Belden but we'll leave that for another time but no mozzie great job this year and we just counted on you and you were always there for us and it's greatly appreciated in I want to on behalf of the Board of Ed and behalf of mrs. Fernandes let the top ten and monsley know that mrs.
white Thank You Adam so what's what's going through my mind right now is forty million people unemployed in the past two or three months a lot more people pay cuts a lot more people no raises I don't know what the numbers are but I know I've heard you know anecdotal stories about all that and I'm confident that it is widespread across the u.s. so my question for you Jeff is what is the contractual increase with respect to the teachers union for their salaries for next year then I'm gonna ask you to take the you know the number quote the numbers much better or not for Cola and for just one the cola plus yeah that it for the teachers is 3.1 percent next year and it's I believe it's one point not it I believe it's one point nine two general wage increase and one point two eight is step I'm sorry it's three point two percent total 1/9 plus one to eight and what's the dollars well the dollars net out to nine hundred eighty nine thousand three eighty seven that's what we have in in the budget 903 eighty seven 9 1889 thousand three eighty seven okay so that's about what is it it's about three hundred thousand per one percent yeah that's thirty thirty two million dollar base okay so yeah I mean I mean we're looking at these numbers and we're talking about staffing reductions so I just want to say that I as one of seven would be very interested to hear if there'd be any interest on the part of the Union you know just basically no increase next year in exchange for no layoffs something along those lines it's not intended as any way any I've had some people say to me it's sliding teachers it's not intended in that way it's just what I view as the reality of the world right now with what people are going through I know that from my own personal experience my job changed from the regular nine-to-five to you know working with my kids I've got a four and a five year old and I literally have been working like pretty much a 9:00 p.m.
Graham Lee and I are growling and I are working on because we're virtual of course the gifts that we typically provide and give as a nice gesture to the top ten and into our student representatives so those will be sent to your house so we'll figure that out and we'll be in touch so just so you know thanks for everything all right so I guess now it is on to the business so up first on our agenda is public comment is there anyone here from the public and I'll have to scroll through two pages so if you could just sort of raise your hand using the reactions at the bottom of the screen so that I can see if anyone's year that would like to make a public comment I don't think I see anyone right okay all right so we can move on to our student representative report okay so I talked about Mr bland already but thank you again you can never think Mr bland enough in terms of things that are going on in online school these last couple weeks of school there's just a lot of ceremonies and recognition going on last week was our NHS induction ceremony that happened last Thursday we have a top-ten zoom call tomorrow the undergrad Awards are tomorrow Monday a senior scholar awards Tuesday is senior athletic awards peer counseling is holding we usually have a teacher appreciation dinner so we're having a zoom called instead so seniors will be on Wednesday and underclassmen will be on Thursday we're just we're getting ready for grad we're excited to make our floats for the parade hopefully you know we'll have fun decorating our caps I know I went out this morning to get some decorations for my cap so I guess it's just everything is wrapping up but we're excited to see where it takes us that's all I have for today all right well thank you so much anybody have any questions activity related form on C alright so we can move on to written correspondence we have Kimberly Abreu Lynne korchinsky Martha Bella Tina Lepore and Dan Keith wrote regarding the high school graduation and Ron Jaffe shared an article from the child mind Institute that's it okay well aboard minutes I will make a motion that the board approve the minutes below the regular meeting on May 20th 20 22nd thank you joy okay all in favor hi okay thank you this is a different tenants report update so I have a few items on the superintendent report that mrs. Grambling email to the board earlier today the first one is our kickoff meeting for the school reopening team is this Friday morning on that team we have our educational leadership team we also have some Board of Finance members and Board of Education members we have our nurses we have teacher representative paraeducator representative secretary one of our custodians and we have a few students that will be participating so we're really excited quite a large group and really the important thing in getting ready for reopening is is providing context to our non educators stakeholders because we really need them to provide that critical input for guidance broad guidance to help the educator testing good clean clear direction going forward into early July to solidify wins based on the criteria that our public health move forward for being able to operate and open safely in the fall well there's a lot of work that's got to be done there but we're excited to get started we also at each of the schools this spring have solicited parent and some staff feedback via surveys the anecdotal conversation as well as group meetings such as the athletic Advisory Committee albin runs at the high school in addition to that Brookfield had the opportunity to participate in that thought exchange technology where the region was able to solicit feedback so we've got a lot of feedback that were star and we'll continue to solicit feedback through the process so we're really excited to get started although I wish we didn't have to get started with that kind of a plan that's the challenge before us and we're gonna do everything we can to put our best foot forward on that the four big buckets I want to mention about the reopening committee that are really important for everybody to understand is the number one priority as we think about reopening is physical is the physical health and safety and well-being of our staff and students similarly the emotional health and safety of our staff and students then there's another bucket we call teaching action that's all the work and feedback we've received on distance learning so far this year as well as any blended or hybrid opportunities technology professional development and all the things that go along with that student engagement etc and then of course operations in logistics there's been a lot of talk out in the public square about that we'll be very clear in our communication what the requirements are and what we need to do and what the implications whether that's budgetary or staffing or whatever it might be to adhere to those requirements to make sure that we're safe and healthy as we plan to open the school in the fall so that's that's a big project that's ongoing to me it's been ongoing and we're doing preparing but it begins formally on Friday morning the other thing that I have to thank mister post he's been working with our Gerry gay our purchasing agent and with Eric in terms of technology as well as our facility director and one of our nurses and that's the post Kovac ordering of supplies and equipment that includes personal protective equipment cleaning supplies cleaning equipment and ordering our technology purchases such as laptops for the teachers and Chromebooks we talked about that a couple of weeks ago that's going out to bid so we're making good progress on that trying to get the best price with hand by working with the town and putting in a purchase order together the next piece I want to just mention to everybody is that registration for new students is online I have to thank you nice Walsh and mr.
to 1:00 a.m. shift so I think I'm not alone and that's not intended as a complete it is the reality of what we've had to deal with recently and I know I'm not getting a raise and that's again it's not a complaint it's just the reality I'm very happy that I have a job at all the unemployment numbers are staggering and really upsetting anyway I just wanted to put that out there as again one of seven I'd be interested to hear if there was any interest on the part of the Union in discussing that because I don't want to see us I don't want to see us lose these jobs yeah not at this time is basically where you know we are with that I've had conversations with the Union you know they're not they're not looking to do that at this time okay could I keep going for one second Adam sure go ahead yeah and the other the other concern for me as I mentioned to you Jeff is although we could find money with this within our budget for retirement incentive what we're doing is we're in part we're shifting a problem over to the state teachers pension fund and that's that also is a concern for me it's not just you know that increases the number that they're paying out on a yearly basis and that's a problem for state tax payers but even again coming back to the local level a couple years ago I know Governor Malloy was talking about shifting the state teachers pension fund obligation the underfunded part at least part of the underfunding to the towns I don't know if that's entirely gone but that's just another concern with the early early retirement incentive for me so that's it thank you Adam Thank You mr.
Conklin and the rest of the team that worked on that there's it's there's a linked up on our website parents could go in there and we have the dedicated Reggie designated registrar at each school as we always have but now it's done electronically because of the situation we're in and we're really hoping for success with that speaking of registration the last thing on the night is actually to turn it over mrs. Eman who at this time of year being the center school the proud center school principal as she always says is to give us an update on gaps but our kindergarten registration as John was saying went live I think Friday eat like Friday afternoon and so email went out to all the families they already had 146 that were that it started the process as of today we have 152 families that have served the process we had six more families over the weekend that have that are starting their registration process for their children and there are an additional 12 families that we know of from the preschools who have kids who are eligible to come but who have not started the process yet so we also reached out to the preschools they sent the the links and all that for registration to those families so we anticipate that they will start the process as well so including those families that we know are on their way well we're at one 164 students registering for kindergarten last year at this time we had 169 so we're in a pretty close comparison to where we were last year last year we ended by the end of June we had 181 students registered or in the process of registering so it's a usually June is a big month and we'll see how things go again people are just starting to get back to work and just starting to get back to routine you know so I think this will probably extend over the length of the summer as we'll see more coming in so I'll you know we'll keep tracking it our secretaries have been fantastic about keeping track of everything and working with Denise to make sure that the process is moving smoothly and so we're we're in good shape thanks Mary Rose I don't have anything else to report I didn't know if the board might have questions for me I saw the cook how many started the year last year Mary Rose in kindergarten 181 okay right we ended I think it last June last you made 179 sorry and then by the we started with 181 and the other correctly just we're currently at 179 in kindergarten so we did we did kind of keep those kids throughout the year okay thank you okay we have no subcommittee reports so we can move on to the consent agenda okay I move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda as recommended we have resignations second thank you joy all right all in favor right thank you onto new business we have the healthy school start times presentation and a possible motion so actually I'm gonna hand this over to the chair of that committee um so Jen the floor is yours okay John do you want to say a little something to intro or would you like me to start you know Jen I'll just start by saying number one thank you for for your leadership and taking over the chairmanship of the committee we we appreciate that thank you to everyone on the committee who put a lot of time in thank you to mrs.
white this is ham thanks mr. Grecco just for some clarification I do it is it okay if I have a few questions here it's go for it okay so mr. Solon of the 14 retirements how many of those are forgive me if I'm sounding ignorant here how many of those are not our positions that will not be filled is it I understand you know you're gonna be doing some shifting around and so as you said to mr. Martelli not everyone is going to be no one will really be losing a job except at the high school but are we how many are we filling yeah retirements with lower teachers okay yes so we have a net loss of one to two teachers correct okay yeah you know three positions right but of our current employees after the folks retire it would be a you know who amongst our current staff that is not retiring will lose a job one or two people okay people proposed budget yeah I'm kind of with mr.
