That's funny. So thoughts on that? Taking that out? Are you guys okay with making it even more broad? Yeah. Jez, how do you feel? I feel good not making it uh I think you're saying not making it broader. No, no, I'm saying go ahead and leave it broad. Yeah, leave it broad as it is. Sorry. No, no, you're good. Another vector training. Yay. It's what everybody wanted. Ask and you will receive. Uh the next one, um like we just said for we do have a community program like a community council uh about drug abuse prevention. The thing that I'm a little concerned about is almost taking um well actually I don't think you even need to take this out. In addition to presentations by school staff members, the program may include I think we could just leave it. It's basically community council and like what whichever group we have like not my kid.
Anybody have any questions on the foyer request? Want to report to the board. All right. The next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on Monday, June 9th with close session beginning at 6 p.m. and open session beginning immediately after close session ends. Board will enter back into close session to review the consolidated superintendent evaluation data after the regularly scheduled port. Can I please we have any public comments? Can I please have a motion to journ motion? Second. Joe. All in favor? Any oppose? Thank you.
We don't want to remove kids from the school environment. The school district can make that decision. We don't want to place kids in handcuffs. This is ultimately working with the student and the parent, referring that kid with a piece of paper over juvenile probations for what's called a diversion program. And ultimately the student and the parent would sit down with somebody from juvenile probations and look at from a restorative practice what is the best outcome for the student. We're just moving them over to juvenile probations to do that work uh within the county. Lastly, and our least thing, but it does have the most impact would be a custodial arrest of handcuffing somebody and removing them from the school environment. Uh that is something that we definitely don't take lightly. We do not like doing it, but we only reserve those for or we reserve that practice for times in which the safety of the school environment is necessary to remove that kid based on the crimes they committed.
And I think we had problem in both these buildings. So, I'm sure the neighbors didn't care much for us for a while. Um, kitchen, electrical, and lighting. uh Davis has come and looked at it and he has got an idea of what we're going to do to make it so that it's going to be prepared for any type of changes you might have in the future. They're going to zone it for us so that if you buy new equipment at some point in time, all you have to do is plug it in. We won't have to worry about electrician. So, um should work out great. There's a switchboard at the grade school has all of our um phone lines in it. It's wide open and and I think they've got a curtain they pull across it to keep kids from getting in it. Um we're going to try to cover that up.
Um but it would just be another tool for us to allow um our students to get here more easily and without um having to stretch the current fleet of buses and buses that we have beyond our limit. There is a trip fee along with that fee but put 10 in there that take them all wherever they need to go. they're still paying it and this is also the grant money. So it doesn't come out of our operations fund, doesn't come out of our education fund, um unless we exceed the grant money that we receive um which has happened before, but um we typically are able to are the the people driving are do you know are they employees of this company or are they contractors? I don't know if their contract stated what they were. I mean like Uber they they own their own car.
Yep. Deb, thank you Meg for your leadership. Appreciate you so much. Go ahead. did want to say how impressive and how reaffirming it is to see so many caring youth reaching out to your peers. You will never know how many lives you've touched and how meaningful your work is. Keep it up you guys. It's great. Kids, I'd like to add um Huntington North is is an amazing high school. Um I've been to and Mr. Trout, Mr. Peters have been to numerous other places in our careers and uh one of the things that stands out to me of what makes Huntington North is amazing is the students go out of their way for others above self on a regular basis. I see it at Huntington North all the time. And so I thank you for your commitment to others. There's no more important topic than this one tonight.
I I all opposed. All right, the eyes have it. Board, any questions or comments on the approval of the bids for forest plan? All right, at this time we'll move on to action item 4.02, approval on the catering RFPs. Mr. Matt Miles. Madame President, as shared earlier this evening, at this time I recommend that the board approve five bids from our local vendors in response to our catering RFP. All right, I'll entertain a motion for approval. So move. Second. Properly moved, Miss Lawrence, and seconded, Miss Dunn. All in favor? I. None opposed. All right. The eyes have it.
