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part of the conversation as we're ending was reminded that this is to help with a lot of vacancies and a lot of turnover that we've had in our paraprofessionals that are impacting our special ed programs our ess programs and then the thought was well we have bus aides that uh service uh that are on buses just for our special ed programs and that we should be in an equitable move should be moving our bus aides from the grade b to grade f to align with the lower of those three tiers of those specialized positions which that would be the resource special ed pair provisional and so that would be moving them from the 1215 up to the 1372 position as well one thought just to make sure everybody was on the same page and just for clarification that when what commonly happens now is right now they're all paid the same our specialized our resource are paid the same and so positions people will get hired into the resource position but then a vacant position in one of our specialized program specialized programs and we'll just move the resource over to the specialized because that is more iep and more needed and more impactful on the student and so we could have other solutions to solve the other vacancy but now that we're creating a differential in pay it would be unfair to move someone hire them at a lower move them and have them do the job of the hire and not pay them so we're requesting that uh paraprofessionals who work 10 consecutive days in the specialized or ess behavior technician position will get paid at the rate of those positions so they might be able to fill in a day or two here or there but if it's going to be somewhat permanent we need to pay them at the higher rate so mr hicks we have uh several vacancies that had not been filled correct so how many did we have for this year that were not filled madam president member source think bill um i don't know the exact number but if i was to estimate off the top of my head that would probably be um around 60 to 70 pair of professional jobs that are not filled and i think i remember i think i remember you saying something about 63.

um so this does come with a small little cost not all of them take it but we through the professional development the training the curriculum needed and the planning they're mostly there and so we're asking to this move to the calendar so we know they're all there all the time um some assumptions just to make sure i know um i talked to the board a lot about you should know um some things and maybe some board members have been interviewed by our auditors and um i do say you should know what is our budget we could make up any number of students and create a huge budget uh and do whatever and then have the have a lot of debts to pay at some point with that so that would be bad so what you see is a budget that's looking at it from this year a growth of 400 students previously a couple presentations ago you saw mr shipman make a presentation i think if i saw he had about 600 elementary kid increasing about 85 high school kid increase so almost 700 increase we are not budgeting that we would have that full increase one his projections are normally through the whole year so you have to we only get funded through the first hundred days so not all would materialize as an adm increase and but we do know that with our approximately 800 student loss now from last year to this year some are coming back a lot of it's covert related we're not going to have a missed year if you're talking 50 000 students statewide we do believe some will be coming back we do have growth but we're just not planning on all of it coming back so we're taking a more conservative approach and moving it down to it's actually a little less than half of what uh the growth um would dictate in that sense we do have the increased base support level so inflation funding is supporting uh increase in pay uh revenue uh the final 20 for 2020 increase which was paid last year but paid in the classroom site fund we gave the raise in the current year out of mno and so i just don't want to get that double counted so i try to make sure that the teachers and everybody understands that i'm going to include it in the revenues but i'm also going to include the expense of it because we already gave the raise last year and i don't want to give a raise twice for getting only one payment we continue to see the restoration of district additional assistance so even though the budget the state budget is not done right now they have per statute that they've already approved was the restoration of capital coming into this year so we anticipate that increase happening and as you know with the retention stipend we're getting federal funds supporting um and they're also supporting some capital increase so i will also mention that at the end of the slide show too as i talked about classroom site fund that increase going from nine thousand to ten thousand five hundred so it's an increase of eight hundred dollars in our performance pay fund uh for a total of forty five hundred dollars um and so i know that the performance uh pay performance plan um is being worked on for next year and still has that piece to go through so you'll still be looking at that for approval but this is just the funding associated with it and then we're looking at an increase of 700 for eligible teacher of the 700 of funds 11 and 13 for a total of 6 000.

thank you amy can i get a second please second thanks joe britton uh any questions or comments i just want to make a comment that um uh policy nine three two one is already um in established but this the board of education workshop sessions it should read is 93212 i know that bylaw 4-3 was included as a reference um and i just want to also make a point that um in that by-law that we're not approving because it's already existing for us um just that there is no city clerk um any longer that there's a town clerk so i don't know if we can make that um that simple just word change and that bylaw um that's that kind of precludes the um the workshop sessions portion of this i don't have it it does rachel i have a question i don't have it in front of me what was the city clerk referenced for was that for a notice it was just a notice of meetings yes kim can we do can we substitute town clerk for city clerk in that instance since we don't have a city clerk anymore without having to re-move it yeah i think i would call that a scrivener's error maybe you know i just want to make sure that the town clerks the appropriate governmental official to get the notice in the absence of a city clerk i would need to check yes i i believe okay okay then yes then i think rachel's right i think we should make that change um so there's a motion on the floor here with the with a second um in that correction that we're talking about we'll come back on the second read is that right okay so i'll do a roll call for the accepting of the first read here uh joe britton aye rachel chaleski aye kate canetta aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich genelli yes thank you kathy molinero hi thanks kathy al russo hi amy spelino hi all right thank you very much motion carries um al can you read action item f performances administrative regulations formulation adoption and amendment exhibit 21-66-84 motions the board of education except for first reading policy 9313 administrative regulations formulation adoption and amendment is recommended by the policy committee and i have a second on that please second uh joe da silva got that one uh any questions or discussion okay seeing none joe britton aye rachel tuleski i kate canetta i joe da silva aye catherine hodgson hi rich genelli yes kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy smolino hi thank you motion carries uh we are down to action item g um amy could you read that one please sure thank you uh i make a motion that the board of education approved the march 2021 operating results and analysis general funds grant projects in accordance with let's see we have exhibit 21-65 on page 47.

sit back and think about this one through our goal next year and we have been planning for all students returning at each of our building for a full day five days a week back to some normalcy um over the break in the past while we've been working with the state legislators we've been working with um the um the units department at the state at the state level because we looked at modules um we uh been working with and we hired the architect to do assessments real-time assessments so that we had good data because my goal was to bring it here tonight so that you could hear it and hopefully we'll be able to alert parents into what we're doing the city has been part of going out and looking at sites with us we have um kevin has a presentation he's been shepherding this project through uh we've been measuring and re-measuring you know um measured twice and cut once we've been doing that we found some discrepancies so there's um there's a quite a bit of work here a lot of um support from um from the town a lot of support from our principals who have been um just um a tremendous group giving us feedback uh going through here so kevin i don't want to spend time doing i think you could talk us through and leave it open for the board for questions okay kevin are you there i am i just had to unmute myself thanks dr style so there are um two slides that courtney was going to open with to address on the application uh so that the board and the community can see where the money has been allocated and how that those monies were um submitted we could do that yeah so courtney go ahead okay thanks oh it's on um kevin if you're what's up it's up there recording okay carrie you can put the presentation back up there we go there it is go ahead courtney we just thought we'd combine it into one i'll be brief because i know this is a long a long meeting tonight um okay gary could go to the next oh no i don't see the um there we go okay so this is just a reminder about the sr one two and three funds so what i was going to talk about briefly is sr2 so we know that one is the cares act funds that we mostly spent down this year the sr2 is as dr sal mentions about 11.2 million and we just submitted the application and then on the third just briefly i'll tell you the sr3 what the american rescue plan funding that was um signed into law in march it was a 1.1 billion came to connecticut of which 995 million is to the leas which of which will be a recipient of and it was provided by the governor to the ga general assembly the plan ah two days ago so we should be hearing back soon and that's that third line for the additional uh 25.17 projected uh million and when kevin goes into the next few slides about the reopening plan and talks about the money it's mingling all of these funds so as we get more refined in the sr3 plan we look forward to talking to the board about you know the breakout that's related to reopening and then the other buckets and okay you can go to the next slide care i'll be quick and this is just a summary high high level summary of the esser to grant that we just submitted which is um you know the four categories learning loss mitigation family and community engagement school safety and social emotional supports and then technology supports so you can see how this breaks out we have additional detail we look forward to sharing with the board in the near future once our grant is approved but that's for salary and benefits mainly a lot of that salary benefits and learning loss mitigation is for teachers and then to enable us to expand safely as kevin's going to talk about in the reopening plan as well as some curriculum supplies and social emotional training the family and community engagement is for some family liaison support as well as um supporting families through uh family visit stipends um communication and parent support tools and then there's a big amount in the school safety and social emotional that's for our counselors as you remember we shifted about 3.5 million from our original board request into sr2 so that accounts for a portion of that and then also some facility lease costs that um kevin's going to go into related to some needs to expand um our space and technology supports so any well we'll be talking to you in further detail just wanted to give you a really broad overview again it was submitted on monday so we look forward to hearing back from the state about the application thanks kevin thanks courtney okay we're ready for the next like hour thank you so so one let let me just start out by saying i i just want to acknowledge all of the work that has been done by the cabinet on this and so um one everyone on this call in the cabinet uh principals around the district extended cabinet just want to say kudos to carawanda who's been really helping us organize the planning around this and i mention the entire cabinet because the the four phases that are on the screen right now uh quite frankly we have gone through this multiple times in the last school year and the one element that has been missing from this is the budgeting and you'll you'll you'll understand what i like what i'm talking about when we talk about the impact from this planning and so let me just start from left to right one as part of this plan and to get all of our kids back to in-person learning i know i i know this is let me just first start out by saying this has been a priority for uh doctor style from the beginning you know it's it's been a struggle and you'll understand uh the logistics and the challenges of trying to make this happen district-wide um in subsequent slides so first as a district we reviewed um our space capacity at every school every classroom in the district uh we have done this several times now uh through various you know variant points when we've been trying to re-enter schools so this is nothing new for us and then uh the next step where it says what if analyze we have reevaluated on our space capacity um given a new cdc recommended three-foot social distancing guidelines and so with that new information needless to say um that provided you know some additional capacity for us and opportunity for us as a district um as as many of us know um the district has been afforded or we're anticipating being afforded um essa 2 what we're calling asset 2 and s3 funds and we've already planned and quite frankly we've already playing essa 2 and s3 monies and looking to leverage those funds what the priority being to reopen our school safely for all of our students and staff but with with that budgeting of course we've been also assessing a financial and academic impact um as courtney had outlined earlier you know the the state outlined four priorities for the district um to to use these funds um when we certainly been assessing all of those realities as part of this planning and forecasting and then last but not least and that brings us here this evening we want to provide an update for the board our staff who was anxiously awaiting i'm sure uh and then of course also the community we know our parents and families and students have been anxiously awaiting uh what the return is going to look like indeed if we are returning i know dr sal has already mentioned this unequivocally we will be back in our buildings in september fully so here are some of the problems and challenges that have been in front of us i don't think this is going to come as a surprise to anyone who's watching this evening and that is space right and so with the social distancing guidelines in place it limits our classroom capacity um six to 12 schools and so our secondary schools did not have the space specif particularly to house students in the cafeteria and so i know our families you know their preference would be that their high school students their high school children can be in school all day for a full day and our challenge continues we continue to maintain that we can't have the students in the cafeteria and and feed them safely with the social system and guide social distancing guidelines in place additionally at our k5 schools we do not have enough teaching sections to accommodate the enrollment guidelines and so if we're going to have social distancing guidelines we just don't have enough classrooms to address and as this community knows um you know we have talked about a need to expand particularly at ellsworth building at annex and so we'll have you know a little bit relief there and building out more classrooms and so we have experienced the the high enrollment in the district these last couple of years the social distancing um just exacerbates those challenges and so i'll just speak a little bit more to that and so solution is our next step and this is about an investment in facility upgrades uh purchasing furniture um leases um in the district and outside of the of the school community and then of course additional staff um and so and so just to expand upon that a little bit more uh we are looking at purchasing desks and i'm um you know there's a part of me that's almost uncomfortable talking about the type of desk that we have to order because i'm thinking about the slide that cara showed which she talked about more traditional desks in classrooms and so we will there's a need for us as a district to purchase desks that are no more than 28 inches wide so that we can get our kids back in school safely now the the benefit is that as a district we will have an upgrade in our school furniture these same desks can be put together to you know promote cooperative learning and grouper and group activities so those are good things for sure but it is a significant investment see that on the next slide um you know what we are estimating um this the furniture investment to be but just to give the board and the community uh even greater a greater idea of what this can look like our middle schools and our high school will need desk instead of cafeteria tables um in which all of our all of our socially distanced and we will have student desk in our cafeterias in order to spread our students out into and to be able to realize the capacity numbers um outweigh the star uh and so and so that's one um two at the high school specifically possibly even one of our middle schools uh we're looking at tent leases um i did say tent leases leasing tents um so like the same type of tents that you would see at banquets etc um those type of tents some of them closed some of them open but we're looking at tents leasing tents um so that for the overflow from our cafeteria particularly at the high school um with the social discipline guidelines in place we can only get 300 to 350 students in the cafeteria we are exploring on the idea of using em spaces um in the school and then also looking at having courtyard and and also um evaluating the idea of also having tents in the tennis courts uh we need to work with the city to just make sure we can do that safely so we don't damage uh damage the courts themselves um but we've already um get we're looking for some concrete um estimates from the tip company to see if they can put a floor down um that is safe enough not to ask so not to damage the tennis courts additionally we also would like to uh we want to continue to maintain the lease that we have at sacred heart for overflow um and also to maintain um some of our classes that we have there now but we're also looking to sign a lease agreement with st joseph school in brookfield connecticut and i'll certainly talk about that a little bit more because i'm sure that got a lot of people's attention activity um and so staffing leasing facility upgrades uh we will need to commit to if we're going to commit to reopen schools which we are um it's going to require additional staff furniture lease agreements etc and so we are recommending that we move kindergarten classes next year incoming kindergarten classes be moved from south street elementary school stadley rough elementary school and ellsworth elementary school and those classrooms which would add up to 11 11 sections in total be reassigned to brookfield danbury high school will look to switch to an eight period day and add um and add positions to maximize classroom capacity while addressing graduation requirements and just kind of overall impact if we're going to safely over to safely reopen our schools in the fall the district will place kindergarten certified staff at the brookfield site because it will be a one grade a single grade focus site for the district for these three schools i'll go into a little bit more detail on why these schools have been chosen we will also need to commit to this lease to accommodate at least to accommodate 200 plus students and then the staff that's going that that will be there to help um teach the kids and and then we will need um to purchase furniture about the cafeterias and classrooms k-12 and tents for cafeteria overflow and uh carrick can you go to the next slide please so just some rough numbers for the board in the community estimates and so for staffing and supplies we are looking at hiring 15 teachers at the high school level and asking two existing staff members to teach an additional class to address graduation requirements we will need to hire 20 teachers for our elementary schools including special education including two special education i'm sorry that 22 teachers include special education and esl teachers two pps staff for the site as well and whatever other support staff we might need for the brookfield expansion and then of course we'll need to outfit all those classrooms in brookfield and any additional classes we'll be adding on in the district which again i'll speak to a little bit further on in supplies and additional classrooms added district-wide um at an estimated cost of 3.4 million dollars gleason furniture um and so least intense for the high school and the middle school to address safety um while maintaining social distance and purchasing desk at the elementary and secondary schools to accommodate social distance and committing to the lease will come to an estimated 1.8 and a half million dollars last but not least transportation um we it looked it appears we will need at least 10 additional buses for the fall in which five will be needed just for the brookfield expansion so students won't have to be on those rides too long and then five additional buses will also be needed for overall growth in the district these costs are based on current pricing from from the transportation authority um this this is this comes at a total cost of um five million nine hundred thousand and eighty three dollars um and and so i i just wanna go back to um in summary and i i want to revisit why we've identified south street ellsworth and stadly rough as schools to move those kindergarten sites to brookfield and then why kindergarten um specifically so so one kindergarten specifically one um i think as a as a district um and there's a many different ways we could certainly could have approached this but we were having a hard time with the idea of pulling students from a grade where they were moving up or graduating from one of our elementary schools we were having a hard time trying to come up with a with a protocol to pull any other grades uh from a school and why they would be pulled um dr sal had mentioned this previously in previous meetings um i the board i think um is aware that we have sister school arrangements uh for enrollment and registration purposes and so just for clarification a sister school arrangement is for an exam for example um ellsworth and great plain are two sister schools in our district and so if ellsworth is experiencing high enrollment in a certain grade that that student that student in that family once we have exhausted all of the classrooms classroom spaces at ellsworth and if their space at great plain uh we will then transfer those students or that student that family to great plain those sister school arranges exist all throughout our elementary schools and so we will continue to use um exercise those arrangements to handle enrollment and enrollment increases throughout the district what some also an additional clarification on the elementary editions uh we don't need to hire new teachers for the brookfield expansion we need to hire 16 additional teachers that will be pop that that will backfill certain spaces throughout the district so for example um this board is aware that we open up granville the granville academy this year for our pre-k program those those classes previously were in great plain and haze town uh the district is looking to backfill those those classrooms with additional sections uh so we have the space um and so we'll be looking to uh bring on four sections in those two sections at each school next year kindergarten is one of them grade two is another grade and then um in stephanie's school i'm sorry at hayes town elementary school uh we'll bring in i believe it's grade two and grade four as well and so uh throughout the rest of the elementary schools we have 12 more schools i'm sorry 12 more ftes or teachers that will be looking to hire those those classrooms will be in um in in shelter rock we will be adding an additional section south street will be adding one section we will be adding two sections at stably rough uh we'll be adding a section at park avenue we'll be adding a section um at i've already mentioned haze time we'll be adding a section at uh pembroke uh we'll be adding two sections that great playing two sections at hayes town um i may be missing one uh but the the the point being we will be adding sections at multiple sites throughout the district and elementary schools in addition to moving these 11 sections out of our district so that ellsworth which is already overcrowded to make sure that they can number one have space for their support staff because we were um we were maximizing in our attempt to maximize every space in that school uh we found when we were done with the exercise of what the reopening look would look like in the fall we realized at that point we did not have space for our support staff and we also we also did not have enough space to safely have our kids in the cafeteria on a daily basis for those of you who have been through ellsworth elementary school it happens to be one of our smaller cafeterias in the district we were also evaluating the idea of having a tent outside of ellsworth and then at that point just felt like it just was no longer appropriate to consider that as an option ellsworth would have been the only elementary school that would have needed a tent outside of its building to have kids uh safely safely social distance so so so first ellsworth was one of our first schools again as everyone on the board is aware we are looking at breaking ground on the annex building very soon and we're hoping that is going to be opened up in the in the fall of next year um so that we we thought number one it was also made sense to move this to move our kindergarten sections across town and then they would return and come back into the new building which is actually being outfitted for kindergarten classrooms south street uh we we this year um is the first year we have gone to three sections in every great since i've been here three sections in every grade level at south street um one of the classrooms and and so the principal at south street had four sections and two of her grades um we reduced that this going into this school year one of those classrooms was actually turned into a nurse's office because we needed a nurse's office for our um previously the nurse's office that was in the principal's office and with with covid and and trying to make sure we can have a safe space for kids we had to make sure the nurse's office was in a separate space it's actually appropriate space that it's in but it also took up a classroom and so that was you know one of one of the two reasons why we had to reduce the sections of the school there's still once there's still one classroom available at the building and so we will be looking to take advantage of that one um however with that said when going through the exercise of trying to open up south street for next year again we notice um and at that school they're already challenged with space for support staff challenged with space for their cafeteria they too are one of the smallest cafeterias in the district um so this is one this is again another reason why south street was identified as a school that was a logic that was logically to be moved to the st joseph brookfield site last but not least sadly rough um it's sadly interestingly enough number one it's one of our bigger elementary schools in the district but what we found throughout you know many walkthroughs in the building is that the classrooms are just much like ellsworth oddly shaped um and a lot of our classrooms could not accommodate the 22 with social distancing or even 20 with social distancing in a number of these grade levels and so we were again we went through the exercise with the principal looking at what it would look like to open up the building in the fall we found ourselves um looking at uh taking over this space in the in the in in the library media space which is actually very big um he'll be able to accommodate many of his uh support staff but then we also found like the other schools we would have needed to take his music classroom his art classroom and other in other available spaces um to not only add the two sections that he he still needs um but and then we would have been compromising space for his specials and as dr sal has mentioned a number of times we want to try to get back to as normal school as possible and we after reevaluating um his the position at stanley rough we thought it was best to also move his sections onto brookfield elementary school um it also works out geographically of the three schools stanley rough happens to be the closest ones to brookfield the other ones are not so conveniently located to brookfield but it does help release some of the challenges that we have with space at south street and in ellsworth specifically kevin uh one thing too for the board um maybe i didn't say that this is a full day of school um if particularly the secondary with the challenges for the cafeteria and spaces at the high school also just um it would be 13 classes at uh saint joe's is that correct or 12.

i don't know why that's sticking out so i was wondering if if that was still true to form it's true to form and i can get you an exact number if you'd like but it's a very large number um of those vacancies right now and uh madam president members board just to clarify i believe the 63 number was already projected for next year um not currently in hand or that might have been the exact amount on that day we do also we will contract to bring in uh paris also and so we have contracted up to anywhere around 40 at that time but we're paying a much higher cost when we contract out and so this we believe will create a better system in place to fill those vacancies uh continuing on in the special ed world of the ess world we're also looking to create a contract agenda for occupational therapists physical therapists and speech language pathologists of three thousand dollars per year this would not be funded out of mno we would move this to the classroom site fund with the passage of um sb1139 it collapsed the buckets but it also expanded the usage of classroom siphon allowed student support services and so these are now eligible we cannot take some of our current mno equivalent because there still is an ounce of planting in there so we part of our standards is to make sure that it's legal and and sustainable um and so we were not able to move um the existing over but we are since this is a brand new one we're recommending a 3 000 for per year for each one of those the goal on that is to be competitive and in the marketplace be able to bring back some of i believe i believe we have 28 that we outsource in those groups currently right now and we pay a lot more when we outsource and so if we continue to increase our current funds uh current compensation to those now we would be able to retain the ones we have and then also hopefully attract new ones in so that we could reduce our outsourcing our reliance on outsourcing those positions as well and so that would be recommended to come through the classroom site fund the current staff and i'll talk a little bit about classroom site fund a little bit a few minutes or next slide maybe the current staff were also we do have i think it's roughly 55 positions funded through mno which we call the m o equivalent i think there's about 80 positions total from other funding sources as well that receive what we call the mno equivalent of 301 and that is way back when when prop 301 was first passed back in 2000 um it crea uh the definitions were not fully defined and so we were paying some positions out of that um the law changed or the attorney general came out with specifics that said you can't pay them out of that so we moved them out instead of taking away the funding from those people we grandfathered him and just said we'll pay you out of mno and so we called it the mo no equivalent and so what we're also recommending from this group is to continue to mirror our classroom site fund so the emino equivalent for those 55 positions will go up from 9 000 now up to 10 500 in accordance with what we're recommending for classroom site fund for our certified staff as well we're also recommending two calendar moves so we have two dispatchers and two routing technicians a routing technician one in rounding tech nation two they're both on 229 day calendar we asked them to work extra days and it mirrors almost a 248 calendar right now so almost no cost as well but if we keep asking them to work the same calendar why don't we just move them to that calendar so this is a request to move the calendar also move the ess specialist from the 197 day calendar to the 222 day calendar they also get additional day pay up to 20.

so that's the increase going up from 9000 to 10 500 for our certified eligible certified staff so basically our all of our classroom teachers get this um so three percent retention stipend one point three percent on the base and also for the classroom site fund going up fifteen hundred dollars which is just under a three percent equivalent on their average salary another change that has happened i think a couple board members heard this during a cip presentation which was a change with our dual enrollment so right now students that pay through our maricopa community college district that sign up and pay tuition and complete a course they get credit and they pay for that that the community college we refunds or um reimburses the district back some of those costs so the cost of operating the program since we're operating the program students are getting the tuition at a low rate and able to as you heard in one high school since you could come out with an associate's degree and the district received some funds so currently right now just looking out over the last four years we did a little analysis to see we we've been purchasing supplies supplemental curriculum and devices has been the number one and it's really random there's no continued use a lot of times it looks like a high school principal wait until there's a sum of money in there and then they'll decide to use it and then they wait a couple years and then they buy something big what we're proposing is to take 45 of the funding that comes in and move it to a teacher agenda part of this personally i think is a good idea just because i think four years ago the requirements changed from the american community college districts of teachers and their qualifications and they actually had to start paying and it was more difficult to be certified to be a dual enrollment teacher so it got a little bit more difficult and they had to have a little bit more skin in the game and so this is aligning to a payment structure uh providing agenda based on the number of paid and completed students so at the end of the year we would work with our research department to find out how many students had been enrolled and paid and then how much the maricopa county dollars community college districts mainly rio salado has uh paid back the district and we would take and we would make uh these pro these um agendas to those teachers of record in the system and so they would be making getting back some of the money which we've already heard some positive comments that they believe will help drive enrollment and incentivize teachers to want to because a lot of times right now you'll ask them and they'll just say no i don't want to have to go pay my own money to take the test or go get trained and do all of that so there's some barriers and we hope that this would help eliminate some of those barriers so that we could increase some of those dual enrollment opportunities across the district so just in total um i'd like to go through just uh really i don't think i could say the word quickly anymore since i've been talking for a while uh but uh just summarizing our inflation um even though there's an increase we had a decrease this year and so i have to account for that decrease and also same with the bridge where the money came in somewhere else we already gave the mno raise and so i account for that on the revenue side but then i take it away on the expense side this proposal recommendation in front of you does have a district additional assistance transfer so we currently transfer about 1.2 million dollars this would increase it to 1.7 million out of capital into mno to support this and i'll talk about that on the next slide benefits the health insurance i mentioned how that was going up our certified staff this is the increase and decrease does not have the 1.3 percent but just to staffing we do have a reduction of staffing embedded in this is we are moving 12 teachers into the esser funds for our high school to be staffed because based on formula we would have also got rid of those so keep those teachers around move them into high school to help provide a better more robust high school environment classified this is a reduction of 10 of the paraprofessionals to help support the program because if we increase the amount everybody's getting right now they're vacant positions we can't fill them let's get rid of get them off our books and let's use that to increase the funding for our special ed program our ess program there's no additional admin increases the other changes were all those emino uh mou changes and all the other special ed changes that are just talked about i like to set aside a little bit of money for a prop 206 so even though that happens in january and it's not a full year's amount we're given a 1.3 percent increase i don't know what the increase is going to be in january but if it's 2 we'll need additional funds because our grade a through d right now are all the same at fifteen cents and so if that goes up to twelve forty that's greater than a one point three percent increase and i need some funds to cover that so i just do an estimate it's just all pure guessing but i'd rather set aside some money than spend all money and not be prepared for it the estimated cost of a one point three percent increase is the two million dollars so you have the almost three million dollars um with the transfer and we have the three million thirty so it leaves us about a hundred eleven thousand dollar cushion um in our recommendation from the capital side um so one of the things we also talked about as a group is um i get a little nervous when we keep just going over the capital and moving money to mno because those are permanent moves and so we talked about as a group and in the iba team to can we put a cap on them out we transfer so this shouldn't be uh forever and so we looked at the max transfer would be a 20 of our capital allocation that daa allocation which means that at no point should we for the next year's calculation would be 2.3 million dollars so going up to the 1.7 is still under um the 80 percent and then if you just to um so you could also see here how much we're projecting to give the school allocation it is based on student council that gets adjusted and then department allocations the department allocations is all requests going in that have been vetted and filtered and all of it coming out of capital we do believe some of these technology will be moved over to our esser funds and some of the federal funds related to kovitz so that'll free up so this is almost i don't want to say worst case scenario but worst on a financial that we could still fund all the requests going forward and the transfer going over to emino there are just a few considerations that we talked about and just the classroom site fund it went up a lot so over 8 million dollars was going into it so that that is part of going up fifteen hundred dollars is a lot uh for it to go up we talked about some other districts have looked at providing one-time classroom site funding and then leaving their amounts the same but i teach that's just two different sources on a pay stub that they still see so you're still giving the full and then taking away that could happen to us next year is this goes down we are projecting uh so almost 200 of the 733 dollars per pupil is one time in nature we did our projections to think that we probably could keep it at 10 500 for two years if it doesn't drop by more than 150 so we we did some modeling to say hey what if it drops but not fully we still have some balances in there that will continue this money has to stay in those funds we can't transfer it out and use it somewhere else so i just wanted to convey that we were looking forward because one of our standards is sustainable prop 208 funding is going to come into next year's iba process and so we will not see the money next year but there will be discussion about that with i know that's at the arizona supreme court right now and so we don't know exactly where that lands but there will be some funding i know that there's also some legislation out there to create an alternative tax for small businesses that would avoid an individual income tax that would then reduce the revenues that this generates we also have current legislation so they're still not done with the legislative session you heard us at the at the summer school presentation talk about there's plans for uh learning loss bill with the state to provide some additional funding for school districts for summer school or learning loss we think something's going to happen if i look at the april jlbc monthly budget update which i read yesterday has a projection based on all everything that's currently in statute and all funding commitments and all revenue projections shows at the end of fiscal year 2024 the state will have a cash surplus of 6.1 billion dollars they only spend 12 billion dollars so they would have 50 cash surplus of an annual budget um that's a lot we know that they're going to they're working on a tax cut right now i don't know how many billion that is going to be um they don't want to give more to schools because of prop 208 so i don't think we're going to see a lot on that side we are asking them right now which will affect this current year which is to restore the cuts to the distance learning loss um so we're at around two million dollars that they cut us this year for learning loss we're asking that that be fully restored um i've asked for a lot of different things i don't think anything will happen so i'm not going to share all the wist list of things that i email our legislators about but it is still something to consider if something happens that is that we need to alter this we would come back with a recommendation to amend this or something that's additional we would come back and ask the board if there's any legislation that changes to change it going forward we would communicate that to the board as well i'll stand for any questions comments all right i'll go first um and this i i know i've been pretty vocal about it so just and i understand that i'm i don't have a seat at the table and i'm just one board member but i do struggle with our special ed teachers um just thinking for what they do as far as writing the ieps and having before school meetings after school meetings all the special behaviors and things that they have to endure in their work day i just really feel strongly i i'd like to see them um something more than what we're offering as far as it looks like i know you're saying fifteen hundred dollars um but really it comes down to about 500 because they're gonna they're gonna keep that extra 500 rather than drop down to a thousand i understand that but then looking at i'm not saying that any particular group is worth more than another um at all when i go through these but just based on your presentation as far as addenda's go i you know i'm seeing addenda for four thousand dollars for dsp and the and ctso sponsor addenda 3000 otp slp 3000.