Stern for staying on the committee with us after her leadership on on of the committee when she was our chair and in general I think the biggest piece is talking about healthy school start times it's just that the word healthy was purposely put in there we're talking about an adolescent health issue and that's getting the proper amount of sleep so at the end of the day that's the key issue what can we do to to have our students have the optimal environment whatever that might be and when we really looked into this and learned about the research is pretty clear and pretty undisputable that our kids need to get more sleep and I'll leave it at that because it's a very thorough present tation and again thank the committee and I'm sure they'll weigh in once Jen gets through the presentation along with questions that the board may have so general turn it over to you and I think Eric's gonna be putting the slide show up okay so I think Eric I'm gonna try first to see if I can get it up correct yeah we worked a little bit on the side to to see if we can get this to work on another piece of instruction there go ahead Jen I'm not it's not really letting me click on my drive would you mind pulling it up I think it'll just be easier so there we go so so the presentation I'm gonna give is just about 10 to 15 minutes and we're gonna I'm gonna go over the committee's recommendations and our reasoning behind it our process and sort of the impact of that decision I want to echo what John said and really thank the committee it was a real team effort I'm going to introduce the committee members in a moment but this was an effort that was started by our former board chair Colette strim and really picked up by Rosa and really my job was kind of easy I just had to bring it over the finish line but it was Colette's leadership that brought this to our attention and it was roses hard work that made us really look at it seriously so I want to thank them both as well so so let's kind of go through it now Joe Eric do I have to then tell you when to change the slide since you're manipulating it yeah I'm following along but if there's a certain point at which you're ready to move on and I haven't moved on just say something all right so we'll go to the second slide all right so let's start with the goal and the mission of the committee why did we have this committee and what were we planning on doing so firstly it was about studying what is the research that's out there in terms of sleep and health and so that was sort of our number go learn about the research and study it and then the SEC our plan was how can we communicate that how do we how can we take what we learn and communicate it to the community so they understand kind of the science behind sleep and health we also wanted to survey stakeholders we wanted to find out what's going on particularly in Brookfield in terms of sleep patterns in terms of alertness in terms of performance related to sleep we also wanted to analyze any potential change that we recommended what would be the impact of it on students lives on parents lives on staffs lives on f let excite a fter school opportunities and financially as well so we went through a deep analysis of that and then finally we wanted to make our best recommendation to the board so we'll go to the next slide so first of all why why get into this topic to begin with so there's a large amount of research that suggests that significant health safety and performance benefits are for adolescents if they are waking at 7 a.m.
white I find it unfortunate that two people have to go and the Union couldn't find a way to make it work but that's how they work and and so so it must be so the English teacher at the high school what level is that incoming freshman English is it AP English what is it a higher level English teacher we're losing or is it just kind of a generic position well you know what their assignment was this year may change next year but it was freshman sophomore English okay all right all right and and you feel that the skills that the kids coming in are such that that the loss of that position isn't going to place an undue burden on the other teachers but also in some way compromise what the kids have to learn to get up to snuff for high school level writing and yeah I mean if I didn't think that the position was valuable in our budget we probably wouldn't have had it the first time so I I you know there is definitely some degree of loss there the you know when you look the big picture of all the reductions that were making and the class sizes and the needs of the students you know in talking to dr.
or later the research really supports that and also many communities in Connecticut as well as the larger United States have been taking measures to research and implement healthy start time so this is a larger movement that's been go probably goes back to at least 20 years but in the past let's say five to six years the movement has picked up steam and so if you look at the graph on your right that gives us a sense of well what are our current start times so at the high school our students start at 7:15 a.m. at the middle school 755 and then at both of our elementary schools the kids start at 8:40 so that's the baseline in which we're working now so let's start with our recommendation we're not going to make you wait we're going to tell you right away so here's what we're recommending and then we'll sort of tell you why we came up with that recommendation so the committee is recommending to the board that we revise school start times for the twenty twenty to twenty 20 year as follows we recommend that the middle school in high school begin at 8:00 a.m.
GAD you know we feel like that's probably the the best place to make a reduction if we have to you know that being said I'm also continuing to work with special ed and evaluating IEP x' to determine if that might be more appropriate but I you know it's one of those I don't have that answer at press time I will tomorrow okay you know we are looking at making reduction out of that out of that teacher line of another $80,000 yeah and I appreciate it and that you know I appreciate what you and VIN had to do to get to this point just one other question I laid this out for you this afternoon you know might be concerning I think of all the grade levels I look at middle school as being perhaps the most emotionally vulnerable um I just look at middle schoolers as in that area where they're trying to figure so much out I am concerned about taking bumping the class size there and I threw it out and again you're the you're the PhD I just can't help but think if we went to low elementary we might in perhaps explored increasing sizes there if we have to lose positions does that make more sense I don't know if you could explain that to me sure I you know Marlene if you want to take this one I I know that Marlene and I have spent a lot of time evaluating the you know the instructional needs at all levels and you know kind of using our background and information from principals to make these decisions and I know that Marlene you know you feel pretty strongly about this yeah so I I don't disagree with you that middle school can be emotional time for students but I think when you look at both the enrollment numbers of that very much smaller grade class going up knowing that the reduc in class lies is not going to be different than it has been historically I I can I can get behind that when we talk about reducing elementary school numbers you're talking about or increasing elementary members you're talking about those foundational that those foundational skills that kids need would we need make them of school in elementary school we need to make sure they can read they can write they can do computation those things are critical and I think the class sizes there can make or break the future success so for that reason I think that that's really important that those those class sizes and our average class size in elementary this year is seventeen point nine or excuse me yes seventeen point nine next year it's going up to eighteen point one and we just didn't feel like making further reductions there where you know from an educational perspective better than making this move it in seventh grade okay thank you sure and looks like you had further comment yeah so I I agree that we should not increase class sizes at the elementary level either Mike one of my concerns is actually this idea of moving teachers out of their area of expertise so if you're a middle school English teacher why but we would have to replace a high school English teacher who has been trained and is credentialed and that's where that teacher belongs in in that level classroom and sort of forcing people into positions that aren't their ultimate strengths is also a little concerning to me I really think I would really like to look at other parts of the budget besides the teaching positions well I think that's a segue for me to move on and look at other parts of the budget that we are your welcome Jeff yeah thank you I hadn't asked my question yet I'm sorry Adam go ahead so I couldn't help but notice that the that the overall reduction to the to the I'll call I'd 113 the teachers line you know it's significantly larger than the one I was staring at this weekend yet we're so we the reductive forced reduction is still in place um and I'm guessing you're gonna get to it but I'm assuming that there was additional expenditures I guess that we needed to share with the town is that why everything else looks relatively unchanged and we had that significant increase but everything yeah yeah yeah yeah that's that's right and and Adam that was almost as good a segue as an had so let's let me show you the next where that that comes in okay so Adam what you'll see in this is we we move forward here and I I'm making it a little bigger so that you can actually see the font but on the manager supervisor line is a is exactly what you're talking about so through the town budget process they identified