a way that we can continue to operate at that level which I know has been a board goal it's also a goal that we have to have in place and and a good amount of cash balance when we go get our bond ratings and so while the values have changed please know also the budget totals change and so that's why the percentages the values don't always match up exactly so just a summary slide of what we covered because it was a lot and I appreciate your your patience and the attentiveness um we are going to present an education and operations funds that are balanced our current enrollment's up this I'm sorry I forgot to edit this one but it's up 61 as of Tuesday hoping to get a couple more kids by the second um we do our we are anticipating estimating tax rate of 6.44 1.644 cents and that's up a little over four from 2023.
every second Faith seconds uh discussion thank you Tony I don't have the I apologize I don't have the numbers in front of me so I'm not going to be able to give you the details somebody else is going to have to do that however I just want to say um thank you to the administrators uh I appreciate you negotiating in good faith I think it's a reasonable contract for everyone involved and thank you for your efforts and I look forward to it for the next four years thank you faith um I sat in on these negotiations it was eye-opening for sure and it was done in good faith I can assure everybody and um I Echo Tim's comments thank you guys for the work you put in to your schools it's um appreciated more than you know so so this is our cap contract and and uh so just some some highlights um it's a four-year contract and just to summarize the the increases uh year one which is 24.25 excuse me I'm in a wrong paragraph So it's an average of uh I believe three percent 25 26 is three percent 26 27 is 2.75 percent 27 28 uh it's 2.5 percent uh this you also made some changes to the high deductibles uh plans uh some changes to vacation days for new hires um I'm sure the details uh once this is executed will be made available but um just highly not because this is a very very fair agreement and I I too iterate um my thanks appreciation to to to our administrators um and I hope that this being a four-year agreement uh oh makes you realize that it's again we're making our commitment to you normally we don't do four-year contracts but this is favorable to both of us so we we want to retain and attract the best that we can and hopefully this four-year uh personal emphasis on that so thank you and I do appreciate faith and everyone who's involved in negotiations as well as your representation for I heard it was very smooth very collaborative and that's wonderful um I hope we can do that with all our Collective Department agreements but uh very appreciative this as it uh sets some certainty for us then uh in our budget so so thank you that will support this Adam thank you um I just want to say I had the opportunity to read through the uh entire contract um I found it uh very fair and as a chairman of the finance committee I also appreciated uh the stability it gives to our budget for the next uh four years uh if we do end up approving this this evening so uh like I said I believe it's uh fair and uh Equitable for the administrators who do a great job for us and I will be supporting the contract thank you anyone else seems that there are no comments uh the motion is move that the Cheshire Board of Education approve the collective bargaining agreement with the treasure administrative Personnel for the period of July 1st 2024 through June 30th 2028 all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you the motion hashes congratulations [Applause] uh in our packets we have minutes from the June 1st June 30th and September 7th meetings uh so I'll move that the Board of Education approved the minutes from meetings held on June 1st June 30th and September 7th 2023 the second and seconds any uh modifications to the minutes yes Andrew on the June 1st meeting I'm listed as being here and not here we're here in spirit so I was not I was not attended to that meeting so I think Vin you were in charge of those meeting minutes at night so thank you Andrew anyone else we lost 10.