thank you very much okay joe da silva's got the second there any questions or comments okay seeing none joe britton aye rachel celestin aye canetta i joe da silva hi catherine hodgson hi rich genelli yes kathy molinaro hi al russa yes amy spelina hi all right thank you very much motion carries gladys we've just um taken care of all of the action items there so we're at item number 10 on the agenda here okay just go ahead and complete that thank you for caring and even i had a little accident no problem at all so the academy model is under item 10 i don't know if that goes to dr casimiro yes dr casmir we have a presentation i know we've talked about this before but we're starting to come together just for the board's um background um the edge specs we had some drafts that we sent over the city and i guess they'll work through what they need to do operationally and then obviously they'll come back to the board and to work with respects but what you're going to see tonight is sort of the um the dream that uh and the reality is starting to come together in terms of on paper and some possibilities so with that kara can you please thank you dr thank you uh board um just to preface this uh presentation just a little bit i just want to let you know i'm having some laptop issues my laptop is not holding the charge i'm on 7 i'm gonna give this my all and make it a nice uh succinct presentation um and i do have a backup plan kelly will help me out and i'll call in from my phone to kind of walk through it if i if i happen to uh to die before this is over um so let me let me pull up the presentation so um we've been on quite a journey together uh this year with regards to and even last year with regards to the idea and the concept of an academy model um and i i i can't tell you how thankful i and proud that i am of uh the board high school administration middle school administration uh central office staff that have really come together to to support this new vision i feel like we have a education angels out there i keep calling them that have been having some wonderful conversations uh and and planting seeds all over not just the district but now the community and there's a lot of great chatter about this um in terms of providing opportunities for students um and and making sure that we're well positioned for the future and that our students are are going to be ready for uh even 21st century and beyond so i just want to thank everybody for their involvement this is really just a a summary to kind of wrap um there's several more um a couple more several more presentations between the portrait of the graduate work and the graduation requirements and a few others that i'll talk about towards the end of the presentation but as we're kind of nearing the end of the of the year and with the approval and passing of the um of the academy at the uh council level uh we just wanted to kind of give a short wrap about where we are with the work and what are the next steps so i want to remind everybody about the vision and mission that was adopted um by the community by the board and by all of our stakeholders i went back and i was i was looking at the words on here and uh they really kind of resonated with the work that's that has happened this year so danbury public schools aspires to advance all learners to their highest potential and the danbury public schools in partnership with families and the community provides transformational learning experiences designed to nurture thoughtful and prepared graduates and i think that there is a large group of us that have really taken this vision and mission to heart when it was revised and really thinking through what does that look like in our school system and how do we make good on this promise and i believe that the career academies and this movement at the secondary level will deliver on that so just a reminder of those who may be joining or watching a board member for the first time aboard a presentation for the first time tonight and a career academy concept is a a design it's a it's a concept that to prepare students for both college and careers they are connected together this is really about career connected learning for all their schools within the schools that link students with peers teachers and community partners in a structured environment that fosters academic success the three hallmarks or key elements of a career academy concept are a small learning community so how do we take our very large high school and make it personalized i know there are some comments about overcrowding we hear that all the time in the dairy public school system and that is true and there are some ways to mitigate that several years ago with the idea of the ninth grade academy the idea was to to to take that very first transitional year which is very critical and to break it down into a smaller learning community and to really build relationships with students focus on social emotional work um and to make sure that our students and teachers are able to cover some things that are unique to to ninth graders and learners and denver high school has done an amazing job with developing that model out the career academy and and the pathways take that to the next level it's kind of uh learning small learning community 2.0 um in addition to the small learning community this is about college proper preparation uh through the form of sequential curriculum and it has a career theme so this is not just about careers we are preparing students for college with an added bonus of helping them to focus in on a career and explore that career and learn what it is that they like for themselves and to be able to make more informed choices in the future um another part of the career academy concept is this advisory board um that's very critical we saw this down in nashville we've learned about another school system out in nebraska one that we hope to visit in the near future that is actually supposed to be uh maybe even doing a little bit of a better job in some areas than nashville but this idea that there's an advisory board that's uh consists of community members business partnerships uh strategic partners to help us employers higher education so with wescon and local institutions in the community to help us build these programs together um so that there's a feedback loop and a cycle of of information that continually improves the career academies um the this is uh should is uh has been presented a few times but this is the academy organizational structure so um while the building has been called at the summit has been called the career career academy um this is really about the academies at denbury high school and the summit location will house two of those cat academies and those are highlighted in the in the black outlined circles here so all students will go up to danbury high school and attend danbury high school and participate in the 9th grade career in college academy i have a slide that kind of outlines what happens during that that time period but we will have six academies overall again these two that are highlighted are the ones that will be at the summit so we will have the academy of information technology and cyber security and you can see the pathways that are are slated for this academy here some of these are can be amended as we continue to push through and work through these programs and pathways we may amend some of these to make sure that we're bringing the most advantageous um curriculum to our students that provides the greatest level of opportunity uh for for the future we have the academy of professional public services you can see those pathways our academy of scientific innovation and medicine which are really concentrating very heavily on right now as well as the academy of global enterprise and economics those will really need to be fleshed out first but we also have to bring these other ones online almost simultaneously but these are the two that we're focusing on um and these are actually going to serve as sort of a test model for development of these of the other academies we have the academy of art engineering design and the academy of communications and design and again there's a large amount of stem focused uh pathways that are here but also um some others perhaps more in the humanities and service industries uh and leadership so we're very excited that we are able to offer um we'll be offering uh many different pathways that will uh surely pique the majority of our students interests so we are excited about that so the ninth grade career academy when students come up to danbury high school everyone comes on the main campus um part of the the kind of the hallmark of the career academy is really this focus on this one semester exploratory course um that will focus on team building career and pathway research so what do all of these pathways what what can all of these offer what do what are the careers that are connected with these pathways what are the earnings potential what kind of education do you have to get to retain these um is it does that happen at a two-year technical school does it happen at a four-year school can it happen at either um what are the on-roads and off-ramps with the different career trajectories within these pathways as well um there's a focus on organizational and employability skills um how do you function in the in the workplace so there's some workplace learning and then the idea that there's a digital literacy and also financial literacy so as students are learning about different careers um we put them through their paces of understanding what it takes in the real world to to um uh in terms of income in terms of running households in terms of uh what types of futures that that they can have with different options um there is a career exploration fair this uh we saw that this was one of a very um important component to uh in nashville this is a very big deal they had hundreds and hundreds of folks coming in industry professionals representing um all different types of career pathways that would come in and there was booths and kids had an opportunity to talk and interview and um ask questions of for some pathways that they may be interested in and then of course an opportunity to uh to visit to visit at the college certain colleges of college level so um making sure that students actually get their feet on campus and they feel what that that is like and they begin to see themselves down these uh down these pathways and these heading and down these roads um so beyond the let's move my toolbar out of the way so beyond the academics so um clearly students will still be taking all the college preparatory there's advanced placements all of those opportunities will still exist um but in addition to that the beyond the academics there are other preparations that come along with the the college and with the career i'm sorry the academy model again we talked a little bit about ninth grade um and that focus would be on college careers college fairs and college visits they participate in exploration course and they eventually choose their pathway in the spring and they apply to a pathway under a particular academy that is usually happens by a lottery process so students identify what pathways they're interested in first choice second choice third choice um and then they get placed in the lottery for selection to those i know there's a lot of questions around what happens if they don't get in um and and those are all answers uh good questions and answers that will develop sort of the the if then um on roads and off-ramps of how to get into a pathway and and what happens if you want to leave those are all to be developed in the in the near future um grade 10 industry field trips and guest speakers so try to get students out and to see some of these uh um what it looks like in the workplace in the pathways and the academies that they have chosen and to bring folks in to have conversations about what it is that they do and what makes their their job special or what are the hallmarks and features of their job students will at this point have at least one foundational course in their area in addition to the normal uh gen ed kind of core requirements and so they'll get a little taste of of the pathway but it's also wrapped around these great discussions and experiences that they have uh in their academy area 11th grade the goal is to do some job shadowing if possible get kids out or we can do some virtual job shadowing as well there's some there are some opportunities students would again kind of dabble in the next level of electives that would be offered in their pathway um so usually there's a there's a about two or three courses um so it could be four in a pathway sequence so um you know there's it's not like students are in uh you know 10 or 12 elective courses over the course of their four years they will take a progressive sequence of pathway electives um eventually leading to grade 12 where they'll complete a capstone project and potentially an internship the capstone is something now as part of the graduation requirements for all of the students in connecticut and so this would tie in nicely with opportunities for students to work with the advanced pathway electives for so for example an advanced engineering course um could be the course that the students chooses to do their capstone project in um so there's opportunities for all of us to be interdisciplinary and very meaningful and to happen in areas that the students have selected so the students have chosen these areas and that they're highly invested in the in the outcomes this also looks great by the way uh for applications for colleges uh being very competitive i had an amazing um interview with two students uh well actually they're two female engineers no longer uconn students that work at medtronics medtronics is one of the largest if not the largest medical technology uh device producer in the world they are in over 150 different countries well they hire exclusively in connecticut from uconn for their biomedical engineering program so that's one of the pathways that we'll have and one of the things that they told me that was critical when they got not only got into uconn um but in order to kind of be competitive with with their specific program in the biomedical engineering that they liked to see that they had already gone had done projects in the high school that put them through the design thinking um process where they went from the from the idea generation stage all the way to production of a prototype and that they had experience with that they've entered competitions and all of these types of things within the academy will prepare students um for that level of competitiveness uh regardless of if they want to choose that or not they will have had some some amazing experiences uh with with capstone and working with um some advanced uh projects within their pathways and uh just to give the board and and folks maybe at home and some of our teachers who i know have already begun to ask a lot of questions and get very excited about this dan and meg at the high school did a great presentation to kind of articulate um the vision and where we're going um but here we are in terms of the phases so we're going to be busy for the next couple of years looks like some of my my uh bullets jumped out of place here but that's okay um so this year was really all about down in phase one all really about concept uh development and planning so um what could this look like what should it look like how would we use the building that has been secured by by um by the board and by the city and and how do we make the best use of use of that seeking board approval this year to make sure that the direction of the academy is what is wanted we definitely felt the level of support not just with the board but now with the community and now the staff is getting we've got some pretty excited staff members that are asking lots of questions um the ed specs are obviously being developed and are in a final stages um there will be some continued tweaks as we visit some programs uh for example i would i'm gonna be getting up to um uconn and taking a few folks up to see their biomedical engineering lab to see what is it what's if we could build a lab what do we want to look like and what are what are the critical uh the critical components and any materials or equipment that we might need to make sure that our students have uh have good training have good access um we've engendered some some great community support and we're going to be doing a lot of something called academic positioning so taking stock of the current courses that we have that can serve this model well and then maybe having to um you know question some others right and so what are the courses that need to fall into these pathways and programs what will best serve our students in their future so we'll be doing a lot of uh you know delving into our current curriculum and um working to kind of bring some things online phase two which is in the 21 22 school year we're going to start with some central office and administrative training some of that has already has already begun we'll begin this summer working on budget development for these academies and programs i do want to point out i know there were some concerns about you know what is this going to cost you know we are still building regardless of if we do academy model or we open up a traditional high school we still have to open up a school so it's you know the same amount of staff that you need for a 1400 student school traditional school is the same staff you're going to need to open up a an academy because it's still 1400 students so you still need teachers you still need administrators still need nurses and and so on so um we have to do that anyways the students are here and we are going to not just help the overcrowding issue that we have to address our growing enrollment but we're also going to provide some incredible kick butt programming for our kids so um so there is a budget to that and that will be developed as we start to push on the details of of all these plans moving from the concept to the actual design and implementation um we'll start some teacher professional development next year mostly around project-based learning and really involving teachers in the design and development of some of these pathways um the following year in phase three continued lots of teacher training um partnership development really reaching out to the community so um we we we will have 24 different pathways all of those will need to have partners that will not only provide expertise but also potentially some some funding which will be wonderful and then this is really where a lot of systems change and alignment starts to kick in so really pushing on the way that we used to do things uh kind of breaking down status quo and re-envisioning the way that we formulate uh all of our systems i guess if you will you know how we schedule things the way that we approach master scheduling and development the way that we approach uh you know how how um students move through and complete the graduation requirements so it's going to involve some really mindset shifts and some changing and we're again working on some of that this summer will be beneficial for the team uh to kind of understand what what lies ahead and what levers we need to push to to forward this um this is also the year that we're really going to be focusing on grade nine because the next year in grade four we have to implement the grade 9 college and career exploration curriculum so there'll be a lot of work with teachers especially ninth grade teachers on how to deliver this what's important where's the focus um and what's and what is it that uh makes the hallmark for grade nine and then uh again in phase four this will be the first year where the ninth grade will get that curriculum and those students will begin their spring academy selection process and then at the same time once that process is complete we'll begin with a new master uh new master schedule development for the spring of 2024 so it'll be very exciting there's a tremendous amount of work that lies in between uh in particular uh phase three and phase four to get this off the ground and then in phase five that is our opening tenth graders will go to their chosen academies and pathways and we'll continue with the professional development for all i don't want to forget the middle school component in all of this we're going to be working on really developing this out rather soon this is a much smaller group 360 kids not any less important but a little bit at a smaller scale in terms of of the academy and so once we sort of get some lift off with the academy model itself which is quite extensive we're going to be focusing next year early on to really make sure that we're designing out this middle school component well so there's tons of action planning happening in the background so the group at denbury high school myself central office we met to do some action planning with the uh kneecap folks those are the architects from the nashville group and they really pushed us through the beginning development of an action plan our draft plan to keep us honest and hold us to a timetable this is just a little snapshot of page one of a 14-page document that we've already started um this is one of several action plans that need to be developed as we go we have graduation requirements we have portrait of the graduate we have a lot of curriculum work ahead of us will be um we've often referenced um financial braiding braiding of our finances well there's going to be a lot of braiding coming up uh very soon this summer and all of next year talking about the portion of the graduate work our curricular work our professional development and training the academy model and then the backwards design of how this changes our school system and what are the uh student outcomes that we expect at each level to make sure that we're graduating our students with this vision that we have that they're well prepared and that they're ready for they're ready for the world so what are we working on right now so sort of the immediate things that we're doing uh we're in the process of last-minute adjustments to the graduation requirements to meet the new vision the high school team will be along with some of our central office folks will be presenting on that in one of the upcoming board meetings very soon a lot of the graduation flexibilities will kind of be visible in these graduation requirement changes we're going to be identifying the courses that go along with these and how to align those to the portrait of the graduate and then begin action planning on all of that um there's a lot of kneecap training that's the national college and career coalition and we have a pretty intensive uh summer schedule with the master schedule development um it's different than how we traditionally do it and it involves a lot of a lot of shifting and a lot of understanding august we're going to be working on the program and pathway development again supported by folks from from knee cac and and people who work directly with nashville and that other school i talked about from grand island in nebraska and then september we'll start with some project-based learning and so how to shift traditional learning to more hands-on more experiential more interdisciplinary learning and to make sure that we have key components in our curriculum and start to gradually build those over time between now and when we expect to open so that we are practicing these things and we're learning and we're getting training in advance of of moving in this direction so that we're well prepared and that folks feel confident and that the teachers are heavily involved in the development of this as well which is really important um positioning of alignment courses i spoke a little bit about that developing the electives trying to push through all the industry credentials what it takes to achieve that we have a great head start on that but there's a lot of work involved and again developing our industry partnerships and working with some consultation on course developments or bringing in engineers so how how how do we circle back to those two engineers from medtronics to help us inform some of our curriculum and the types of things that students need to to learn to be successful and then development our grade 9 course and then again just final adjustments to the ed specs i did reach out to antonio and jay just to make sure i could make a few minor adjustments nothing to the nothing to the footprint of what was everyone saw but more along the lines of further delineating the design descriptions of those rooms so what do we want those labs to look like and and making sure we have the right equipment in there so um as we visit other sites uh and talk to um professionals and folks who have academies or pathways here and there that have developed um i'm asking for things like what are the crit what's the critical equipment um if you can have if there's two pieces of equipment that you need to have in a cna program which we already have or an engineering program what's a non-negotiable and making sure that those get into our ed specs so that uh when it comes time to develop or when we design these rooms that there's a full understanding of what needs to be in there for this to to really be done well um and not just uh you know the bare basics and so uh i'm getting ready to wrap here but um you know part of that ed spec on paper development is really how do you how do you take a vision and and capture it on a piece of paper so that someone else can interpret your vision and bring it to life and so um the idea we've spent a lot of time talking about what we want these learning spaces to look like and um while we have a lot of classrooms that look like this and there's always a time and a place and there's always spaces where um this is a pretty traditional looking classroom and setup there's certainly room and balance for some additional spaces that we think will be a little bit more enticing this is obviously a snapshot of our concept at the at the matrix or at the summit i should say and so when we think of learning spaces these are some of the pictures that we showed some of the architects that we worked at with friar to say look this is what we wanted to see happen we want to see classrooms that look differently we want to make sure that there's equipment in there that is representative unsimulated of what students would experience they get a real sense of what's happening bringing in this is an example of some specialized equipment which is called i always say it wrong it's a animatage table or nata mataj table uh there's over 3 000 virtual uh dissection and um you know examination uh capabilities with this that are absolutely unbelievable they have two of these up at uconn that they use with the medical students and the nursing students um and these are the types of things we want our students to be utilizing um you know how is it what what are they what's the equipment and what kinds of activities do we see when we walk into a room what are kids doing are they are they working in groups are they actually with hands-on are they experimenting are they testing things out are they um formulating hypotheses are they generating ideas what is happening and so um you know we're definitely envisioning very active learning this was another example of some learning spaces that we said you know this is this is what we want our learning spaces to look like we want them to be exciting not just for the two students but also for the teachers as well so just some out of the box non-traditional these were what we used when we started to talk about some of the concepts there's going to be a greenhouse at the top of the summit for our environmental students um and what what a better way to to to dig into that and to start working on on real real life real world uh projects and pro and problems so um this would be something that you know we tried to bring that um business our business side to life and what what would that look like what type of equipment and programming would they need so i will leave you uh with with some of those exciting uh learning spaces um things that we will continue to flesh out um we're gonna be bringing all this together in the in the near future very soon and really digging deep on the details you'll be hearing from again the high school team on the portrait of the graduate the graduation requirements all of these things are intricately tied together to kind of make this happen um and then i'll stop talking because i am down to five percent which is not bad um but uh again i want to thank the board i want to thank the high school team and central office and the community as well as our city council um and and all of our representatives for their full support on this uh i think this is going to be amazing and i think that the there's a lot of tremendous people involved in making this happen so we will provide more details and updates probably in the fall of course you can continue to email me with any questions that you have madam chair i said it would be but we will come we have a quite an agenda left but i just want to thank cara for this we have the ed specs that are going to kind of the match to the functions here that'll come back to you um before we leave in july so uh in june so you'll be seeing um those specs that relate to these thank you very much gary if board members have questions if you can just shoot them the cara um she can answer them for you so thank you very much for a great presentation okay thank you super nintendo report yes let me just start i was going to have courtney do but i think it's more general than anything here the the city and state budget i believe next week the city is going to vote on their um on their budget i did talk to mr cabo there's a nexus to the the conjunction here about the state budget i understand and i just talked to brian bingham again he's our lobbyist coming out of the education committee they've restored uh some of our ucs funding which is uh terrific and i'm i'm trying to get a fix on the exact amount but i think it was a specialized five million dollars at this point that that was re um reinstituted in there and uh according to joe in my conversation if money comes through there he fully expects to pass it through to the board of ed uh as mark had done to you so i was really um happy to hear that timing may be an issue only because i understand maybe you guys know better and i we approve our budget next week i mean the town doesn't i think june i want to say 7th or 8th maybe the governor budget gets approved in hartford so there is some timing issues but anyway um joe did um want me to convey that to you that that money comes through it'll be passed through to the board uh which is good news and so all of the folks that have been lobbying and writing letters it's made a difference uh so i thank you for that i'll just move through here because i want to get to the reopening uh ellsworth project nothing big except that we got approval to go out the bid so as of a few weeks anne and richard and the group down there will be moving moving out but they're getting ready to put out bids so we can start that project which is exciting i have kathy here kathy really quick could you update the board on the vaccination project oh sure thank you dr sal good evening everyone um this past weekend the 24th and 25th we again had the opportunity to extend the invitation for vaccinations not only to some of our staff and families but to students as well we started the project with um partnering of course with our health department danbury hospital and the community health center to offer vaccines at the danbury mall a special thanks to amy taylor at the community health center she made this such an easy process for us uh it was as simple as sending out a link to our students we started with seniors and once you know that was that was accessed we opened it up to 16 years and up and then we still had spots available where we were able to offer it to families uh staff who had not yet been vaccinated so it was um very successful so their second appointments have automatically been scheduled so by the end of may i don't have exact numbers back from the community health center yet but i know that we had close to 600 spots filled so that's a very positive thing for our district moving forward thank you so much kathleen for your leadership there frank are you with us dr ivanka i am could you um we've been thinking about this about frank two years five years i think actually uh so uh when west side middle school academy was established we followed the lottery process that the um the ais school was using yes lotteries taking place in january and ours took place in february i think one of the realizations we found is that it's very challenging to conduct a lottery for a middle school that late in the school year mainly because the process uh you know some districts have entire offices dedicated to choice programs and we we run that outside of the assistant super and through the assistant superintendent's office and so the process of having well over a thousand students every year apply for the lottery and then going through the process of of accepting students and seeing if they want to accept the seeds that they've won through the lottery takes a great deal of time we've only finished the lottery process just a couple weeks ago so for our lottery that took place in february we were just wrapping up the process now and getting all the names in and at a middle school level that poses a great deal of challenges for preparing for the next school year there are a lot of things that are different in a middle middle school in terms of scheduling students ensuring that we have the purple staffing and so on so it's been my recommendation that we move that lottery from february to november in order to facilitate um really more opportunities for students ultimately because the lottery process takes place so late that some people get their seat late in the process they choose not to take it and so giving that opportunity to students earlier in the year will first of all administratively make the process be much smoother and then secondarily i think for students it gives more people the opportunity to make the choice at an earlier time so uh i made that recommendation to the central office that we moved that lottery process to november to uh to make the process more efficient uh i we can do that we'll just put in our operational plan it just i think frank hit it on those it permits youngsters to uh more access and that's what the board's always wanted we always wanted so i thank frank for his leadership um so we will probably make sure we get on the calendar we will publicize it because it is a change but um you know i i if we fully support that probably should have done it as frank said a few years ago we simply did it because we always had ais that we had then we had the stem it just doesn't work for the middle school so um with that i finished my report madam chair when would that change take place are you looking to do that next year next year thank you um yeah i'm sorry i was muted i just want to ask the board members have any questions to talk to dr dr leblanc okay so before we go on then um just so you know yesterday i think yesterday afternoon maybe five o'clock we received a memo from the state which is relative to our next conversation the remote learning that took place this year by giving everybody option will not be an option that will be required to give so that is out of the equation officially we've been waiting for the state to make a commitment and they finally did as of yesterday afternoon there are some areas that we can use it with as optional but as far as the board saying we're going to permit an option for parents that is not what the state department is recommending so um it does have relevancy to our planning i just want to i just came in yesterday afternoon let you know that dr sal i have a question kind of semi-related to that yeah um two two actually two questions number one there's no distance learning option for next year we're now we don't have to offer that that's we got that confirmation yesterday yeah that's what it is and our target is five days a week for all kids right for next year for next year yeah um yes everything is for next year is the state going to allow us to you went you went you went mute i can't read your lips you can put it in the chat joe xfinity did their best to lock me up um is dl going to be an option in lieu of snow days in the future one of the bullets that they had like five bullets uh something like um the state department realizes the value of the and would like to utilize this in different circumstances and they listed five one of them joe did have a comment about when there's a clement weather um what extended time they would offer it on a limited basis we don't know that but they did indicate that okay thank you so uh we if there's i don't know if there's any more questions but we have a pretty heavy agenda the next one to talk about if we could move forward which kind of gets to some of joe's points okay are we ready okay okay so um the um elementary and secondary emergency relief fund so2 and i'm going to come back around but [Music] courtney has coordinated our effort and did filed the application to the state last monday of the 11 plus million dollars um and um i guess we'll be waiting for feedback um because as i've told everybody that's the money yeah they said it's yours dan barry but it doesn't come it comes with an application uh and so um we've taken as we've talked about with you guys uh areas that were in the operation budget when we cut it back to see where it made sense and she was been able to braid those funds in there along with alliance money now it doesn't account for the extra money we just talked about um the five million dollars in ecs because we don't know about that we still don't know what it means about alliance but we did submit uh she did courtney did submit the s of funds last week um and uh we'll be getting some feedback uh on that the um at this point um we we expect that they'll approve it but they may ask us for do limes some modifications um the next item 2122.

um yes that's it it would actually be 11 um it could it could accommodate up to 13 but we thought it was best to stay around 11 so we could have dedicated spaces for support staff there um and also our specials as well so the board um every school will be effect impacted um with um granville opening even though it opened late it was a january thereabouts for next year where it's going to create space so that we could create the assist to school arrangement in here which the demographer just alerted us to expecting about a thousand kindergartens so not only do we you know have the space issue we have the increase particularly at the kindergarten so all of this hopefully will be able to accommodate um our needs we looked at the modules didn't work out for us even though we were able to get them at a school district that um had some special circumstances and had some least um they would be remotely located and not attached to buildings we thought there was some security issues so this is the plan for the board to consider to really be able to bring back youngsters and this is making the assumption that the social distancing is part of our expectations when we return we keep asking if there's going to be some variances on that and i what i'm told quite honestly is that until the cdc makes some decisions you can expect to have these three free guidelines even with the vaccination particularly at the secondary level k5 i think um will be with us only because of the vaccination part but um so that's making all these assumptions i don't understand i don't know how we could plan and say to the board and to the community well we'll just wait until august that's that's a ridiculous statement um you know i i test uh positive for stupidity if i did that um so that's why you have what you have in front of you which is a pretty um pretty aggressive plan in a lot of ways we um had some real challenges about who would go to saint joe's or the new site um if it was a k5 building how do you make choices about you got families different grade levels kids have been in we thought kindergarten although um they're going to have to move out of danbury they haven't been in the school system there shouldn't be a connection unless there's siblings out but obviously but we thought that would be the least destructive to our families and kids um i'm saying to folks with the enrollment the way it's going um you may need these buildings for more than one year but right now kevin has been working with saint joe's with a one year lease and we have one year left on sacred heart at this point yeah don't die yes so dr south i can just also say um to the board and for the community we did speak to the transportation department as enrolled as uh registrations continue to come in we're trying to get an handle on where our families live and assess what the drive would look like uh for our families um to date um we're anticipating number one it definitely will not be as and i don't this is i don't want to say anything bad about magnet school but we do not anticipate it will be as long a ride for as our magnet school because we have kind of a controlled it more of a controlled area to pull from um sta is anticipating as of right now you know based on the the the parameters that we provided them 25 to 30 minute ride for our students that's what they are estimating that right to be but we will have more specifics for them uh we just ran a report for the initial first wave of kindergarten applica registrations that have come in and we've shared those addresses with them and we'll continue to share that with them so we can have um some kind of information for our families in real time so they can understand the impact just also wanted to be clear we'll also be looking to have elp services um in the am npm at the brookfield site for our families understand that there might be a need for child care there as well and so the same services that we would be providing in danbury would certainly happen in brookfield as well i think at that point look i mean um we're still working on this obviously um you know the tents the uh bus routes and everything but at least you got the whole gestalt about what we're thinking um at this point so thanks kevin and thanks team for putting it together so any questions and comments madam chair i have a question that's appropriate yes um before you go uh mr silva i just like to make a comment and and i i certainly appreciate all the work that has been going into this uh i'm thinking as a board and it's 9 20 at night and once you pour the rest of the information that you need to pour into this we could sit down as a board and have a workshop on this because i'm quite sure there's questions that's going to be longer than one or two a quick second that as a board workshop we can have a much better discussion about this uh you know i i just don't know how anybody else feel but go ahead mr just silver uh i'm happy to wait for a board workshop for most of them i got one quick one then um all of it correct me if i'm wrong this is this planning is what we need to do in order to come back full time five days a week and comply with distancing yeah if the cdc removes the distancing requirement in july or in august can we undo this so joe thanks thanks for that question one um i i don't know if dan is still on i i just want to applaud him for accepting this assignment and is assuming this additional task if you will so we have acts we we have axe dan um any commitment in our schedule that we've made in terms of overages or additional classes that teachers might be teaching um to to set up the schedule in a way so at the halfway point in the school year we can mitigate you know any additional investments that we've made and pivot at the middle of the year and come out of that joe more specifically to your question about those other things in terms of the lease the commitments to the staff etc i do not anticipate if we were to hear from the cdc in late july or august quite frankly if we hear in late june it might be too late for us because we hope to make our hires we hope to have our lease agreements taken care of um and for year one uh quite frankly there's a i think there's a silver lining in this we can cut into class size significantly across our k5 classrooms this possibly we can do that also at the high school um it's not ideal the last thing that i i'd want to us to spend our money on are tents outside and so if you know if this we don't have to continue leasing tents and our kids can go in the cafeteria i think that is something certainly we can undo uh but i i think there are some benefits to having extra teachers in the system cutting into class size and it's an opportunity for us to mitigate some of the learning challenges that we know our kids are going to have um it's and they'll get more one-on-one attention um so for year one we might be locked in yes okay that's fine but not everything okay perfect good question if i may yes um kevin because i don't know any better is there any social emotional impact on a kindergarten aged child being on a bus for an hour a day um well there's always could be that possibility they're so energetic uh i think it goes by pretty fast but now we're hoping it's not going to be an hour out i think what i heard the initial model was a half hour is that correct yeah so so mr russo we we are intense we we we did evaluate this with um an initial evaluation with the sta um and they they are projecting a 25 to 30 minute ride um and so you know one of the reasons why we have five buses for these three schools is to make sure our kids are not on the road for you know more 30 40 50 minutes um trying to get to the building um but what we also heard in our feedback is because it's not a true magnet school where they have to drive all over the city to pick up students it's actually not going to be as long as the ais ride is currently um so it's it will not be the longest ride for our students in district for sure thank you um gladys i think if the board's gonna have a workshop um you know i think the community is waiting for um for something and um you know i i think i'll make the statement anywhere we're going to come back five days a week the money in the essa uh courtney has been mindful of that and has put it to the side she's ordered the ten buses the staffing king kevin articulated these are things that this district should have had to begin with so um at some point if this workshop could be earlier rather than later so that we could get information out to our parents it really is important i'm glad this is on tv tonight at least we can get the initial um you know information out for folks what we're doing okay thank you dr unless there's any board members that have any other questions or you know what are you feeling about a workshop you know if you guys yeah can i be brief i think a workshop is excellent i have a few questions but um just the most pressing is for me is there's another surrounding district who um is going back full time five days a week you know um very soon um and a letter went out to parents i believe saying that the three feet social distancing recommendation not requirement may not be fulfilled in some classroom so i just i don't understand how how they can do that and also it's such a shame that we can't use utilize the distance learning in any way shape or form when for some is working so well and um you know even before covid um that was a topic that came up to address the overcrowding um so those are my my really quick two cents but i would appreciate um a workshop and i'm available anytime any other comments it's not uh that would say you want to say something no i'll just work with you to get some i think you know there's some questions but the sooner we get around this right better for all of us right so thank you we'll have a side conversation too early tomorrow uh you know about the workshop and the information and how you want to get it out okay uh i'm gonna and if you're finished uh dr sale i'm gonna move on down to the agenda my board chairperson report's gonna be very brief uh just like for all the board members to uh look at the future meeting dates and uh there will be some extra meeting dates uh we're looking forward to working with rain associates okay and their first email to me today if they want to meet with the full board so you know it might not be at your conveyance you know uh we have to sort of work around everybody's schedule and put this in place and we know that they're here to work with us to take us through this process so uh when you get the call or you get the email you know or let me know that this day does not work with you before i contact them okay thank you uh if there's any nothing else we are going yes i just did one that has comment i just want to make a comment um i just want to publicly apologize to courtney for what happened this evening um personally we should have you know and i'll speak to aaron about that i think talking about generality is coming to a personnel we can identify was not the right thing to do so i do probably want to apologize to her and we could have stepped in so um i just wanted her to to know that i appreciate that i want to add to that too courtney i'm very sorry that that happened and um publicly i think she should be reprimanded thank you kathy i also appreciate that uh courtney you know how we feel about you we know that you're doing a great job okay and one of the things that you know i that we know whether whether you might like it or not you've taken on a humanist job you know and uh at some point i think this board need to look at you know some type of an assistant to you and to help with other things and and you first focus on the budget and the money aspect of this board okay so i'm sorry that it happened this way i just it was out of it was out of the noon and it should not have happened and uh we i apologize to you okay well thank you so much um gladys and and everybody um you know this district means a lot to me and and my the integrity of our information and the people that we work with and and the support and relationship with erin as well so you know thank you i appreciate that and we'll just keep going forward from here thank you courtney thank you thank you uh we need we need a motion to enter into executive sessions so move madam chair i'll see you bye bye joe seconded by kate thank you all in favor hanging pointing point of inquiry madam chair are we going to have to vote on anything and if so do we have to come back into public session i don't think so oh no no okay okay so we'll be adjourning directly from executive session yes right okay i just want to make that point so the public knows we're not coming back yeah right and we've got to switch over to the executives they're a separate link yes there's yes yes separately that's why i asked the question okay thank you are we adjourning i think we're returning yes we're not we're not adjourning we're not adjourning we're entering going to executive sessions see everybody there