a need for a capital project man your position so this person's responsibility would be to really kind of be like an owner's rep supervisor of all capital projects conducted in the town of Cheshire many of which take place in our schools that position we are you know paying half of that salary that we didn't know about in January when we made our budget in the town ultimately adopted so we are responsible for forty two thousand five hundred that wasn't in the draft budget numbers that I sent you over the weekend so you see these reduction you know this is in addition to our budget this forty two five and then you see the reduction of seventy five thousand out of that budget which includes the reduction of school security manager position a seventy five thousand dollars that we had budgeted now this is another perfect example of you know would we really want that position would it be valuable of course that's what we we budgeted for that purpose but given the fact that we do have to reduce nine hundred eight thousand dollars we're gonna have to try and survive without it again it's better than cutting classroom teachers we're reducing to ia positions reducing overtime hours for our custodian secretaries our support staff we had a math interventionist if you recall in our budget at the middle school it was a twenty-five thousand dollar budget item we also reduced to elementary hall monitors so we as we went through the capital budget process with the town we and we saw bids and stuff the effort to put in man-traps at Chapman and Norton that didn't work out for this budget cycle so without those man traps we are not going to need the IAS to to supervise those the hall monitors to supervise those two locations so they came out of our budget in terms of budget reductions as we move on the pension retirement line that is for non-certified staff and it's based on the recommendation of the town actuaries again this isn't this has nothing to do with our teacher retirement but our defined benefit plan for non-certified staff it's no longer structured this way but we still have another number of people that are in that plan historically and so the actuarial figure that impacts both the town and the school side was increased we had to change the assumption and with that we had to commit another ninety eight thousand and change almost ninety nine thousand to our budget you know absent that we're not making the recommendation for you know some of these recommendations that that we have then do you want to elaborate it all on that pension piece or not well you covered it very well it's a we really don't have a choice on this the actuaries you know had recommended a series of possible ways to properly run the pension plan this was the least expensive option it spreads out you know based on a 25-year cycle the period in which we're having to fund the part the pension obligation so the Town Council did take the UM you know the least you know budget would have the least impact on all the different scenarios that the pension actuary recommended so it's about as low as we were going to get but it does have to be done so then the other reductions that we have recommended here are basically you know decisions that we've made to reduce line items to come up with a significant amount of money in order to you know meet this reduction so staff training you know we're making the the recommendation of reducing that thirty thousand dollars so that budget light line-item would be roughly you know one hundred thousand eighty five 185 thousand dollars excuse me and you know staff training a couple years back was one fifty three well you'll see a couple years back in that far left column are some lower budget lines because I think was been that the year that we made the five hundred thousand mid-year reduction or was it more than that was the prior but you know we're you know we've we've had budget reductions every year so you know the when we look at those actual expenditures you know in that year especially on these line items these are the line items when we make budget reductions that are always affected you know so we have been under spending what we would have ideally would have liked to you know have to fund each of those line items because you know as I mentioned before the flexibility in our budget comes from a pretty narrow swath of line items and these are really this this last block that you're looking at in terms of instructional expense is the area where we have the most flexibility so you know if it's a really bad winter and we're spending a lot of money in overtime and rock salt or whatever you know this is where we have to be flexible here if we have a good winter this is where we hope to try and riku and purchase more instructional supplies maybe to offset what might be a difficult following year so this is really has been said an area where this is really one of the few places where we have our flexibility so yeah Mitchell do I get because you're on on this particular section I you know one point that I could make if you look at the tuition our placement line in that 2018-19 actual year you see that it's two million four hundred twenty three thousand eight fifty you know that was one year where our placement costs exceeded budget as we went through the course of the year and so we did have to make up you know that additional budget overage by reducing some of the line items that you see in front of your staff training was one of them so not just budget reductions that occur at the beginning of the year it's the actual expenditures we're going through the year that also have an impact on what we ultimately spend on those line items yeah so the the you know unpredictable ups and downs within our budget tend to bear themselves out in this chunk of line items and the instructional expense so a $75,000 reduction in the instructional supply line fifty seven thousand dollars in textbooks and software a ten thousand dollar reduction in library periodicals four thousand and library media supplies thirty six thousand two fifty and replacement equipment and eleven thousand 250 in new equipment so you know this this is our recommendation at this point to get down to the nine hundred and eight thousand six hundred and twenty eight dollars the you know the decisions as I began you know it's it's trade-offs nobody feels excited about any of these reductions because the this group of seven you guys decided that wasn't what we wanted when we started and I think you took a very you know responsible and imbalanced view of the budget at the time and now these are reductions that we have to make and you know I don't think the Town Council is wild about it either but you know this is our reality so where do we we make and then so we have to make recommendations somewhere and this is where we started for the conversation tonight and you're on you you're unmute Adam there we go I got it Catherine you had a question I do thank you I'd like to go back up to the line item 119 managers supervisors and go a little into more detail on this capital projects manager position so this is a position that we did not ask for I assume well did we ask for this position is this something that more bed sort of initiated at all we I don't know that we initiated I don't think it's fair to say we initiated it it is fair to say that the capital budget projects are you know plenty within the school system and that there is a demand for a position like this I don't know you know if it was a lot to me I would have advocated that we really need this more than maybe solution but then it you know I think you're probably a more balanced view on this than I live tonight can I just it doesn't look it doesn't really matter how balanced a view it is because I find it really objectionable that cost was put on to us at a time when this is that's not I don't care what anyone says a critical position and yet we're talking about having to possibly reduce teaching staff so I don't know how it is that the Town Council has the authority to and I'm sure they do but I don't know where that authority comes from to just impose this on us in the middle of our budget process so I vehement Lee oppose that not that there's anything we can do about it apparently because it's a done deal but I mean I want to make it very clear to the community that we serve but that is really inappropriate and it's an inappropriate cost to push on us at a time when we have to you know cut what we needed five million dollars I guess I wasn't really a good follow-up to that specifically which is on their math interventionist at the middle school so you know that's probably the same argument is cutting the teachers that we've already had but I'm a little concerned about having that position go away if that position serves the seventh grade because if class sizes are increasing which I'm sure you know they can handle wouldn't would those students maybe need a little bit more support possibly sorry that's it summed up yeah you know I think it's a fair question again you know when we when we adopted the budget we all felt that that was an important position which is why it was included is it you know you could make the argument that it it becomes more important with a larger class size but I think what we've done over the last couple of years is really focus on our poor math instruction and you know we've seen obviously substantial gains in our performance it doesn't mean that we don't need that position again if we didn't feel like we needed it it wouldn't have been included in our original budget but is we evaluate the total picture we feel like you know that's something that we would hope to be able to potentially include in next year's budget right okay I mean no question that the performance of our kids is you know really stellar so and the mat the work on the math curriculum all the way through thanks to Marlene it's it seems to be paying off really well so I just felt the need to bring that up I don't think it's the right trade-off that's all mr.
