Oh, Carol's taking it. Check the angle. Jeez. I will wait for Mr. Matiana to assume his position for the next exciting committee report. Uh, Mr. Jackie planning. I'm going to send this right back over to we're going to talk about the energy performance contract update. Sorry, I I I did put it on the planning, but I should have given you a heads up. I just wanted to let the board know that with respect to the um energy performance contract. We began interviews this past Monday evening and we'll be interviewing the next two Mondays. the uh there's a working group that's been appointed including Mr. White from the board, Fiona Pearson from the town council, Chris Smith from the energy commission as well as a couple of you know um town and board of ed staff members including myself. The goal after the interviews are completed on the 31st is to select one of these three vendors to go forward and then do an investment grade study which will take about three months where they will go into every single school and town building and look at the HVAC systems, the motors, pumps, uh water usage, electricity usage, natural gas usage will all come under scrutiny before a final final recommendation is made for an energy performance contract that has multiple energy uh conservation measures.
So we need to bridge broach bridge we we make that bridge that gap bridge the gap and so they're going to be um uh working on that in the daily [Music] instruction. Um first grade we had our midyear dip happen and so teachers again are targeting um students for additional event intervention and working on some fluency skills that um should hopefully address some of those issues. Uh second grade we've been able to add another section of second grade. So bringing our class sizes down smaller will help. We were at 28 now we're on 20. Um so with those smaller class sizes, teachers are going to be provide more personal instruction. Um through that progress monitoring more frequently and implement differentiated strategies to support struggling learners. And so it's also will shift our the shift will also allow us to increase small group instruction fostering that deeper understanding and comprehensive mastery skills.
So there's the work has started in earnest. Um I thought the interview you know Monday went well there was a long presentation you know lots of questions and we'll see how it goes over the next two and uh Mr. White, I know that you were there, so you may have some thoughts you'd like to add to that. Yeah, thank you. Uh, I thought it went really well. I feel like the process overall is going really well. My one caution on all of it is that this is as a reminder to people, this is the second contract that we're engaging in. The first one we did is what, 15 years, Ben? 16 years? 11 or 12. Was it What's the total number of years? It was a 15 year. Yeah, it was 15 years. We're in year 11 or 12. Yeah, I was I was unclear about that.
third grade cohort data. Um, third grade has made progress based on the second grade math and third grade cohort data. We're going to continue working I mean obviously it's not where we totally want, but we're going to continue working on that momentum that uh practice uh teachers are continue providing targeted interventions that addressing specific skills and focusing on the foundational math skills and reading skills. uh fourth grade. You can see from second grade through fourth grade over the past two years that the math corporate data showed that there's an improvement with the reduction of minimally proficient students and increased and an increase in partially proficient and proficient. Um it's indicating that intervention strategies are working. They're having positive impact on student growth. Teachers are going to continue to support um students do small group instruction and push those partially proficient students into proficiency and reinforce those um concepts.
Sorry about that. Um Yeah, so the contract is 15 years. We can make a contract shorter than that. I don't know if we can make it longer than that. Anyway, the point is is this comes into um it comes directly into either uh conflict or confluence support with uh school modernization. And so if we end up making recommendation on you know certain certain improvements it could be for 10 15 years. So if anyone has any ideas about uh absolutely you know any of the schools absolutely changing their footprint entirely staying the same as is uh and I don't I don't know where I am. I I want I believe in school modernization, but I also, as I mentioned during the meeting, I'm just cautioned everybody about that when we're looking at say a 15-year improvement, potentially a costly one. And I'm not saying anything specific, but then where are we five years from now when we're talking about the doing something different with the high school or with Dodd?
conceptual understanding and problem solving skills for deeper mastery and monitor that progress so we can adjust our instruction based on student needs. Chris, stay here for just a second. The cohort for math uh 20 for the third grade beginning beginning math for 2024 and 2025. That's the approximately the same group of kids, right? Both are the same. Yeah. I mean, it's approximately. Yeah. Um what what is the reason for the differences? I mean, there's a whole bunch more red from from third from from 2024 to 2025. From third grade to fourth grade. I mean the the reds are trending up. Yeah. Different standards and different complexities that that um students didn't have and uh fourth graders saw really a lack in some of the foundational like multiplication back fluency. So they started working on that piece of it because students could do some problems in third grade but lack some of those auto automatic skills.