um so this does come with a small little cost not all of them take it but we through the professional development the training the curriculum needed and the planning they're mostly there and so we're asking to this move to the calendar so we know they're all there all the time um some assumptions just to make sure i know um i talked to the board a lot about you should know um some things and maybe some board members have been interviewed by our auditors and um i do say you should know what is our budget we could make up any number of students and create a huge budget uh and do whatever and then have the have a lot of debts to pay at some point with that so that would be bad so what you see is a budget that's looking at it from this year a growth of 400 students previously a couple presentations ago you saw mr shipman make a presentation i think if i saw he had about 600 elementary kid increasing about 85 high school kid increase so almost 700 increase we are not budgeting that we would have that full increase one his projections are normally through the whole year so you have to we only get funded through the first hundred days so not all would materialize as an adm increase and but we do know that with our approximately 800 student loss now from last year to this year some are coming back a lot of it's covert related we're not going to have a missed year if you're talking 50 000 students statewide we do believe some will be coming back we do have growth but we're just not planning on all of it coming back so we're taking a more conservative approach and moving it down to it's actually a little less than half of what uh the growth um would dictate in that sense we do have the increased base support level so inflation funding is supporting uh increase in pay uh revenue uh the final 20 for 2020 increase which was paid last year but paid in the classroom site fund we gave the raise in the current year out of mno and so i just don't want to get that double counted so i try to make sure that the teachers and everybody understands that i'm going to include it in the revenues but i'm also going to include the expense of it because we already gave the raise last year and i don't want to give a raise twice for getting only one payment we continue to see the restoration of district additional assistance so even though the budget the state budget is not done right now they have per statute that they've already approved was the restoration of capital coming into this year so we anticipate that increase happening and as you know with the retention stipend we're getting federal funds supporting um and they're also supporting some capital increase so i will also mention that at the end of the slide show too as i talked about classroom site fund that increase going from nine thousand to ten thousand five hundred so it's an increase of eight hundred dollars in our performance pay fund uh for a total of forty five hundred dollars um and so i know that the performance uh pay performance plan um is being worked on for next year and still has that piece to go through so you'll still be looking at that for approval but this is just the funding associated with it and then we're looking at an increase of 700 for eligible teacher of the 700 of funds 11 and 13 for a total of 6 000.

um you know especially too when we look at how we asked our voters for the override to pass it to help us recruit and retain highly qualified staff you know is all we can give our special education teachers 500 i just think they do an awful lot and i and knowing that we're we're giving a lot more money to a lot of different areas i just personally i just i wish that were higher again i know i'm not part of those conversations but those were my initial thoughts when i see that i just think they uh 500 just really isn't a lot of extra for them in my opinion man of present members of the board i think everybody works very hard i think everybody is they do an amazing job uh we did work with our ess director and also looked at the data what is the word where's the place that we could have the most impact and the paraprofessionals with the vacancies and the turnover is where we could have the most impact in so we wanted to solve that problem the second biggest when we talked to them was our ot's pts and the outsourcing and the problems that that has and the vacancies that that has and so this also tries to address that so it may not provide more than the five hundred dollars extra to a special ed teacher we are working to um and we could this isn't something that's one and done uh we'll continue to look at it and look at the data but we try to be as efficient effective as possible with our dollars and where can we have the biggest impact to improve and and support programs the best possible and we do believe this does satisfy that and for clarity and that's why i said it earlier but just to your point since you mentioned it i am not saying that one group is any more important than another of course i understand that everyone is important in worth more so i i want to clarify that because you mentioned it madam president management board i was not alluding to that i will say um also talking to uh is it dr montana there's a lot of doctors now our ess director she is looking for other ways i know we piloted a program to provide a monday using your prep day to help on ieps and we're looking at our case loads right now are very high so the question is can we do something to start reducing our caseloads and the burden that's also on the teachers in some of those and so that is also looking at how can we do the case management so they maybe don't have as many ieps and and that too so providing them a little bit more time and break in that time too mr hicks and probably dr croto may want to chime in on this as far as our agendas with the different areas are they in comparison with our neighboring districts that are about this size um madam president members think are you talking to otp um i know otp is is um i'm not even talking about that there are some districts that are larger that don't have to contract out for them those type things um but i'm talking about like for the um the ess hard to fill um do we are there any lead nurse agendas that are out there in other districts um for individual addendums addendus uh yes uh most do some type of lead to instead of hiring a position that you'll have one that's just managing them you'll just provide a stipend addenda to one to kind of coordinate and be the right but how are they as far as compared to other school districts um i only know a couple districts off hand so i don't know if that's a good comparison to all and 3000 is right in the ballpark of all those but i don't know i don't have a wealth of knowledge of another a lot of districts to attend those okay madam president and member sawyer shank bill ken is correct that they're in line and we know the ctso one um is definitely a line because that is what the other districts do so that's why they're trying to go from the 2042 to the 3000 to be like our neighboring districts and be equal with them um because and just to piggyback on what miss pritchard says there are some school districts that do pay two thousand to twenty five hundred dollars for a hard to fill and um i i do agree with her with regards to uh the time that is spent creating an iep and sitting through meetings and stuff um i i know everyone in our district works extremely hard but sometimes those positions are very hard to fill with qualified people but yeah there are some that pay two thousand twenty five hundred that's just difficult all the way around and it would be great if we had otmpt on staff that we didn't have to pay those extra extra dollars to provide those services for our students and madam president a member sourcing bill um currently we have 24 ess uh slp and ot vacant positions that we contract for see this 24 24 and the dollar amount we pay for contract it is much higher it's much higher it's much higher okay just a quick question on slide three um the keywords that are used they're the legal affordable alignment sustainable viable was that um are you saying that that was that those terms were board adopted it is in policy okay members of the board gotcha i thought there was like something new that we had a meeting on and agreed to and i'm spacing out madam president members of the board i think uh dr dean could give us the history lesson of when they were because he mentioned each year we we re-adopt the same thing every single thing each year yeah i don't think anything was specifically brought to the board say please that's something it was just in our policy of okay um i just i want a clarification if i'm reading this correctly on the high school theater agenda it's 2042 per semester per high school correct and what was it before madam president member grant it was 2042 for both semesters so they needed to do uh two shows total now we're saying they need to do four two each semester and they will receive each semester okay we're putting on four four plays gosh that hurts hold that thought hold that thought now i'm i'm just going back over the dispatcher um now you've answered that and um for combined total listen okay and currently how many teachers do we have that are certified in dual enrollment do we remember how many we have madam president members of the void i do not have how many teachers are certified nor do i know the exact number i looked at to model this these rates i took and created a bunch of different scenarios based on the number of uh students we had in a number of different classes because it depending on where it breaks you could be paying two teachers might only have five in each class and so you'd have to pay the full amount instead of just paying one and so with the benefits associated i grabbed a bunch of modeling to show uh what's the worst case scenario best case scenario but depending on how it all floats out and so then i created this amounts based on that to make sure that we're not exceeding 45 at no point did it go above 42 percent but there could be some other scenarios that have a stipend or two increase so that's why i used that and madam president member sawyers think bill we we have numbers that range from 24 on some campuses to um you know a dozen or so on others a few years back if you'll recall the state changed the the rules for those um who are able to teach dual normal courses and so that lowered the number that are available our our principals have worked very hard to hire more staff that are eligible to do so okay all right thank you madam president members of the board just uh i know i didn't couch it this way in the presentation but just looking at the 500 hard to fill the three percent retention stipend the 1.3 percent and the 1500 classroom site fund our average special ed teacher that makes 58 000 would get 42.54 which is a 7.3 percent raise for next year which is only the 500 more than the others to to your point but 42.55 42.54 and our classified staff if they're not a paraprofessional would be getting 1.3 and our admin staff would be getting 1.3 percent okay i left out of there the some of the non-classroom site fund certified staff but there's lots of different categories but i was just trying to provide some context for the board okay i don't have any questions good thank you very much mr hicks thank you very much educational leadership from grand canyon university and a master's degree in arts from spaulding university she has extensive educational experience currently a teacher at dysart elementary school and has two years of administrative experience outside of our district so with that i will stand for any questions and vote and then i'll wait for the vote and we can welcome her and her she has her family with her here tonight too so [Applause] just curious miss v um did i read this correctly that you had taught at field elementary yes ah okay okay all right thank you very much i thought it was a field that was out here um impressive resume um you're you're one of those um i like to call a professional student that you keep on absorbing and keep on studying and everything so very impressive thank you do you want to say something yeah go ahead um i moved the appointment of mrs v because i don't want to slaughter her name as the elementary school assistant principal second motion passes congratulations welcome happy dance next we have item h2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board members of cabinet mr crow dr croto will also introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president uh members of the boards superintendent kellis cabinet guests our second recommendation this evening is for the director of research and achievement position we are proud to recommend uh miss amy hartjen um as the candidate for this position as you know miss harton has been with the district 21 years and eight years as principal at dysart high school with that miss hartson has a master's degree in curriculum instruction from arizona state university has extensive educational experience and like i said as well as 21 years in our district and we are very happy to recommend her for this position and she is also here this evening [Applause] harjan do you realize that you have to um eat and regurgitate a whole bunch of numbers at any given time i'd like to make a motion to approve the appointment of amy hartjen as director of research and achievement second seconded by christine pritchard go ahead i think she beat you motion passes thank congratulations to uh to both of you this evening welcome next we have item h3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet it has been the routine over the last several board meetings to bring forward to the board an opportunity for conversation regarding colvid matters this evening this also will continue believe we have some public comments that we will begin this item with and i'll go ahead and re-read the statement this is a time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.03 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for future consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and tonight the first person requesting to speak is tina malika my name's tina malika i am a parent of two children here in dysart school district continuing dr kellis cabinet members and governing board members i have come to discuss the covet protocol and mitigation plan our family chose ischool for the first three quarters of the 2021 school year in order to keep ourselves and our community safe it has been difficult and stressful and we've made many sacrifices to make it work believing that the safety and health of our community was the priority fourth quarter we decided to return our elementary student to in-person learning knowing that the numbers were improving many arizonans were receiving the vaccine and mitigation measures such as masks were in place at dysert our high schooler continues to remain in a combination of high school and in person learning the american academy of pediatrics the nea aea both arizona and maricopa county health departments as well as state superintendent kathy hoffman have all recommended that school leaders and board members continue to implement universal mask wearing as recommended by the cdc cdc has also recommended this mask wearing although i appreciate i do appreciate the efforts advisor has made to keep the schools clean and safe during the pandemic but the science tells us that covid19 is airborne and cleaning surfaces alone will not prevent it from spreading unlike this room here physical distancing is also impossible in a small classroom with 25 plus kids if you remove the mask mandate there will be nothing left to protect our students for these last three weeks of school especially those of us who have not been vaccinated it has been less than a month since those 16 and over can receive a second can receive the vaccine my husband and i are due to receive that vaccine next week it is scientifically proven despite what you may hear that children can spread the virus we are currently at a 10 positivity rate 40 percent of arizonans are vaccinated there simply has not been enough time for all of us to get vaccinated yet for over a year we have done our best to bring this virus to an end it has been difficult and exhausting for the district the community teachers and its families we are so close do we really want to risk the health of families not yet vaccinated and send more students home to quarantine with just three weeks left in the school year i am asking that you vote to leave the mass mandate in place for these last 15 days 15 days to allow people to get more the vaccine 15 days for students to complete their school year in person and for seniors to graduate 15 days until summer break where we will have another two months to let the virus continue to climb i hope that you will each consider the science as well as the safety of all dysart families carefully when making this decision i know this has been a hard year for everyone i thank you for your time thank you i do want to apologize in advance for any mispronunciations of anyone's name so i apologize for that okay okay the next person we have is lisa moberg good evening my name is lisa moberg and i am a sixth grade teacher with the dysart unified school district i've been a loyal employee of this district for 17 years i'm also a mother of two boys who are both products of the des desert schools my youngest graduating and three weeks from tonight and thank you for listening i'm i sent you earlier in email with all the medical and scientific facts of wearing mass as of today without the biased decisions or thoughts of politics we are currently living and working through a global pandemic and we need to remember to stay focused on the health and safety of our children as a veteran teacher i can attest to the power of consistency if we have required our staff parents and students to wear mass all school year let's remain consistent with a safety measure which has lowered our covered cases in the city of surprise and in our district if we take away the power of consistency this will increase anxiety as students and staff during the most stressful time of the year as a mother i'm begging that we keep our schools safe while my son completes his last three weeks of his desert school career he started at the desart preschool at three years old miss yolanda and he's been a happy and secure child while growing up with the desert schools currently he is so stressed and anxious about kovid that he didn't even attend prom and the fact that his peers might show up without mass in the next few days is also causing a lot of anxiety our seniors are really stressed out right now with college admissions finals and graduation let's keep them safe and secure so they aren't quarantined for graduation as a staff member i'm asking you to keep our loyal and brave teachers and staff safe for the last three weeks of the longest school year i've taught in 24 years we have a volunteer with a heart condition who comes to school every day to help the school nurse let's keep her safe we have a staff member who just survived her battle with breast cancer and is back with us let's keep her safe we have a teacher whose husband is battling stage 4 cancer let's keep him safe mass prevent all people from getting kova 19.

sit back and think about this one through our goal next year and we have been planning for all students returning at each of our building for a full day five days a week back to some normalcy um over the break in the past while we've been working with the state legislators we've been working with um the um the units department at the state at the state level because we looked at modules um we uh been working with and we hired the architect to do assessments real-time assessments so that we had good data because my goal was to bring it here tonight so that you could hear it and hopefully we'll be able to alert parents into what we're doing the city has been part of going out and looking at sites with us we have um kevin has a presentation he's been shepherding this project through uh we've been measuring and re-measuring you know um measured twice and cut once we've been doing that we found some discrepancies so there's um there's a quite a bit of work here a lot of um support from um from the town a lot of support from our principals who have been um just um a tremendous group giving us feedback uh going through here so kevin i don't want to spend time doing i think you could talk us through and leave it open for the board for questions okay kevin are you there i am i just had to unmute myself thanks dr style so there are um two slides that courtney was going to open with to address on the application uh so that the board and the community can see where the money has been allocated and how that those monies were um submitted we could do that yeah so courtney go ahead okay thanks oh it's on um kevin if you're what's up it's up there recording okay carrie you can put the presentation back up there we go there it is go ahead courtney we just thought we'd combine it into one i'll be brief because i know this is a long a long meeting tonight um okay gary could go to the next oh no i don't see the um there we go okay so this is just a reminder about the sr one two and three funds so what i was going to talk about briefly is sr2 so we know that one is the cares act funds that we mostly spent down this year the sr2 is as dr sal mentions about 11.2 million and we just submitted the application and then on the third just briefly i'll tell you the sr3 what the american rescue plan funding that was um signed into law in march it was a 1.1 billion came to connecticut of which 995 million is to the leas which of which will be a recipient of and it was provided by the governor to the ga general assembly the plan ah two days ago so we should be hearing back soon and that's that third line for the additional uh 25.17 projected uh million and when kevin goes into the next few slides about the reopening plan and talks about the money it's mingling all of these funds so as we get more refined in the sr3 plan we look forward to talking to the board about you know the breakout that's related to reopening and then the other buckets and okay you can go to the next slide care i'll be quick and this is just a summary high high level summary of the esser to grant that we just submitted which is um you know the four categories learning loss mitigation family and community engagement school safety and social emotional supports and then technology supports so you can see how this breaks out we have additional detail we look forward to sharing with the board in the near future once our grant is approved but that's for salary and benefits mainly a lot of that salary benefits and learning loss mitigation is for teachers and then to enable us to expand safely as kevin's going to talk about in the reopening plan as well as some curriculum supplies and social emotional training the family and community engagement is for some family liaison support as well as um supporting families through uh family visit stipends um communication and parent support tools and then there's a big amount in the school safety and social emotional that's for our counselors as you remember we shifted about 3.5 million from our original board request into sr2 so that accounts for a portion of that and then also some facility lease costs that um kevin's going to go into related to some needs to expand um our space and technology supports so any well we'll be talking to you in further detail just wanted to give you a really broad overview again it was submitted on monday so we look forward to hearing back from the state about the application thanks kevin thanks courtney okay we're ready for the next like hour thank you so so one let let me just start out by saying i i just want to acknowledge all of the work that has been done by the cabinet on this and so um one everyone on this call in the cabinet uh principals around the district extended cabinet just want to say kudos to carawanda who's been really helping us organize the planning around this and i mention the entire cabinet because the the four phases that are on the screen right now uh quite frankly we have gone through this multiple times in the last school year and the one element that has been missing from this is the budgeting and you'll you'll you'll understand what i like what i'm talking about when we talk about the impact from this planning and so let me just start from left to right one as part of this plan and to get all of our kids back to in-person learning i know i i know this is let me just first start out by saying this has been a priority for uh doctor style from the beginning you know it's it's been a struggle and you'll understand uh the logistics and the challenges of trying to make this happen district-wide um in subsequent slides so first as a district we reviewed um our space capacity at every school every classroom in the district uh we have done this several times now uh through various you know variant points when we've been trying to re-enter schools so this is nothing new for us and then uh the next step where it says what if analyze we have reevaluated on our space capacity um given a new cdc recommended three-foot social distancing guidelines and so with that new information needless to say um that provided you know some additional capacity for us and opportunity for us as a district um as as many of us know um the district has been afforded or we're anticipating being afforded um essa 2 what we're calling asset 2 and s3 funds and we've already planned and quite frankly we've already playing essa 2 and s3 monies and looking to leverage those funds what the priority being to reopen our school safely for all of our students and staff but with with that budgeting of course we've been also assessing a financial and academic impact um as courtney had outlined earlier you know the the state outlined four priorities for the district um to to use these funds um when we certainly been assessing all of those realities as part of this planning and forecasting and then last but not least and that brings us here this evening we want to provide an update for the board our staff who was anxiously awaiting i'm sure uh and then of course also the community we know our parents and families and students have been anxiously awaiting uh what the return is going to look like indeed if we are returning i know dr sal has already mentioned this unequivocally we will be back in our buildings in september fully so here are some of the problems and challenges that have been in front of us i don't think this is going to come as a surprise to anyone who's watching this evening and that is space right and so with the social distancing guidelines in place it limits our classroom capacity um six to 12 schools and so our secondary schools did not have the space specif particularly to house students in the cafeteria and so i know our families you know their preference would be that their high school students their high school children can be in school all day for a full day and our challenge continues we continue to maintain that we can't have the students in the cafeteria and and feed them safely with the social system and guide social distancing guidelines in place additionally at our k5 schools we do not have enough teaching sections to accommodate the enrollment guidelines and so if we're going to have social distancing guidelines we just don't have enough classrooms to address and as this community knows um you know we have talked about a need to expand particularly at ellsworth building at annex and so we'll have you know a little bit relief there and building out more classrooms and so we have experienced the the high enrollment in the district these last couple of years the social distancing um just exacerbates those challenges and so i'll just speak a little bit more to that and so solution is our next step and this is about an investment in facility upgrades uh purchasing furniture um leases um in the district and outside of the of the school community and then of course additional staff um and so and so just to expand upon that a little bit more uh we are looking at purchasing desks and i'm um you know there's a part of me that's almost uncomfortable talking about the type of desk that we have to order because i'm thinking about the slide that cara showed which she talked about more traditional desks in classrooms and so we will there's a need for us as a district to purchase desks that are no more than 28 inches wide so that we can get our kids back in school safely now the the benefit is that as a district we will have an upgrade in our school furniture these same desks can be put together to you know promote cooperative learning and grouper and group activities so those are good things for sure but it is a significant investment see that on the next slide um you know what we are estimating um this the furniture investment to be but just to give the board and the community uh even greater a greater idea of what this can look like our middle schools and our high school will need desk instead of cafeteria tables um in which all of our all of our socially distanced and we will have student desk in our cafeterias in order to spread our students out into and to be able to realize the capacity numbers um outweigh the star uh and so and so that's one um two at the high school specifically possibly even one of our middle schools uh we're looking at tent leases um i did say tent leases leasing tents um so like the same type of tents that you would see at banquets etc um those type of tents some of them closed some of them open but we're looking at tents leasing tents um so that for the overflow from our cafeteria particularly at the high school um with the social discipline guidelines in place we can only get 300 to 350 students in the cafeteria we are exploring on the idea of using em spaces um in the school and then also looking at having courtyard and and also um evaluating the idea of also having tents in the tennis courts uh we need to work with the city to just make sure we can do that safely so we don't damage uh damage the courts themselves um but we've already um get we're looking for some concrete um estimates from the tip company to see if they can put a floor down um that is safe enough not to ask so not to damage the tennis courts additionally we also would like to uh we want to continue to maintain the lease that we have at sacred heart for overflow um and also to maintain um some of our classes that we have there now but we're also looking to sign a lease agreement with st joseph school in brookfield connecticut and i'll certainly talk about that a little bit more because i'm sure that got a lot of people's attention activity um and so staffing leasing facility upgrades uh we will need to commit to if we're going to commit to reopen schools which we are um it's going to require additional staff furniture lease agreements etc and so we are recommending that we move kindergarten classes next year incoming kindergarten classes be moved from south street elementary school stadley rough elementary school and ellsworth elementary school and those classrooms which would add up to 11 11 sections in total be reassigned to brookfield danbury high school will look to switch to an eight period day and add um and add positions to maximize classroom capacity while addressing graduation requirements and just kind of overall impact if we're going to safely over to safely reopen our schools in the fall the district will place kindergarten certified staff at the brookfield site because it will be a one grade a single grade focus site for the district for these three schools i'll go into a little bit more detail on why these schools have been chosen we will also need to commit to this lease to accommodate at least to accommodate 200 plus students and then the staff that's going that that will be there to help um teach the kids and and then we will need um to purchase furniture about the cafeterias and classrooms k-12 and tents for cafeteria overflow and uh carrick can you go to the next slide please so just some rough numbers for the board in the community estimates and so for staffing and supplies we are looking at hiring 15 teachers at the high school level and asking two existing staff members to teach an additional class to address graduation requirements we will need to hire 20 teachers for our elementary schools including special education including two special education i'm sorry that 22 teachers include special education and esl teachers two pps staff for the site as well and whatever other support staff we might need for the brookfield expansion and then of course we'll need to outfit all those classrooms in brookfield and any additional classes we'll be adding on in the district which again i'll speak to a little bit further on in supplies and additional classrooms added district-wide um at an estimated cost of 3.4 million dollars gleason furniture um and so least intense for the high school and the middle school to address safety um while maintaining social distance and purchasing desk at the elementary and secondary schools to accommodate social distance and committing to the lease will come to an estimated 1.8 and a half million dollars last but not least transportation um we it looked it appears we will need at least 10 additional buses for the fall in which five will be needed just for the brookfield expansion so students won't have to be on those rides too long and then five additional buses will also be needed for overall growth in the district these costs are based on current pricing from from the transportation authority um this this is this comes at a total cost of um five million nine hundred thousand and eighty three dollars um and and so i i just wanna go back to um in summary and i i want to revisit why we've identified south street ellsworth and stadly rough as schools to move those kindergarten sites to brookfield and then why kindergarten um specifically so so one kindergarten specifically one um i think as a as a district um and there's a many different ways we could certainly could have approached this but we were having a hard time with the idea of pulling students from a grade where they were moving up or graduating from one of our elementary schools we were having a hard time trying to come up with a with a protocol to pull any other grades uh from a school and why they would be pulled um dr sal had mentioned this previously in previous meetings um i the board i think um is aware that we have sister school arrangements uh for enrollment and registration purposes and so just for clarification a sister school arrangement is for an exam for example um ellsworth and great plain are two sister schools in our district and so if ellsworth is experiencing high enrollment in a certain grade that that student that student in that family once we have exhausted all of the classrooms classroom spaces at ellsworth and if their space at great plain uh we will then transfer those students or that student that family to great plain those sister school arranges exist all throughout our elementary schools and so we will continue to use um exercise those arrangements to handle enrollment and enrollment increases throughout the district what some also an additional clarification on the elementary editions uh we don't need to hire new teachers for the brookfield expansion we need to hire 16 additional teachers that will be pop that that will backfill certain spaces throughout the district so for example um this board is aware that we open up granville the granville academy this year for our pre-k program those those classes previously were in great plain and haze town uh the district is looking to backfill those those classrooms with additional sections uh so we have the space um and so we'll be looking to uh bring on four sections in those two sections at each school next year kindergarten is one of them grade two is another grade and then um in stephanie's school i'm sorry at hayes town elementary school uh we'll bring in i believe it's grade two and grade four as well and so uh throughout the rest of the elementary schools we have 12 more schools i'm sorry 12 more ftes or teachers that will be looking to hire those those classrooms will be in um in in shelter rock we will be adding an additional section south street will be adding one section we will be adding two sections at stably rough uh we'll be adding a section at park avenue we'll be adding a section um at i've already mentioned haze time we'll be adding a section at uh pembroke uh we'll be adding two sections that great playing two sections at hayes town um i may be missing one uh but the the the point being we will be adding sections at multiple sites throughout the district and elementary schools in addition to moving these 11 sections out of our district so that ellsworth which is already overcrowded to make sure that they can number one have space for their support staff because we were um we were maximizing in our attempt to maximize every space in that school uh we found when we were done with the exercise of what the reopening look would look like in the fall we realized at that point we did not have space for our support staff and we also we also did not have enough space to safely have our kids in the cafeteria on a daily basis for those of you who have been through ellsworth elementary school it happens to be one of our smaller cafeterias in the district we were also evaluating the idea of having a tent outside of ellsworth and then at that point just felt like it just was no longer appropriate to consider that as an option ellsworth would have been the only elementary school that would have needed a tent outside of its building to have kids uh safely safely social distance so so so first ellsworth was one of our first schools again as everyone on the board is aware we are looking at breaking ground on the annex building very soon and we're hoping that is going to be opened up in the in the fall of next year um so that we we thought number one it was also made sense to move this to move our kindergarten sections across town and then they would return and come back into the new building which is actually being outfitted for kindergarten classrooms south street uh we we this year um is the first year we have gone to three sections in every great since i've been here three sections in every grade level at south street um one of the classrooms and and so the principal at south street had four sections and two of her grades um we reduced that this going into this school year one of those classrooms was actually turned into a nurse's office because we needed a nurse's office for our um previously the nurse's office that was in the principal's office and with with covid and and trying to make sure we can have a safe space for kids we had to make sure the nurse's office was in a separate space it's actually appropriate space that it's in but it also took up a classroom and so that was you know one of one of the two reasons why we had to reduce the sections of the school there's still once there's still one classroom available at the building and so we will be looking to take advantage of that one um however with that said when going through the exercise of trying to open up south street for next year again we notice um and at that school they're already challenged with space for support staff challenged with space for their cafeteria they too are one of the smallest cafeterias in the district um so this is one this is again another reason why south street was identified as a school that was a logic that was logically to be moved to the st joseph brookfield site last but not least sadly rough um it's sadly interestingly enough number one it's one of our bigger elementary schools in the district but what we found throughout you know many walkthroughs in the building is that the classrooms are just much like ellsworth oddly shaped um and a lot of our classrooms could not accommodate the 22 with social distancing or even 20 with social distancing in a number of these grade levels and so we were again we went through the exercise with the principal looking at what it would look like to open up the building in the fall we found ourselves um looking at uh taking over this space in the in the in in the library media space which is actually very big um he'll be able to accommodate many of his uh support staff but then we also found like the other schools we would have needed to take his music classroom his art classroom and other in other available spaces um to not only add the two sections that he he still needs um but and then we would have been compromising space for his specials and as dr sal has mentioned a number of times we want to try to get back to as normal school as possible and we after reevaluating um his the position at stanley rough we thought it was best to also move his sections onto brookfield elementary school um it also works out geographically of the three schools stanley rough happens to be the closest ones to brookfield the other ones are not so conveniently located to brookfield but it does help release some of the challenges that we have with space at south street and in ellsworth specifically kevin uh one thing too for the board um maybe i didn't say that this is a full day of school um if particularly the secondary with the challenges for the cafeteria and spaces at the high school also just um it would be 13 classes at uh saint joe's is that correct or 12.