and end at 2:45 and that our new school which would be a one you know pre-k to five school would begin at 8:50 and end at 3:35 p.m. the result of this change would mean that high school students would be getting 45 minutes of sleep per night in addition to their current what we have now and the other schools are really just having some minor adjustments it wouldn't disrupt what school times are for the other kids much at all there would be minimal disruption to after-school activities and athletics and we really felt like we have an opportunity that we are going to go through some change in two years with our new school building and by giving the two year window we would be able to coordinate the change in busing but we'd also give families and staff and kids two years time to plan and adapt to the change we know the more lead time you have for a change the better you can sort of equip for that change as well so that's the recommendation so I want to begin by talking about the committee let's go to the next slide so we had the world's greatest committee if I do say so myself obviously John was on our committee we had Rosa from the board myself and Amy Foster Steve Baldwin who's our athletic director was an essential member of the committee to give his perspective we had a teacher English teacher from the high school Lori Moses who's on the committee Lisa Whelan is a staff member at the middle school but she's also a commune member and a parent of teenagers so her perspective was super super important and then we had two community members who also have worked in school districts that have implemented some changes to their start times so Luke Quinn is a school counselor in Greenwich high school and also a parent and Joyce Puteri is a school counselor at John Reed middle school which is in Redding and also a community member and parent and they were able to give us really a lot of information about what worked and what didn't in terms of changing the start times in their district and then of course Colette who is our former Board of Ed was really an integral part of the team because she was really the force behind it as well so that was our fabulous committee and I think many of them are here tonight so at when we pause for questions please feel free to ask them questions as well okay so let's go to our next piece was really our process and our actions so we were really sort of deliberate in the way in which we approach the work we began the work a little bit over a year ago in the spring of 2019 by establishing the committee and that was really important that we wanted to have key stakeholders but also people with experience in this kind of work to guide how we move forward and starting in the fall we did a tremendous amount of research we read a lot of articles from different scientific journals educational journals about what is the science of sleep and how does it impact the adolescent mind and body and so there was a tremendous amount of work and we had discussions on all of those articles into the fall into the winter we spent a lot of time and a lot of districts gave generously of their time meeting with us we had superintendents from Wilton Board of Ed chairs from Newtown and a variety of other different districts who had went through this process already so they were generous enough to come to our meetings and give us the history of their decisions you know some may change very quickly and we could sort of analyze the impact of that and and some maybe didn't really pull in all the stakeholders so we really learned a lot from from those colleagues of ours and other districts in the winter and into the spring we said you know what we've really got to develop surveys that go out to all of our key stakeholders parents staff and students and so we worked on developing those surveys and as many of you took those surveys in the spring and then the work was analyzing those surveys so what does this really tell us about sleep and health in Brookfield and then most recently we analyzed the impact so we were coming to our beliefs on what would be best for Brookfield but what's the impact on a practical matter schools transportation and costs and then we're ready for a recommendation today so I want to just take you through quickly into some of the key research findings so if we can kind of move ahead and I know the board was fortunate to have a presentation from the doctor from Yale I know Mike and Amy weren't there at the time but we were we got a lot of sort of high-level research on sleep and adolescents so I'm gonna summarize sort of some of the big ideas but I've also included links to a lot of the research on the later slide so people will be able to go back and dive in a little bit more so what are the big ideas well the biggest idea is that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says teenagers should be sleeping between 8 and 10 hours a day for good health that's really the the recommendation for teenagers 8 to 10 years now if we go to the next slide though there's something unique about teenagers and those of us who have them could probably attest to this but there's something that teenagers and this is because of puberty they become sleepy later at night and then they need to sleep later in the morning and this is a result of shifts in their biological rhythms and so it's not just that they're older and they want to stay up later it's really something biological that sort of forces our teenagers to be up later and stay and then sleep later as well so there's some biology behind that and if we look at the next one we know that our era computers go the next one we know that there's a lot of other things going on too and in terms of teenagers and other distractions and we know that the these biological changes are also combined with some poor sleep habits of teenagers and all of this sort of compounds itself to have some pretty big implications on their health so if we look at the next slide this is interesting because well obviously when two kids wake up during the school year well they wake up when they have to get to school so school times obviously dictate when students would wake up here's a chart that indicates the national school start times across the country and if you look at let's look at the high school up top so we're in that blue of before 7:30 so only 10% of high schools in the United States currently start before 7:30 the most if we look in the yellow 40% are between 8 & 8 29 so I think you know we're a victim of our own experience and often we think well of course schools just have to start early that's what they do but in fact nationally many many districts have moved away from these very very early start times something more in the eight eight-thirty range okay so if we move on next I mean what's the conclusion well kids are have later bedtimes and the school starts early in many cases and as a result they're just not getting enough sleep if you see the visual dictates that six out of ten middle schoolers are reported to not get enough sleep seven out of ten high schoolers are not getting enough sleep and so as a result there's some pretty big health implications as well and so let's go to the next slide and what are those and and they're pretty serious obviously being sleepy seems to be a concern but it goes way beyond that there are some physical health implications so here's this is a document from the CDC but if you look at sort of the bottom there adolescents who don't get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight not get enough physical activity suffer from depressive symptoms also engage in really unhealthy risky behavior such as drinking alcohol smoking tobacco and other drugs and performing poorly in school so there's extent there's been extensive research that links not enough sleep to some of these serious health issues another one that's not on our chart is there's a correlation between lack of sleep and risky driving as well and and car accidents so there's really a direct correlation between sleep and our students health okay so we did our survey okay and let's look and see what we found out so we had great participation so that really I mean the more participation you have the more valid your survey is we had over a thousand parents participated I mean a nice spread to the different schools we had over 900 students and two 178 faculty and staff members participate in our survey and so we want to share with you some of the big ideas that emerge so if we look at our first survey slide so we asked the high school teachers if students are most tired during their first class and the the response was interesting seventy-five percent of teachers agreed to strongly agreed that students are really demonstrating to being very very tired during their first class so probably not a surprise but the data sort of supported the research that we had reviewed as well and so if we look at our second piece of data we asked a little bit more specifically our students struggling to stay awake in class and high school teachers over 60% of them from agree to strongly agreed also saw that that tiredness is gone is gone into beyond just tired but struggling to stay awake so that's supported some of the research that we saw as well ok so our next question that really gave us some interesting things to think about we asked the question to students seem adequately ready to learn each day and this was interesting we wanted to share this with you because there's a little bit of difference between high school results and middle school results so high school teachers almost 50% of them between disagree to strongly disagreed said you know students don't really see matically ready to learn every day but less so at the middle school so some of the analysis and discussions we had was that we definitely seem to think that the problem of sleep and tiredness and academic readiness seemed to be more prevalent at the high school our data seemed to support that ok and then our next question we asked teachers our students arriving late because they overslept and again same trend here 60% of high school agree to strongly agree only 28% of middle school so you know it's again seem to support that the problem some of the problems with sleep seem to be much more prevalent at the high school than the middle school okay and then next we asked students we said how alert are you and if you look on the blue that's the first class of the day and then the red is your second class so you can see that about 56% of students said either moderate moderately or - not at all alert during the first class but then 56% of them said they are fairly - extremely alert during their second class so there seemed to be some real indication that that first class particularly at the high school at 7:15 is a time when students struggle to be alert okay and our next question we asked we asked them about how much sleep they get so how often do you get less than 6 hours of sleep how often per week and so 59% of our students said that at least one time per week they're getting less than 6 hours of sleep so it definitely again our local data seem to be almost perfectly in line with the national research that we were doing and then finally we really wanted to through a series of questions with parents we wanted to ask them on that that next slide what are our values is this something that the community values and so we said how important is allowing students to get more sleep to you so this is from the high school students excuse me parents 90 percent believed allowing students to get more sleep is at least above average of importance and we gave the same question to each of the other schools and the percentage was between 89 and 91 so almost identical at every building that parents are recognizing that it's crucial that my child get adequate sleep in order to be healthy and productive so those were some of the big results of our survey so if we go to the next piece what are our conclusions based on this survey so as I mentioned before we've spent a lot of time sort of analyzing kind of the nitty-gritty of the survey and what does it tell us well probably no surprise high school students in particular are not getting the recommended amount of sleep and are less alert in their first classes that seem to be the trend of the data but we also learn that our community values the healthy implications of proper sleep so that was sort of our big big takeaways of our survey okay now what about athletics now the big sort of stopping point for a lot of districts that have pursued a look at healthy start times has been athletics community members said you can never change the start time because it's really gonna mess up athletics so we felt like it was crucial to have Steve Baldwin on the committee to find out is that accurate so if we look at the next slide Steve did a lot of research for us so he went and looked at our athletic league and he got information from all of the schools that we currently compete in our league and he got all of their start and end times and so just to give you sort of a global view if you see all of the schools that I've highlighted in blue those are all schools that either have or are in the process of examining their start times so the vast majority of schools in our league have either changed their start time to later or are currently going through a process that we've gone through as well so it looks like I mean and we're interestingly currently the earliest of schools in that regard so the changes that we're proposing won't put us you know way out of the range of other schools in our league and again within the next two years I think we anticipate that many of those schools in blue will make a similar change if they haven't done so already so that's a little bit of the data there okay now we also know though that the science really supports sleep and performance in athletics so sleep deprivation is a leading contributor to an increase in injuries among student athletes and that was a theme and a lot of the research that we reviewed so there's a direct correlation between the two and on the other side adequate sleep actually leads to an increase in athletic performance so we really feel like a shift to a later start time would have a really positive impact on our athletes now Steve also analyzed the you know the question often comes up well if they had a game that's with a school that ends earlier than us would