And I I don't have any answers on that. I don't think anybody here does, but I just wanted to point that out in case anyone does have strong feelings about any of the schools in relation to school modernization. Uh, but one question. So, is the do you expect the board would be voting on this Finn or this is only a vote by the council with a recommendation from the committee? The board wouldn't have to vote. Okay. that, you know, the next step after the investment grade audit is done is, you know, the the working group will continue to refine it and ultimately if there's a a you know, a program that will make energy improvements uh or infrastructure improvements that save energy that make sense and the contract can go to 20 years. Okay. Uh we if we go forward then the council would have to approve that.
And so when you struggle doing automatic skills it impacts everything. Okay, I wanted to talk about our our SIM charts here. Um, it's instructional the school instructional maturity model. Um, so we've taken we had taken a step back into more hierarchical authoritarian. So as a leadership team making more of the decisions for teachers. Um but since we did that last year appraisal, we have moved over a little bit. Not not too much further, but we've been moving to the right. We're making some progress. Um one of the things that we've been talking about is doing getting a way to get more of the teachers involved in next year in our role setting process so that they're more part of that cohesive team. And so we want to increase our our instructional leadership team to inre include possibly team leaders so they can help us act out our tasks.
It doesn't need referendum because it is not, you know, a bonded project. It is turnkey. So all the work would be done by the selected vendor. Let's say it were to be Amoresco. Again, they would do all the work. Um would probably take a year or so to complete the work and then we start making the payments, but you get the benefit of those infrastructure improvements. We also have the option not to go forward. So even though all the work, you know, has been done, if we're not satisfied with the improvements, if you know, we think that gee, you know, we may be making some changes to Dodd, so you could just take Dodd's improvements off the list. We've got a variety of ways to go, but at the end of the day, it's the council that has the ultimate approval authority. But, you know, with Tim as part of the working group, certainly we'll continue to report back and we can, you know, work work the process until we're all comfortable before we go to the town council.
So um and probably rather than uh the instructional team meets daily that they need to stand up to talk about how things are going but probably do weekly things with teachers with team leaders to talk about for this week what we can do have them help us do with their team whether it be planning and things like that. Um here's our action board. So we meet uh daily in my office and we take turns sharing out what actions we took for that day to move us closer to our goals and then what we're going to do the next day to continue to move us toward towards our goals and if we didn't get something done that day we ask questions like so what are we getting done and then um how can we remove that competitive so if it's something that I can step in and take um maybe there's a meeting that wasn't wasn't scheduled um and so Aaron has to be in that meeting I can then take over that task that continues that day.
Thank you. Anything else? Uh, Mr. Gripple. So, the last improvement contract, what did we improve? So the big item and what is this contract looking to improve? Is it the same thing over again or is it new things? No. No. So the the major improvements in the last contract, there were really three. One was to replace the electric heat at Highland with natural gas fired heat. And at the same time, we were able to air condition the building, you know, and the energy cost still was better than heating a building of that size with electricity, right? And that was built in the 70s. So we, you know, we heated with electricity for a lot of years. The back of Cheshire High School also was electric heat that was converted to natural gas. Uh, and then the third major improvement was replacing all the fluorescent lighting in the classrooms and the hallways.
So we work we're working together as a balance team to help each other out. Um when we create the goals and sprints we uh we had to create big rocks, little rocks and then task analyzing our niche. And so, um, part of our things that we talk about who's doing what pieces and rather than assigning, um, like I'm doing all these, we we look at the the rock and all the tasks that we get done. And then that day, if you want, I can handle these things today. And then the Aaron different things that he he can do to get us toward that goal. And so it helps us as a team rather than they say like, I'm going to get these assign myself these tasks, Aaron, these tasks. If you have the impendance, we can't get those done. But if we say, "Here's what we can take today." That helps us move us toward our goal.
across all the district schools with computerc controlled LED. So those were the three big ones. There were others we did, you know, replace motors, replaced all the refrigerators with more efficient refrigerators across the district, replaced some of the toilets with low flush toilets. this time around um improvements to the building management systems, eliminating the hydraulic controls for digital controls, you know, that's a big piece of it. We are looking at solar opportunities as as part of this. all the, you know, all three of these, um, vendors will be making some solar recommendations, uh, and a number of other things, but those are really kind of the big ones. You know, as Mr. White has pointed out, we did all the lowhanging fruit in the first contract, so we don't have any more buildings that have electric heat. Um, I was actually pleasantly surprised though that there were enough potential infrastructure improvements that save energy that we we could have a contract anywhere between four and, you know, a $16 million contract.