so that's the increase going up from 9000 to 10 500 for our certified eligible certified staff so basically our all of our classroom teachers get this um so three percent retention stipend one point three percent on the base and also for the classroom site fund going up fifteen hundred dollars which is just under a three percent equivalent on their average salary another change that has happened i think a couple board members heard this during a cip presentation which was a change with our dual enrollment so right now students that pay through our maricopa community college district that sign up and pay tuition and complete a course they get credit and they pay for that that the community college we refunds or um reimburses the district back some of those costs so the cost of operating the program since we're operating the program students are getting the tuition at a low rate and able to as you heard in one high school since you could come out with an associate's degree and the district received some funds so currently right now just looking out over the last four years we did a little analysis to see we we've been purchasing supplies supplemental curriculum and devices has been the number one and it's really random there's no continued use a lot of times it looks like a high school principal wait until there's a sum of money in there and then they'll decide to use it and then they wait a couple years and then they buy something big what we're proposing is to take 45 of the funding that comes in and move it to a teacher agenda part of this personally i think is a good idea just because i think four years ago the requirements changed from the american community college districts of teachers and their qualifications and they actually had to start paying and it was more difficult to be certified to be a dual enrollment teacher so it got a little bit more difficult and they had to have a little bit more skin in the game and so this is aligning to a payment structure uh providing agenda based on the number of paid and completed students so at the end of the year we would work with our research department to find out how many students had been enrolled and paid and then how much the maricopa county dollars community college districts mainly rio salado has uh paid back the district and we would take and we would make uh these pro these um agendas to those teachers of record in the system and so they would be making getting back some of the money which we've already heard some positive comments that they believe will help drive enrollment and incentivize teachers to want to because a lot of times right now you'll ask them and they'll just say no i don't want to have to go pay my own money to take the test or go get trained and do all of that so there's some barriers and we hope that this would help eliminate some of those barriers so that we could increase some of those dual enrollment opportunities across the district so just in total um i'd like to go through just uh really i don't think i could say the word quickly anymore since i've been talking for a while uh but uh just summarizing our inflation um even though there's an increase we had a decrease this year and so i have to account for that decrease and also same with the bridge where the money came in somewhere else we already gave the mno raise and so i account for that on the revenue side but then i take it away on the expense side this proposal recommendation in front of you does have a district additional assistance transfer so we currently transfer about 1.2 million dollars this would increase it to 1.7 million out of capital into mno to support this and i'll talk about that on the next slide benefits the health insurance i mentioned how that was going up our certified staff this is the increase and decrease does not have the 1.3 percent but just to staffing we do have a reduction of staffing embedded in this is we are moving 12 teachers into the esser funds for our high school to be staffed because based on formula we would have also got rid of those so keep those teachers around move them into high school to help provide a better more robust high school environment classified this is a reduction of 10 of the paraprofessionals to help support the program because if we increase the amount everybody's getting right now they're vacant positions we can't fill them let's get rid of get them off our books and let's use that to increase the funding for our special ed program our ess program there's no additional admin increases the other changes were all those emino uh mou changes and all the other special ed changes that are just talked about i like to set aside a little bit of money for a prop 206 so even though that happens in january and it's not a full year's amount we're given a 1.3 percent increase i don't know what the increase is going to be in january but if it's 2 we'll need additional funds because our grade a through d right now are all the same at fifteen cents and so if that goes up to twelve forty that's greater than a one point three percent increase and i need some funds to cover that so i just do an estimate it's just all pure guessing but i'd rather set aside some money than spend all money and not be prepared for it the estimated cost of a one point three percent increase is the two million dollars so you have the almost three million dollars um with the transfer and we have the three million thirty so it leaves us about a hundred eleven thousand dollar cushion um in our recommendation from the capital side um so one of the things we also talked about as a group is um i get a little nervous when we keep just going over the capital and moving money to mno because those are permanent moves and so we talked about as a group and in the iba team to can we put a cap on them out we transfer so this shouldn't be uh forever and so we looked at the max transfer would be a 20 of our capital allocation that daa allocation which means that at no point should we for the next year's calculation would be 2.3 million dollars so going up to the 1.7 is still under um the 80 percent and then if you just to um so you could also see here how much we're projecting to give the school allocation it is based on student council that gets adjusted and then department allocations the department allocations is all requests going in that have been vetted and filtered and all of it coming out of capital we do believe some of these technology will be moved over to our esser funds and some of the federal funds related to kovitz so that'll free up so this is almost i don't want to say worst case scenario but worst on a financial that we could still fund all the requests going forward and the transfer going over to emino there are just a few considerations that we talked about and just the classroom site fund it went up a lot so over 8 million dollars was going into it so that that is part of going up fifteen hundred dollars is a lot uh for it to go up we talked about some other districts have looked at providing one-time classroom site funding and then leaving their amounts the same but i teach that's just two different sources on a pay stub that they still see so you're still giving the full and then taking away that could happen to us next year is this goes down we are projecting uh so almost 200 of the 733 dollars per pupil is one time in nature we did our projections to think that we probably could keep it at 10 500 for two years if it doesn't drop by more than 150 so we we did some modeling to say hey what if it drops but not fully we still have some balances in there that will continue this money has to stay in those funds we can't transfer it out and use it somewhere else so i just wanted to convey that we were looking forward because one of our standards is sustainable prop 208 funding is going to come into next year's iba process and so we will not see the money next year but there will be discussion about that with i know that's at the arizona supreme court right now and so we don't know exactly where that lands but there will be some funding i know that there's also some legislation out there to create an alternative tax for small businesses that would avoid an individual income tax that would then reduce the revenues that this generates we also have current legislation so they're still not done with the legislative session you heard us at the at the summer school presentation talk about there's plans for uh learning loss bill with the state to provide some additional funding for school districts for summer school or learning loss we think something's going to happen if i look at the april jlbc monthly budget update which i read yesterday has a projection based on all everything that's currently in statute and all funding commitments and all revenue projections shows at the end of fiscal year 2024 the state will have a cash surplus of 6.1 billion dollars they only spend 12 billion dollars so they would have 50 cash surplus of an annual budget um that's a lot we know that they're going to they're working on a tax cut right now i don't know how many billion that is going to be um they don't want to give more to schools because of prop 208 so i don't think we're going to see a lot on that side we are asking them right now which will affect this current year which is to restore the cuts to the distance learning loss um so we're at around two million dollars that they cut us this year for learning loss we're asking that that be fully restored um i've asked for a lot of different things i don't think anything will happen so i'm not going to share all the wist list of things that i email our legislators about but it is still something to consider if something happens that is that we need to alter this we would come back with a recommendation to amend this or something that's additional we would come back and ask the board if there's any legislation that changes to change it going forward we would communicate that to the board as well i'll stand for any questions comments all right i'll go first um and this i i know i've been pretty vocal about it so just and i understand that i'm i don't have a seat at the table and i'm just one board member but i do struggle with our special ed teachers um just thinking for what they do as far as writing the ieps and having before school meetings after school meetings all the special behaviors and things that they have to endure in their work day i just really feel strongly i i'd like to see them um something more than what we're offering as far as it looks like i know you're saying fifteen hundred dollars um but really it comes down to about 500 because they're gonna they're gonna keep that extra 500 rather than drop down to a thousand i understand that but then looking at i'm not saying that any particular group is worth more than another um at all when i go through these but just based on your presentation as far as addenda's go i you know i'm seeing addenda for four thousand dollars for dsp and the and ctso sponsor addenda 3000 otp slp 3000.

let's continue our safety measures which provide people especially the children with a sense of security thank you very much thank you i think we're going to take a brief recess you

um you know especially too when we look at how we asked our voters for the override to pass it to help us recruit and retain highly qualified staff you know is all we can give our special education teachers 500 i just think they do an awful lot and i and knowing that we're we're giving a lot more money to a lot of different areas i just personally i just i wish that were higher again i know i'm not part of those conversations but those were my initial thoughts when i see that i just think they uh 500 just really isn't a lot of extra for them in my opinion man of present members of the board i think everybody works very hard i think everybody is they do an amazing job uh we did work with our ess director and also looked at the data what is the word where's the place that we could have the most impact and the paraprofessionals with the vacancies and the turnover is where we could have the most impact in so we wanted to solve that problem the second biggest when we talked to them was our ot's pts and the outsourcing and the problems that that has and the vacancies that that has and so this also tries to address that so it may not provide more than the five hundred dollars extra to a special ed teacher we are working to um and we could this isn't something that's one and done uh we'll continue to look at it and look at the data but we try to be as efficient effective as possible with our dollars and where can we have the biggest impact to improve and and support programs the best possible and we do believe this does satisfy that and for clarity and that's why i said it earlier but just to your point since you mentioned it i am not saying that one group is any more important than another of course i understand that everyone is important in worth more so i i want to clarify that because you mentioned it madam president management board i was not alluding to that i will say um also talking to uh is it dr montana there's a lot of doctors now our ess director she is looking for other ways i know we piloted a program to provide a monday using your prep day to help on ieps and we're looking at our case loads right now are very high so the question is can we do something to start reducing our caseloads and the burden that's also on the teachers in some of those and so that is also looking at how can we do the case management so they maybe don't have as many ieps and and that too so providing them a little bit more time and break in that time too mr hicks and probably dr croto may want to chime in on this as far as our agendas with the different areas are they in comparison with our neighboring districts that are about this size um madam president members think are you talking to otp um i know otp is is um i'm not even talking about that there are some districts that are larger that don't have to contract out for them those type things um but i'm talking about like for the um the ess hard to fill um do we are there any lead nurse agendas that are out there in other districts um for individual addendums addendus uh yes uh most do some type of lead to instead of hiring a position that you'll have one that's just managing them you'll just provide a stipend addenda to one to kind of coordinate and be the right but how are they as far as compared to other school districts um i only know a couple districts off hand so i don't know if that's a good comparison to all and 3000 is right in the ballpark of all those but i don't know i don't have a wealth of knowledge of another a lot of districts to attend those okay madam president and member sawyer shank bill ken is correct that they're in line and we know the ctso one um is definitely a line because that is what the other districts do so that's why they're trying to go from the 2042 to the 3000 to be like our neighboring districts and be equal with them um because and just to piggyback on what miss pritchard says there are some school districts that do pay two thousand to twenty five hundred dollars for a hard to fill and um i i do agree with her with regards to uh the time that is spent creating an iep and sitting through meetings and stuff um i i know everyone in our district works extremely hard but sometimes those positions are very hard to fill with qualified people but yeah there are some that pay two thousand twenty five hundred that's just difficult all the way around and it would be great if we had otmpt on staff that we didn't have to pay those extra extra dollars to provide those services for our students and madam president a member sourcing bill um currently we have 24 ess uh slp and ot vacant positions that we contract for see this 24 24 and the dollar amount we pay for contract it is much higher it's much higher it's much higher okay just a quick question on slide three um the keywords that are used they're the legal affordable alignment sustainable viable was that um are you saying that that was that those terms were board adopted it is in policy okay members of the board gotcha i thought there was like something new that we had a meeting on and agreed to and i'm spacing out madam president members of the board i think uh dr dean could give us the history lesson of when they were because he mentioned each year we we re-adopt the same thing every single thing each year yeah i don't think anything was specifically brought to the board say please that's something it was just in our policy of okay um i just i want a clarification if i'm reading this correctly on the high school theater agenda it's 2042 per semester per high school correct and what was it before madam president member grant it was 2042 for both semesters so they needed to do uh two shows total now we're saying they need to do four two each semester and they will receive each semester okay we're putting on four four plays gosh that hurts hold that thought hold that thought now i'm i'm just going back over the dispatcher um now you've answered that and um for combined total listen okay and currently how many teachers do we have that are certified in dual enrollment do we remember how many we have madam president members of the void i do not have how many teachers are certified nor do i know the exact number i looked at to model this these rates i took and created a bunch of different scenarios based on the number of uh students we had in a number of different classes because it depending on where it breaks you could be paying two teachers might only have five in each class and so you'd have to pay the full amount instead of just paying one and so with the benefits associated i grabbed a bunch of modeling to show uh what's the worst case scenario best case scenario but depending on how it all floats out and so then i created this amounts based on that to make sure that we're not exceeding 45 at no point did it go above 42 percent but there could be some other scenarios that have a stipend or two increase so that's why i used that and madam president member sawyers think bill we we have numbers that range from 24 on some campuses to um you know a dozen or so on others a few years back if you'll recall the state changed the the rules for those um who are able to teach dual normal courses and so that lowered the number that are available our our principals have worked very hard to hire more staff that are eligible to do so okay all right thank you madam president members of the board just uh i know i didn't couch it this way in the presentation but just looking at the 500 hard to fill the three percent retention stipend the 1.3 percent and the 1500 classroom site fund our average special ed teacher that makes 58 000 would get 42.54 which is a 7.3 percent raise for next year which is only the 500 more than the others to to your point but 42.55 42.54 and our classified staff if they're not a paraprofessional would be getting 1.3 and our admin staff would be getting 1.3 percent okay i left out of there the some of the non-classroom site fund certified staff but there's lots of different categories but i was just trying to provide some context for the board okay i don't have any questions good thank you very much mr hicks thank you very much educational leadership from grand canyon university and a master's degree in arts from spaulding university she has extensive educational experience currently a teacher at dysart elementary school and has two years of administrative experience outside of our district so with that i will stand for any questions and vote and then i'll wait for the vote and we can welcome her and her she has her family with her here tonight too so [Applause] just curious miss v um did i read this correctly that you had taught at field elementary yes ah okay okay all right thank you very much i thought it was a field that was out here um impressive resume um you're you're one of those um i like to call a professional student that you keep on absorbing and keep on studying and everything so very impressive thank you do you want to say something yeah go ahead um i moved the appointment of mrs v because i don't want to slaughter her name as the elementary school assistant principal second motion passes congratulations welcome happy dance next we have item h2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board members of cabinet mr crow dr croto will also introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president uh members of the boards superintendent kellis cabinet guests our second recommendation this evening is for the director of research and achievement position we are proud to recommend uh miss amy hartjen um as the candidate for this position as you know miss harton has been with the district 21 years and eight years as principal at dysart high school with that miss hartson has a master's degree in curriculum instruction from arizona state university has extensive educational experience and like i said as well as 21 years in our district and we are very happy to recommend her for this position and she is also here this evening [Applause] harjan do you realize that you have to um eat and regurgitate a whole bunch of numbers at any given time i'd like to make a motion to approve the appointment of amy hartjen as director of research and achievement second seconded by christine pritchard go ahead i think she beat you motion passes thank congratulations to uh to both of you this evening welcome next we have item h3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet it has been the routine over the last several board meetings to bring forward to the board an opportunity for conversation regarding colvid matters this evening this also will continue believe we have some public comments that we will begin this item with and i'll go ahead and re-read the statement this is a time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.03 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for future consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and tonight the first person requesting to speak is tina malika my name's tina malika i am a parent of two children here in dysart school district continuing dr kellis cabinet members and governing board members i have come to discuss the covet protocol and mitigation plan our family chose ischool for the first three quarters of the 2021 school year in order to keep ourselves and our community safe it has been difficult and stressful and we've made many sacrifices to make it work believing that the safety and health of our community was the priority fourth quarter we decided to return our elementary student to in-person learning knowing that the numbers were improving many arizonans were receiving the vaccine and mitigation measures such as masks were in place at dysert our high schooler continues to remain in a combination of high school and in person learning the american academy of pediatrics the nea aea both arizona and maricopa county health departments as well as state superintendent kathy hoffman have all recommended that school leaders and board members continue to implement universal mask wearing as recommended by the cdc cdc has also recommended this mask wearing although i appreciate i do appreciate the efforts advisor has made to keep the schools clean and safe during the pandemic but the science tells us that covid19 is airborne and cleaning surfaces alone will not prevent it from spreading unlike this room here physical distancing is also impossible in a small classroom with 25 plus kids if you remove the mask mandate there will be nothing left to protect our students for these last three weeks of school especially those of us who have not been vaccinated it has been less than a month since those 16 and over can receive a second can receive the vaccine my husband and i are due to receive that vaccine next week it is scientifically proven despite what you may hear that children can spread the virus we are currently at a 10 positivity rate 40 percent of arizonans are vaccinated there simply has not been enough time for all of us to get vaccinated yet for over a year we have done our best to bring this virus to an end it has been difficult and exhausting for the district the community teachers and its families we are so close do we really want to risk the health of families not yet vaccinated and send more students home to quarantine with just three weeks left in the school year i am asking that you vote to leave the mass mandate in place for these last 15 days 15 days to allow people to get more the vaccine 15 days for students to complete their school year in person and for seniors to graduate 15 days until summer break where we will have another two months to let the virus continue to climb i hope that you will each consider the science as well as the safety of all dysart families carefully when making this decision i know this has been a hard year for everyone i thank you for your time thank you i do want to apologize in advance for any mispronunciations of anyone's name so i apologize for that okay okay the next person we have is lisa moberg good evening my name is lisa moberg and i am a sixth grade teacher with the dysart unified school district i've been a loyal employee of this district for 17 years i'm also a mother of two boys who are both products of the des desert schools my youngest graduating and three weeks from tonight and thank you for listening i'm i sent you earlier in email with all the medical and scientific facts of wearing mass as of today without the biased decisions or thoughts of politics we are currently living and working through a global pandemic and we need to remember to stay focused on the health and safety of our children as a veteran teacher i can attest to the power of consistency if we have required our staff parents and students to wear mass all school year let's remain consistent with a safety measure which has lowered our covered cases in the city of surprise and in our district if we take away the power of consistency this will increase anxiety as students and staff during the most stressful time of the year as a mother i'm begging that we keep our schools safe while my son completes his last three weeks of his desert school career he started at the desart preschool at three years old miss yolanda and he's been a happy and secure child while growing up with the desert schools currently he is so stressed and anxious about kovid that he didn't even attend prom and the fact that his peers might show up without mass in the next few days is also causing a lot of anxiety our seniors are really stressed out right now with college admissions finals and graduation let's keep them safe and secure so they aren't quarantined for graduation as a staff member i'm asking you to keep our loyal and brave teachers and staff safe for the last three weeks of the longest school year i've taught in 24 years we have a volunteer with a heart condition who comes to school every day to help the school nurse let's keep her safe we have a staff member who just survived her battle with breast cancer and is back with us let's keep her safe we have a teacher whose husband is battling stage 4 cancer let's keep him safe mass prevent all people from getting kova 19.

good evening quarterback club has a scholarship that we've done for the last five years and this year we had three recipients for the quarterback club scholarship the criteria each player has to have at least two years of chs football all four of which are all three of which had four a gpa of 3.0 or higher a 396 or higher for all three and they had no disciplinary issues that we could find of any of them so our three winners andrew malding bryce hildebrand and colin mclaren i'm sorry i missed one peyton westfall next i would like to introduce the columbia eagle athletic booster club president cara pulcher who will be presenting their scholarship winners good evening the main goal of the columbia eagle athletic booster club is to provide financial volunteer and fan sport or fan support to the columbia school district sports programs over the past two years we've been able to contribute over 16 thousand dollars to our various sports programs and to our athletic department we can't do this without our parents and we'd just like to thank you each year the athletic booster club awards up to four five hundred dollar scholarships uh to be in consideration for the scholarships athletes must have participated in six sports seasons with at least one being their senior year possess a gpa of 2.5 or higher uphold the chs athletic code plan to attend a two or four year college university or technical school and they must write an essay on what's meant to what it is meant for them to be a chs athlete the essays are made anonymous and read independently and confidentially by multiple scores using a rigorous scoring guide to determine the winners tonight i'm proud to announce the 2021 columbia eagle athletic booster club scholarship winners are zack anderson natalie bush [Applause] kelsey olendor [Applause] and max missouris our next special athletic award is the st louis post-dispatch scholar athlete of the year the st louis post-dispatch scholar athlete award honors one senior from every area high school to be considered a scholar athlete students must be in the top 25 percent of their senior class academically and must have played at least one varsity sport this year's st louis post-dispatch scholar athlete of the year is awarded to jonah james our last special athletic award is the u.s marine corps distinguished scholar athlete award [Music] each year this award is presented to two senior athletes who are exemplary young citizens role models for other students and exhibit the personal traits of courage poise self-confidence and leadership this year's u.s marine corps distinguished scholar athletes are ava corey and colin mclaren the next part of our ceremony we would like to recognize those athletes that have signed a letter of intent to play sports at the college level athletes please just stand whenever your name is called and remain standing until the very end kyra bivens attending wabash valley college in mount carmel illinois for soccer sam sam benaldy attending southwestern illinois college in belleville illinois for baseball macy brown attending kaskaskia college in centralia illinois for volleyball kylie cleveland attending the university of illinois in champaign for softball mary gassaway attending the university of north dakota in grand forks north dakota for soccer [Applause] trey hemminghaus attending lewis and clark college in godfrey illinois for baseball jackson holmes attending st louis university in st louis missouri for baseball matthew howard attending westminster college in fulton missouri for baseball sophia hook attending the university of tennessee martin for cheerleading jonah james attending southwestern illinois college in belleville illinois for baseball ava corey attending illinois wesleyan in bloomington illinois for softball malia casino attending mississippi college in clinton mississippi for golf megan levan attending mckendree university in lebanon illinois for cheerleading london little attending the university of wisconsin-oshkosh for football and track and field marisa maldonado attending illinois college in jacksonville illinois for golf [Applause] molly ricky attending university of pittsburgh in pittsburgh pennsylvania for gymnastics and adam wenmeier attending southwestern illinois college in belleville for baseball hopefully we haven't missed anyone anyone else signed that we didn't know about where we going allison carr tipton university for soccer okay one more round of applause for these college athletes the last part of our ceremony is awarding our 2020 2021 penciler award winners this year's penciler awards will be presented to each pencil winner by our chs coaches from the respective varsity sports please come forward to accept your pencil reward as your name is read and then proceed to the cafeteria for a picture boys cross country thomas crossley [Applause] girls cross country izzy barker football london little boys golf presented by mr doogie spencer tate girls golf also presented by mr doogie malia casino boys soccer sitting in for mr mathenia will be coach bridges boys soccer goes to carson bridges volleyball macy brown boys basketball jackson holmes girls basketball ava cory [Applause] boys bowling dominic auer girls bowling jessica lambert cheerleading hannah walters scholastic bowl mason albers baseball adam wibbenmeier [Applause] girls soccer mary gassaway softball kylie cleveland boys track thomas crossley [Applause] and girls track allison fredenberg in closing congratulations to all of our student athletes on your outstanding accomplishments and good luck with your future endeavors thank you to our coaches for your dedication and the hard work that you put in each and every day to make a difference in the lives of our student athletes stay safe and go eagles all penciller winners all penciller winners we want you to stick around for a group picture that concludes our ceremony for this evening we appreciate you coming out drive safe so [Music] [Applause] so [Music] you

yes wow well 2009 was the review that was done and we do report to the state once a year our progress and we remain in this monitoring mode until all the work is completed so you know we haven't been in compliant there haven't been any complaints the state's been understanding as to the financial limitations that we've had so you know i would like to be complete with this project so we get out of this monitoring mode with the state but it's you know it's something that we are working towards we have made progress so be it slow is the press box uh elevator press box still uh an issue yeah that's still on the list but you know there's there's some easy ways to get around that you know one of the benefits that just waiting so long is that some innovative solutions have come along that other school districts have employed that the state's accepted so we don't think we'll ever have to build that press box okay absolutely make the press box accessible by building an elevator is what i should say um and then the other one that a couple months ago there was that air quality bill that was moving through the general assembly did that do we know where that stands is that going to effect i mean is the hvac project in any way going to ameliorate that or satisfy it should it go through or are we still going to be in the hole if that goes through you know faith i'm not familiar with that particular legislation um okay and so i haven't heard of any any bill that's gone through but you know it was just one of many but if it's not an issue and you're not hearing about it my guess is it's okay okay thanks okay adam did you have something um i i think faith covered the uh the door project that's the that's the one from last year right where you had to pull out all the brick and and do all those doors in in high school that's the one to talk about okay thanks yes anybody else all right seeing none um item number four contract extension with performance environmental again vin oh thank you i'll just talk through this one i did provide i did share with um with the committee and the board members a recommendation to extend our contract with performance environmental who's been cleaning our schools since 2014 they're currently in the third year of a contract we can extend for next year and the following year so we have two more con two more contract extensions remaining before we need to put this out to bid which again we did that three years ago so the couple of things i want to highlight about performance um you know during the pandemic during the early phase of the pandemic which was in march through june of 2020 they were extremely responsive to our plight we basically had a stop service we didn't need them we didn't have students and staff in the building so there was no need to do the daily cleaning and because we didn't have students and staff in the buildings we used our maintenance employees to do the summer cleaning so you know those were you know two financial impacts to performance environmental we didn't pay them because they didn't do the work uh and again they were very understanding you know despite the fact that you know we did have a contract you know we didn't pay them because they they weren't doing the work and when we bridged into the 2021 year you know which the fiscal year begins in july we needed a couple of things from performance environmental so i'm talking about the current school year one to really step up um to meet the guidance required by the state for you know cleaning and sanitizing and disinfecting obviously because of covid um and so they had to take on different types of uh in particular disinfecting supplies that were effective against covet you know and that was at their cost um and then the second thing that they had to do was we asked them to provide intraday during school days intraday porters that would continually go through the school disinfect the high touch surfaces disinfect all the bathrooms at least one additional time during the day this is in addition to their nightly cleaning and they were able to provide porters in all our buildings that were you know very reliable and very diligent and the dayporters became you know part of the the team of each school so they did a really really great job and i know a lot of school districts struggled to find you know dave porter services and that was within the state's guidance when we started this school year you know i know that this seems like it's it's ancient history but you know it was only the beginning of this school year that we needed this service so you know i i would just generally say the performance environmental in addition to being a good contractor you know over the years has really stepped up and performed very well you know for us throughout the pandemic um so the recommendation that i'm putting forth tonight is to extend their contract for an additional year we negotiate negotiated with them pricing wise they've got a couple of things that they brought to the table you know number one the additional cost related to cleaning protocols for covid and the additional cost of the disinfecting supplies that are effective against covert that they'll be supplying that they supply this year that they'll be supplying into next year's contract so that's a cost you know for them and then the second and probably the larger issue that they have is that the minimum wage is increasing another dollar per hour as of august 1st of 2021 so that increases their labor cost what they've um they've requested and we negotiated down to is a 38 000 increase in the contract which is about 5.3 percent um the dollar amount that we're talking about if um if approved that base contract would increase to 757 784 however and i think the um the good news here is that's a 38 000 increase but we expect to receive billing credits from them of 56 784 from this contract year so the credit stat will offset credits more than offset the increase so the reality is for next year the total amount we would pay them is 700 hundred ten dollars um and then we've budgeted seven hundred eight thousand dollars for the contract year for our cleaning services so from a budget point of view we actually have a little bit of a of a pick up here um so that's the that's the recommendation and the explanation of the financial portions of this and again we we can extend them you know this year and next year if we so choose okay adam do you have a question yes thank you um vin what constitutes the credits and is the um value of the contract renewal built into uh the budget that the council is considering yes so to answer the second question yes we have 708 000 built into the budget we would need 700 000 based on this recommendation um the credits come primarily from work that wasn't done um early in the year july and august because we didn't need it done because you know we were closed the prior uh period so that's primarily where those credits are coming from and we you know we'll apply them into next year and uh when is this um extension run through uh would be july 1 21 through um june 30 of 22.