we had 128 students 13 staff members and a higher enrollment was Kindergarten with 30 students we had two sessions for each class we also offered the family literacy program in addition to language arts and math curriculum some other um Services rendering during this program it's got a reading totally Daily Journal reinforcement and vocabulary math centers I just said she put on my reading glasses all right that will help language or language arts development writing skills and completing summer reading and math assignments uh school 12 we also we offer minds and motion program this program um is to assist students in grades three to five to maintain skills to meet the New Jersey learning standards students are provided with opportunity to explore a wide variety of stream which means science Technologies reading engineering art and math activities while infusing character development into the program activity and field trips every Friday they have field trips as well as providing breakfast and lunch the mind's in motion per um Futures were held every Friday every Friday students had the opportunity to enhance what they were learning in the classroom by visiting an off-site location the Fri the Friday field trips were not only exciting and fun for the students but also a way to enrich and expand the curriculum by immersing them into various sensory activities we some of the places all the pictures not showing but some of the field trips that they visited with space Farm Liberty Science Center and sign and Sandy Hook mind's emotions program at the school in addition to off-site educational experiences students were also able to take part in several School visit programs these multi-sensory Hands-On and interactive experiences were not only entertaining but extremely educational um that's back at school 17 um every morning we had a student announcement for the day each day a new student came was called and they had they were recognized by Miss Harvey who is our building principal for the summer the student was able to select a quote of their choice and make the daily announcement um during school 17 we also had thing week seven every every week we had a different theme uh rainbow week ran from July 10th through the 14th week two we had spirit week from July 17 through the 21st and then our community week our last week July 24th to the end of the program oh we have and beautiful pictures they were really pictures there technology is not cooperating but they were yeah this is a massive presentation and Commissioners I see that you're flipping through your pages what was printed was an older the front pages or an older version The Back Pages or the new version so I'm going to share the electronic document hopefully you'll be able to see all the pictures once it loads fully on your computer all right if during spirit week we had a picture of a student on demonstrating a letter of the day students were encouraged to bring an item either and wear or an item to represent the letter their letter um second week we have uh superhero week um we share this uh with the community and staff member alike okay uh the following week was Sports week ah that picture came okay hit or miss yeah did we had this next summer week now so what we see here especially in summer day we try to encourage a community involvement um with our spirit themes so students that uh parents also supported are themes we're given pbsi's tickets in order to not only support our pbsi program during the summer but also to strengthen that Community relationship now another area of our theme weeks was our all about the community week and this the students really love we have every day there is a different visit so one day we have the police come and they get to play in the cars um we have our assistant superintendent uh Miss kusilevich come and talk about expectations and different roles and other really useful skills that they can use additionally our pbsis District coach Paula reyosa she also came and talked to them about the pbsis program and did a beautiful program uh with them on another day when the police were there they got to go play in the cars and they got to with the fire departments spray the hose and use different um materials and supplies that they had on the trucks I can't tell you how excited they get when they actually get to have the hose it is lights up their day and we brought therapy dogs into uh to visit them as well which if those weren't the fan favorite at that point uh Chewie was not ready to go but um I'm sure they would have loved to seen Chewie as well for sure so that is a lot of what covered the theme weeks and then we went into our pbsis program so this is our second year of implementing pbsis in the summer program we did a form of pbsis to continue the support throughout the year and and maintain the pbsis expectations and goals students receive pbsis as a reinforcement in the classroom students will recognize during three weeks student also got pbsis tickets if they support it for they supported the theme week every Friday we did a drawing where multiple students receive were selected from the bins and uh won tickets if you look at the bottom pictures those are donations from our pbsis coordinator Ms Ray goza thank you so much for your contribution and Mr gengaro for supporting the pbsis during the summer now this year Miss Harvey and oops go back uh Miss horben and I implemented a new aspect of pbsis to maintain um attendance during the summer we implemented the golden ticket I had the idea from Willy Wonka's golden ticket movie and so students who have perfect weekly perfect attendance will receive a golden ticket and we held the big prices at the end of the city at the end of the program so students will encourage that attend daily attendance I am happy to say we were able to maintain 94 of our attendance and we gave out just in perfect attendance over 239 tickets 19 students received tickets at the end of the program and in addition to that we also had a class competition with attendance where every competed with each other and if they had a hundred percent attendance they would get a point we kept that cumulative and then at the end of the year our first place class got a reward along with the teacher for motivating them so we we did do several projects with attendance um one last thing before we close up we had a breakfast and