Um there's a heart around our action board. Um and I happened to put up in February and when Heidi came said, "Oh, you said really like uh Valentine's Day." I'm like, "No, I put up for a daily constant reminder." Our action board should be our heart of our decisions that we're doing for the day because that's those are the tasks that are going to get us to the goals that we set. And then of course there's times that it's not working and you get stuck. And so you um we did some root cause analysis and um we worked with our ILT and we did some deeper diving into our imple implementation struggles. Um we each came up with our own strategy to add to our action board that's going to drive us and our teachers closer to our goal and overall implementation. And so, you know, with the root cognostics, we listed what we thought our difficulty like implementations were.
So, a lot of work to be done, but nothing that we did, you know, 11 years ago is up for a redo. I think one of the bigger pieces if I recall correctly the police department the police station boilers boilers. So it's not just the schools is the point and that's a big one for the town side. Two boilers. Was that projected in the millions of dollars for cost or hundreds of thousands? No it was in hundreds. Okay. I mean it was I think it was around 400,000. It's it's not a huge project. Um, when you say solar, do you mean solar potentially for our new schools that are 100% electric? No. This would be just for existing school and town buildings. Uh, no. I'm talking about solar on on roofs primarily is what was proposed originally. But again, these proposals at this point are just, you know, to engage one of these firms to do the next step.
This is mine poster. Um, you know, second order change. It's hard to change that belief system. Um, skill versus will. Um, the thought was that maybe we had a lack of will, but really it turned out to be a lack of skill some for some people. And, um, they didn't want to fail in front of their peers. And so um what um we did what I did was um start planning individually with those with that grade level that was having some struggles doing some PLC's and so I'm planning with teachers individually and so then it's a conversation more and it's not they don't have to worry about failing in front of their peers. We're talking and saying all right so in this lesson what are we looking at what's the question? What what vocabulary do we need to emphasize? what tools do you need to have the students use to have that concrete experience before you go into the abstract?
So whether or not we do solar on roofs or do solar car ports or do groundbased solar, those are things that will come in the next phase. So this performance contract would potentially allow us to do um forget the term uh capital projects without going to uh uh founding, right? No referendum required. Referendum because my brain's not working. Yes. That's interesting. We did it the first time. Yeah. Well, okay. Thanks. Any other planning items, Mr. Aki? No. Thank you, Mr. Masiana.
Um, and some of our teachers are in this group that did not come through regular um, teaching methods. And so like there's been some ahas of like things you wouldn't think that they would they wouldn't have known, but like what vocabulary was really important and so here let's put make an anchor chart for these things. here's some visuals you can add to that anger chart. And um from that like the first meeting I had with that particular teacher like she like lit up and like had got really gotten excited about planning and like ready to meet with me each week and talking more about and being prepared for our meetings and um that's new for us and that's that's exciting. Um, so it's an example of of our coaching um, uh, board. And so one of the things in this work is that we're working together in ways that we've never worked before.
Next item on the agenda are other standing committees. If any board members would like to speak on any other committees, I believe Mr. Gripple, you have a report, sir? Uh, I do. It's a bit of an unusual report, but um, so like I don't know, it's like a month ago, we get a lot of emails, and this particular email was to all the board members, and it was from like an a an event that was occurring at Arts Place. And so I found it interesting and I RSVPd because I was like, hey, let's see. And then I'm like, I don't know what I'm walking into here. if it's at Arts Place, who knows what's going to happen. Um, but so I was pleasantly surprised. Um, it was a uh a group called the uh Arts and Culture Collaborative Waterberry Region. And so the people who attended who were invited uh and attended were members of the uh performing and fine arts committee that we have here.
And so is being more vulnerable to each other and saying this might not be working or I'm not getting it. What can you help me? Where where we can where can we go? We have more resources to be able to step in and help us out. We've got I've got Heidi. Amy's got Kristen. Um, and then we've got the the uh learning the new uh courses in instructional empowerment central that we can then go to and say like, you know, so teachers are really struck stuck on um question eight on a rigger walk. What can I make making sure that I understand what that's looking for? there's there's like six hours of video they can watch through to make sure I'm understanding it better help them. Um, so we're our instructional leadership team is also still working on trying to hold ourselves more accountable. Um, that's part of that next triangularity team of knowing that we are human infallible and it's okay if I fall down, you're going to be there to help pick me up and we're going to keep us moving together along.