if we close sites there's not going to be room for us to have those kids in only 15 kids in a class so i think this is not the time right now and thank you for listening to me i appreciate everything you do thank you next speaker is steven sarate stephen saratha you have two minutes please and mute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi there my name is stephen i am a parent to a student in fisher middle school i voiced my concerns in the past to the board and uh to the principal of the school and which i've realized and uh in person seeing how there has been a mismanagement comes down to facilities and uh housing is that we need a budget overhaul we need to understand what it is that we're spending our money on who we're contracting our uh work to and how it is that we're doing our business practices to better serve the children and the communities around us not just spending money to spend money and uh you know putting our allocations towards trying to uh in a sense uh stellar work to [Music] some of these charter schools um i must i will not be sending my child to learn songs as her suggestion [Music] i think that closed fisher middle school is a bad idea um or from many teachers themselves that just say what i spoke right now um some is going to be harming and i really hate to see this happen but if this is going to be the prostate problem i think you're going about it the wrong way um maybe some uh ideas of what we can do uh he's the experience that we have in our communication that we're in now but again a terrible idea to close the school so i think that we can go about it a better way thank you mr sadate uh mr moran if i can just let mr zarate know it was a little choppy and we got the gist of it we got most of it um but he's more than welcome to also send his statement via email to us um just to make sure that we didn't miss any part of his statement i know the internet um you know these ways you can have technical difficulties so i just want to make sure to give them that opportunity thank you mr martin thank you board president next speaker is randy barber mr barber you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin dear board thank you for listening tonight i stand with the recent previous speakers and urge you please this is not the time to close down schools this is the time to be creative and to repurpose there are a lot of good ways to go about that you've got a lot of support in that area i truly am in the bigger picture of things uh afraid that it would be catastrophic to to close a site in the expectations of students moving to another recommended alum rock site i think i think what we would be doing would be accelerating our loss of students not staunching the flow so again i urge you please to consider the repurposing committee's recommendation for some creative repurposing uh you've got a lot of people in support of this and uh we really hope that that is uh where you choose to go with this so again thank you very much and i yield my time thank you next speaker is rosa sapolvada mr povera please yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi good afternoon my name is roses polvida thank you to the members of the board i have three children enrolled in the school district and i believe that it's completely inappropriate to consider closing schools down in the middle of a pandemic what message does the district want to send to our children and community members does the district really want to hold want to hand our children to charter schools on a silver platter do they want a mass exodus of children leaving the district thereby creating a greater deficit um where's the equity in the marginalized communities um with that being said you know it's important to consider that these schools they create a community and family environment they develop relationships and how are these relationships going to be maintained moving forward if our kids and families are being made to understand and believe that they really don't matter that their voices don't matter um you know what are the ratios of students to staff going to be um once the kids go back to school uh with with schools being closed down that's gonna create less space for our children to be uh able to maintain adequate social distance and you know honestly as a parent i'm concerned that you know given that i have a child with special needs i am worried that my child will get lost in a bigger school setting i don't believe that it's appropriate at this point to close anything down as other parents have said it's better for the district to consider looking at their budget and seeing what other areas can be trimmed and not necessarily in schools we need these schools as safe zones for our children for their after-school activities for their extended learning opportunities just please consider all of these all of these ideas that i've presented um in the interest of our children thank you thank you mr moran can i say something before we go to our next speaker i apologize for interrupting um just want to remind our community that we are on item 301 um and we are uh having public comment on the presentation that both speakers just finished recently um and in there there's no recommendation i think to close so just want to remind our our public that we are on item 301 right now and then we will be going to 302 um as soon as we're done with this item thank you next speaker is mrs castillo mrs castillo pl you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello my name is sonic spear i am a parent of fisher middle school i um compare a pta president also in spark meetings with uh mrs barr but um i just wanted to say um that yeah i agree with everybody else it is not the time to um close schools it's um better to use them in other ways because um for example my daughter would be very effective i mean going up epidemic having to not be able to see her friends go to a new school not know where any of her friends are going if the friends are going to be there having new teachers being in um more classrooms that are going to be more crowded because eventually the students are going to be more packing more classes um not knowing what is going to be expected how the school looks and the parents i'm kind of confused too it's like i don't even know what to do if i want her to go to renaissance or not um you know i don't know much of that school and if i had a choice could i put her in another school yes so then i would have to look into that information too i mean it's we already have enough to deal with this epidemic i mean they're not even asking either our kids cannot get back to you because they're underage so you're putting all these kids in other schools where they're going to be more impacted in we got to think about that too um yeah i it's not the time to close any schools and it's uh especially when when this epidemic is going on still it's not over you know we just got a cure yes but um it's not over yet and our kids cannot get the best scene that's another thing you gotta think so they're gonna be all impactful um they can get anxiety they already have it as it is i mean their expectations when they go back to school is to be able to see their friends and their teachers again and to go to another school it's like starting all over again for each one of them and that's just not the way to go back to school yet so thank you for your time and listening to my opinion thank you next speaker is miss loewy chloe you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin when you begin speaking the timer will begin can you hear me carlos hello yes i'm sorry to interrupt just really quickly um to president comments a minute ago so i just want to make sure that i'm clear on this this because this is a special board meeting um public comment right now is it or my thought is that or my understanding is that um any public comment can be over any of the items tonight over so public comment is not necessarily item per item but i just want to make sure that the list and we're clear on whether or not public comment in this section is to any item on the agenda or specifically each item will have public comment because i know in special meetings special board meetings it's typically at least testing um they could comment on anything on the agenda so i just wanted to get clarity on that good question but i know i did confirm with our uh council rojo ruiz um and we are right now just speaking to item 301 um the notice on two was just to alert the members of the public that they will have an opportunity to speak on the items coming up and so that's why that message was there but right now we are just speaking to item 301 uh the report that was given um from the uh committee so hopefully that clarifies that yes thank you for that party i'm sorry for the interruption no worries thank you again miss miss louie you have two minutes please mute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi um my name is kathy louie i teach at sheppard middle school um i was at pala the year that it closed um and i know we're not i'm i'm a little confused if we're going to be able to talk about 3.02 after this but i just want to mention that my kids went through a lot i was a sixth grade teacher there and my kids were went through a lot with that school closing um and i know some of them didn't end up going to shepherd i i went back to shepherd i started at shepherd and i went back after my year at pala but my sixth graders went through a lot of emotional um times during that year where when we knew that paula was going to be closing but at least they had each other the least they were together and the kids now that we don't like they don't have that kind of connection um i will say that i i think that the the facilities were purchasing the advisory committee came up with some really great ideas i would love to see more um stuff for the community suffer kids except for you know adults in the community i feel like that would really bring us together and bring you know alan walk together as a as a community that would um really it would be a really good thing for the community to have the spaces for child care for all of those things that the committee suggested i think it's i think those are all really wonderful ideas and i do hope that those are considered um and given a lot of weight thank you thank you next speaker is dilsa gonzalez miss gonzalez you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello can you guys hear me yes so thank you um good evening my name is isa gonzalez i am a community organizer but i am also a parent of two students attending almond broad school district i want to thank everybody that was part of this adversary committee because i know how hard it is to make decisions and to get together and especially understand budgets and deficits i especially want to thank um miss jocelyn marsh for her input and for defending our teachers and our students when we when there was a conversation about the closure of schools i do also want to recommend recommend that not only in this advisory committee but any other community that is designing the faith of the future our students to be a little more transparent i know that um the links were put in the in the um school website and that it was shared on youtube however we have 89 of the students are english learners and low inc and around 80 percent of students are um low income meaning a lot of parents do not have access to technology or do not really understand technology so going into a web page going into youtube looking for an album broad school district page is hard enough let's use that in the apps that we have like um dojo square to actually notify parents of this meeting so they could attend and they could participate on them um i will be commenting in 3.02 later on when it's available and thank you very much thank you next speaker is mr springer mr springer you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin [Music] good evening board members president herrera loretta and alamar community i apologize for the noise i'm a special educator here at shepherd middle school where i work with sixth seventh and eighth graders and i do have to speak today in support of the presentation from the committee about their plan for repurposing the facilities um you know as bad as kobe has been in our community this is a fantastic time to be creative think outside the box and provide services for kids here in alamo who require more specialized special education programs that we already have and our facilities are a perfect place to make this happen they provide an essential space when the whole world is in turmoil they provide a home right this is an ideal time to provide that space and accelerate our community recovering from this pandemic thank you so much for your time and i yield the rest of my time thank you next speaker is veronica talton miss talton you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening board president and trustees can you hear me yes yes thank you i'm an itinerant performing arts teacher from lindell elementary and george middle school thank you to mr sanchez and the repurposing committee for your hard work and evaluating options for our school district i want to speak in support of the use of daycare facilities and community resources for families at our smaller school sites after more than a year of pandemic survival and multiple losses for many families including my own it would be least disruptive to follow this alternative the options presented seem to be those which would unify the community community and i'm grateful to jocelyn mertz and everyone on the committee who shared additional creative ideas instead of school closures lindell elementary is an extremely special school with a close-knit staff and family atmosphere my students at lindell have brought me joy in the midst of pain the idea of subjecting them to further trauma with the school closure after a year like we've all had is harmful to those students their families and to the staff and communities please consider the negative impact that school closures will have on everyone especially the long-term effects i thank you very much for holding this community public forum an opportunity to speak and thank you for listening thank you thank you next speaker is johnny nguyen mr winn you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin um can anybody hear me yes all right um hello uh my name is johnny nguyen i am 18 years old and i am a product of this district i went to ben payner elementary and i went to shepherd middle school and i am here to voice my support for the repurposing of school buildings for community resources job training day care facilities but why what i am not in support of are those school closures our education system in california has already been ranked one of the lowest in the nation because of our um methods of funding it and even more so during this pandemic when kids are forced to attend virtual schooling and especially in the east side not everybody has access to technology not everyone has access to good broadband internet and we cannot afford to have these kids fall further behind schools should be made all about the children and especially after this pandemic we cannot keep jostling these kids around because of the decisions of a few adults and these kids after this pandemic our main priority should be to get these kids back into a safe learning environment as comfortably as possible for them and closing down the schools further would not be beneficial to their education or their social experiences in school i yield my time thank you last speaker is camille giannis pontania miss fontania you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timing will begin good evening board of trustees can you hear me yes good evening everyone my name is camillianis pontania and i would like to use my time tonight as a community partner as well as a parent as a community partner i want to stand in support of the repurposing committee's guidance and recommendations i want to thank all of them for their time and energy that they committed to this um as a community partner i actually spend quite a bit of my time talking about the work that's happening in lm rock the abundance of partnerships and the vision that the school district has with many of your partners and i find that investments flow when we have a vision for the use of our assets including our facilities and so i think many of the outlined recommendations are ways to generate revenue but truly to create that ecosystem that east san jose and the allen rock community has needed for far too many generations and so i think if you lean into the recommendations it will provide our community with guidance as to how we do that and how we can save our schools while creating pathways of opportunity for people within our community and i think that's the kind of investment that all of us are committed to as a parent i also want to uplift that you know there is a very unique school community that each distinct school has and i was reminded of that today when we all called on to celebrate el nino when you're able to witness your children in the same space with other kids that they've known from kindergarten and that the parents know each other you know that you're part of a community and it is i think our responsibility to try to preserve those communities not only at our schools with the highest enrollment um but really look at our schools with the most inequities where families are being displaced where families are having a difficult time living and really ensure that we're shoring up those gaps because those are the people who are most affected um by potential displacement not only within their homes but now also potentially within their schools so i offer those perspectives um and i stand with you as always as a partner to continue to figure out how we can continue to strengthen um our school district rather than potentially put us at harm for having more charter schools um and and other things come into our district other i also want to specifically highlight two recommendations that i think are important sorry i mentioned our president speakers okay thank you um and now i would like to go um back to the board and uh open it up for any questions any comments at this time please raise your hand um and or this is on for information only so there's nothing then we will move on to the next item okay so i see nobody let me just confirm i think it makes sense for us to speak in 302 given the benefits very similar items that's what i'm intending to do okay one more time on the next one it makes sense for us to speak in 302 given the fact that it's the same exact same exact topic okay that's what i'm intending to do okay so seeing none um i'm just gonna say a few words um i want to thank the committee for uh meeting all those times as a parent myself and having been in many committees in the past i know it's not easy to give up your time um so thank you all very much for gathering 11 times um i know it wasn't an easy topic to discuss um and i appreciate especially the community forum that you all gave the community an opportunity to come and voice their opinions or thoughts um on this possibility um everywhere from you know uh the recommendations that are here all the way to the possibility of of closing some of our schools which is the reality that you all were dealing with in front of you and so i thank you for allowing our parents to have that time to come and um speak on that item and or you know just um hear you all um speak um again you know i know it's not easy um one just giving up your time and two the topic that you were all discussing so with that we're gonna go ahead and go on to item 302 at this time uh discussion on consideration and action to approve resolution 41 2021 authorizing closure of matheson middle school and consolidation with renaissance academy and medicine and closure of fisher middle school and consolidation with renaissance academy at fisher beginning the 20 21 2022 school year dr bauer thank you madam president this is a very difficult um recommendation that we're putting before the board and i want to acknowledge that these kinds of recommendations are never done lightly or without a lot of thinking on our part and after the committee's last meeting and not seeing any schools being called out for closure remember that the closure moment is when we are able to repurpose and so that's something that i want to remind the community that it's it is almost it's impossible to be able to um repurpose something if there is no surplus and so this first recommendation that i'm bringing to the board has to do with calling on all of us to understand how the process works this recommendation comes after uh reading the report after studying the demographic study after looking at our board uh our budget and uh knowing that within the past year we also have lost another 500 students so all of those kinds of things need to be considered when we bring something of this magnitude to the board and um specifically having been at fisher as a principal and as a community member of that community this was very difficult for me to do but i also have to honor the future of the district and other students and in order for us to continue to provide quality education for our students we need to address the budget and that's something that we have been bringing to the board again and again and again uh if you recall and i'm going to call mr chang in a little bit to remind the board about a resolution that you approved in the mo in the month of march regarding a savings plan that we must present to the county office of ed to be able to get a positive budget for next year there are a lot of things in the future of this district hanging in our process of getting a positive budget not only for this year for but the years to come one of them is the ability to sell bonds and so i want to remind everybody that in order for us to to fulfill a lot of the dreams of refurbishing schools of addressing the needs we must take some very decisions on our path this particular decision uh was done with the spirit of savings but also with the spirit of not um impacting the families as much as it would have been to move them to other places so please remember that this is about finances uh i totally understand we want to make sure that the transition for everyone involved especially for children and students it's considered and in order for us to start that path the board needs to take action uh mr cheng would you please um refresh our memories and i'm asking uh you to help us uh explain uh i know the board is very aware of this but also to our community the need to be able to start this process sure um thank you dr bauer and good evening board members and alumni community um just a little bit of background before i get into the resolution um for those who have been following the district's budget um is aware that we have been in qualified status for over the last three years um being in qualified status meaning that we're um may not be able to pay our obligations in the current or uh subsequent year um so as a result of that the county is is not forcing but it's recommending that the board adopt a resolution to commit itself to do anything that's necessary to keep the district solvent in that resolution i want to highlight some of the issue that the county raised one of them is you know the highlighting of the district being able to stay afloat over the this year and the next year with one-time funds that we're receiving from the federal government as related to covet the pandemic in addition to that it also highlighted the exploration of our parcel tax uh starting in fiscal year 2223 um and just a reminder the parcel tax that we have right now um generate approximately 4.5 million of ongoing money um if that partial tax is not renewed starting in year 2223 um that ongoing revenue would be lost um in addition to that um the the one key highlight that i want to mention is that um in year 2223 um the districts will be facing a fiscal cliff um as i mentioned you know the one-time money is keeping us afloat but in year 22-23 we're projected to spend close to 14.5 million dollars in reserve in order for us to stay solvent so this year we were able to stay afloat because of the one-time money next year because of the one-time money again but once that one-time money runs out um you know we're having to dip into a reserve and based on our second interim um we're barely meeting the three percent requirement that is set that is prescribed by the state uh which which seems the district solvent so we do need to take some drastic cuts and make some difficult decisions um and i just want to finally i just want to read a sentence from the resolution itself um just to inform remind the board and also inform the community and it's one of the last paragraph on the commit on the resolution itself and it reads in order to ensure that the alum rock union elementary school district remains fiscally solvent the board of trustee is committed to reducing expansion expenditures in all budget areas including total staffing benefits services and operating expenses capital outlay other outgoing and is also committed to examining potential source of revenue including but not limited to the repurposing of excess facilities to generate facility use or leasing revenue the board of trustees is committed to taking appropriate action to begin addressing these projected funding shortfall with the adoption of the 2122 budget in june of 2021 thank you dr power you i just wanted to say with that i will i am asking respectfully that the war will consider the recommendation that we have been brought forward to you okay thank you and at this time i'm going to go ahead and open it up for public i see your hand um mr quintero i'm going to go ahead and i just want to open it up for public comment because i want to see how many are on to speak um yeah so i just want to open that up before i turn it over over to you mr quintetto so those of you that are here to speak on item 302 please raise your hand at this time um while mr quintero expresses himself go ahead mr quintetto so uh what i wanted to there was a lot of questions that were raised in uh the previous item and i think it would benefit us all if uh the administration could elaborate and could respond or not respond because could provide information that may elucidate and inform the public with regard to those concerns that were raised because it seems like there's uh there has been some postings online social media that simply flatly said the school's to be shut down however i would i would ask through the president of dr bauer the students that are there now that are entitled to an education at that facility in the future would they be able to continue to enroll at the same site maybe not the same name school but they would still be in the same facilities that they were in the previous year let's see if they were sixth graders and they're moving on to the seventh grade they would still be in the same site correct yeah they would be entitled to enroll at the same site and um when the the time is appropriate i would like to amend the resolution to make sure that the resolution has that specific language that uh the students who are currently enrolled are guaranteed access to that to that same school even if it's under a different name and so i just wanted to make sure that that was clarified for the public given the fact that that issue was raised as to the disruption of students that may have to go to different schools um that is not necessarily the case given the fact that the same students would be able to continue to from the same enrollment area would be able to have access to the same facility it just would be a different name and um and so that was it i just i i heard the comment continue to come up and i wanted to make sure that that was clarified thank you thank you board vice president um and maybe if you want to uh as your i know you have some recommendations in regards to the actual recommendation at the time um if you can maybe come up with a recommendation um so that we can continue this conversation um and make a recommendation um so that we can again continue on um and then also so that the public um knows what they're making a comment on you know depending on what you add to it oh okay did you want me to make the recommendation for the additional is that okay because i want to make sure yeah sure um so it would be a therefore be resolved and it would be a guarantee for the students of students who are currently enrolled are attending the enrollment areas of both lee matson and fisher would be guaranteed access to uh renaissance of madison or renaissance at fisher wherever their respective enrollment areas and i'll second that can i add wait can i add something um if if we dr bauer um if they if the parents because i hear some of the parents saying you know i heard earlier that they don't want their child going to that school are they open to going to any of our other schools in our district yes can we add that uh board of vice president quintero so that and or any other school within our district yeah yeah give and also i would add that per the district's open enrollment policy with middle schools students would be free to choose to go to whatever elem rock middle school they choose to attend okay um i'm sure dr bauer got that down in writing or somebody hadn't done it it's being recorded so i think we can go back and add that to as an edit and i'll second and for purposes of moving it forward thank you very much so we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment at this time um sorry about the president i think let's see travis had her hand up i see her hand see her i'm sorry i do see her thank you it's okay um just yeah i have a question because hold on one second one second trustee chavez um i just wanted to ask uh um mr moran how many hands do we have have up for public comment for total uh right now looks like we have six okay great so we have six for public comment um if you're indecisive please raise your hand up um because after trustee chavez then we're gonna move into public comment thank you so much go ahead trust chavez with the resolution reading like that wouldn't it be difficult to want to get into avelante since there is a prerequisite to get in uh isn't that don't we have to change the language a bit on that because that might be creating a problem later on down the road because of the they have to be dual immersion i'm assuming that's for documentary the opening not in prison go ahead the open enrollment policy already addresses that correct given that um it deals with those very unique situations such as bill emergency that's why i mentioned the open enrollment policy board president yes trustee chavez i just want pug to know that and the parents because they don't know the policy and they might consider that school and then later on get turned down get disappointed and go somewhere else that's why i'm bringing that up thank you okay so we'll go ahead and turn it over to public comment uh mr moran i'll go ahead and turn over to you at this time thank you board president yes we at this time we have speakers first speaker is brenda sandejas miss indejas you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening i'm brenda a parent here at lmroc i have two children here um i just wanted to make a comment for the repurpose repurpose uh surplus is any uh school whose ada had dropped and had classrooms that potentially could be used right for a lot of the recommendations that was given here just wanted to clarify that there is surplus there are uh classrooms that can be used that's what i understand and so you don't need to close the school to have surplus they're surplus because there's a lot of schools that have capacity of 800 that are have they have 200 students so that surplus is there um and another thing that i heard here you need to they're doing this or you guys are doing this because you need a qualified budget um so again our kids are the ones that need to save you guys because these options are being done here because you guys need a solvent budget again our students are put last i understand that what is being brought here you think doesn't affect people but it affects classified workers i don't know what principle is going to be in what school is the fisher principal out since that is a school closing is the renaissance principle coming in those are just questions that i have but we also have janitors and lunch ladies that will be uh displaced when you do these kind of of uh recommendations and so i just want to make sure that you guys know that um you know i think that we gotta we gotta really think about how we're spending because i heard the last meeting that we're doing great and now i'm hearing that you know this parcel tax might not come in and this was being told months ago so you guys need to think about a better way how to strategize our budget because i don't want to have to keep hearing that other schools are going to be closing down the line so that's all thank you next speaker is adrian vain miss vane you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello again um now is not the time to be tearing down our community now is the time to lift them up and by closing schools and i understand you know sitting there saying oh but there's still going to be a renaissance well those schools have different focuses and we shouldn't be tearing down our community we should be lifting it up we should be lifting our students up we should be using these facilities to lift our community up to help the parents that need help to help the teachers that need help the more you close down our schools the less support you're going to get from the community and the teachers this is i understand that there's a budget and sometimes we have to look at the dark and dirty and i understand that but this is not the time maybe in a year and who knows what could happen this year because a lot of people have lost their jobs and there are some people that may not be able to send their kids to private schools anymore and so that they're going to have to use public schools a little bit more we need community spaces for a lot of the people that have lost their jobs and this would be an opportunity to give them a place where they can learn a career we need to think about our community right now we shouldn't be tearing our community down this is a time this is a beautiful time where we can actually lift our community up and do something good please don't disappoint our kids again i i know that you know they can still go to the school but it may not be the right fit for them to do renaissance thank you very much thank you next speaker is rosa sepulveda mr poveta you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good afternoon thank you again yes i am rosa sepulveda so again i still believe that it is completely inappropriate to consider schools consider closing schools down um as other other speakers have mentioned there's a different area of focus at renaissance at matson versus um matson renaissance at fisher versus fisher merging the two schools together would impact families would impact the students my question is with these schools merging what's going to happen to the personnel people are going to lose their jobs you know what is the ratio of the students to staff going to be are they going to remain the same will the supports remain the same for students with special needs um you know i as i mentioned previously i am the parent of a child with special needs and the amount of support that i receive at my child's school um would definitely be impacted if she were if her school was merged with another school um i don't believe that the same amount of supports would be there i as a parent feel very comfortable going to my school administrator speaking with the principal speaking with the secretaries getting an update if i need clarification on something i feel very comfortable getting that information um having the school merge with another school would raise concerns like would i have that same that same opportunity um i'll have to build that rapport once again with the administration you know in the event that i need to address or clarify something overall in the grand scheme of things our student success is important it's vital our children are our future thank you for your time thank you thank you next speaker is dilsa gonzalez miss gonzalez you have two minutes please then mute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening members of the board my name is isa gonzalez and i have a child in renaissance medicine um first of all i understand the deficit and i sure don't want to be in your shoes right now when we have to make these kind of decisions that is going to impact our children second i believe that even though this this is a preposition that will help us in the future is a too fast decision there is no parent involvement engagement or conversations with either or of these websites that we're talking about we have a lot of questions is renaissance are going to still become a a small school that that means that my students are gonna have to be in a waiting list what's gonna happen to our stu to our teachers to our staff to our community license there's so much um questions in the air that have not been answered and will not be answered if you guys take a decision right now and it's not fair for our students it's not fair for our teachers and it's not definitely um fair for for anybody in this situation i truly believe and i know that alumbra school district know how to engage parents and know how to bring them in community towns let's make that before we rush into a decision so parents can have their answers questions like myself and other parents are here i understand merging is a it's a possibility but i also understand that i have concerns as other parents too and let's not remember that in some point in the last years um students of renaissance and citizens and of officials on madison had a little rivalry right there even though they were in the same school they had a little rivalry so we have we are in the mental crisis with our students let's think about that before we merge schools and let's bring them to the table and let's bring parents to that table to really talk about what's happening and and answer those questions that are in the air right now thank you have a really good evening thank you next speaker is jocelyn mers miss murs you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin thank you um good evening i am glad i'm not in your shoes tonight um i did have the privilege of being on this committee um and i feel like we we accomplished what we were tasked to do and that was come up with repurposing ideas for the unoccupied facilities whether it was a room or a wing at a school regardless my question i i know that dr bauer earlier said that this was about finances and my question is and i know that you know you don't need to answer this and i can go back and look it up but i do think have you asked yourselves and is the community aware what is the cost savings that is going to be realized by the district by school consolidations um it's my understanding that you know what they'll be an administrative cost savings when they're sharing an administrator and possibly sharing the community liaison those kind of administrative costs but i don't know exactly how much that is that the district will realize and is it worth the potential effects that it will have ultimately on the students or the potential decline of enrollment that we may see by consolidating schools just something to think about when you make your decision tonight thank you next speaker is megan oh she's no longer there next speaker is miss lowey miss lowey you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi my name is kathy loewy and i am at shepherd middle school um i spoke earlier about being at palo when hello was closed and talking about how the students were really upset and i remember telling them you know we're going to be at shepherd together and they said that's it's not the same it's not the same these are sixth graders they hadn't even gone through half the school year at the time but they had already become you know felt that paula was their home their family and it was important to them i also was a member of atlas academy at shepherd and we built something that we were really proud of and we were really it was really important to us it was really important to our kids too and when we asked that that be something that we could continue permanently you were told no and we had to merge the school back together but for those few years that we had it and and avid academy as well it was very important to our kids and i cannot tell you i cannot express to you how sad our kids were when they found out that wasn't going to be continuing we a lot of the things that we built there some of them continued a lot of them didn't and they were really good things that we had going really good programs that we had [Music] and those were lost to that consolidation and i think that what renaissance has done what madsen has done what fisher's done what they've built a lot of those good things are going to be lost through this kind of a move and i i think that that's really unfortunate i think that we should repurpose spaces instead of closing schools and consolidating them because we'll lose a lot of important things thank you next speaker is mimona berta miss berta you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin miss berta please unmute yourself there you go hi um this is actually mr berta um namona's husband i both of us teach special education at fisher middle school i've been teaching there for six years my wife has been teaching there for eight years i wanted to first thank the community members and fellow teachers who do not actually teach at fisher matson who spoke on our behalf i also would like to thank the repurposing committee for suggesting no closures and i would like to remind the board that they should listen to those who elected them and who they serve i do like the sounds of repurposing the schools but i do want to echo what another person said and that that there are a few open classrooms and why couldn't we not start with those classrooms while we keep everything the same regardless of what people say some students will be displaced will there be free transportation provided to students who do not choose to go to the renaissance schools also renaissance is definitely not the same as fisher or madsen fisher was built in 1962 it's a cornerstone of the community it's a generational school that is not renaissance renaissance was not built in 1962 it is not a generational school that has served this community if you go out to renaissance renaissance and speak to those kids there's definitely a sense of entitlement i don't like that that's not our community we don't need the kids being entitled looking down on other kids that go to the same campus as them also there are no credentialed pe teachers out there they're running mickey mouse pe classes that's not best benefiting our kids i would like i personally would not like to teach at renaissance and if i'm going to be expected to just teach at renaissance i will not go for that so please i implore you board to listen to this community that you serve and listen to their recommendation and please if you do repurpose this the schools please do a better job than the state-of-the-art multi-purpose gym that we were supposed to get at fisher please don't let that happen again thank you for president last speaker is veronica veronica you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin great thank you and good afternoon bora and good afternoon to the community um and i'm here also to echo the same sentiments that you've heard already it is it is sad it is heartbreaking and it is also very frustrating it's frustrating because it was a decision that administration had to make but had zero parent involvement as parents we've been asking for transparency as parents we've been asking to collaborate together and that has not been the case there was a repurposing committee in which many of our community members attended as well and voiced their opinions and voice their concerns and their repurposing committee you know struggle as well and and did a great job in listening to the community the community said no closing of schools and that's what they came no closing of schools instead let's repurpose what schools have that extra space um and as a parent i think i'm also very concerned i have you know my trust just there is no trust because i don't know if in the next board agenda i'm going to find my children's school on that to be close i don't know if i'm going to find my cousin's school in the board to be close and without zero knowledge of that coming i also want you to think about the impact for the students okay they've already many of them have been displaced from their homes many of them living in now in one room where they were displaced from their other homes many of them going through a lot of trauma of losing somebody to covet to covet many of them getting covered themselves i want you to think about that transitional plan that needs to be in place before anything happens i want you to think about that transportation plan that needs to be in place before anything happens it's not just let's consolidate and move on there's more we're president there are no more speakers thank you mr moran at this time i'm going to go ahead and open it up for the board for any questions comments concerns and i'll go by your hands there are any uh board vice president quintero i think uh board member pham had his hand up first i want to jump in okay let's uh thank you go ahead trustee thank you thank you madam president thank you mr vice president uh you know uh through the pro through the ward president question to the superintendent uh could we we've heard through public comment that they're there you know and from the uh 7-eleven committee that uh that the suggestion was to one of the suggestions was to repurpose empty classroom space uh would the superintendent clarify how how do we get to [Music] repurposing that an empty classroom in in a school uh if if if the superintendent could provide a kind of a a nutshell answer to that please so that's kind of the point that i was trying to make it needs to be specifically said there is x number of classrooms surplus at any any specific facility cannot just be at all the facilities right and so that's one and i'm gonna ask mr chen to jump in also um to explain to the board and the community this whole concept of a classroom here two classrooms there uh that's not um the path that that we are that we would be able to follow and i'm going to let colvera address that piece just so that everybody is clear that number one we need to be very specific about which sites have how many rooms to be able to be repurposed that's just that's by law we cannot just say all the the empty classrooms in the district so that's one but then i'm gonna ask mr cheng to be able to explain to everybody about um thinking in terms of creating revenue streams from you know one classroom two classrooms in different facilities great thank you dr bauer um one thing i wanted to share with the board and the community is that um the one of the information that we shared with the repurposing committee was that there was a target amount that that the district was looking for in terms of amount that the districts need to generate in savings in order for us to close our structural deficit and that that target number was between three to four million dollars um in order for us if we were to go in the route of just leasing and not closing schools and leasing empty classrooms in order to generate three million dollars we would need to essentially lease one wing at about 12 to 14 of our school sites in order to generate that revenue ongoing revenue um the challenge with that is also you know finding 12 to 14 partners who are willing to work or have to need to rent those spaces out and are willing to rent those space out at market rate um as some of you may be aware of a lot we work with a lot of um agencies who we consider partners um and in those relationships um you know in the past we it's been very difficult for us to be able to charge them a market rate um so those are the things to also keep in mind and in addition to that um you know having to manage 12 to 14 lease agreement there's some costs associated with that in terms of running those lease agreement through legal counsel to be vetted before any of the agreements are presented to the board for um for approval um so those are just just some of the factors i wanted to share with the board and also to keep in mind as we move through through this process thank you okay so supplemental question to superintendent bower and assistant superintendent chang so basically due to due to legal requirements and logistics we so we just can't we we're unable to say you know there we have five classrooms that maths and for example and two classrooms at fisher that we could police out but rather we there we have to in a way uh you know uh for lack of a better term if we're going to lease out classrooms they need to be basically arranged in a efficient manner so that they're they're located in the least number of sites possible so i would going back to your example of one wing in every school for example it would be preferable to say you know uh we have three schools that we can lease four wings each for example that that that is a uh more logical way of approaching the repurposing is that right yes and it remember surplus and rogelio can join you know and help me explain um the it needs to be very specific right the board me there needs to be a specific whatever the amount is right classrooms by sight right we cannot just blanket and say oh you know we have more or less two in painter and four in ocala and two in lindel that doesn't weigh this works right it needs to the it has to be very focused about specific sites and so all of that generates the whole thing about what really will create a revenue stream who will be you know in terms of that who would be interested in saying you know i'm going to set up a daycare in two classes in in one of our schools so those are the kinds of things that that we need to consider as well and right now we are considering um consolidation also that that uh impact the least amount of families right and i totally understand they're different schools all of the schools are different because they have different people um so we will have you know depending on the board's will uh we will have uh a transition plan that we need to work with with the schools but you know just so basically before we could we could repurpose facilities for leasing the board would uh basically the the board must declare x school site surplus property whatever school property yes okay okay okay thank you very much thank you trustee fam uh board vice president quinteno and then i see with nano's hand up so um you know i think none of us signed up for the the day that we would have to go ahead and merge schools well the idea was to continue growth the reality is different and so we politically expedient thing for me to do would be to just sit here and start beating up on my colleagues saying i'm not going to vote for this because it's going to make me look good with those who've called in some members of the public uh the fact of the matter is that there's a job that we were going to do and uh as the voters went ahead and placed in you to make sure that uh we maintained a financially solvent district so that's stable and so with that said i i i was not going to be i publicly stated that i was not going to be supporting the shutting down of any school sites um and i i stand by that i do appreciate the recommendations of the committee um the folks that volunteered that went in there multiple times a week sometimes i appreciate the work that you've done and you brought forward a good recommendation of looking at sites and so i'm looking forward to seeing how it is that we can go ahead and use uh some of our our surplus facilities to to generate some revenue and get creative because i think that's what we have to do we have to we have to get creative and in order to help us deal with the situation and moved up we've been dealt but um i also am appreciative of staff's recommendation of coming forward with the um not closure but the merger and that's something that i can support because as i stated before i probably stated to members of the public not my colleagues that i would not be supporting any sort of closure of any of any school site and i'll stand by that i pass by and i see the old content site and i used to be an alum rock side you can pass by josef and um a key road that corner lot was sold out by former board former members of this board it was a mistake it's wrong for them to do that and i still stand by that uh selling off land is something that i'd not support and i'm not supporting any closures of our of any of our sites i think that the merger of two sites into one would allow us to go ahead and meet this very difficult situation in a way that makes sense uh given the fact that we stand in a position that we're in i was very heartened to see the recommendation by the committee uh when they mentioned that none of our sites should be going to charter schools i think that's an appropriate recommendation and i stand with them firmly in support of that right now every morning i believe and dr barry is correct i think it's about 4 500 students that come to school and alan rock can go to a school other than alan mark's school district correct i think yeah the number again i'm sorry the ballpark i believe was about 4 500 students that uh go to charter schools within lm rocks and boundaries yeah so we wouldn't be facing the situation if we have to deal with privately operated publicly funded schools within our boundaries but the legislature sought to it to go ahead and institute this law in that opened up privately funded privately operated publicly funded schools roughly right around the time that alum rock was at its height reaching nearly 20 000 students and we've seen the decline since then so for us to say that it's not it's a demographic issue no we see the numbers and we have students exiting to these privately operated facilities that are publicly funded i was very very disheartened to see some of our county board of education members at rally with some of these privately operated institutions just on the 28th more disappointed was that one of our one individual connected talum rock closed off the rally and is now telling us right here at this meeting that we're the reason why these problems are happening it's unfortunate that we have somebody who's out there pushing privately operated facilities that are publicly funded and then comes to these meetings and blames a board for for this um it's inappropriate things wrong should be more honest with the public um but with that said i i'm going to be supporting uh the recommendation because it's not a closure the facilities will mean will be maintained uh we uh have it in the resolution then we will continue to go ahead and um and operate the facilities and the students that were there for example in sixth grade we'll be able to move in to seventh grade going to the same facilities that they were in in the previous year and so i'm very very comforted by that uh i know that there's been some uh reference to rivalry and that's unfortunate i hope that we would be able to go and move beyond that and uh and i'm sure that the rivalry is not amongst the students um kids are kids and then they can work with each other um and so i'm hoping that that somehow dissipates and we're able to have kids from uh from madison and for fisher being welcomed into some of our highest performing schools i think it's a benefit for both schools uh because the kids at renaissance will be able to work with their uh colleagues from the former traditional schools and um the kids from uh renaissance from from madison and fisher will be able to have access to these high performing schools and so i'm very very excited to see what the future holds for the children there i was concerned about some of the recommendations that were made um by the committee in particular the uh recommendation very specific recommendation of uh providing the former moxa site to san jose evergreen community college district i know that the college district was in the process of of working with the foundation for hispanic education to um enter into some sort of negotiation when everything fell apart in large part it was a jew because of one one board member's desire to preserve the facilities for voices charges that's something that came out very clearly and so i'm concerned that there may be ulterior motives uh in one way or another uh here in the the involvement of that particular board member should be concerned uh that they were very very clear about their hesitance to and their their opposition to have san jose evergreen operate at the former nhu site due to their concerns about impacting the charters so uh given the decisions that we're having to make today the um impact that we that's being felt by elm rock due to these privately operated publicly funded institutions i'm very very concerned about the connections that may exist between one particular board member of san jose evergreen and um and their motives uh because of the fact that they've been very clear about their support for basically derailed an entire process to bring a college education to nhu the former indian chu site once again um and so i wanted to make sure that that was a very clear i'm saying it right here in public that i'm very very concerned about that so i i would hope that my colleagues heed that concern and look into those issues and when things move uh move forward and when we have to take a big decision so uh thank you for the time uh once again i want to thank the members of the committee that were involved in the uh in the process that uh that uh very very long drawn-out process and i do appreciate uh your your involvement your support and uh looking forward to what the future holds for alum rock um this is not a closure but a a merger of two schools and uh looking forward to uh that uh the the work and the access to to the high performing schools that uh we'll have at uh renaissance of matson and renaissance at fisher if uh the board chooses to move that direction thank you so much trustee carano yes thank you um so i'll try to get through this stuff so first of all um i want to sincerely thank the the members of the committee for coming to the meetings i know there was 11 meetings over the course of about three months and meetings were anywhere from an hour and a half to a three plus hour meeting so i know the the work that went into the meetings itself plus preparation and all the work that went into that i want to also thank mr hand and mr sanchez for for trying really trying to facilitate the group to the kinds of decisions that i think we as a board were hoping to see come to us um i particularly want to thank also mr ray turner and ms maria martinez particularly in the later meetings for their leadership and for trying to advocate for some decisiveness and from the com from the committee in terms of the specifics again that at least myself as one board member was hoping to see um that reflected um the needs and wants of the community but also the reality of our situation um and so some of the stuff that i had as questions or notes coverage or dr bauer already addressed um just some of the comments that were made um during the public comment sections um with regards to kind of transparency and just the general operation of the district and the board i certainly take that feedback and and consider it and take it seriously but also i also lean on you know the reports that we get the data the the report that we got recently it's not everything but it does speak to the satisfaction of parents and students in a number of areas of the district and a very high rate of satisfaction always room for improvement obviously but i i look at that i look at the audit that we got last month that also it wasn't a perfect audit but it was a very good audit which demonstrates our our fiduciary responsibilities as a district as as the auditor looked through that so again that's not everything there are other pieces to these pictures but but i consider those things um as i also consider the feedback from from community members who may have questions in those areas um i do think i you know during when we had the demographic study presented to us i did ask the question specific to the impact of charter schools versus the demographic trends and you know it's kind of a gray area i guess to be able to to analyze that fully at least in the report that we got but i do think it's a combination of those two things that are impacting us but whether it's charter schools or demographic trends or whatever the reality is is that the impact is felt it has been felt year after year and that those impacts cannot just go um unheeded or unaddressed um i also i also understand the concerns brought forth by parents and community members about um how a decision here by us would impact current students current teachers current parents that's supremely valid and um a consideration the challenge however as as a board and as a district is that these kinds of decisions we feel them in the moment we feel them for our current situation but we also have to consider that these are decisions as many of you mentioned that are generational so we do have to consider the impact on current students but we have to think of the impact of our decisiveness or non-decisiveness in 5 10 20 50 years and so it's not just the short-term impact that all of us feel but we also as board members need to think of long-term impacts on the district as a whole um i also want to reiterate that this we're in it all of us are in this so it feels like this is us this is our district and we're having all these impacts but declining enrollment is a trend in many other places it's not just our district it's not just here we are more impacted in some ways because of the realities of our um our socioeconomic realities of our area but these trends of declining enrollment are being felt other other places and indeed other nearby districts have already started the process of closing schools and have closed schools already um so this is not unique to us as we've talked about before another thing that you know i i have many of the same hopes that many of the community members have brought forth and i also have a lot of the what ifs what if we can get you know these partners what if we can you know bring in these resources what if we can do all these things unfortunately again from a governance perspective it's very difficult to govern on hopes and what is we have to take um solid information that we have the best information that we can get including in um input from community and parents and incorporate all that into our decision but you know it's it's it's a very challenging thing to have to um govern with all these hopes and wishes and dreams that we have but also knowing that we're here to do a job as trustee cooper already alluded to and so for many of those reasons um you know i think that this this was being brought to us tonight is is a decent start um but given the reality of what we are facing i i don't think it's enough i don't think that this um i mean for tonight i will be supporting it because it's enough for tonight i think it's a good start but i think contrary to you know many of the comments that i've heard you know with the basically the word being this is not the time i i disagree i think i agree in that it's not the time for any of us ever to have to do this it's never the time to have to do these decisions but in terms of the business of the district um and just the cold hard reality i think this is the time we covered already mentioned you know a lot of the stuff that we are accountable to in terms of our budget and the county office of education and all of those things so this is the time we have to make some decisive decisions here and you know the the challenging thing about leadership or whatever you want to call it is sometimes that you have to you have to make hard decisions when it's tough when it's rough it's you know if if you really it's easy to come up here and just say the wish list of everything i want to have and i agree with everything that that people have said and i think you know one of the for me one of the positives that has come out of the the the committee is that a lot of the stuff that we have already been talking about um career training and dr bauer and myself and i think um andres and many of us have already for a year or several years have been talk going down that path early education all these areas we're in alignment with the group of what we would like to see for our district um you know i just i i was hoping to get some more direct guidance but i understand the sentiment and the you know what was brought to us i i understand where that came from from the group uh so with that all being said i will be supporting this resolution tonight this item tonight um but separate from this item i do want to direct staff um and this is the hard part and and again these these are things that i would like to look into this is not to be very clear with the public in the community this is in no way shape or form something that i say is going to happen or we're saying it's going to happen it's something that i you know i'm directing to look into and get more information on so for potentially next year not this year um the closure of russo mackenzie the consolidation of kiratin into george as a k-8 or tk8 school the consolidation of painter into shepherd and the partial repurpose of ryan and lyndon i know that is harsh it sounds very um it doesn't sound it doesn't feel good saying it but you know i i went to ryan that's one of the three almost schools i went to my daughters went to russell mcintyre and shepard they graduated from shepherd i have very direct ties to these these sites i lived on the same street as lindale for many years too so i mean i'm connected to all these but when i look at the information that was provided to the committee in terms of the projected cost projected enrollment i consider you know the the charters in the area i consider trying to minimize families having to leave neighborhood schools as trustee um quintero leader to those are things that i'm interested in looking at because what's happening tonight potentially is not gonna cover what we need to do still so we still need to look at other this difficult decisions um to make we need to close up to like nine sites at some point in my opinion and i think that's what it's looking like um we want to have the least impact on students and families we want to reduce flights of our families to charters another district we can't guarantee that but that's a goal and we want continuity of programming where possible so just to finish up um you know doing doing something like that and part of my rationale is that that would open up painter and puritan to do some of these things at scale that we're talking about day care early education career training it opens up entire sites and it's as dr bauer and coverage mentioned it's specific that we could say we specifically are you know going to take action on these sites and then we can begin to work on bringing those partners that can come in and provide these services to to our community the consolidation of the two patron shepard and george and puritan keeps families obviously their puritan and painter families feature less of the puritan but they won't be in the exact same site but they will be very close so they can stay in a neighborhood school they can stay in um you know where their their family goes to and so i've talked to dr bauer and covera about what modifications would need to be made in order to prepare schools like that that's something that i want to have looked into with my request here um and these schools that i mentioned have some of the highest administrative and utility costs based on the information that was provided to the committee so taking these actions my thinking is that we will cut um some of those costs from some of the schools that have the highest cost there uh the last thing i i would want us also to look into making sure that if some or looking at as part of this request looking at um ensuring to build in facility upgrade costs to accommodate additional students so as you're looking into this staff um to consider the cost of upgrading leak shepard and george to be able to number one bring them up in areas that they're already deficient to the extent possible but also to accommodate bathrooms uh playground areas things like that that would um that would need to be there for for elementary students i would want to include in the in your analysis the cost to provide leadership training as appropriate to um to staff at these sites to be able to successfully transition from a middle school to a k-8 and i also would want to make sure that for for this proposal what it would look like or any proposal i want to make sure that we have i don't know what you turn the term is legacy naming in the fut for any future facility so if a site were to change purpose or um clothes or whatever whatever goes there i would want it to be like you know the i mean let's just if we had a school named johnson the johnson community center or if you have a swimming johnson the johnson clinic to to maintain that legacy that history that alum rock does have um so i have questions that i can give to the staff offline but um those are my comments and requests to staff i'll be reporting i mean supporting tonight this um item and i just want to thank you all for for everyone's work and difficult times and thank you for mr fam i see your hand up yeah was that from earlier or no no this is a yes so i'll you know madam president up i will say this is a painful choice i haven't even been in on this board for full months and yeah you know we it's a horrible situation that our school districts find yeah our school district finds itself in uh you know i you know i took the lit you know i took the liberty of uh meeting with the the principles of of madison and the renaissance principles that you know to get a feel of how the how things may play out and i i do want to say that after watching the uh repurposing committee meetings and yes i i there were parts where i had to pull myself out of there because that that uh i understand the pain of when when the school closes yeah i attended powell middle school the the founding school of this district and i graduated from there before going on to independence high school and it hurts when when the the founding school of this district closed uh for reasons that were out of my control at the time i was not on the board i was you know a young employee but it it hurts but this proposal i i think is the least disruptive to everyone involved and now you know the students who are attending still have an opportunity to attend to to attend the same same site even though we'll be under a different pro a different program and of course i'm gratified at the fact that that there is still the element of legacy naming uh lee matson and clyde fisher both played an important part in the uh foundation of this district and i and as trustee baejorano mentioned you know these are generational schools and uh i would say that this is one one chapter of it is closing exactly for and um and then there's an opportunity for a new chapter for maths and and for fisher all vietnam you know as part of the renaissance program and i'm grateful and i'm gratified also that renaissance is a high-performing program one of our one of the bright spots of our district's academic offerings and i and uh you know given the need to minimize the disruption of our community uh our students at madison and fisher are given this special opportunity to opt into the renaissance programs at their sites you know and uh i i want to commend the assistant superintendent chain for for putting out the the fiscal future of our district yes i know that there are one-time funds that will be keeping us afloat but we also have to think about the future once those one-time funds disappear how do we meet our obligations uh you know we this is a time where we are able to to prune away so that so that we can best use this this one-shot money here to ease the transition for this district into a much better i should say uh sustainable fiscal future uh you know uh you know this is a this is the point i know that this is not the you know the resolution before us is not the committee's uh recommendation but elements of this resolution uh were mentioned by con committee chair natalia ball and so i think you know there was you know there is there was committee input that was taken into account one administration uh wrote that uh presented this i should say drafted this resolution um you know and so for for those reasons i i reluctantly reluctantly will support resolution because it is the um it is the uh the best possible path for this district to take at this time uh recognizing its fiscal issues at the same time uh protecting as many students and families and staff to the extent possible um all you know on that note i'd also like to echo uh the sentiments of the board vice president now ladies and gentlemen if you've heard dr bauer mentioned that 4 500 students who live in the boundaries of this district are attending charter schools uh if those students were attending alum rob schools we would not be making this decision right now yeah you know uh i you know if there is there are board members or people with so with ties to this district who have uh ulterior motives uh in their dealings with this charter let me say that i i wholeheartedly condemn that i certainly believe that as elected representatives and or you know employees of the allen rock district we all have a vested interest in these sustainability of our district to serve uh children of this community for generations to come uh at the same time it also means that yes we need to move on the offense again to burn to bring children back to alum rock as well as to encourage those who are on defense to stay in allen roth so i i'd like to take this opportunity to uh ask uh to request an administration uh you know to do fast track considerations of uh partnerships for at least to the surplus property uh as soon as you know as soon as they come after the passage of i should say after the board takes action on this resolution uh and also to uh uh to seek partners who who may also bring uh curriculum enhancement so that we can expand upon what works academically in our district such as our such as our dual language immersion programs as well as what we can do to augment augment uh career technical facilities like we have at o'connor middle school for example and to uh and and to help scale up best practices that can be learned from uh lucha and renaissance so we can apply it to other you know other parts of our district as well as uh finding ways to you know using those synergies to make the best use of surplus properties going forward so on that note uh madam president thank you very much and i you the rest of my time thank you i see board vice president quinteto's hand up yes uh thank you uh madam president um i know that uh during these very difficult conversations it uh it sounds counterintuitive to say that the best days are ahead of us but i definitely believe that our alum rocks best days are ahead of us we've been going through declining enrollment at some point we are going to plateau um and so that's the unfortunate reality that involves declining enrollment but we still retain even in these difficult times and this is for the benefit of the public we still retain a comprehensive education something that many of our competitors don't they teach to the test to dedicate an entire month to go ahead and have the kids drill drill drill on testing so that they can have good numbers and we on the other hand provide music sports and things that others that our competitors have chosen to do away with because it represents an expenditure that doesn't give on the bank for their buck on the other hand we continue to believe in a good comprehensive solid education that involves things like music and sports everything else that we provide jeremiah that is not provided by our competitors and so while we're going through these very difficult decisions i wanted to make sure to underscore that for uh members of the viewing audience as well as all of us to to remind us that uh the difficult times have come and we've taken a surgical approach to retaining those things that we want to continue to maintain here at umrock as well as allow to regrow uh even when we've had to scale back so i'm appreciative of the fact that our staff has been has had the foresight uh to go ahead and and take those measures even though it's been very very painful uh we've we've not done away with everything else uh like some of our competitors have and many many other many of our other uh public school districts have done away with things like these um i was surprised when i when i went and learned that from other places so um i just want to make sure that uh remind us of that dr bauer would you be able to provide us a com madam president through the president of uh dr barr would you be able to provide us a comparison of our surrounding districts and where we're at in terms of our size their student populations just maybe one or two of the districts if you have that information off hand it doesn't have to be now but at some point in time i'd like to the public to have the knowledge um and be able to compare um so that they understand the decision that we have to take so thank you thank you madam president thank you i see trustee stand vegeta go ahead trust me yes thank you i just had a question actually for trustee fam uh with regards to your your pac most recent statement about fast tracking and so if i heard it correctly the request was for district staff to fast track um the pursuit of or or you know looking into bringing utilizing surplus properties um to bring in these some of the resources that we've talked about this evening is that accurate so far i think yeah for lack of a better better term but something like as soon as feasibly possible i i guess that's kind of key i think than what you just said the fees will be possible because also my understanding is that the mo the motion on the floor tonight i think we have a motion already it speaks to the consolidation of these two schools but on the same sites and there's nothing agendized for tonight and there's no recommend specific recommendation from the committee for um any surplus sites or surplus partial surplus or anything like that so i'm just wondering if maybe we're half a step ahead with that and having that fast track this kind of utilization if we haven't specifically named surplus property yet and dr bauer or anyone can correct me if i'm wrong in that assumption and i apologize because um there's my the the unit in my office is very loud and it's difficult to hear so you're talking about uh whether or not we have identified already specific sites with surplus well yeah because trustee family i understand why you know he wants we want to try to get moving on getting some of these services into any surplus that we have i think i understand the the intent of what he's saying i'm just wondering if we're able to do that um or if staff will be able to do that given that we haven't identified either through a motion tonight or through a committee recommendation or anything else we haven't identified any specific um surplus property so i'm i'm wondering how can we can expedite services on surplus property if we haven't yet identified that surplus property i believe that tonight's we're only the board is only able to entertain them the recommendation as it stands but it definitely that's something that may be brought to the regular war meeting in may um you know and and that you you guys know the drill you send us the request and then uh the president and i will place it on the agenda so that's definitely something that can be done for the mabor meeting okay so it's basically depending on a potential future action of identifying certain yeah i thank you rogelio for appearing go ahead mr reese can you help us answer some of that yes that is correct so on the agenda tonight is only the resolution for action is only the resolution which relates to the consolidation of the of the matson and fisher schools before the board or before the district or the administration can start looking into partnering with surplus or looking for partners to use the district surplus properties it would have to be an action by this board declaring which properties are surplus and we're not quite there yet that will you know that would the the committee's report which you received today was an integral process or an integral part step in in that part of the process thank you um and i trust each other i thought maybe i saw your hand up but i wasn't sure maybe not did i see your hand up no you don't want to speak okay so yeah he asked the same question but i do have a question on um one of the proposals that they asked at the committee okay one second because i wanted to stay on this before we went that's why i wanted to double check with you um on this specific item about the surplus and what to do next um and just to put it out there ahead of time i know we're not specifically talking about that today but i would like um we have many great ideas right and we can't do them all so i would like before we get there some additional work to do right before we say this partner um so i think i'm in agreement uh trustee vacarano i'm an agreement trustee fam we need partners you know but there's still a lot of work to do before we get there um okay trustee chavez yeah one of the things that the the recommendations was is that they were limiting uh the leases to five years um if you want a really strong partner to come into alan rock they're not going to want to invest millions of dollars for a five-year lease it doesn't make sense i was talking to that uh reference to dr bauer um and also i have always brought up the spending and the deficit spending at alan rock and that we have had a self-qualified budget and i came in knowing that when i got elected that one of the things that had to happen was consolidation of schools and closing of schools because we don't have the ideas and now we're tasked with this repurposing and it's basically we have to close more schools and i think we should also let the public know that this is not the only ones and there was some on the recommendation because i did see all of the facilities committees uh meetings and some of them that got brought up are not on this list and they are written down on the list and i'm wondering how come none of those were mentioned or that it didn't come to the resolution and i asked dr bauer um who brought the resolution and and why those schools so i did look at how many uh or what the percentage of capacity is in some of these schools and i think that that wasn't addressed because some of one of them that they were starting to mention to close it's almost at full capacity and there's several others that um are also almost at full capacity so why would you want to disrupt that many students when you know they're doing a good job and they're they have the numbers and and yes one of them is a small school but keep you know some parents want to keep it as a small school and if these costs to upgrade the schools isn't that much then i think that we those maybe should not be on the table and i think more considerations and more time and effort needs to be put in by the board to hear all of these uh recommendations that they had as well as the paperwork that all of the um committee came up with um also i i know that nobody likes to hear the word closing of schools but this is also an opportunity to improve the district and instead of struggling with the budget um we we need to do this and we need to do it sooner than later because like i said and like big mac i said figma the word f c m a t what that stands for is fiscal crisis management assistance team now they were here in the district before i ever got elected but they have they're still here because they're telling us we need to fix the budget and they've been saying it for years the scoe which is senate sccoe with the santa clara office santa clara county office of education have also said you need to watch your budget you need to watch the decline in enrollment we needed to watch all these things this is the can that got kicked down the road far too long and a lot of the parents are now saying that this is the worst time that good this could happen and i i agree with them because a lot of these families are hurting but i just want to say to all the parents that we appreciate all of your students we appreciate the families that come here we appreciate all the teachers and we appreciate all the staff and all the hard work that everybody's done unfortunately it's a reality that schools have to be closed and we have been thinking about this for a while nothing has been done that's true until now we're forced to do it in the last hour um we do need to close more schools i want to make that clear because a lot of the persons that i heard speak in other uh meetings said that they were surprised that they were not expecting to close schools they called it repurposing schools but that's another foreclosures so um i do like that we do have a resolution on the board uh agenda i just don't agree with those sites uh so is there another option or would we have to have another meeting to have another resolution on that or is that what we're tasked to do vote yay or nay and i ask that question dr bauer yeah i mean the the resolute the only sites that you are to consider tonight are the ones on the resolution thank you and we are voting on the uh um what was what's on right now to um vote which is those two um and i'm gonna i see trust if i'm with your hand up uh i'm gonna share a few words otherwise i'll be left with zero to say because you guys are all covering you know a lot of the information that i had i also see trustee chavez's hand up so we'll come back to you after trusty fam um and some of it bear with me i might repeat because i feel it's important to repeat you know it's that rinse and repeat um unfortunately it seems like sometimes um some of us forget forget where we're at you know and um only focus at you know the task at hand but don't see the entire picture and so i think it's important to see that entire picture to then understand why we're here um and as the trustees have mentioned this is one of the hardest decisions you know i can still count them in my hand which is great you know there's a lot of hard decisions but there's those hardest decisions and this is one of them um but as we know just like and i'm sure i've used this example before in my home family budget right as much as i want to splurge and you know just go and spend and have um i know that i can't otherwise at some point i would end up unhoused and you know all those consequences um and in this case you know obviously related to education if we continue to spend in the way we're spending we're gonna have some very bad consequences and we're like on the verge and we see those and we're getting uh the red flags up and you know the board presidents the previous board presidents won't allow me here to lie we've all received those letters from scowy telling us red flag red flag president red flag president it's like over and over and i can't just see that letter and just be like ah you know i was voted in to represent my constituents especially my the children that i represent and trust you because well generations to come so i can't just be like oh let's have all the all these amazing things now you know because my daughter's in the 12th you know 12 year old in our district or whatever reason i want let's just do it all now and who cares for generations to come i can't the decisions that i make today i know are impacting generations to come and i need to make those decisions now along you know with my fellow board members that are going to be the best for now and generations to come even though now it might hurt you know and i remember being a child not understanding this right like my mom's saying no i can't buy you that because we didn't have the money so now i understand a little better seeing the big picture um and so you know being a trustee i'm able to see that big picture you know but when my mom would be like no we can't go to mcdonald's every weekend you know it was once a month and it was with coupons and my mom would take a soda you know for her and then juice for the rest of us in her bag because we couldn't afford it and so it's those things you know to understand the totality at that time i'm like why can't i just get you know any drink or a slurpee on the way but now as an adult i see the total picture so with all that being said um you know i agree with our constituents who have spoken you know our parents do need to know this information as soon as possible which is why we have um we're having a special board meeting which is why we want our parents to hear what we end up coming up with today you know i know what i want but it'll be a vote um so that if impacted they have enough time for the next school year to then plan to be at the school luckily you know we're gonna have again reiterating a site there at the schools so that parents don't have to worry about things like transportation and and things like that and so i look forward to uh continuing to revisit all the great ideas you know amazing ideas i'm in agreement we have a lot of partners you know ready to come on and be a part of the work and i'm very proud of our alum rock community because that's the way we are we work together to make things happen so i don't doubt that you know a lot of these amazing um programs ideas will happen um and with this leadership too i trust that you know when we move in that direction and we make those decisions that it'll be great things for our community and so um with that just a few things i wanted to mention before we move on i will go i think i said trustee fam and then chavez and then i see board vice president trustee pam okay thank you thank you board president uh you know in in light of trusty chavez's remarks oh look i think i think we are all committed to fiscal solvency uh uh i was on the bond committee i read fake fake math for many years you know as vice chair of that committee i asked some very uncomfortable questions to the district and at to deltera at the time when they were the bond program management contractor uh that was the multi-year effort to clean up those issues of internal fiscal controls to get us to the point where uh we where we could talk about selling bonds again um you know so please do not doubt my commitment to fiscal solvency for this district right it is certainly an important part to make sure that this district remains the foundational k-8 educational organization of this community as i said when i was at my interview for my appointment that a community that can that cannot afford to educate its own children is a community in decline however that stated i um i state my disagreement to to trustee chavez regarding one of the conditions laid out i should say one of the uh recommendations laid out in the facilities repurposing advisory committee which was the uh issue of leases not longer than five years uh if we're going to lease something i uh as long as i'm on this board i want to see that it is to the best benefit financial benefit to this district when we engage in a lease it i understand that it is a way we can we can resolve our budget issues so that we retain the ability to educate our students and to take care of our employees uh you know i am not interested in a i don't think i am nor do i think this community is interested in something like a 40-year long lease with escuela popular where we're locked into uh rents that are i should say lease lease rates that that are in that are that put this district at an advantage um prices you know we all know that the prices of goods and materials and salaries change yearly and i understand that when we sign a lease agreement there needs to be some stability but but i think that something in the range of five years is a good principle going forward if we are to consider leases i'm not you know we i i'm not here to give sweetheart deals to to organizations wanting to make use of this district's property this is the property of the residents of alan rock and um gosh darn it i want to make sure that it is put to the best use of this community uh secondly please stop skip i mean i also disagree and that's why i made my comments in terms of uh taking using you know expanding programs that we have that many parents want now you know the whole point is to go out on offense here to bring bring families back to this district bring confidence back into this district i think you know it's irresponsible i think to con consider the closure of more schools before we've had a chance to go on the offense and get you know uh the the vietnamese dual language immersion program at painter is not has not even started yet let's not let us not uh you know uh smothered in the crib with tops of more and more school closures here i think i i think that yes we are taking some action today but also i there is where we can let's try to use some time to do you know to show the community that alan rock is is committed to providing uh you know just like board vice president quintero said a comprehensive education that's not only academically sound but also you know answers to the aspirations of our community uh you know i do i am not interested in i should say i think that it's a disservice to the residents of our community to to wade the white flag before uh before the before the battle was over uh statements like that give cover to to the kips the alphas the rocket ships and the voices charter schools and of the world around here uh i'm committed to fighting the charters i you know i completely agree with the recommendations of the of the repurposed thing committee that no we're not giving yielding anything to the charters we're not using anything that could be used to the advantage of charter schools uh you know if we're going to stay preemptively we're going to close more schools you might as well go to uh you know go go sign up and um you know be part of the marketing arm of these charter schools uh i wanted to state my commitment clearly to this community that uh you know this board you know i myself as a member of this board i help my colleagues to er er we stand committed to offering a good education to the allen rock community uh as we have done for the last nine decades that's not going to change as long as i still got a scene on this board uh i you know highly resent the fact that you know i'm as we're taking tough action let us not give you know the charter schools that's that inundate our district you know aid and comfort by scaring off our parents you know with threats of school with further threats of school closures come on uh for for once you know after this let's rally around let's do our best to get out of this pandemic open open for you know hopefully get to a successful fall reopening and let's see where we end up but in the meantime you know let's not let's not rile the community here with you know uh you know uh you know uh un you know with things that were posted in unfounded social media posts as well as you know certain websites that are openly pro-charter and opposed to the existence of alan roth thank you very much madam president thank you um and i think we said trustee chavez and then i think it was vice president guitero and then trustee him you're muted trustee travis i have two questions what is the exact number of students we have now could you tell me that and then i have the next question 8 547 i believe okay and the other question is um what is the cost savings if we do close these two schools would you give us that tonight chang can you please answer that question from trustee chavez at the cost savings on the closure of fisher and madison yes so it's um we estimated to be for both schools um close to seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars for the uh reduction in admin cost savings and i think what was the total amount you said that we had to come up to um submit the budget you answer that the target that we were asking the committee to achieve was between three to four million dollars okay so what would the other schools that we would have to do to reach that goal i'm sorry yeah i didn't catch your last question um okay obviously so if the savings only going to be 770 000 and you said that we need how much three million something between three to four million dollars okay let's call it four million okay so if we're only going to save seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars and let's be realistic here what else needs to happen in order to reach that number exact number four million can you answer that please i don't know if i can answer that in one sitting i mean there's plenty of options that the board administration okay the thing is is that we have to come up with that that's what the county is telling us that we have to come up with right so we're not going to do it and so if we don't do it the skull we make the decision for the board and they take over because they already have the bank accounts they're there because we are not being fiscally responsible when somebody takes over your bank accounts so does that mean that if we don't do it here and in the next meeting the skully take over that decision for the board can you answer that please no my understanding is that there's a process before the county office of ed um ends up taking those actions um and you know it the authority still lies with this board in terms of the decision that needs to be made in order for to present a budget that is solvent for current year and to two years out um so their role is to work with the districts um to ensure that all those stuffs are happening can i add about the last letter that i received um from the scoe and what can i just ask this question before i get derailed okay go ahead and you can you go by the steps the actions that will be taken by skully if we do not make these decisions okay go ahead corrina and i think it's i think it might be in relation to that good questions trust each other because i also thought the same things and in the letters they acknowledge that we as a board have already been making decisions like for example one of them you know is um this repurposing committee right to head in that direction so it's kind of like the boat heading in that direction for solvency um so they do acknowledge that we as a board are doing the work to get there and so um you know thank you mr chang for not saying hey you know this is what you're gonna do because that's what we're here for and some of the ideas obviously is based on today's decision on what we do with that land to them bring in money and you know other ideas that i've heard in the past right from other board members such as the solar system i mean these ideas that will eventually shift that for our district whether we agreed to them or not um but you know we obviously don't have that today and we are not going to be voting on that today um i'll go ahead and go to board vice president quintero and then i think you had a hand up i don't know if you changed your mind and then we'll come back to you chavez yeah so um i guess what we have tonight is the option of continuing to do what we're doing and eventually we'll get to a physical insolvency and then eventually a trustee would be appointed and they would have the authority to take action do whatever it is that they need to do to right the ship so obviously we're not i'm not interested in allowing that to happen because people voted for me not for a state appointed trustee uh to go ahead and make decisions on behalf so as tough as the decisions are i it's imperative that we take those actions and so but i do see uh my colleagues passionate position of uh not waving the right the white flag and i'm all for you but i also see the the concerns that are raised by by trustee so um i want to take us back to down memory lane and alan morack i was a new board trustee much like uh board member pham and um we my my concern was the bleeding the bleeding of students that was taking place at the time it happened and so this was before dr bauer came on board and so the previous superintendent had put forward some recommendations recommendations that were put out there and i wholeheartedly supported they were very unpopular it was to go ahead and shift the nature of the chavez mayfair site schools and the idea was to go ahead and take us in the direction of a k-8 that would preserve our kids um if we take a look at the harvard model we see that it's very successful in stemming the flow of kids to al far to other charter schools around the area and so using that it would have been a successful model unfortunately a lot of my colleagues at the time um caved i think i was the last one that still went ahead and voted and supported the recommendation everybody else said no no no i'm gonna go because there was a lot of a lot of passion speeches a lot of remarks by people who were very very concerned about the it wasn't closure it was shifting over and and doing something different in those school sites to avoid the massive loss of students that we saw who ultimately have seen that it led us to this date and so i would hope that my colleagues that all of us come on a unanimous position and then none of us go ahead and say well these are those two schools that i'm not going to touch and i want other recommendations because we've been here before actually you haven't been i was here and then my colleagues are gone the ones that were there at the time and they chose to disregard the recommendations uh it was it was a solid recommendation that i support at the time and uh the hubbard experience has demonstrated that actually would have worked we saw the success that we've had at hubbard and um and so with that said i would hope that my colleagues uh allow us to have a unanimous vote and it seems like we're going that direction i hope that nobody uh decides to back out and say well you know it's not pocketed we've already seen what happened it's approximately yeah it was a few months after i came out to the port it was a while ago and so i'm just trying to provide the the benefit of the experience that we lived through that time hopefully and in the fact of the matter that we need to take some action we can't continue to re relive this experience we won't um we will become physically insolvent if we don't take you trusted with haram yes thank you um you know i i'm not gonna lie we all know that it hurts man it hurts to have to do these things like i have chills on my arms right now thinking about all my colleagues comments and the community's comments because it's this is a super pivotal time like in the history of the district and it hurts um but you know as trustee action needs to be taken and we cannot continue to kick the can down the road to i i just wanted to um speak to a couple of comments trust each other has mentioned about what would it take my understanding and i i hope i'm corrected if i'm wrong i mean there's a lot of things that we could do that as covaria mentioned but we some of them are we need if we could get 8 000 kids to come back to our district because if you look at those reports that were presented to the committee were projected i believe to be at like uh like high 30 40 capacity in in in a few years and so you know we're built to to have a capacity of i forget the exact number but we'll need about six to eight thousand kids i could be off on that but it's a high number to to come to our district is it possible sure anything's possible but in the near future at least looking at trends that may not happen so that's one thing another thing that we can do is bring income you know trustee and i don't know what i mentioned the solar thing that made somewhere down the road maybe would be a reality that would help bringing in partners once we've identified surplus sites that helps um is it enough to the extent that it reaches these uh these amounts that we need to get to so i know and it's hard to know that right now there's too many unknowns with what that would entail and the other thing that the option that we have is is cutting things in the past few years we've you know enabled that and we've cut you know unfortunately the everyone else libraries we've put you know some some time of liaisons and all those things that were very difficult at the time but that wasn't enough and and you know at some point it has to be enough which is why i throughout my my um request for stock to look into those things and it's specifically because of what has been mentioned about i think trustee and i mentioned that she's received those letters and and office of ed is recognizing that we're moving in a direction so i think tonight's item sends that signal we're taking action we are a responsible board we are governing in a responsible way in a fiscally responsible way i think part of my intent of putting forth my inquiry to staff is to continue to even if it doesn't if none of that stuff were to happen it continues to send the message and to me it's very genuine that we're not just stopping tonight and then kicking the tan further we're continuing to look at what is what we might do in the future that um that will address uh what we need to address and then the last thing i wanted to mention in response to trustee um i appreciate his comments about not wanting to wave the white flag and i don't think any of us want to do that i think the difficult thing for me is the challenge between you know like fighting and doing what you can to try to fight with so many unknown variables um in terms of like getting partners in and trying to get revenue and things like that and knowing when it's time to have to make a call in the other direction and i get you know the risks that that brings with it at the same time i've heard and i take very seriously the comments from a lot of our public and i do think it's an area where we as a district have been i don't know about negligence but we might have taken a different approach is um you know calling out to trust each other's point calling out the the difficult stuff when it needs to be called out and just saying it and i think the public deserves time that's why i said this my thing would be not for another year but it allows for time for people to digest people to consider for us to tweak or look at other options but i think um you know for a number of different reasons whether it's the things that i propose as we look into those or whatever it may be i just think it's important that we yes do what we can to to fight but at the same time give our community and ourselves time to pl time to plan um and be very thoughtful and strategic about whatever moves we need to take next because in my opinion there there are further moves that we need to take if trustee china just found out or you know was told that the current item is three or four i forgot how many hundreds of thousands of dollars and we still need another you know couple million clearly further actions need to be taken sooner than later as president said earlier so those are my comments on those items right now uh trustee chavez that's one of the reasons that i've been wanting to have the budget at meetings because i wanted to ask a bunch of questions on the money what was needed to um keep the district solvent and to keep the education for the kids to give them a really strong program and i'm going to ask my colleague [Music] president corrina if the in the future um if you can the letters that you get from scoe if you can distribute that to the board sooner rather than later as well as i'm going to ask that of all the other colleagues when i got the letter as soon as i did get it i wanted to share that right away because i think that each and every board member should know what the response is from skully or if they're sending something out and also i don't look at it as a white flag i don't ever do the white flag you do have to step back though and to reflect and regroup so that you could come out stronger and giving the kids a better program a stronger program and cutting the the excess hearing that that needs to be cut in order to provide the quality education that these students need and deserve and that's what i'm looking at i'm looking at are we going to be able to provide the students with what they need and that's my number one focus is the education of the students um that's it thanks um can i just say something in regards to the request specifically from me i cannot agree to that uh because some of the information that i get is very particular to me so i can't agree that i will forward everything to you and or the rest of the trustees here um but i will take that in consideration uh for vice president quintero uh i would like to call the question or if we move to a vote i'll retract there will there'll be no need to call the question one more time i would like to call the question but if we go for a vote then i'll retract and there's no need to call there would be no need for me to call it i don't see no more hands up so i think we're ready for the vote um there needs to be a motion we have a motion and we have a second dr bauer i know it was long time ago so uh board vice president quintero uh motioned a nice second um maribel do you have that information sorry it's okay it was tough yeah no i appreciate it the resolution with the amendment yeah the amendment of the resolution was the one that um kristi kintel spoke about yeah thank you i'm sorry guys it's just tough right and it's okay i get it thank you and thank you for helping us stay focused and making sure that we don't miss anything um i just wanted you to know that rogelio crafted some language to the resolution that i wanted to share for everybody just the edits so that the board knows what's the edits on the resolution and the community does also so is it okay for maribel to share just those edits so that everybody has the resolution and it's just that everybody can see the edits to the resolution is that okay sure please thank you so as you can see this will go at the very end correct rogelio that's correct these would be added to the to the very end of the resolution and this is to address your comments as well as in consideration of member chavez's comments so thank you madam president and i just wanted to make sure that everybody knows what's going to be um considered sure and and i'll go ahead and read them out loud and then we'll go for the vote be it further resolve that students currently enrolled at madison middle school and families with students currently enrolled at madison middle school will be given the opportunity to enroll their students at renaissance academy at madison school and students currently enrolled at fisher middle school and families with students currently enrolled at future middle school will be given the opportunity and first priority to enroll their students at renaissance academy at fisher school and be it further resolved that students currently enrolled at mathson middle school and fishermen or middle school may enroll at other district schools per the district's enrollment policies thank you thank you okay and we'll go back to our screens just want to make sure we'll go ahead and go to the vote now i'll just call your name as i see you on my screen uh trustee vegano hi or vice president quintero hi trustee chavez hi bestie pham i and myself i passes unanimously thank you so much now calling to or joining the meeting at 8 48 p.m thank you thank you