Uh happy to take any questions if people have questions. Um otherwise feel free to email me anytime if you go through this and and see a line item. Um you know like uh health insurance you'll see is is kind of all over the place. The reality is people move around a lot. They change plans. You know once we make that determination more than a year in advance on health insurance um you know it can change a lot. But again, you you kind of hope that to the you're going to be in the aggregate, everything's going to balance out, right? Someone's going to go off a family plan, someone's going to go on, but they're not all going to do it at the same school, right? So, you've got some movement, a lot of movement there.
So it's a regulator of other genes and regulate lots of genes and it's also easily rew rewirable by evolution. Save me. Take a break. I was just curious if you think it's possible that an error with micro RNA could be involved with that rapid aging disease. It involves the timing. Yes. The question is about proeria, right? Uh rapid aging. Yeah. um uh your instincts are good that you could have a regulatory change right that could have such an effect but in fact I think are mutations in nuclear laminate right after that I don't know the mechanism though there's not there's not a lot known yeah it's a mutation in a in the gene that encodes a protein that that it makes up a part of the nucleus of our cells DNA is yeah where the DNA is in there. So it's thought probably to perturb how DNA is organized in the nucleus.
Um further here, it goes out to spell out all the different immunizations that are required um by Connecticut General Statute. There's quite a few. Um and at the bottom here, um we did find this language a little bit confusing and this was um after Carrie and I talking about it. Uh students are required to have um this vaccination um uh for um their kindergarten year, the Vericella vaccine. Um and so it says or um or it also indicated and in seventh grade. Those are um two years in which the kindergarten screening is required. and then again when the child is in middle school. But the um this particular vaccine is is recommended um by the Academy of Pediatrics by the time that a student is entering kindergarten. So what we're saying is if a student enters kindergarten, this vaccine should this vaccine should be administered already um or at another grade level.
It's um it's a good thing. So, I want to thank the public um for coming and speaking on behalf of what they believe in because we are elected to represent you. Again, we work for the public, right? And the superintendent works for us. So, we don't know what we don't know, right? There might be lots of rumors or things on Facebook or posts of here or that or whatever. Um, but we don't know what we don't know. We are seven people who represent a district of thousands. We can't be everywhere all the time. We try to be out in public, but we can't be at every game, in every classroom, in every school building. We need the public talking to the board. It is not an an us against you. It is a collaboration and we need the public to communicate with the board and communicate with all of us.
Yeah. Their other bids are so close together anyways. It would probably be comparable. We just want to go ahead and move forward the short since we have that that bid. Scott going to do the modular building. So, so Scott right now gave us a quote for the modular and I'll talk a little bit more of that in my superintendence, but we're probably going to have to bid that out as well and it's going to be over $50,000. So, that would be something that have to be bid out as well once we get to that point. There this summer. Yeah. And we've got a bon the concrete work from Scott. Yeah. Okay. Is he the only one? That's the only one we've got so far. Yeah. Did you get it out to Shy? Not yet. I have a motion to approve the uh bid from Shy for the concrete at the Hollywood with the in between courts.
So what we do is we teach them at grade level, we teach them at their ability level, and we try to close those learning gaps so that our goal is for them to not need our services as much or at all. Um, so that is one of the key ways that we have focused on it this year. But another thing that we did this year to really try to increase our special education state testing scores is the teachers started working on test taking strategies at the beginning of the year because a lot of kids unless they're told those things, you know, we just don't know it. So they were they did a lot of work helping those kids learn those strategies, teaching them at grade level so that even though they're let's say they're working at the second grade level, but they're in fifth grade.
I also feel like the media people Yeah. And we're due to have them back. I can't remember what it's called. Well, if you think about it, in a lot of ways, social media functions like an addictive drug. And so, it is it's one of the reasons we've tried to because it is a equally as big of a safety issue for kids as as drugs in the community. And so, we've kind of tried to treat it the same way and cycle them around annually as best we can. So, so yeah, I like it the way it is. It says May. So that's a that's a good word, especially this month. All right. So, that one is done. Um, let me just change the colors on these really quick. Okay. Okay. So, tobacco if you go to J I C G J I C G. So, this one doesn't really have anything that we didn't we didn't talk about, but it was I feel like it was like so covered by the other things that we didn't really need to do anything else with it.