lunch program our students were able to come into school have a breakfast to go bag where they can bring into their classes and then we had right towards the end of the program um about half hour before dismissal we offered a hot served lunch community members were also able to come down and receive lunch in that area we had five different counselors who helped our students and of course we had our security Specialists who really helped us in every possible way so we appreciated everything and it was a great program and just again if we didn't mention it in the very beginning Mrs uh Joanna horbe who was our who was the principal for the entire summer program of all the different things we discussed she oversaw everything and really made sure that every year since we've been there it's grown and it's it's become great thank you thank you very much ladies great job foreign and now we have Mr Stewart for the summer accelerated student Support Program good evening my name is Matthew Stewart I served as instructional coordinator at the summer accelerated Support Program uh I worked with Miss Jennifer Lucas this summer uh due to referendum related construction projects our program needed to be virtual this year uh hopefully uh we're back in person next year but um yeah we had a great summer we focused on math and literacy curriculum uh we really try to concentrate on uh what the data told us where students had areas of opportunity as far as mathematics and uh language literacy and we worked on that during the summer again we were virtual due to referendum related construction projects each day students had phys Ed we had Mr Burbridge working with us during the summer and he did Fizz ad lessons with um you know stretches exercising uh little activities just to get the kids moving so they weren't in front of the screen uh all morning and we also had social emotional and mindfulness lessons with the school counselor twice a week students had that in addition to reading recovery and their math and literacy uh lessons we served the non-title one schools uh so those were the students who are eligible to attend and we had approximately 50 students who are grades three to five we also piloted a virtual PBIS program this summer so teachers were encouraged to shout out at least one student each week who they felt were demonstrating positive online Behavior uh students who were shouted out every Wednesday I personally delivered certificates to their homes uh with the positive feedback from the T from the teacher and those students were also entered into a raffle where each week we had three students who had prizes whether their sports equipment art supplies um you know just you know just to get the kids excited um and to promote positive online learning environments we had one student who was actually shouted out by every single teacher which was really great and the kids were really excited the parents uh really like the program um lots of emails from the parents saying oh we're so grateful for this thank you for doing this so uh for us that was very rewarding uh here are some of our students who had um certificates um sent to them um what one of them the mom was really excited she put she framed it for him another another student uh you know they had multiple certificates on their uh refrigerator so it really you know really made us um happy and it showed us to our students were learning and they were excited to learn no matter the um you know circumstances whether they're in person or remote thank you thank you so much Mr Stewart and now we have our team coming up for the covid learning support which is an Esser funded activity um which is one that has really been helping fill that gap between special education and gen Ed good evening everyone my name is Megan Fitzpatrick I was one of the coordinators for the CLS program my name is Joseph DeLuca I was the other coordinator for the CLS program and currently a teacher at Clifton High School our program falls under these special services umbrella with through our fearless leader Heather Rotolo and Richard Randall so our seal it uh CLS program was at Sila a this summer for the month of July running from July 6 to July 28th we had 120 students recommended for the program with the two coordinators nine Clifton teachers our custodians secretary and nurse or also all Clifton employees our security specialist and our pomptonian food services during our program we focus on providing compensatory education services to our students meeting the needs determined in their IEP as well as supporting them through our district language arts and math curriculum additionally we implemented social emotional learning needs through our pbsis program in math the students were using the hand to Mind program and thank you to miss Aaron zumuda for her wonderful resources for our staff to use during this instruction for our reading studies our teachers utilized the Wilson Reading and fundations programs as well as journey and our novel studies to enforce reinforce the language arts curriculum at the CLS program we also Incorporated theme theme days and spirit weeks this served to not only motivate our students and create an inclusive learning environment but it served to drive the pbsis initiative for the district in our summer program we did a rainbow week where every day got a different color we did we did a Disney day um we did a superhero day and as you can see from our pictures which luckily are actually loading um not only not only did our students participate but this was something that um our entire staff including Mr Fitzpatrick and I um participated in to um just to kind of help the kids integrate and to make them feel like they were a part of something bigger we did we did a Wacky Wednesday we did a sports day uh what else did we do we had a sunny day we had a Clifton day where you got to where your your Clifton gear um we also did a multicultural day which gave the students uh an opportunity to celebrate their Heritage and diversity which is something that makes our district so unique and special we ended it with um a tie-dye day and a cool for the summer day where we all dressed for what we were hoping to be a good summer program we implemented the pbsis universal tier each Friday we held a Friday raffle we all convened in the hallway of Sela a where we brought the students out ranging from K to 12.