they have to miss their last class so if we look at our current schedule this and this current start times those schools have student athletes would have to miss their last class about five times per season so spread out throughout the tie entire season there would be opportunities where they would have to miss their last class so that that is something to note however over the next two years I meant we had we were anticipating those schools may be changing their start times as well and that would be okay so the bus obviously we've got to get the kids to and from school that's a major responsibility of our school district and so we examined a bunch of different ways in which to do it and and what are the financial ramifications of doing that so if we look at option A and B they're both what we'll call three-tiered systems so that means there's three start times and that means sort of three big roots that are going on in terms of the bus company now the first option we could flip flop those start times we have a seven forty five and eight twenty five and nine ten we could flip them to different schools to see which work best for those kids but the major concern we had with that was that some students would either be in the dark when they're going to school and some other students would be in the dark during the winter when they're coming home from school and so that was an thing that we were concerned about so we weren't really happy with option a option B also a three-tiered system and with some overlap and the pro of that no student would wait in the dark that's good kind of a big con we need 19 additional buses and it would cost an additional 1.6 million dollars so that was a pretty quick no on that one because it would almost close to double our current expenditures on busing and we thought well that's that's not sustainable so if we go to the next slide this is our recommendation for busing can you just click on that next one for me Eric great okay so here's our recommendation so we're at we're recommending that we do a two-tiered busing option so that would mean the first tier would be middle school and high school so middle school and high school students would ride together on the bus so we recognize that's a change in something you know we'd have to plan for the second tier would be for the new elementary school now why do we like this one well it meets the early time recommendations for the high school we're able to do it and it that aligns obviously with the science of sleep patterns it aligns with our what we've learned from our survey from our different stakeholders students state safety is good because there's no dark before or at the end of the day and so that was a big concern now how much what is this gonna cost so one of the things in moving towards a k-25 building which we're doing in two years is that we had dumped some early jhana don't most all this work he did some early analysis and we will need two additional buses in order to have that new have the kids in the one elementary school so two additional buses will be needed at a cost of a hundred and forty thousand dollars with the two tiered system we would so that that's like not changing any of the healthy start times we would it would be an increase of one hundred and forty thousand in it in order to change to a two tiered system we would need two additional buses and the bus company is estimating that would be an additional one hundred and forty thousand dollars one of the things we discussed was that we know there'll be a savings in energy cost with our new building and so we're hoping that the savings with energy could somehow balance out an increase in busing okay so almost there thank you so what are our conclusions so we say you know the science the data our surveys all indicate that our current model aligned with healthy school start times and so we're recommending that change and just a review we're recommending the change for 2020 to 2023 for the high school and middle school to begin at eight and to end at 2:35 and then the new elementary school has really a minor change and and that's actually no change at all cuz I think they're already at 8.50 high school students are going to gain 45 minutes of sleep a day and really there's no there's some minor adjustments in other regards there's minimal disruption after school and athletics and we really feel like with two years to plan it gives all different stakeholders time to plan and adapt as well okay and then finally kind of what's our next step so obviously if you could Eric just get hit the next one we assuming that the board would approve this recommendation there's some planning obviously the administration will have to work to execute the plan there will be bus contract negotiations with the BOE but the committee really felt that our work is not necessarily over and that we really wanted to play a role in educating the community about the health benefits of sleep because we know that just changing start times is not a panacea it won't cure everything so how can we really bring the community along with us to recognize how sleep can have a positive benefit and what are the changes you can make at home to sort of ensure that you know your your teenagers are getting the proper sleep and the health benefits that associate with it so the last couple of slides are just some research resources for everybody to look at it their leisure their YouTube video presentations their articles but they give you all different sort of perspectives on the that we reviewed as a come in okay so I think I'll stop there and if anybody has any questions for myself or for the committee let's have a question on slide 22 how many parents were surveyed thousand fifty two I have a question yes please Monty how how would the bus situation work with Liam would they everyone would get picked up from the same neighborhood and then all the kids from BHS would be like dropped off first and then Julia maths or vice versa mazi that's all that that's what the next two years is for is to work out with the bus company how that will walk they you know they have to look at how the students matriculate through the grades and look at the addresses siblings all those kinds of things kind of the same thing they do now but it would be given because we have that two-tier system where we would have the high school middle school together and then adding fifth grade to the elementary run in elementary will no longer be a split tier run it will be one run that would go through the neighborhood pick up all the kids K through five and bring them to one building rather than two different builders on two different buckets so there's a lot of pre-work that has to go into that with the bus coming the piggyback Muncey just asked so are we not clear then if our middle school students will be on the bus with the high school students oh no there would be man would be that they would ride the bus with the high school students okay yeah question when they ride on the same bus would they just drop off one school and then drop off the other school or is that the plan at this point that's the plan mr.
Perry Jeanie yeah very quickly I had two questions but the construction manager I and I know it seems like it was so long ago I don't remember discussing that in our budget that we reviewed and passed before over to the town for review was this something that was added on recently after the capital budget process because and I got no I just don't know this is because that the number of projects in the pipeline when you break down what the town is what the PD see for example might be managing versus the Board of Ed projects they would seem to take those as a whole you definitely a dedicated person he at least and he split it out that way where does come from and I apologize I didn't attend the planning to me last last nice house that was discussed I'm sorry I'm behind it was not no and I'll answer the question so the project manager position that is being introduced in tonight's budget did come as a request from Sean Kimball and Sean did contact us and ask you know if they added that position to the budget you know would we support it and you know our answer was yeah but I will just caution what I'm saying by telling you that that was before these budget reductions took place did that conversation take take place the this position is primarily to assist with the public Building Commission side of the project load which is which is very you know it's quite large it's not that we don't have quite a few projects assigned to the board of that as well at this point that you know which Clarett is managing for us you know quite effectively we we did go through those with the Planning Committee last night so this is more to provide the assistance on the town side the reason that we would agree to it is because a lot of those projects managed by the PC do bent by the PBC do benefit to schools you know in the other part of the thinking is as we start doing school modernization projects you know which very likely will be assigned to the public Building Commission having the additional resource to complete the amount of work that it takes to get a project you know through the PBC process and the Town Council process is pretty extensive so it is a useful product is a useful position there's no doubt the it's really up to the board you know what to write in this I appreciate that it's just that the board we never discussed this our budget process and I I'm not against you know obviously hope and especially if the bulk of those projects that were paying for are really further for us but I don't ever recall in years past that you know when the PBC and maybe I'm overthinking this and then not trying to be critical at all at all I just try to follow some logic here so if these are a Board of Ed capital projects that I know that when we go through this process and for folks we'll be watching you know when those capital budget projects are approved you know usually society hey the board's gonna run with it with it or the PBC is gonna him and even in years when I think even most recently if last couple years I mistaken a PVC managed quite a bit of those never asked for you know additional funds it was usually I guess it was handled on the town side so I can see the argument where hey there's more board of that projects coming in and hey guys you know eat your fair share we just never discussed this and in a career with Katherine they know when we're going through this reduction especially have all the budget talks we have everything it'll been good to know this you know I don't know how much we're actually going to use this construction manager for our own projects but you know pay for it for the PVC work I don't know if I'm saying that correctly so I know it's in a normal year the forty two thousand dollars may not be a big deal and I'm certainly not putting away from only thing the PD skier Town Council is doing I just I don't get this one at this time it's all that's all I'm saying but that's it thank you yeah and just to be clear Tony this was not discussed with the Board of Ed during the budget process because it was not anything that we were aware of it happened after the board approved its budget and it was submitted to our manager yeah I the one last thing and I'm sort of hog this but ya know I I I get that part but we submitted a very lean capital budget request list for next year and I is that put I guess so you can follow this up after I'm not sure that's putting the person already edge but I could see if we had a pretty large set of projects coming in twenty twenty twenty-one where hey we don't see that but I'm a I'm good thank you for explaining that mr.
post and I would happen obviously we have a lot more work to do over the next two years and that's the gift of time we've given ourselves to work with the bus company on that you know along with negotiations and all the other things that happen and I wanted to ask about that as well do we have have you seen models of any other school districts where middle school kids are on the same bus with high school kids because I suspect that might be one area I'm sorry actually that's not very uncommon Debbie my kids do that when when they were in middle school they rode with high school kids another in high school they ride over middle school kids yeah yeah the district that I work in it's the same thing so the school middle school and high school kids ride the bus you know it's a cultural shift and all cultural shifts sort of take time to adapt to it but I think it's a relatively common practice and just neighbors you know kind of in our in our league if you will or in our neighborhood you know the new towns of the world and the battles of the world I think Bethel is switching to a middle high school run now and there's probably five in our area immediate area that are middle high school runs that run together so it's not this is missus term can share some experiences from the Midwest how the bus runs work good it's not uncommon if that's part of the education that's part of a two-year plan at that time to have those conversations and ask those questions be prepared for that you know what are some things we could do is infer Brookfield we talked about the big brother and sister ideas kids mentoring each other helping each other the class X exam to ease that concern folks yeah and that that was really my only concern I know mr.
Martelli this was my question was originally a bang Anthony or chairman Perry Jeannie covered most of it but so we didn't know about this position coming on for the program manager their owners wrap with this supplement rich coal that's rich coal that's work would he work with or for well with this would help where this would help you know rich and us overall is that those projects assigned to the PVC if they were handled by project manager you know that's exclusively dedicated to the PVC projects it would take some of the burden off of rich Club at but he would still continue to manage those projects that are assigned to the Board of Ed again we reviewed a ton of them last night yeah and again I think long term this position is necessary when we have school modernization you know projects underway it open for discussion to the board going back over a year ago the town was looking to hire a program manager for construction projects within the town so and so this is part of that let's see mr.