I can tell you right now that that happens potentially two to three times per year for all of our schools within our jurisdiction. So that is not a common practice for us. This is something that we uh wait until it you know it's something from a safety perspective. So I kind of want to move on and talk about our ordinance violation tickets that we talked about. So in the history of how we've policed in the schools, we started issuing years ago ordinance violation tickets in lie of arresting students in or in order to uh limit the amount of referrals that we were making for vaping, for small amounts of drugs, whatnot that would fit into a category. And it's almost all vaping at this point. And so as you can see in 22 23 we issued over 100 tickets within the two schools. We realized that giving a financial penalty is not potentially the best for the student.
Um we've got a plan to do that. Remove that digital sign on the outside of the grade school this summer. Uh we've got a plan to clean and paint the annex. Um the inside of the annex. Uh we're going to move the lockers to the junior high gym from the grade school gym. Right now they've two sets of lockers in each room that aren't being used. Fact there's stuff stored in front of them. Um they need to get those out of there because that is a um storm shelter and I can't have those in there in the first place the way they're at. So So we'll get those moved. Um replace baseboards in the junior high gym office and in your office, Mr. Davis. There's the baseboards that are missing. replace replacing the lights in the kitchen walk-in. Um, I don't know what that thing is we bought in there in the kitchen walk-in, but it should be a lot easier to replace bulbs in than it is.
We just have to So this um they are they have to be at least 18. They have um ongoing criminal attacks through the department of justice and sex registry. They have to be in a drug and alcohol screening program that touch that regularly and randomly and then they have to complete the ever driven their safe ride education course. Um so okay, right. Um on something like this, we probably need to see a certificate of insurance and see how much insurance they have so that if something happens that that you have the first in line in that it's more than just somebody carries minimum insurance on their own. That did not make it in the packet because information. So let's look at it as an aspect of it really works. Right. Right. How many buses taking [Music] so the cost of those buses to drive those buses if this is will work.
And so although we talk about a lot of things and budgets and all the things and you'd love to have a ceiling or two back in your high school, um I would tell you thank you so much for taking care and and reaching out to others. Keep growing your group. Um Mrs. Fen, thank you for your passion for this and I'm just so proud of you kids for being here tonight. All right, so before we take the picture, how many seniors? Really? Wow. Freshman up here talking fresh. That's amazing. Wow. Okay. So, here's what I want you to do because one thing we didn't do, we don't know your we don't know all your names and what year you are. So, uh that means every single one of you have to come up to the microphone and you have to tell us your name and what grade you're in.
Any questions or comments on the catering RFPs? Okay. Madam President, I move that we treat action items 4.03 through 4.09 as an agenda. Okay. Do we have a second for the movie? Second. All right. properly moved. Uh, Miss Pucket, seconded, Miss Lawrence for the move to a consent agenda 4.03 through 4.09. All in favor? I. All opposed. All right. I move approval of the consent agenda. We have a second. Second. All right. Properly moved, Miss Pucket, and seconded, Dr. Mahaland for the approval of the consent agenda. All in favor?
Any questions? Sorry, I asked for questions then. To be clear, because I know in the December report, some people had some questions about why we halfway through the year and haven't spent half the money. This is as of the first quarter this year, right? This is through this is through the third quarter. This is through the end of March. Third quarter of our year. First quarter of the calendar. Yes. Yes. Y So it's And that's July 1st through Yeah. Now keep in mind um administrators who are on a 12-month contract go July 1 to June 30th. Teachers go September to August. So they've been paid for seven months this year, not nine. So they're about run about two months behind. I have looked at the spending on teacher salaries and it's just about on it's within um you know about $100,000 but again we haven't tapped any school choice.