um and the annual impact I'm sorry this was the this was the seven dollar number I mentioned earlier it'd be 29 if we stayed Flatline and so just wanted to include that in summary be transparent and open and honest about what we're doing um speaking of transparency on the very last slide we like to put all these details out there so if you want to know more about the education fund the operations fund a lot of things that I talked way too much and way too fast about this evening you can dig in here you're welcome to reach out to me Ms Conrad does a great job managing this website and making it look great for the community it's easy to digest we're happy to answer questions this evening that's part of the hearing but also in the upcoming weeks as our community has questions thank you good job Dr Taylor okay this is the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on the 2024 budget or the information presented this evening are there members of the public present who would like to comment can you just come on up to the podium please yes sir come on up Mr Norman yes sir yeah Mr Norman we give everybody three minutes so I'll be the time keeper I'll try to give you a warning about 30 seconds out I'm Randy Norman I live down Stones Crossing Road I have a couple observations in a question my first observation is that with a solar panel thing it costs 20 million and you save a million what kind of a good deal with a 20-year return uh okay don't take my don't take my three minutes yeah the next thing was on the uh I don't know what other schools look like but the debt and the bond service we have 30 million seems like a lot of money I mean that's a third of our budget uh and is there any plan to really pay that down or are the interest rates such that those bonds are so low it'll be silly to pay them down which may be the case uh and the other thing and don't everybody boo out here but uh I think we ought to go after a bigger tax increase um for heaven's sakes look where we were in those in all those other schools and how we compare I think we need to be looking at investing more in the school that's not my comments I I do want to point out I was very conservative in those savings they also don't include that we will receive some some money back from the federal government for installing these it is something that is available so we get about a third of that cost back and we can roll that into other projects so we'll share more of that in October I hope you can come back and see those details and I hope they're even better than what I'm projecting but um we agree it's not a it's not it's a great option for a 20-year repay like that but when you're so constrained in One Fund you've got to look at both so that's really where we're at great question I would also like to add about going for the bigger increase you want to share a little bit about that so you know we understand this as a community where we've we've approached the community with two referendums in the past really 15 years and so we felt this was a a reasonable increase anytime we increase our budget we're going to hurt the other taxing entities in in the area too and Mr Hoffman's here for the fire department we didn't want to make it so large that we ended up taking money from other entities we are trying to play play a fair game daughters they're buy one get one free today by the way I appreciate that that's the real reason there 'll just trade-off so when we were but when we raise it when we raise it we also impact that cap and so we have to factor the more and more we go up the bigger and bigger the cat gets we think this is a nice nice place to start but appreciate your advocacy Mr Porter yeah yeah hi I'm Keith in case poorer I'm just a taxpayer and a supporter of Center Grove uh two questions you said that our enrollment will only go up 61.
you have to abstain I suppose I'll try to draw this off for a few more seconds but a pregnant pause if if I make yes please Mr Ripple uh that I thought the uh the the minutes were uh very concise and well written and uh very informative and uh they matched up to the YouTube videos that we have that if anyone uh does uh want is interested in uh what occurs during our business meetings they can always go to Cheshire Public School uh Channel and uh view the meetings themselves I uh I would I would chuckle but Adam is serious I'm 100 confident he matches up the minutes to the videos if I may make another please Faith another correction here um on Page Six of the June 1st um it says Miss rosenblatt I think it was supposed to be Miss Rosenberg unless there was someone else in the room no so we need the men's rosenblatt with Rosenberg for the June 30th June June 1st that was tough meeting June 1st no no I've just made for whoever's taking the minute Zing that was great as long as Carol coming back hopefully next week it's completely oh there's in all seriousness so the motion is so my apologies uh move that the Board of Education approve the minutes from meeting South on June 1st June 30th and September 7th 2023.