Rhonda just put those schools that have those models do they have bus monitors on those buses because currently I think there's our an issue with let's say the middle school busing and disciplinary issues and things like that and I can't imagine compounding that with now adding high schoolers on with sixth graders and vice versa it's interesting the opposite happens so when you have younger kids with older kids the behavior improves because some behavior that you might deem a sort of middle school type behavior tends to change a bit when they're with older kids but I think you know it's really it's a cultural change so it's something we'd have to plan for and work with kids on I a couple questions I I saw in your presentation the survey said that parents agree or feel that you know adequate adequate sleep is very important for their students but I don't remember if there was a question specifically asking them if they I'd say think a plan like this is feasible you know do they think we can execute it does it work with their schedules do they trust their high school students to wake up on time if the parents have left earlier to go to work actually I would like to address that question because it was opt the utmost importance that we established the survey that we purposefully did not ask questions that were applying it that way all of the questions were to gather objective data about the sleep habits of students in Brookfield we didn't want to ask questions about start times and things like that because we didn't want parents making those decisions without or having those opinions without having sort of the background of the information and the knowledge of the research that's out there so we really wanted to focus in more on the questions that would deliver us data that we could then drive a recommendation for it so we didn't start with the recommendation and sort of work backwards we sort of let the data drive us to a conclusion that makes sense I also remember at one point in discussions about the new school we talked about and sort of floated the idea that it could be possible that the lower grades pre-k kindergarten and first might have a different start time than second through fifth was that something that you considered in the plan or or you're certain assuming that the new school will all be on the same schedule it sounds like yeah I'll start and then please anybody from the committee jump in so we examine that and we could accommodate the the buses to load and unload so we have been taking a look at the the larger context of the entire district and trying to figure all this out have it we would have three tiers which would cost even more money if we try to do two separate tiers at the middle of at the elementary school and then the school you know a middle and a high school tear or two separate and seventy four tiers or we would have two separate tiers at the elementary school and then a one tier if we combine middle and high school and it just it didn't work out in terms of number of buses and it didn't work out in terms of timing to have any reasonable timing to deliver and drop off all the kids and so since we could get a start time one time for the elementary school this then allowed us to put our minds through a different way of yeah and I think John remember I think you brought us in even the bus drop-off map of the new school and we sort of looked at how many buses can you get in and we analyzed the fact that yes we could it could work that we could get the kids in at the same time yeah a big part of this was Ken and I met with bus company several times but the committee itself met with Eddy from taxi architect and Techcon was in for at least one meeting maybe a second meeting to go over these kinds of things and these kinds of issues the physical layout of a lot the driveways you know what that would look like the stacking of the buses so there's a lot of a lot of planning already has gone into how this could work before we got to this point okay I have a question has the committee considered net so if the school start times are pushed later and our high school athletics are pushed a little bit later now our youth programs will be pushed later so that's going to force our now younger children to go to bed much later and now they're losing sleep because we only have field time at a certain time that the high school or high school are utilizing on our fields but now that will be pushed given that their start times are later and that will force our youth programs to now go later yeah enjoy I don't know I agree with that that the premise that that could be the case but I know Steve Baldwin was really obviously an integral part of the committee so there was some of those were considerations I know we've talked with Mary from Parks and Rec as well so maybe Steve you could weigh in on a little bit of that even though you don't plan you know for Parks and Rec but you work hand in hand with them on the field usage I mean for us we're lucky you know through our community leadership and there are community support on athletics that we have for lighted turf fields obviously the biggest obstacle for me is sports that don't have lights and readjusting them but I could see possibly in the fall just maybe having to use catechin a little bit more than normal and not so much in the spring other than maybe going to between five and six when we normally would end that six because typically our practices now are two to four for four to six six to eight and obviously when we change we'd have to go three to three five five to seven and seven to nine so you know it's gonna take some working with parka rack and use to readjust what we do and we might possibly have to either shorten our practice times or you know find some grass fields to use so I'm actually curious if you if the committee came across any results on how the teachers feel about a later start time just considering the the the current climb and I talked to a lot of teachers and they're working like seven days a week and I kind of curious on is there may be a benefit to them as well I don't that wasn't studied but I kind of wonder if there was maybe any findings in that research as a former teacher before I was an administrator I would have loved to garden later extra sleep maybe get the morning workout in for a little longer I mean that's just my opinion but I mean I'll just as a teacher it's you get a little bit more time in the morning maybe you know with your own kids you know get them done and you know even just some planning time in the morning I will just add that we didn't at we again purposely did not ask about start times in any of our surveys we really were out together you know objective data my question was more for the the perimeter research that was done I guess spring of nine 2099 from me yep my other question is did you guys come across any research with kind of isolating just the time meaning you know having nutrition accounted for bedtime habits as far as bedtime actual times going to bed screen time has a huge effect on dopamine is the name that pop into the research as far as a factor like like a checking for cofactors in order to isolate the independent variable is the start time yeah I mean definitely all those things play a role but the overwhelming research showed that really was the shift in the adolescent development during puberty that led to that later falling asleep time is what made it different for older kids so yeah I mean those other things will definitely contribute to it but overwhelmingly the research really said that older kids fall asleep later and therefore need to need to sleep later as well and need that eight to ten hours of sleep oh I totally agree yeah I think I want I guess I wrote myself with saying I think this is a very thorough job but you guys did I haven't really been part of the board that long to know what you guys been doing this is very impressive stuff research is kind of my thing so I always have lots of questions with research my last last point is is there any research or maybe even just case studies on the schools that have changed on their impact yeah so well we have some anecdotal information so from all of those districts that shared with us they each are interesting had done some sort of follow-up surveys with parents and students and really across the board they found that kids were healthier they were sleeping more and so there seemed to be a correlation between the two you know I think a couple of them said well can we say kids are performing at a higher level I'm not sure if the data is there but they definitely supported that and and even you know asked community members if would you change back and overwhelmingly their their information came back that no that they felt like this was a positive change for the community and for the kids how did they measure health you said they were healthier how'd they measure that I don't brisket ever was I'll speak to my conversation with new town superintendent as you may know two years ago they went through you know it's very public some of the transportation issues they were having they transition quite quickly and so there was a lot of that logistical unrest stopped all and in talking with dr.
white Thank You Adam yeah I mean I personally don't really want a lot of council input in our budget but it is a it is a collaborative process and based on what I think you just said then or Jeff I mean there was a discussion between the two CEOs Jeff and Sean Campbell and I do I do recall when I was on the council discussions about how the public Building Commission and Public Works Department was doing work for the board and me having you know discussions with other council member saying why doesn't the board pay for this now I don't know if I don't know what that number would be but I think for a long time then is it is it fair to say that for a long time there has been public works department staff hours dedicated to board of ed capital projects I'm not saying 100% or 0% just something one percent 50% whatever it is there's there has been support there right no there has been and the way it works right now just just quickly is that the any project work that's assigned to the public Building Commission georgeanna wanna need the Director of Public Works he's the Lee so he's responsible for doing things like you know making sure that the bids go out the bids come back the bids are evaluated you know in president president all the public Building Commission meetings taking minutes following up responding to questions so there's no doubt that that is part of George new Antony's responsibilities he does have an assistant that helps he attends the meetings you know he does the walkthroughs whenever it's a PVC project that's you know been put out to bid and you know I know that because I do talk to George you know some of his responsibilities have been expanded you know beyond this public Building Commission and and Director of Public Works where all he's he did take additional responsibilities on for the maintenance staff that was part of Park and Rec so there is a you know a lot on that that man plate and this would you know not only take some of the work off of his plate but it would you know give the overall management of our capital projects one source that's focused on it so that's the advantage of it ya know I mean I I knew there was something there I'm not you know I can't talk about the percentage or whatever but about the benefit to the board right now but I do know that speaking very generally the town of Chester including the schools has a million square feet our footprint is a million square feet 800,000 is the school's right vent 800,000 or so 750 you know all right so we have we have 75 80 percent of it we're paying for 50% of this it's existed for many years I I'll support this like I said I don't really want this happening I don't like I got interjected this one I'm sorry you know okay we've never a appoint so you're saying and maybe that's always been implied but we've never done this kind of shared services division on this as far as I could tell if labor in the Board of Ed I don't ever remember adding a position to our voyage or partial to pay for something that's you know what's happening in a town side and again it's just fact I've been in these budgets before it's the first I've seen something like this but just me that you know the Patel council's assign these projects to the Board of Ed PBC if they're signing more projects than BBC you know and in George I used awesome person and great work at nope nothing was there I think they should help you footing some of this now I got to believe that the reason part of this is coming back to the board is because some of those projects doing the take some have something to do with us and I get that just you know I wish we had known about this earlier I gotta assume too that the budget increased organic we're getting from the town council includes a $42,000 you saw paid for this I hope that's the case I don't know just plain out there sorry to explain it no no no I mean I agree I don't really care for the I don't really care for the process and the finding out right now and not a few months ago cuz like I said I mean this issue has existed going back 10 20 years so but the other thing I'll just just really for the voters probably I mean this is this is a collaborative process I think we do share don't we share IT to some extent then we do with it cost of Apex which is the firm that provides you know our network support and network monitoring services you know we did spill we did share before we had Apex we did have two employees okay we're working in technology that we split with the town so I mean we can that those splits in the past yeah and the other the other thing is that do we have do we have an annual do we get part of the annual capital non-recurring budget well we don't only on a project-by-project basis is in a point being that we have to go ask for it and ask for the money and this is we got to work together is ultimately my point here so I'm not saying it's pretty or something that I like but I support it I mean I assume Jeff and Shawn had conversations I get the background on it a little bit so I'm comfortable with it I'll support I can I support this one particular change I guess it's my point okay mrs.