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] oh that should be about right because um my god um which is is uh good evening i'm scott horner athletic director of columbia unit school number four welcome to the 2021 penciler awards ceremony we appreciate you taking your time out to join us this evening the columbia gymnastics association was founded in 1866 by gustaf pensler in honor of this gentleman our local organization has instituted the pencil awards which are presented annually to a team member in the respective varsity sports offered at columbia high school the individual winners of these awards are selected by the coaches the student athletes must have met eligibility requirements academically and adhere to the policies and procedures outlined in the code of conduct tonight we honor our students for their outstanding achievements in varsity athletics the students who are being recognized this evening represent the best and exemplify our tradition of excellence before we begin the actual ceremony i want to just take a quick second to thank jill dickerson district our high school secretary uh she was responsible for a large part of this as well as kurt steve and his custodial staff uh who who set this stuff up and then obviously our principal brian reeves who is here this evening with us as well so thank you to them so first we will begin tonight's ceremony by recognizing those receiving the ihsa academic award this award is given to any junior or senior student athlete who has earned a varsity letter in their respective sport and has earned a 3.5 gpa or higher we will also be recognizing senior students who have earned a varsity letter tonight we honor 106 student athletes who have achieved these accomplishments we will recognize the juniors first then the seniors when your name is called students please come to the front to accept your certificate or your plaque from mr reeves and then you may return to your seat okay for our juniors alexa aguiar track isabella barker cross country [Applause] isabella crabtree softball thomas crossley cross country track alison fredenberg track dylan hankins track some of our track athletes had a meet tonight so they're potentially a little tardy or not able to make it luke holbein scholar bowl alexa hildebrand basketball volleyball soccer owen jackson soccer jason kuczynski bowling football peter livingstone cross country austin luber's scholar bowl track [Applause] grant matheny football logan miller baseball zachary o'leary scholar bowl alexander patrick golf peyton perry volleyball jalen ralph scholar bowl ethan riebling soccer meredith riddell softball ally excuse me ally sachman soccer sydney sanderson softball [Applause] caitlin schwartz soccer jacob steve baseball [Applause] alexis volkl cheers carson walton golf soccer [Applause] that concludes our junior juniors that receive the ihsa academic award now for our seniors again we will recognize all seniors who who lettered in a varsity sport as well as those that received the ihsa academic award mason albers scholar bowl ihsa academic award zach anderson basketball soccer ihsa [Applause] got awards coming from over here easton andrews football [Applause] put on the brakes kyra bivens soccer ihsa award samuel balasina golf samuel binaldi basketball baseball caroline bosch bowling bryson borisol basketball ihsa award grayson borisov basketball ihsa award carson bridges soccer [Applause] macy brown volleyball ihsa award natalie bush basketball volleyball ihsa award allison carr soccer ihsa award alicia kaya cross country scholar bowl ihsa award [Applause] kylie cleveland softball ihsa award [Applause] ashlyn crawford softball ihsa award [Applause] dominic dalpost track ihsa award [Applause] emily gillen cheer [Applause] andrew graves baseball peter good connect scholar bowl soccer ihsa award trey hemminghaus basketball soccer baseball bryce hildebrand basketball football ihsa award [Applause] jackson holmes basketball baseball ihsa award matthew howard bowling baseball [Applause] sophia cheers [Applause] you're fine natalie hoy volleyball ihsa award kyle jackson football ainsley jacobus soccer ihsa award [Applause] jonah james basketball soccer baseball ihsa award luke jordan's golf ihsa award dane jordan soccer ava corey basketball volleyball softball ihsa award mason kolenberger football track malia casino golf ihsa award [Applause] jessica lambert bowling ihsa award megan levan cheer soccer london little football track [Applause] marisa maldonado golf ihsa award [Applause] trenton martin soccer ihsa award andrew malding football ihsa award colin mclaren basketball football ihsa award [Applause] grant narczynski ihsa award [Applause] kelsey olendorf basketball softball ihsa award colin olendorf soccer ihsa award olivia peterson volleyball ihsa award [Applause] evan pruitt football ihsa award [Applause] garrett pulcher football aaron ron soccer ihsa award [Applause] rebecca riley bowling ihsa award [Applause] oliver romero cross country scholar bowl ihsa award tate shilling soccer baseball [Applause] oliver schroeder football track isaac schreckenberg basketball baseball ihsa award morgan seals scholar bowl ihsa award [Applause] hayden seiler golf ihsa award [Applause] max cerese football ihsa award [Applause] dawson suka football spencer tate golf [Applause] reese taylor bowling ihsa award aaron 2 train football ihsa award [Applause] molly tippin bowling [Applause] kate von boko volleyball hannah walters cheers peyton westfall football ihsa award adam wibbenmeier football baseball ihsa award caitlin wilhelm volleyball soccer max wolfel basketball baseball nolan zarek baseball [Applause] one more round of applause for all of our juniors and seniors at this time we would like to present some special athletic awards students after you receive your award you will then please proceed to the cafeteria where then you will get a picture our first recognition is for the ihsa academic all-state nomination each ihsa member school was invited to nominate one female and one male student from their high school to be selected to the 2020-2021 all-state team nominees needed to possess a minimum 3.5 gpa on a 4.0 scale after their seventh semester have participated in at least two ihsa sponsored sports or activities during each of the last two years and demonstrate outstanding citizenship congratulations to this year's nominees from columbia high school jonah james and ava corey our next special athletic award will be presented on behalf of the columbia quarterback club i would like to introduce alex schlimmer treasurer to present the quarterback club scholarship winners for 2021.