we had multiple winners and then our final raffle we had some special guests thank you Miss Ray goza and Mr gengaro for joining us were some behind the scenes videos we wanted to include but we'll say that for another day um but the students are rewarded with bigger prizes on our final raffle and we were able to bring the whole group out for a celebratory picture at the end to cap off a fantastic summer program at CLS thank you very much [Applause] thank you so much and now we're going into our traditional extended school year program for our students in our with special needs thank you hi good evening my name is Marissa kasoi and I was one of the coordinators for our extended school year program oh this microphone and goody goody good evening my name is Thomas Hudak I'm a special education teacher at Woodrow Wilson Middle School and I had the privilege this summer also being an esy site coordinator with Marissa Annie Aileen pick we also had two supporting coordinators who you met earlier Joe Deluca and Megan Fitzpatrick big thank you to Heather Rotolo and Bahia bedrabo and Richard Mando our supervisors so esy is the largest and the longest running summer program in the district extended school year is a federal mandate for classified and eligible students to attend in order to maintain skills learn throughout the school year and provide maintenance over the extended summer break we were located at Cielo B this summer the program ran from July 5th to August 15th we served 358 students our staff consisted of two supervisors three site coordinators two support coordinators 39 teachers 115 paraprofessionals 14 support staff members including educational Specialists and related service providers we have behaviorists social workers psychologists counselors speech occupational and physical therapists on site Food Services helped him meet all of the students dietary needs throughout the summer and with such a large population or custodians provided a lot of help and support in order to keep the building clean and prepared each day for our students our staff also included three nurses two secretaries and three security specialists um esy also works closely with our transportation department as they provided 18 buses to and from school each day okay so to to for the for the students identify we identified students that um would possibly regress over the summer if they were not provided with this program and we identified students that would benefit from maintaining their skills um we wanted we didn't want them to lose any of the skills and knowledge that they gained throughout the school year and we also determined the um the severity of the students disability also to determine placement in the program uh we provided an individualized program of support we had students that received instruction through ABA therapy through discrete trials that stayed through their IEP uh we and we provided instructional support through language arts and math we also had students that received related Services if it was in their IEP we provided social and emotional uh skills and mindfulness activities and we also had one-to-one paraprofessional assistance if that was um in the students IAP um as mentioned we had several related Services providers that work with us this Summer that provided students with speech occupational and physical therapy services in individual and in group settings we also asked our staff members to take pictures of students throughout the program so the next few slides are just going to highlight some of the great engaging activities that our teachers were able to plan throughout the summer thank you as our program ran through the months of July and August we conducted one fire drill and one security drill each month and then we also maintain the district's pbsis framework by rewarding students for positive behavior throughout the summer we do have students that were recognized at the July Board of Education meeting an important part of esy is providing social opportunities for our special needs population these opportunities are in line with individual needs and educational programs we also aligned our spirit days with CLS our students and staff enjoyed partaking in our themes and they truly showed off a lot of spirit so as you can see I would say this brought many smiles to the faces of our students and our staff um I would say that the favorites were Disney day Hawaiian day and my personal favorite happy summer day and I will say that this was a great way to close out our program and thank you Clifton students parents and staff thank you to everybody that supported us this summer [Applause] thank you so much and now we're going to hear from our Middle School summer Academy Miss prizvara good evening everyone my name is Elizabeth prizwara I'm a teacher at CCMS and this year I was the coordinator for our summer Academy so our summer Academy this year did run completely virtually and that was the first year that we've done that so that was a quite interesting challenge but you know I can't say enough about the team of teachers that we were able to put together they pulled the resources that they learned through the pandemic and they really put together an amazing program for our students so our summer Academy is a free enrichment program that we offer to all the middle school students in Clifton and all of our classes met completely virtually this year on Google meet we had 130 students that completed the program so we were very happy with the number of students that enrolled they did a wonderful job we're very pleased with how successfully it turned out it ran from July 5th to July 28th and we offered instruction in math language arts as well as stem activities we had 18 teachers total running the program both from CC and Woodrow Wilson we decided to split the grade levels into two teams per grade and we decided to do this because we wanted to provide the students with as much Rapport as they could with their teachers and with their classmates even while being completely virtual so we had smaller class sizes we had cohorts of students that went to all of their activities together and so even though we were completely virtual they were still able to build that rapport with each other and have that experience of getting to know each other and doing the activities together and having a good time we did daily instruction in math and language arts through this Avis program as well as enrichment lessons and activities for stem and throughout the program we tried to infuse all of our lessons with technology skills since we were completely virtual building tools for the upcoming school year problem solving creative online activities we did Breakout rooms small group work and the students really did a fantastic job throughout the four weeks so for language