Rodriguez she shared with me that not only me anecdotal that Jen talked about but they're definitely right off the bat they saw the the nurses and and the administrators can tell you about attendance and you know calls you know business to the nurse's office and then things like that tardiness a lot of that stuff was kind of some general health data than I can think of off the top of my head that was definitely improved for sure the other thing might you ask some some questions that I thought was important I'd like to turn it over to Steve for a second C : because in health class we do talk about obviously healthy lifestyles help it help the ABA's healthy pattern maybe stay you can share a little bit about maybe just a brief overview of what our teachers do in terms of health instructions already and how they can contribute to this you know this movement as well I mean obviously we discuss about all healthy habit habits and all in health class and you know including proper sleep and nutrition like dr.
Hamm thanks I I do have to say you know we're supposed to be autonomous bodies and to slip in $42,000 or whatever we're talking about now I what's to keep them from seeing down the road we want this and you're gonna have to do it so I I'm with everybody else this is I'm not keen with how this has happened in terms of are there by putting someone in charge a single person in charge of all of the of the capital projects are there going to be savings that accrue you know just because we're streamlining the management we're streamlining the projects the the bids aren't going out over and over again and will that happen at all do you season I mean I don't know that they'll be savings you know dollar savings when we actually put out a bid but work you know should get done on a more timely basis and one person focused on project manager and assuming that we hire the person with the right skill set will be able to you know help us do our our project work not only you know more effectively at the bid stage but also as projects are being managed throughout the life of a project but it's not I can't I don't think it's a dollar-for-dollar benefit on the you know actual bidding of projects necessarily okay um I just didn't okay I was just gonna say if if there are any to accrue I sure hope they apportioned them appropriately as well but and then you know going back I of all the years I'm just I understand this has been talked about for years and years we've we've done without I don't know why this became the year that we had to do but apparently we don't have much say in it so we'll take it can I just shift gears quickly we're Jeff or VIN are the IAS coming from that we're reducing the IAS in our budget that we're reducing have not yet been assigned because we haven't been able to fill a couple of positions and historically just there's greater demand than we've had supply through at least the winter last year so what I've said to our special ed team in their meeting like I said earlier tomorrow morning to try and finalize some of this is where you know where will these assignments come from the these two positions so they are they are working on that where they can you know work on scheduling to try and tighten that up but we finna tably it's not from an individual student it's not from us you know specific IEP service but we are you know trying to reduce that line by two people okay thank you mrs.
Murphy was talking about and we just asked general observation you know when I come in in the morning and I have to observe some health classes or PE classes you could see a difference in the classes later in the day you know rather than at 7:15 when the kids are kind of you know sluggish and aren't ready to roll yet so but you know um one of our teachers you know did some surveys with the kids and had discussion on it and the kids actually really want want this although it definitely seems like a nice deftly seems like a great solution I'd like to jump in I'm the counselor for Greenwich and a parent who's lived through this and I would tell you that any transition and any change is going to have its problems you know it's it's difficult it's difficult for people to change families to change faculty to change but you know in the long run having it lived through it I think it's it's certainly when caught on the other side of it when you think about the health of the students and getting them through school academically as well as emotionally and socially it was well worth the change and it's one of the reasons why I joined it to me and someone just clarify um I'm one of the earlier slides the disruptions to after-school activities and athletics Julie I'll start and then if Steve could jump in or certainly anybody from the committee so Steve's done an assessment of how often the kids currently based on each sport boys girls fall winter spring might miss the last period of the day because of a competition whether it's for far away travel during the regular season or competition that is like tournament time you know state tournament or League tournament time and so in the current model Steve it was an average of one so you know we had some sports that were zero and others that were two basically that averaged about one one time per season sometimes two and then of course if you get into a playoff situation that could skew those numbers in the current model at this point if there was no changes and Steve again we have to go we have to think of the slide Jen showed you with the schools in our league that are in blue that are also going to go later like what we're planning to do along with the ones that have already gone later the majority of the league will be going later we wanted to be fully transparent that max we might see as many as not in every sport but as many as five times where the students would have to leave early and you know we don't particularly like that you know and that's what off Steve you could jump in in just a second I just want to finish my point that's in the current model with the other schools that haven't moved later yet assuming they're going to move later and assuming we're in a different world now - let's not forget we've learned a lot about distance learning and its own that that blended model and Google classroom and the things we do remotely especially with our high school kids is going to improve so I don't want to forget that I'd only get deep into that conversation but that's something to be considered two years from now while we're considering this move but Steve I'll turn it over to you to help I'll use Westerners that example when when we play Western at home just you know normal freshman game would start at 3:30 from when we play Weston we shift it to four o'clock because of their start time so you know I'm assuming that mostly everybody will also help us with that until they change their times what it really affects are you know the things that we can't control like I said we're lucky in Brookfield we're well equipped equipped for this and we have four lighted turf fields we have cattigan to play softball with on the lights sports like indoor track where those those meets row long and we have to rent facilities such as Wesleyan and Hill House in New Haven so you know that would probably shift to increasing that sports are going later outdoor track again you know it's because of the facilities tennis and golf where you really can't a lot of schools don't have lights on the field and you know baseball softball other than that the rest of the sports really don't change or we can fix them it's just you know the sports with that don't have lights or you know where you have to use facilities and a certain amount of time so it's not you know it appears it's like oh my god when you think about it but it's not that bad I mean it's it's we'll figure it out and we'll make it work for our kids you know and the lineup getting some more sleep out of it so just to clarify so that's fine you know current models one to two so no changes would be five per season so if you have a three to four or three or four season sport season athlete then that would be fifteen or twenty classes they're missing yeah and I think Julie that would be the absolute worst case scenario that's not considering the things Steve is going to do over the next two years sure it's I don't I don't think it would ever get that high because you know you're looking at you know the spring sports with there will be the highest based on lighting and then when you get into the other sports it's not eat you know you look at maybe a freshman you know in volleyball might have to get out a few times early well I guess the biggest thing would be you know if somebody runs cross-country indoor track and outdoor track you know those are the ones that would be really affected I think the most you know and if you add those up at six eleven so maybe fifteen times for one of those kids possibly and again that's in the current model where the you know there's not as if the other schools don't move to later and many are in the have already moved to later or in the phase that were in they're right about where we are making decisions so it'll end up if we you know whatever number that slide was that Jen talked about I think there's maybe three to four schools in the league that at this point aren't planning to go later the majority it's fourteen schools in the league it'll look like there's probably about ten that will be going later so that then would eliminate this early concern and again that that was our whole premise from the start I think the board would remember me discussing is very early on that we wanted to we didn't want to disrupt we wanted one disruptive moment and so we thought we'd time it with the new elementary school and make it all work together so we've got plenty of time to work on this but the concern enjoyed I'm glad you asked the question thank you and it was talked about quite a bit does anyone have any questions for the committee I just like to add one more thing like I absolutely respect the their surveys that you sent down and wanting to really base it off data and not subjective information and opinions but I think it it does bring an element of value to kind of survey the community and find out about how much support there is you know in you know later start time I think I think it's important information so I agree I think I think community input is is definitely important i think the process that we wanted to follow and the steps that we wanted to take was first from an education standpoint because most people i think in most communities have already an opinion about this despite not really being aware of really decades of research that are overwhelmingly in favor of high school start times being after actually a three so how we wanted to sort of go about this was to inform the public but what we've seen in the research is that you know there are actually common myths that sort of emerge in people's opinions of leader school start times and by and large all of those myths are sort of debunked after a district moves to changing the start times so it's important that people have an opinion absolutely but the opinion needs to be informed and i think you know having this sort of collective recommendation now allows us to sort of be united in our communications to the public so that they can weigh in on this but also from much more informed standpoint and there was a lot of data there was a lot of data that we collected from parents to find out the impact of what that would have for example does your child watch another child before school or after school does do your children have after-school jobs and so there was all of this you know specific data that we collected which helped us analyze to what extent would this be a disruption and so we were able to to find that based on data and not turn it into an opinion survey but you know it would be helpful to have that information I'm curious sister you know how much of a disruption it would be kind of like what Debbie asked before we said you said you well we the the survey questions really do go into great detail and we certainly you know Jen could provide those and the results everybody I mean there's no there's no secret and it really does get at what the disruption would be its students for example with the job question the majority they're involved in after-school activities so that was our focus it wasn't about now they