ready when you are you know all right good all right good evening everyone thank you um for attending tonight's planning committee meeting of the whole today is april the 29th mrs jaczynski could i have a roll call please sure mr gripper here ms hallen miss ham here miss harrigan here mr martelly here mr parachini here mr white here and i see miss hallen joined mr chairman you have a quorum hello okay please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice much better we did it in chambers last week i have to say right do we have any communication um from the audience either jeff or vin i do not have any nor do i nor do i all right all right first item on the agenda is update on capital projects scheduled for this summer then we turn it over to you okay well thank you good evening everyone i'm going to share my screen and give you a quick overview can you see the screen with the words over on the left side please someone yes yes thank you so what i'm showing you here is just the high level major construction projects that we have this summer so it excludes things like routine maintenance and some of the smaller repairs but i did want to give the planet committee and the board members tonight you know some insight as to the things that we're planning first of all right here at the top the last day of school is june 16th and then the first day back is august 26 so that's the schedule that we have to work within we do aim to get all our projects completed doing that also at doolittle and um cheshire high school those are exterior stairs uh large project that doolittle it's a continuation of the bathroom renovation that is a pvc project we do expect that to last all summer and you'll see we have quite a few quite a few projects this summer at doolittle so doodle will not really be open for any use you know outside of the repair work and the projects that we're doing we're replacing the underground oil storage tank at duluth doolittle doesn't have any other natural gas supply so we have to replace it the tank is already on site so that that project is teed up and ready to go we went out to bid we are replacing the two boilers at doolittle as well um at doolittle this next project the main entrance renovation this is the security project where we're installing person traps and we're doing that this summer i at doolittle at cheshire high school at highland as well as at dodd this next one classroom renovation what what that really is is that we are the board knows that we are moving two of the kindergarten grades that were at darcy over to do little so we do have some minor renovation work within doolittle to be able to accommodate that another large project and now we're on to the high school the door replacement project this one has been in the works for two years we have a school construction grant from the state approved for this project it's roughly an 800 000 project there is asbestos abatement that has to take place um that is a project that is very very you know detailed and requires rebuilding of a lot of the door uh frames and removal of brick to accommodate that so that the classroom doors essentially is the essence of this project will be ada compliant and wheelchair accessible we already talked about the main entrance where we're going to build a person trap at the high school this summer the act replacement you'll see that we've got a few of these a.c.t is the ceiling tiles basically those you know will be replaced in certain sections of the high school also at cheshire high school in the front of the high school not 100 sure we're going to get this project in but there is an underground oil storage tank that we would just remove not replaced because cheshire high school does have natural gas this regenerator installation is part of the ventilation system so we'll be actually restoring some ventilation that was lost years ago at cheshire high school went out to bid we have good bids and we're going to be replacing the two boilers at highland again doing the main entrance person trap we do have some minor classroom renovations to do we're replacing several windows and doing millwork replacement this project we've been bouncing back and forth we we have 400 thousand dollars to basically upgrade the serving area cafeteria and the kitchen at norton went out to bid the bid came in at over 600 000 so we don't have enough funding the town council asked if we could break this project into a couple of different sections and do it over two years the pbc met last night it's not likely that we we can do that because the pieces of the project that we would have to break up are actually very closely linked and you can't do one without doing the other so i do not believe uh we'll be going with the norton kitchen renovation until the following summer but in norton we do have to do some work on the fuel lines and the pump that supplies oil from the tank which is located in the parking lot into the building and that's to make it compliant with current dep requirements again um moving out of norton into dodd this is the person trap we are replacing some of the 30 year old rooftop hvac at dodd we are going to also replace a couple of different sections of roof at dodd that you know we've been chasing leaks for years on these sections so those will be done this summer replacing you know quite a large portion of ceiling tiles and doing some sidewalk repairs so those are the major the capital projects that we're doing did want to just point out that you know we also have to balance the projects that we're doing with any other maintenance repairs that we're doing that are smaller scale with our cleaning schedule so this is the schedule where the buildings are essentially you know get a deep cleaning and detailing you know strip and wax all the floors and you know the gym including the gym floors to make the school ready for the new school year so we've got to accommodate all that we do have summer school running at highland over at camp quinnipiac which we typically run at norton we had arranged to move it to chapman because we were doing the norton kitchen so the y may wind up back at norton as it turns out we haven't verified that the only other thing that i want to mention and i'm going to stop sharing my screen is that the on the technology side we have some um you know not really large but important projects we have chromebooks for the incoming seventh graders that actually have been purchased they have to be prepped and the the new operating model we're employing starting this year is the seventh graders will receive chromebooks and keep those chromebooks through 12th grade instead of the swap that we did previously they would keep them for seventh and eighth grade and then we would recycle those for the incoming uh seventh graders we're not doing that we're just providing the seventh graders chromebooks that they'll keep through 12th grade and the reason that we're able to do that actually is because google is allowing their operating systems to run out you know through that five-year period we also have uh desktop pcs that we have to replace in the classrooms you know believe it or not we're on about a seven year life cycle with pcs which is pretty long so we have 160 pcs that we'll be upgrading or replacing over the summer and then the last thing which is if we can squeeze it in we will but our current software that we use for a food service operation where you know students essentially buy their meals and most of that is done through a card system um that is a server-based software that we are running in-house we want to go to the web-based version which provides you know in addition to more security and and better backup than we can do in-house it also has a lot more features including an app that parents would be able to use uh it's called mosaic it's by the same company that provides the current software that we're using on our server so if we could squeeze that in on the technology side we're going to give that a shot so that's the brief update on the bigger things that we've got going on for this summer that we're getting ready for big anna's question so then why did you say that camp quinnipiac is going back to norton instead of chapman was it because of the bear no no no no no that's a good question though it's you know what norton has been their um go-to school for the last several years um and again they've moved to chapman when needed norton's a little bit bigger um and they like it better so you know they may wind up having the option this year i just don't know how far they've gotten with notifying you know parents during registration where it will be held and the norton kitchen project is still you know until the town council weighs in i don't have a definitive answer on what's happening there thank you i just wanted to bring up the bear thanks thank you ann uh vin a few questions are all those projects is everything already contracted um pretty much yeah you know we have to get these things out to bid um and signed off on i mean there'll be maybe a couple we haven't signed off on yet but um but when you say bid have they already been bid oh yeah okay so everything's good vetted and now you're just finalizing contracts and purchase orders and whatnot correct okay oh yeah and natural gas the only two schools are highland and cheshire that haven't that are natural gas um the only two that don't have natural gas okay are norton doolittle and now darcy doesn't have natural gas but we converted darcy from oil to propane got it so we've got two schools that we do not have natural gas nearby um and i just want to mention chuck warrington and john copeland from collier's just joined great good evening gentlemen welcome good evening questions for vin based on the upcoming capital projects over the summer uh tim then faith thanks andrew yeah vin with regard to high school you're pulling out an oil tank do we have another oil tank there no so we are going we're going strictly to gas because all the other schools i think are don't they have dual fuels they they do what we've been doing is pulling out the tanks and not replacing them if they have natural gas all right so the interruptible supply you're not really using that rate anymore it doesn't it didn't make it worth it but i do have a bigger question which is um you know we have we have these uh spikes these peaks in gas demand in the winter is are are schools like first [Music] are they uh given first priority in terms of availability of gas or if the gas gets shut down for some reason then we're just closing the schools i'm just trying to understand that well the i mean the reality is we've been running primarily on natural gas where we have it for you know the last few years you know we just keep running oil just to make sure that you know we're running out the supply in the tanks and to keep it fresh you know if we and so the supply of gas has not been an issue you know the one thing that you know we did do as as we're where we still have the dual fuel capability right which is just you know the burner um we're not removing the burner you know and shutting off the dual fuel capability so if we got into a pinch what we have to do is bring in an oil tank and make the connection just okay don't see that as an issue though um the reason that we take these tanks and don't put them back where we can is because the tank you know maintenance and the requirements from the department of energy and environmental protection you know are pretty onerous and it's not really worth spending the money anymore not to mention the environmental risk of keeping that oil tank no no no and i unders i i understand i think i can understand and appreciate the reasons why you would remove it and not replace it the concern i have right now is you mentioned this about the high school and it is a critical facility that could get used highland i think also is um so it's almost like to me that's an issue that the count of which the council should be made aware in terms of like funding i just as long as you are comfortable that you on like at a moment's notice you could get that back up oil tank but literally what i'm thinking about most recently is texas everything was fine with their electric grid until it wasn't and and i just want to highlight this that there if if these are critical facilities for the town there is a question that goes beyond just the the the school system itself that that i think sean uh the town manager sean kimball he should be aware that that we're doing something like this that that's all okay i will you know i will follow up with that and as i said i'm not sure we're going to be able to get that in um this summer but got it thank you that's it thanks andrew faith thanks andrew um vin i was just questioning curious is this our last year for that ada project at the high school well no no there's still the the big item that's still remaining on the list will be the um renovation and ada compliance of the lockers behind the west gym there are boys and girls lockers that um you know have improvements that need to be made to make them ada compliant so and we actually you know do have a proposal from silver petrocell or the architectural firm to do that work but we don't have enough funding to do it however because this project they are that we are doing this summer does have a 40 um six percent grant associated with it we're assuming that when that grant money is returned because it's a reimbursement we can use that towards the funding needed for the west gym boys and girls lockers so we're not in we're doing this because we've been ordered to do it we're not at risk of being in non-compliance are we or are they just seeing that we're making a good faith effort and this is your 12th club you're 12.