arts this was a pilot program through savvis and you know I have to shout out to my language arts teachers they Dove right in they did a training session right before we started and they got to know the program really well but they came up with very creative activities to add to the programs that we were doing through Google Classroom you can see here one of the activities they did they had the students design water bottles virtually that expressed characteristics from characters that they were reading about in their novels and I would go to the Google meets and the students would show me their water bottles we would try to guess what character they were talking about it was very cool and other teachers did Virtual Field Trips one teacher had her students to a virtual field trip to the Holocaust Museum had to do with the reading that they were doing in the module and it was very exciting to see the students participating in all of those things for math we continued to use savvis realize which is something the students are already familiar with so this was a really excellent way for them to build on the skills that they used throughout the Academic Year as well as preparing them for the following school year and getting them ready for that they were used to the lesson quiz format imagine math but again our teachers went above and beyond and they found things like jamboard where they could have the students show their work quickly on the screen create little colored stickies and show off their work and answer that way so very creative on their part and then finally our stem program of this was my personal favorite you know some of the teachers had the students going outside picking flowers bringing things inside they learned to dissect the flowers and they would show their work on the Google meet label the parts of the flowers they built Towers they built paper airplanes they learned how to do coding through code.org they also learned some web and graphic design using canva and they were able to present their work at the end of the program on the last day of our Academy we wanted to have some fun activities for the students so we did some team-wide events and activities and games where the students were able to win some prizes they were able to actually earn some extra credit that they could use for the school year this year they did some virtual scavenger hunts they had we had them running through the house looking for things coming back to the Google meet to show what they found and also earning PBIS points in our Champs point system we also had the students recognized for the ones that went above and beyond you know it's hard to get middle schoolers to log on to Google meet as we all experienced during the pandemic so we really wanted to recognize you know the students that were online 8 30 in the morning in their summer logged into the Google meet participating and just contributing so each team nominated some students to recognize that we did recognize them on the last day with certificates that were mailed home to all of them and they also earned Champs points in PBIS rewards that they're now able to use towards Raffles throughout the school year so they're very excited about that um well that's supposed to say 30 winners but they really embodied those respect responsibility helpful character traits that we're trying to instill in our middle schoolers so they're very excited about that so it was a great program couldn't say enough good things about our students and our teachers thank you for your time [Applause] and here we have a new addition to our summer program something we've never done before it's a new collaboration with Kane University for project Adelante Ms Guillen foreign good evening and I am a teacher CCMS I have the honor to be the coordinator for our Clifton newborn project Adelante that started last summer and we restarted recently and will carry it to May of next year project Adelante is a pilot program and a partnership we have with King University it is an Innovative pre-college program designed to reduce the high school dropout rate among Latino students we immerse experiences and instructional activities designed to help students increase their academic skills and encourage youth to pursue higher education some of our enrollment requirements our student needs to be a Clifton English language learner high school student no more than one year from exit in the ESL program meet our attendance policy good academic record and know disciplinary infractions last summer we had 22 English language Learners uh six of those were 10 graders eight were 11th graders and eight seniors he started in July and he ended in early August we were there from Monday through Thursday 8 30 to 2 30 and we had a 92 percent student attendance uh this fall we currently have 31 students seven of those are 10th graders 13 11th graders and 11 seniors we started this September as I mentioned earlier Annie ends in may 2024.
that's what you're projecting for that's actual it's pretty close it's going to be almost exactly that that's we're going to get 61 new students between now and January 1st uh that's from last September to this this year to where we said today we've grown 60. I thought I saw on your slide 306 that was the last that was the year before so we do it we always go count data count and so we have those 61 kids in our school today from last year from last year okay all right okay yeah and uh the other the other thing was uh I just said it slipped my mind uh but I agree with Mr Norman that Debt Service fund is getting more and more every year and we now are using The Debt Service fund the paid uh by buses you know and stuff we don't have enough money you know coming in from that so oh the other question uh let's see I just thought of it and I lost it again I'm sorry uh oh how much in the 24 budget are we taking from the education fund to the to the operations fund that number for 20 million and it is the maximum of 15 that is the maximum this year yeah because last year 13 last year yeah so a couple do you have any time I will take your time do you have any other questions no that's it okay so the reason the reason for the growth in the debt fund is that the Ops fund is legally capped and we can't grow it we would have if we gotten that mlgq money I showed on the one slide we wouldn't be doing as much in debt this year that have been another I think it was 1.6 million right 1.1 we would have done it there so thank you yeah thank you very much I will okay are there any other comments okay I now close this public hearing are there any board members who have any comments or questions nope um Please be aware that there's no board action to be taken this evening the board will approve the budget at its next regular board meeting on October 26 2023.