can't work and help their family that because of most of our Brookfield kids are not in that situation so that was the importance of the survey the same thing would be is there an adult at home to for child care do you have child care come in what would this look like if change you know there was a lot of those kind of questions so the committee was really able to be cognitive of where the major disruptions might be for families for sure but it wasn't an any one for the questioner 9% of our kids play athletics so they're staying after school that's just athletics team that's not yeah that's not the clubs and I also think even though you know we will set out to sort of educate the public I think it would be it would be dangerous to hold sort of an informal vote on the matter I don't think any such survey or something like that would be representative or thus valid so I want to be I want to caution the board in in thinking that that sort of a logical next step scientifically that wouldn't really yield us very valid data so you know I think it's important that we as sort of representatives our community received data receive actual uh opinionated objective data and we make decisions on what is best for our students now to Mike's point there are a lot of factors that go into student health performance things like that and most of those things are completely out of our control as a board those are you know strictly within sort of what goes on at home and we can't tell people how to parent but what we are in control of is when students wake up and that is just the fact of the matter and so if there is a portion or slices of this pie that we can control and the data shows that it would be healthier for our students to do so then we should be able to make that decision and say yes this is actually better for our students so we when you say you know we have to I guess I'm curious about next steps like you said we have two years to plan so are you asking for a board vote and that vote will mean that we are moving forward with this plan or is is are you intending to talk to stakeholders anymore over the course of two years and get additional parent feedback Jen you're yeah we're asking for you to vote on our recommendation to change the start times and then the two years is like how do we plan and make sure we do it right how do we make sure the bus is going to work out how do we make sure we educate people how to how do we make sure people know about it over the next two years so they can whatever adjustments they do need to make they can do so yeah we're asking for the board to I think to vote on tonight right bro so do have a right yeah I mean we certainly can vote on it tonight I'm understanding that this is sort of the first time that you guys are seeing all of this stuff it's not vital that we vote on it tonight if you guys want to mull it over ask more questions you know flip through the presentation at your own pace we can do that and maybe come back at our next meeting and sort of add it as you know an agenda item but basically in order for us to do anything next the board needs to be united and a plan you know for John needs to be to actually put that plan in action and he needs to have some sort of you know something to actually go on so yes we do need a vote on this if not tonight then at our next meeting most likely and and I just wanted to say something Jen thanks for all your support on this but the bus plan is going to work we're not worried about that it's gonna work I mean there's details that have to be worked out that's because we're changing things but it's going to work there's no it's not an issue the buses exist to pick up students and drop students off it's going to work so it's really the the work that's left is just the detail work to make sure everything happens just like every summer they change bus routes and addresses and new students are added and moved in 2700 kids matriculate to another grade and many change to a you know a different school of our four schools and you know almost 200 kindergarteners come in and now they get picked up safely and dropped off safely every single day so you know that's natural and in a normal piece of this that we're going to do it's the education and for people to adjust minor adjustment to their schedules remember that's the start time for the elementary school in the middle school others there's within five minutes of change that's it there's no no difference it's our height though that's the beauty of the plan is it's really the change for the high school kids which ultimately is the adolescent health issue I mentioned at the beginning it's to make sure the high school kids get more sleep so leave it at that and it might also be worth it for you you know if you're uncomfortable now the committee has put all of the research that we've taken a look at you know the ones that we've found really sort of as crucial pieces to our research study was we put them all online so if you go to the Board of Education site and you go to the subcommittee's and you go to this committee you will see a bunch of resources there so it might you know sort of who view to sort of take a look through those um you know if you'd like to be more informed yeah I added most of those to the last two pages of our slides as well so Bob and Amy you guys have been quiet any questions or anything you want to weigh in on well I was on the committee so I'm in favor of this yes oh I'm a hunt I'm a hundred percent in favor of this I erased kids who slept through first period and in class all the time this is the best thing that I think this board will have will it will do in its whole tenure so and I've all my questions have been answered and if they weren't I'd walk down two doors down and I'd be bang on blue Quinn's door anyone else from the committee want to say anything okay so how would you guys like to proceed I do want to make everybody comfortable if we sort of take sort of a you know feel of if you're ready to vote on making this plan in action we can do that I had make a motion to approve this is that your motion yes I'll make a motion to approve the healthy start times committees change in start times for two years from now okay I will second that motion those are any other discussion or questions on this okay good I guess my only concern really is the busing I mean I'm a hundred percent in favor of high school students starting later I think that's a great plan I completely agree that it's necessary I'm um stuck on the middle schoolers being bused with the high schoolers and maybe even more so the pre-k and K students being bussed with the fifth graders because I know that that like I said when we were talking about the new school we talked about a couple different options of either different just different bus runs and dropping those kids off at different separate entrances of the building and also even staggered start times so I I guess I'm sort of feeling and maybe I just haven't been part of the more recent conversations on that but I'm sort of feeling like those discussions have taken a bit of a backseat in order to the healthy start time plan work yeah Debbie I wouldn't say that the discussions took a backseat I don't think that's a fair picture but I'll turn it over to Ken who runs the operations number one I wanted to clarify that the pre-k kids have their own bus routes transported separately so it would be K through five being transported together uh-huh right right now Cajun four are transported together our fifth graders are actually a bit of an anomaly in our town because they go on a bus with middle school kids and then there has it the middle school is vertical that was part of our plan was to bring them more traditional elementary setting and so be more natural for K through five to be bused together so page before already ride together on I'm sorry they don't write again Sentinel huckleberry so but K through five is a normal elementary school very typical and but the staggered times didn't work Debbie not only in looking at holistically at all the kids in terms of being picked up in the dark versus dropped off in the dark because of the separation but also because of cost it just became it just it wasn't Hannibal couldn't make it happen and I think we can easily get you know sort of feedback from very close by neighbors who currently have middle and high schools bussing together middle and high schools together where I went to school job even in the 90s I'm not sure they still are region fourteen up in Woodbury and it was fine and even back then I'm sure now they can probably implement kind of what they do with the younger grades or at-risk a near where the fifth graders are in the form of the glass like that sort of stuff wasn't implemented in the 90s but I'm sure that our situation here or something like that could be done and we have something nowadays called video I mean if there's there's right I think this proactive things we deal with you know SEL and behavior and and those are concerns legitimate concerns that people have that I think there's there's a lot of proactive things we can do to address that and more questions and again it's not it's not an unusual configuration at all so um there is a motion a second in motion is there any other discussion okay so seeing none let's proceed to vote so all in favor of approving the healthy school start times plan to be implemented two years from now in the year 2022 um signify by saying aye hi I okay all opposed okay so vote was unanimous thank you very much everyone and thank you Jen for such a great presentation thank you guys for being here yeah the whole committee thank you very yeah I was a really thank you to everybody on the committee Rosa I think just as a matter of course we ought to make sure we get a regular report on as a standing report in our board agendas maybe not every month but as we're progressing so that we as a board can hear you know how some of the further research and details are progressing very similar to the other reports we get and and I think I did and I would propose we start with every other month yeah that's gonna do all right so moving on we have a discussion impossible motion of the 2021 school calendar so dr.
Helen thank you mr krepo not to beat a dead horse that I will on the project manager position I just want to bring up a couple of things first of all as far as I know during the meetings that the town council and Board of Ed had with respect to the Board of Ed budget those budget workshops there was no discussion about this project manager position and I know this because Tony had never hadn't heard of it so I you know the more I think about it the less happy I am with the way that's the Town Council whether we have to work collaboratively or not I don't find that to be a very collaborative approach to the Board of Ed I don't at all objects the concept of a project manager but since the Town Council is the one that decides who you know who gets which projects whether it's a PPC or the Board of Ed and on the Board of Ed side right now we're kind of you know keeping things as small in terms of projects as we can because of the school modernization committee work you know I just don't see why there's a need for it other people have said this but I also don't see why there's a need for this position at this time modernization is going to take I would defer to Andrew on this but you know we're years away from doing any sort of big project that would require a project manager I think even though I understand that overall it benefits all of the projects throughout the town but even so at the time we're going to undertake a significant project like a new school or a renovate as new or whatever I will bet right now that we'd be hiring a separate owners representative for that project and so you know I I don't that that argument that we're going to be modernizing our facilities and so we should bring on this project manager now does not wash with me but so I I don't know whether there is something that we can do to push back on this $42,000 $42,500 obligation I mean if we have agreed to do it then I guess we are stuck with it but I I don't see how the Board of Ed agreed to do and again I I'm just I'm so unhappy with the process on this and I don't believe that we as a board have to just sort of roll all over in the name of collaborating with the Town Council that's the end of my speech thank you very much thank you mrs.