those in favor please raise your hands is unanimous that motion passes um Madam Secretary do we have any correspondence so we had uh an email exchange from Mr Michael Sheehan um regarding the seventh grade curriculum reading uh the fiction contemporary fiction um couple of the books and that were choices in that um in that section and that is being addressed in um by superintendent Solon so um I would just add that um I would really appreciate when Mr Sheehan thinks he's addressing the the board with an issuer or questions that he include all of the board members in the email exchange um interestingly the two board members who represent the minority voice on this board were omitted from that email request so if you're addressing the Board of Ed please include all of us thank you up next is superintendents report Dr Solon thank you very much Mr peragini um I just want to try and Buzz through we have a few quick items here all exciting stuff uh Cheshire High School be holding a special breakfast our culinary Department getting an authentic opportunity uh for National First Responders day uh recognition for our firefighters police and EMTs along with our Community Partners like social services and our Public Works folks on Friday the 27th CHS at 8 o'clock if you guys are available to stop by that'd be great um we're our science department at the high school has been doing some really exciting stuff uh they just received a grant for the plant Mars challenge through the Connecticut space Consortium additionally they've been working with Aces and Aces is facilitating uh between the department of Ed in South Korea and um high schools in America a science collaborative where students are given various challenges and so our Cheshire high students will work collaboratively with students from high school and South Korea to solve these challenges in the spring there's a symposium where our students are invited there to present so that that may be a field trip request coming forward because we had really strong interest we had 22 kids express interest in participating in this science challenge so that's really cool they're excited about that at Cheshire high school and to just give a quick update on the high needs student population performance for three through eight in um in Connecticut we ranked ninth in K-12 districts in 10th in math and K-12 districts overall we were ninth there as well for our high needs student population so pretty solid performance I'm glad they're you know I know that they were I knew that they were performing on par with their their peers in terms of rank and of course we want to do everything we can to support closing the the Gap that may exist between there performance and our folks the students who are not identified in that group but more to come on that I'm sure look we promise we'll share more data with you guys [Music] thank you that's so any uh questions on Dr Sean's report yesterday did you mention modernization at all or oh my gosh is that a separate item the one thing yeah modernization um I hate to steal Andrews Thunder now that he doesn't do it anymore it's like he's so yeah he's yeah there used to be his thing but anyway um next week we are hosting two special events thank you so much Tim uh on Tuesday night at Chapman school we'll be hosting uh community members for the north end program and if you're not familiar with what we're doing please see our website if you go to the Cheshire Public Schools website there's a banner on the bottom with a link to uh school modernization we'll give you all the information you need to know so Tuesday night at seven o'clock we have a presentation from techton on that um on Wednesday night we have the Norton edition of that uh down at Norton school and again at seven o'clock tecton will be presenting the schematic design for that building uh soliciting feedback from the community uh and again this was mailed to every address in Cheshire several weeks ago to give people ample time to be there uh in subsequent weeks we'll have some virtual sessions as well if you can't make next week's sessions and then next Thursday night for the uh School modernization Trifecta we have the next gen school modernization committee meeting which occurs um just about every other week at seven o'clock downstairs twice a week or twice a month I'll be downstairs in room 205.
we meet every Saturday from 8 30 to 12 30 and as of now we have 85 student attendance some of the cool things that we did in the summer um here are some of the pictures on the left bottom you see actually a presentation our students carry out Clifton the cliftonin pretty highly and they were selected a group of seniors were selected to actually produce the next Adelante video on the right side another group of students from Clifton in collaboration with a student a senior from Belleville Public Schools they were recognized by the Vice President one of the vice presidents Akin for their presentation on healthy um healthy habits um that's their presentation in the back here are some other pictures from the summer uh some of the outdoors and indoors activities that the students were involved with and this is our last day um it was in our fun day organized by Keen we had an ice cream truck we had Outdoor Sports and dance I look forward another successful phase of project Adelante and I must say that I am very very proud of our students they enjoy every single activity and they were super early every time we had to meet in the summer and they were sad that we didn't go on Fridays so I wanted to say quickly mucha mucha gracias yes thank you guys thank you so much Miss Kian we're really trying to support our students for both newcomers and and Clifton born through Pre-K All the Way Beyond college and now we have our IC program which I think many of our commissioners came to the IC production at the end of the summer good evening everyone um my name is Maggie votillo I was one of the coordinators for the IC program with me is Mr Justin Louis we also had Miss shiratsky as another coordinator and Mr leshowitz the supervisor who was assisting us with communication reaching out to Central Administration and support so our IC program stands for integrated summer enrichment experience and this is for students incoming students in grades first through eighth we offer enrichment classes where students get to choose in grades four to eight get to choose four hours of academic classes of their choice so it is definitely Choice driven it is something that our student students are always looking forward to they get to pick from art math science coding as well as Orchestra and musical theater at the end we have a showcase that many of you have seen or visited where students get to Showcase all of their wonderful work that they've been doing through throughout the program our classes are taught by Clifton teachers this year we had 18 teachers working for us along with the three of us as coordinators one supervisor we also had a nurse and one security specialist tuition for the program is paid by the families and this year we were located at Sila s due to referendum work prior to that we were located at Woodrow Wilson Middle School okay again like I've mentioned before it is for incoming first through eighth graders students it is not just for I'm sorry Clifton public school students we offer it to all of our neighboring town so this year we had students from Woodrow for systemat from CCMS from all of our elementary schools along with Classical Academy students St Phillips and neighboring towns such as Wayne orange and new Arlington we had about 200 students this year with classes ranging from in first through third grades we had 15 to 22 students and then about average of 35 to 36 students in grades fourth fifth sixth and so on but again students were mixed in depending on their choices class sizes were small we also had student volunteers that were supporting our kids they were able to Showcase their leadership skills the program was only 16 days long and again during that program we were also doing the fire drills as well as security drills okay and our first through second grades as well as third grade we had three wonderful teachers who are working with our students very hard they were working on Art reading as well as science and art curriculum all activities were standards based and they were very much Hands-On so students were immersed in many different experiences and math our students again we utilized something this year that was team teaching so we had actually two teachers that were able to support our students depending on what kind of needs they had it was inquiry-based lessons standards driven our students were working on stem activities where one of the activities you could see they were actually trying to build a contraption that would help them take out a cell phone out of a sewage train so we had we had many many very interesting activities they work on Geometry fractions decimals so on so forth as far as coding Mr trevetti and Ms Taylor did a wonderful job she talked to students they talked to students about computer safety passwords as well as how to be safe online students learn all about binary code programming Morse code so on so forth things that I'm definitely not familiar with but if you ask any of our kids from Icy they definitely know what they're talking about and as far as science we have two science classes one Mr Malik muskansiki again students we're learning about different concepts such as surface tension buoyancy forces in motion and again all lessons and activities were based on Next Generation science standards so many Hands-On activities many very engaging lessons that our students have encountered and I'm Mr Louis on the side of the fine and Performing Arts uh we should probably add another E because I think exploratory learning is one of the main goals uh and as far as art goes visual art Ms benardchik and Ms leshen explored with the students multiple forms of medium including paint clay and watercolors as well as creating tapestry they explored two-dimensional as well as three-dimensional art along with our students our high school volunteers our Tas created all the sets and backdrop pieces that we will be talking about later for the musical for music appreciation our students with MS bartolozzi and Ms Gordon explored the basics and fundamentals of music including singing emotion and dance they also created instruments out of inanimate objects creating closed circuits with any object that you could think of including a banana which is kind of weird in bands Mr Perez and Mr lanzarati took our students from day one they knew nothing as third graders and they put on a concert in 16 days along with our middle school students who continued growing in their quest to become excellent musicians in Orchestra Ms Adele with her students did the same taking her students from day one knowing nothing to putting on an a concert with our musical theater which is always one of our biggest classes our cast of about 70 students put on a full production of Annie kids and I would like to thank our our guy Randy from rmt productions for being so willing to come in and help us with all of our Sound and Lighting I also would like to take a moment actually to thank our entire team it really does take a village to provide this experience for our high school volunteers please thank you for uh cassia Dominique Haley Ella Jordan Aiden Alicia Mila Dexter Caitlin Emma Cameron Melissa and Kaden our teachers are there they provide the instruction but especially with that class of 70 they needed some help so thank you to our high school volunteers yes and we also want to thank Central Administration especially Mr shahada and his team of Maintenance and custodians who are yes you're getting a shout out yes you are because we took an empty building of Silas who had teeny tiny furniture and we've turned it into a building that was accommodating for first to eighth graders so it was an amazing team and it was a group effort again from delivering everything from whatever were our needs thank you so much for all of your support thank you [Applause] thank you so much our IC program is always a hit even my children even participated in that and now we're looking at our ESL program from 6 through 12.