okay thanks you're welcome are you looking for us to vote on this tonight well what we've done in the past is the planning committee would vote to put it to the full board of ed okay but we do have the full board of ed here so we could save a step if there's a you know if there's an inclination to approve it and get it done so we don't have to put it on the next agenda um i'm okay with that if my colleagues okay with that i'm good with it see some head mo all right so um yes i guess i just need a little bit of help as to what the motion would be are we talking is the what is the dollar amount uh i will get his his the um the motion would be along the lines of the following to um extend the contract with performance environmental llc for the period from july 1 2021 through june 30th 2022 with a base contract cost of thousand seven eighty four okay so moved look does the planning committee get to vote on or does the full board get to vote on right now well i'm assuming the full board can vote because it's a meeting it is a meeting of the hall okay do i have a motion for approval yes discussion seeing no discussion all in favor no no oh faith that's a question sorry there's you were frozen go ahead you're on youn still frozen and muted really slow computer tonight there you are um okay so we have one more year to go to extend this contract right after this year is there any way to [Music] set the price for next year also so we at least know what we've got um to do a two-year do a two-year extension i can ask and perhaps you know if nothing else we get um we know what we're budgeting next year and i don't know i open that to the others to see if that makes sense for anybody tim yeah i i'm not really i'm not really inclined to do that when is that we did the bid what we did an original bid in 2014 we went back out to bid 2018.

madam board president i think board vice president is here but needs to be promoted to a panelist esta carmelina then for those of you joining us for english if you can um go down on zoom and if you um highlight over the bottom next to uh the different options you have there you will see what looks like a world click on that and please go to english so that we um can make sure that you have the all the information and audio um that that you need for to join us tonight so if you're here for spanish carmelina gave the directions for spanish and if you're here for english please click on english thank you so much now we're going to go ahead and move on to roll call marielle can you help us with roll call please today is a special board meeting of april 29th 2021 at 6 00 pm members of the board in attendance president corina president vice president andres quintero president clerk here member linda chavez president member mim pham president members of administration superintendent dr bauer president great thank you um now if you can all join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america america to the republic of which it stands one nation under god god indivisible great um and just want to um uh focus today's meeting or um i know every meeting i want to uh start it with some intention and so today i just want to think of our youth who are struggling um for one reason or another um that they find uh balance and harmony and wellness that they get the help and support they need um any parents are out there that might be struggling with their youth know that their support in our schools um we have the social emotional uh learning specialists mental health specialists um available to support so please find the help that you need for your child if they need it thank you so much and now we're going to move on to item two public members who wish to address the board this is to inform our public that we will have an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on any of the items are listed on today's agenda so if you haven't prepared your uh speech yet you know and you want to address us this is uh the time to start preparing we will have that opportunity in the near future for you to address us on any of the matters coming up um and then with that um going to go ahead and open it up to our first agenda item uh item 301 facilities for purposing advisory committee update ms bauer is that something that you're going to present or do we have somebody else i will be introducing to the board and to our public mr vanessa sanchez co-chair of the facilities advisory repurposing committee and mr r han who was also um a support to the committee in terms of bringing some some parameters you know for the work that they needed to do so i'm going to turn it over to mr sanchez thank you great welcome thank you dr bauer i'm board president members of the board thank you for giving us the time to share this report with you before i get started and share the report i will ask uh mr art hand who was helping support the process um to share with us an overview of the work that took place over the last three months so mr ardhan okay uh can you guys hear me yes yes okay all right no video so just fyi um so thank you uh board members for the opportunity to come and speak to united and thank you for the opportunity to um be a part of the facility repurposing advisory committee or the frac as we like to call it uh in its acronym in its acronym form um for the past three months the facility repurposing advisory committee has met 11 times with one community forum to discuss alternative school site use options exercise that's driven by the district's continued declining enrollment and the need to address the corresponding budgetary concerns that were created by the problem uh in support of this effort the nine-member committee was provided access to data important to their work and that data included uh 2021 demographics enrollment projections as prepared by schoolworks inc for the district facility specific needs assessment information uh going back to studies that pretend in the 2018 school year and reviewed all school sites uh facility purposing overviews including facility utilization five-year summary school site operational cost analysis and a comparison of repurposing options uh also presented to the committee facility representations facility repurposing information updates and finally additional facility repurposing information and considerations is necessary to help us bring the the process to a conclusion and throughout the process there was much significant debate uh that was centered on the decision to either recommend the closure facilities uh the development of income generating repurposing options or a combination of both in conjunction with um important community input very important community input the committee struggled to formulate a set of final recommendations that would assist the district in its fiscal management efforts in the end their decision was to recommended that no schools be closed but instead that aggressive efforts be undertaken to establish community program partnerships that result in income streams which could offset the need for the cost savings normally associated with with the closure of existing campuses a partial listing of some of these income generating options were health clinics daycare for all ages from infants to adults community support tech centers senior housing alternate education uses such as community college and higher education satellite locations community awareness and support programs uh specific health education programs community arts programs home for perhaps vapa programs sustainable chemistry opportunities through business partnerships teacher housing non-profit use opportunities and construction industry apprentice program and training sites that's just a few of the things that were mentioned uh in the uh the discussions are held uh by the committee through the the course of their three months of work the committee specific ideas are contained in the film report which of course the people will receive here in a few moments tonight but lastly uh before we go to that report i would like to just say that uh and commend both the committee and district staff as they serve with what i would call admirable and focused diligence as they work through this very very difficult assignment with that i'd like to turn it over to mr sanchez who will give you a review of the final report you're muted mr sanchez sorry about that that's okay if i can ask either uh maribel or avtar to please share the the report that i shared with them earlier if they can bring it up and i will walk um the board in the community through the report okay give us a second thank you you could scroll up a little bit thank you so we presented we shared with you this report and this captures the recommendations of the lmroc elementary union school district facilities repurposing advisory committee in the report you have an introduction that outlines the education code that defines the advisory committee its composition and its charge the committee was made up of nine members brandy salcido who is a district advisory committee member if you could scroll up to the next page araceli ortiz who represents dlac the district english learn advisory committee alberto torres who is part of spark the superintendent's parent advisory resource council jocelyn murse from area alumni educators association brenda sanders um csea california school employee association edgar gudiel teamsters local 150 maria martinez araa alam rock administrators association ray turner community at large and natalie ball community at large these were the members who worked with us through those 11 meetings um this was not an easy task um if you could scroll up um to the next section you'll see all the meetings when we met with individuals and as you can see we started this process back in january and we concluded just recently um this week so in here um you have the 11 meetings and one thing to highlight we did hold a community forum where we gathered input from the community and that was on march 25th if we could go to the next page as art shared with you um there was a lot of data that was presented um to the committee members a lot of different reports um all of that information was made available to them and to the public we had a a link in the district website where all that information was held people were able to access it videos of the actual meetings themselves were also there so that the public could access them if you could scroll up a little bit through the discussion um we talked about and brought the names forward of many schools uh for possible repurposing for possible closures for partial uh repurposing or for full repurposing and the list is right below that if you could scroll up maribel so all of these schools were discussed right for either partial repurposing or full repurposing and this was part of the discussion um through all those meetings next page we also had a list of different repurposing ideas that were brought up um and i shared some of those already with you health clinics um at the time homeless shelters day care facilities community support tech center senior housing alternate education the possibility of selling properties discussion around sustainable income streams opportunities through business partnerships teacher housing nonprofit use working with the construction industry all of these things were discussed as possible ideas for repurposing um at the end we came to the committee came to our recommendation if you could scroll up please and i will read this uh recommendation in full um and starting with a based on the current projected declines in enrollment and the extent of underutilization and operational costs and impacts to the district's budget and financial resources the advisory committee recommends that the board of trustee declare consider declaring the following sites or portions thereof as surplus all sites that have unoccupied space which can be for alternative purposes closing the facility to school use priority list of use of surplus space and real property the advisory committee recommends that the board of trustees consider the following priority list of uses of surplus real property and facilities early start intervention programs day care for all ages including those of staff trade apprenticeship programs adult education classes technology support neighborhood empowerment evergreen extension classes other alternative education and fourth special education county programs as appropriate under section c limits of tolerance of use of space and real property the advisory committee recommends that the board of trustee consider the following limits of tolerance when considering the use of district surplus and real property do not sell properties do not allow vacancy that would permit charter school takeover no homeless support activities follow board policy regarding lease options for any surplus property parentheses no long-term leases no adult industries liquor sales cannabis sales no activity that creates toxic waste which could impact the community recommended uses of surplus space and real property the advisory committee recommends that the board of trustees that the district surplus property be used for the following use any unoccupied space at elementary schools for day care before and after school for all ages and expanded preschool offerings use other unoccupied middle or elementary school space for adult education trade school programs health care centers community college extension programs community agriculture garden programs and third maxa used as a community college extension program site and this was the recommendation of the committee in that report you will also find if you scroll up um please mariel the appendix a which is the the written recommendations that's provided by individual committee members and these were some of the ideas that individuals from the committee brought forward throughout the process so in there you'll have a collection of those and some of them have multiple iterations so they adjusted they adapted their thoughts their ideas and those were shared there and the last section appendix b is the final presentation to the committee uh which includes background data that was shared on multiple locations with everyone and we wanted to be able to provide a comprehensive report that really truly captured the work because there was a lot of work that was put into this um the committee members um put a lot of thought they had a lot of ideas and this is um what they concluded at the end so with that i close that section and i'll open it up for questions board thank you thank you so much before we open it up for questions concerns from the board we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment at this time carlos moran if you can help us with members of the public wishing to address the board at this time hello board president at this time we have two speakers first speaker is i'm sorry uh first speaker is liz sanchez liz sanchez please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi good evening members of the board i am a parent and family community member and also committee member of the arust ethnic studies program and i'm here to show my support um in in not in closer enclosure of the schools but repurposing um for the maxwell youth center to become a community college extension or something that enriches the programs that we already have in place and for the daycare programs to continue in the elementary schools so i am in full support of that and any other community who wish to continue to support that um i hope they do voice their opinion here tonight so thank you again for having this meeting thank you next speaker is adrian vane adrian vayne please immute yourself when you begin the timer when you excuse me when you begin speaking the timer will begin uh hello my name is adrian vane and i'm a teacher at george middle school and now is not the time to close schools we've already students have already been disrupted we don't want to disrupt them anymore we've seen through this pandemic how much our community needs us we need a place where parents can access technology where kids have a place to stay the committee has been meeting for three months and it's i would be extremely disappointed if you completely ignored what the committee said and decided to close these schools our kids have already gone through enough and you know they haven't been in school for a year plus and to have that uprooted again this is not the time you know we we what we strive to make things better for them and this is an opportunity to make things better for our community and i really think we need to think of this big picture of how the community how we can best serve the community and our kids and i don't believe that closing schools right now is the right time especially since we're not sure what the um what we're going to have to deal with next year what the class sizes are going to be currently i have over 150 kids i have 30 kids in each class what if they say i can only have 15.

yes wow well 2009 was the review that was done and we do report to the state once a year our progress and we remain in this monitoring mode until all the work is completed so you know we haven't been in compliant there haven't been any complaints the state's been understanding as to the financial limitations that we've had so you know i would like to be complete with this project so we get out of this monitoring mode with the state but it's you know it's something that we are working towards we have made progress so be it slow is the press box uh elevator press box still uh an issue yeah that's still on the list but you know there's there's some easy ways to get around that you know one of the benefits that just waiting so long is that some innovative solutions have come along that other school districts have employed that the state's accepted so we don't think we'll ever have to build that press box okay absolutely make the press box accessible by building an elevator is what i should say um and then the other one that a couple months ago there was that air quality bill that was moving through the general assembly did that do we know where that stands is that going to effect i mean is the hvac project in any way going to ameliorate that or satisfy it should it go through or are we still going to be in the hole if that goes through you know faith i'm not familiar with that particular legislation um okay and so i haven't heard of any any bill that's gone through but you know it was just one of many but if it's not an issue and you're not hearing about it my guess is it's okay okay thanks okay adam did you have something um i i think faith covered the uh the door project that's the that's the one from last year right where you had to pull out all the brick and and do all those doors in in high school that's the one to talk about okay thanks yes anybody else all right seeing none um item number four contract extension with performance environmental again vin oh thank you i'll just talk through this one i did provide i did share with um with the committee and the board members a recommendation to extend our contract with performance environmental who's been cleaning our schools since 2014 they're currently in the third year of a contract we can extend for next year and the following year so we have two more con two more contract extensions remaining before we need to put this out to bid which again we did that three years ago so the couple of things i want to highlight about performance um you know during the pandemic during the early phase of the pandemic which was in march through june of 2020 they were extremely responsive to our plight we basically had a stop service we didn't need them we didn't have students and staff in the building so there was no need to do the daily cleaning and because we didn't have students and staff in the buildings we used our maintenance employees to do the summer cleaning so you know those were you know two financial impacts to performance environmental we didn't pay them because they didn't do the work uh and again they were very understanding you know despite the fact that you know we did have a contract you know we didn't pay them because they they weren't doing the work and when we bridged into the 2021 year you know which the fiscal year begins in july we needed a couple of things from performance environmental so i'm talking about the current school year one to really step up um to meet the guidance required by the state for you know cleaning and sanitizing and disinfecting obviously because of covid um and so they had to take on different types of uh in particular disinfecting supplies that were effective against covet you know and that was at their cost um and then the second thing that they had to do was we asked them to provide intraday during school days intraday porters that would continually go through the school disinfect the high touch surfaces disinfect all the bathrooms at least one additional time during the day this is in addition to their nightly cleaning and they were able to provide porters in all our buildings that were you know very reliable and very diligent and the dayporters became you know part of the the team of each school so they did a really really great job and i know a lot of school districts struggled to find you know dave porter services and that was within the state's guidance when we started this school year you know i know that this seems like it's it's ancient history but you know it was only the beginning of this school year that we needed this service so you know i i would just generally say the performance environmental in addition to being a good contractor you know over the years has really stepped up and performed very well you know for us throughout the pandemic um so the recommendation that i'm putting forth tonight is to extend their contract for an additional year we negotiate negotiated with them pricing wise they've got a couple of things that they brought to the table you know number one the additional cost related to cleaning protocols for covid and the additional cost of the disinfecting supplies that are effective against covert that they'll be supplying that they supply this year that they'll be supplying into next year's contract so that's a cost you know for them and then the second and probably the larger issue that they have is that the minimum wage is increasing another dollar per hour as of august 1st of 2021 so that increases their labor cost what they've um they've requested and we negotiated down to is a 38 000 increase in the contract which is about 5.3 percent um the dollar amount that we're talking about if um if approved that base contract would increase to 757 784 however and i think the um the good news here is that's a 38 000 increase but we expect to receive billing credits from them of 56 784 from this contract year so the credit stat will offset credits more than offset the increase so the reality is for next year the total amount we would pay them is 700 hundred ten dollars um and then we've budgeted seven hundred eight thousand dollars for the contract year for our cleaning services so from a budget point of view we actually have a little bit of a of a pick up here um so that's the that's the recommendation and the explanation of the financial portions of this and again we we can extend them you know this year and next year if we so choose okay adam do you have a question yes thank you um vin what constitutes the credits and is the um value of the contract renewal built into uh the budget that the council is considering yes so to answer the second question yes we have 708 000 built into the budget we would need 700 000 based on this recommendation um the credits come primarily from work that wasn't done um early in the year july and august because we didn't need it done because you know we were closed the prior uh period so that's primarily where those credits are coming from and we you know we'll apply them into next year and uh when is this um extension run through uh would be july 1 21 through um june 30 of 22.

right correct i i mean i i think it'd be worthwhile just to go out and do the rfp again i mean every you know every few years just to see where the market is and hopefully they keep providing a good service and they give us the best price again but i don't i don't want to do this in perpetuity particularly the kovid i'm totally you know comfortable with this they've been doing it and we still have the cleaning um they know the cleaning routine but i i don't like doing i don't want to just extend extend them in perpetuity any of these contracts not that one year not that one year is but i'm just saying there should be some i just feel like there should be a moment in time when we do go back out to bid no i understand the contract ends in two years but do can we negotiate a rate that covers those two years so we have some constancy in our in our budgeting that's all i mean when we went back out to bed then what was the savings well and they won the bid they underbid themselves correct they did and they actually lowered the price by about forty thousand dollars when they bid this you know for the next they it actually was two years that they bid on that's what we asked for in the bid so they lowered the price by 40 000 because after serving us for you know four and a half years at the time they went to bid they realized that they could make some internal changes for supervision and so they lowered our price when we got the the next two years they they did they give us a two year price lot the first two years of this current contract and i guess that's what i'm asking if they'd be willing to do it again i can ask you know what i what i would offer is you know you rather than hold this up you know if we approve it this evening i could still ask i mean it doesn't necessarily mean we can't go back and change what we've you know agreed to tonight if they come back with a good two-year price and the board wants to consider it i'll bring it back to the board next month a point of order um we're in the middle of a discussion on a motion so we need to either vote it up or vote it down before we can think about uh a two-year extension so or all right so we have a first and we have a second the other option if i get another point order you can also choose a table and definitely take the motion off the table not going on at all yes that can also happen okay um i'd like to have a full vote so can we as the chairman i'm gonna say all in favor for the for the one year yeah for the one year for the motion yeah okay so that's all right fine all right okay okay i'm the one who passes what's that i'm the opposed the opposed faith yeah okay anything else in on that do you want me to go back i appreciate the you know approval but do you want me to go back and talk to performance about just give me a two year price you know we we agreed to one year what does the three-year price look like i mean i think i think you should do that yes yes okay right it can't hurt um but the idea is that you would be going back out to bed after after this contract year correct yeah i think it you know i think it is healthy to do that on on this this contract i mean and that is what we're required to do it's either put it out to bid or ask for a bid waiver um so the plan is to get it catherine i'm sorry i have a quick the plan is to bid it after this extension not if we go out two years it wouldn't happen until after the second year second year right right right and we couldn't go more than two years with that right right i just i was getting confused yeah we're allowed to go five years okay you know you can get a base contract and extend up to the five years and then it has to either be re-bid or bid waiver grant got it okay thank you you're welcome got it anything else that's it thank you okay thank you all right now we're on to the uh main reason for tonight's meeting item number five school modernization plan um we have a couple gentlemen here from collier's tonight um before we get into it i just kind of wanted to give a little kick off to it so school modernization put forth the report um we had the joint meeting between the town council and the board of education back in the beginning of april i hope everyone's had a chance to really digest that report um i know that i'm getting questions i'm sure a lot of people here are wondering what the next steps are and where we're going with this um i think the last thing we want to do is after all these months of work and studies um put this on the shelf and kind of wait to see what happens next um so hopefully what's going to come out of tonight we'll come up with some next steps have a discussion see where we're going to be moving um because i really think it's time to move the project forward we have a tight time frame um i personally haven't heard from any members of the public so what i did was i there are a couple things that i see as next steps i could be completely off base but i know the superintendent has a couple ideas also um but i think as a board we need to come up with how we're gonna get our this project either moved to the town council for november for a referendum um or go back to the drawing board so it's either we have to go in here or we're gonna just kind of be stuck in this holding pattern um so that the the first thing that i think that needs to happen um is the osdgr was pretty adamant that they wanted to know how the community felt about the different scenarios that were developed um i think that it was to schedule a series of public outreach campaigns or public forums community type meetings um i was discussing with vin the other day and we have these great circus tents at all the schools um so in this current world that we're living in with social distancing requirements etc cetera it might be nice to hold some outdoor type forms we have the tents through graduation i believe then so at least through mid-june until it's the end of april so we have about a month and a half i'd like to and i could be off with this but i'd like to have like two or three forms at various times have like a a daytime form for some families you know some people that are home with their kids that they can come and listen different scenarios are what the school modernization findings were um an evening type setting maybe at the thorpe auditorium if we could use cheshire high school um and then another one at another elementary school kind of give various options at various times to get that public input i think we need to hear what everyone else has to say because you know there's little bits on the community forum we've got some emails here and there but i think having everyone in one place where we could field some comments and questions to really get a good um barometer as to you know where we're going with the school modernization um secondly um i think that we need to issue another rfp i think we need to come up with a idea as to how we're going to you know we're saying two new elementary schools one in the north and one in the south um i think we need to figure out where these schools can be located where they can't fit can one fit on an existing school site does that make the most sense we have some information on that but we don't actually have geo tests borings we don't have you know the capacity for the water and sewer and where these it could best be schools could best be located whether it be the new elementary schools or the new 63 middle school depending on which way we go also as part of that our conversation continues to go towards hummuston school and what we're going to do with that um i think that we should have some sort of feasibility study done on hummuston school um i don't think it has to be like complete in-depth but i think that we need to see what the programming is in that school where we might be able to relocate it and actually come up with a menu of options because um things always kind of like fall back to hummuston school and so i want to kind of get that discussion out there and come up with some real data and facts about that building um third and maybe most importantly is education specifications um i know that they were done uh by the last consultant for the new six through eight middle school i don't think they've been done for the new elementary schools um so i think that we need to i'm not sure if we can do all of that internally we might need to hire a consultant to help to move that along um so those are kind of my ideas just you know i've been thinking about this a lot lately because i don't want this to just kind of it's kind of got quiet for a little while the school modernization committee is done the reports are out there i hope that all of you had a chance to read that 68-page document because a lot of information in there um and it was a lot of the question here and read on the community forum if people just take the time to read the report um i think that it would answer a lot of those questions um a lot of people don't have the time that's why i think that the forms might also be good in order to get a lot so that's kind of my spiel i'm you know i appreciate everyone having the time or putting the time away side to come here tonight um and then with that i think adam has a question but what i'm not going to do i'm not gonna go back through all the scenarios i mean i have a slideshow but hopefully we all know what the scenarios are at this point um i think if we have specific questions we can ask um the folks here that are here from colliers but um with that adam your question i think catherine was first or no maybe yeah no captain there you go catherine go for it yes yeah so um i just as a matter of like the timeline so we are as the board of education um are we saying that we're not going to make any real decisions about what we think the right answer is before we do these community forums and um you know get get public input i i i guess i was thinking that we would be a little more proactive or getting you know making some judgments about what we think is the educationally you know optimum um proposal and you know at the same time that we're getting feedback but it feels like now you're it's you're saying that we would go through this uh forum process and then start figuring out what we think educationally makes sense am i getting confused by where we're going which is definitely a possibility no i mean jeff did you wanna yeah i think you know if you don't mind me jumping in here thanks andrew that the the timing is such i think catherine that it it's okay to do things concurrently this is a fluid process and there are a lot of variables that play into this decision and so i don't think it's a problem for people to articulate where they stand today with the understanding that we're reasonable people and that it's it's not we're not at the starting line we're midway through the process and that there are going to be a lot of variables that we kick around to ultimately come to that conclusion uh i think anybody who says this is the only way that can be done today is a fool that there's just you know it's it's premature to come to you know conclusions i think we have opinions based on um information shared to date tony had asked me to kind of share my perspective as it stands right now with the board and i i wanted to just take you through real quick um where that is i i'm hopeful that i can do that in like 10 minutes um so i'm just going to present my screen real quick uh well jeff before you do that do you want to andrew do you want to attain adam's question in my comment before we get into it sure adam um i'm guessing probably uh jeff's presentation will probably answer a lot of my questions but i guess but my comment really is my vision for for me personally is if we're gonna invite the public to come and ask questions that we should have some answers like where do we think maybe these schools could be built and how much do we think that it's going to cost the taxpayer do we have an idea of how much their taxes are going to go up if we pursue project a or project b um i think those are that's some good information that we could have and i don't know if like the test fitting that you mentioned um if those if that could happen in a month i don't know if it could happen that quickly or not or to have some kind of idea because even like there were questions from smc if there was even um you know talking about the sixth grade middle school if there's even 30 acres available to build a school that large in this town that that was a very big question and the one that wasn't really answered in all of the meetings uh that that they had so i think that's an important question because even you could be an advocate of six to eight but if you can't actually build it anywhere then then what do you do so even if perhaps that's the best option for modernizing our educational system what if you can't build it somewhere what happens next um so i think that's kind of the questions that maybe we need to have some preliminary answers for before we go to the public or else we're just listening to people give their opinion and that's great but they should also have some facts to base their opinions on yeah i i i'm i'm gonna admit jeff thanks for chiming in about doing things in parallel i i have no issue getting public input before we make a decision but damn's point and catharines we need some details um you know um you know i know the preferred option for him to see he's at two elementary schools that that is the way to go you know is that gonna be the same model we have today there's any different programming is that an opportunity to do things differently you know where would they be located you know how does it impact my kids if i'm in northern cheshire right you know the whole region so and we have a lot a lot of facts around that and i think by the time we begin engaging our stakeholders they'll there'll be more details to share i think that jeff will talk about some specs tonight a little bit um but yeah i i will tell you and i did talk to uh chairman orris earlier to see in atlanta that we are meeting tonight and i say one of the things that we all asked and was lingering from smc is what land is available for any of these options and all right well they truly fit and the last time we did this um you know we had a design done at a school and then i don't know if we got as far as a test fit uh but it would be good to know if it is option six with the two elementary schools is a norton property chapter and you'll accommodate that yes or no i wouldn't assume if it's six or eight you know so we can do all that stuff in parallel but the only thing i want to say is android disagree by no means are we any type of holding pattern nothing slowed down we're not dragging our feet maybe you feel that way but i certainly don't the presentation was given to us april 6th lots of information and discussions had since then with the administration here we are tonight so i don't think that's the case at all uh that being said though uh with town council i can tell you that they're finishing up their budgets so they'll be actively engaged in this in a couple weeks uh so some of them so by time they get engaged maybe we have some answers uh especially if they do test fits we'll probably need their help so that being said let's get cracking i think that was my introduction um so uh let's see [Music] okay so everybody can see the powerpoint okay yes yes all right so you know actually the previous slide preparing for 2034 the relevance of that is that's next year's kindergarten class it sounds like a science fiction date but you know that's what we're building buildings for students who are going through starting our school system now have to be relevant then i wanted to share these pictures they're not out of a magazine or some faraway place this is on the left guildford high school on the right depaolo middle school or jfk has the exact same design in southington on the left that's eli terry elementary school in south windsor on the right that's the auditorium at hampden middle school and i share this because you guys are all familiar with our buildings our communities familiar with the buildings i i can pick any districts almost in the surrounding area and pull up pictures like this to illustrate again just providing the importance that we have to move forward a very quick recap i know andrew talked about where we've been but for the community you know there's a strong agreement across the board that we have to move forward uh the committee put forth two um preferred recommendations first of all they have a primary recommendation i think andrew said it was 9-3 i think that's that's what it was uh in the vote on the committee to move this forward as the primary two elementary schools one located at the north end one at the south end possibly at the norton site uh the existing norton elementary school site so basically taking trees down in the rear of that property building a new elementary school and then there are subsequent uh phases that you see at the bottom there renovations to the other schools basically so the cost of that the primary cost option the estimate was that it would the the total of all of the work to be done on the high end would be 329.76 and that's you know so the way that it was uh priced out for the average taxpayer was that we do all of this within a 10-year window which i think is ambitious probably isn't even the right word insane might be a better word um so i i really don't think we're gonna do that in a 10-year window but for the sake of argument that's what it was phase one only which are the highlighted items on the sheet new elementary school north and south cost the average cheshire taxpayer 3256 a month and it services uh 1332 students at the peak between the two buildings that's the enrollment peak between the two that it would be servicing at one time the secondary option called for a new six through eight middle school and a new k through five elementary school to replace chapman uh potentially on the existing site based on a test fit similar remainder to phase one and similar in phase two and three where we're renovating all the other schools the cost there is 340 million on the estimated district share on the on the high end uh in this case if we were to do both a new six through eight middle school and the new chapman uh in that first phase that cost would be an average of uh 46 a month to the average taxpayer it would serve 300 more students at 1687 total students so what are the next steps we've got all that information where do we move from here and you know i'm just echoing i guess a lot of what andrew suggested earlier that you know we have to identify what additional information is necessary to move forward and that's something you know that that um chuck had um shared with me you know in a phone call before too that this is what we we really need to consider that so would a new school fit on the chapman or norton property is a question you know what impact does swing space have on on future costs so um if we were to renovate buildings and not have dot available there's a fiscal impact on that versus um if we had dot and we're able to put students there while we renovate other buildings it's safer faster more efficient cost wise but i don't know the net on that and that's something that we would need help with how does the community feel about preferred options obviously that's a critical piece that and brought up that we need to to kind of vet out what are the available options for the hummuston building again like andrew said identify the educational benefits and the preferred option i think that's something that we all hold particularly in this body to be quite critical um what's the merit of that and i'm going to speak to that momentarily i mentioned further engaged stakeholders in the modernization review process whether it be through forum survey more how do we get feedback on these different ideas that we're pursuing to make sure that it works for the town and then ultimately you know extending our relationship with colliers to make sure that we're talking about ed specs that's not something that we have the professional capacity to fully facilitate and we did that previously on the middle school with the help of another firm um and you know we would need that sort of similar help here to spec out elementary schools and for me as i thought a lot about this and talked to ben and marlene a bit the it comes down to those three terms at the bottom the logistics of these things is it even feasible is this does this mix how does it impact learning and then what's the cost um and as i mentioned before there's not really there's no magic bullet out there there are there are different ways that we could go about this and still meet the needs of our community and our students at a cost that makes sense so we just have to you know identify those areas so my perspective on the two different proposals on the primary proposal learning in essence it's a status quo certainly the buildings are updated but we look a lot like we did before with six uh k through six elementary schools again that's that's not a bad thing this is that's a good thing um logistics uh it's it's pretty straightforward and the fact that students remain in their home schools and the cost significantly or excuse me slightly less than secondary preference before consider considering um swing space or for hummus to needs on the second one i mean that's um a much different animal and the fact that we're building a new six through a which is different than the configuration that we have today so uh the logistics of that like the elementary proposal it's pretty much students are in their home district still the difference being in sixth grade now you go to a middle school as opposed to the elementary school that you were in previously again slightly more expensive cost with the construction of the new chapman before we consider swing space i don't know what that does to the cost but i think it brings it down based on previous conversations over the over the long term i mean it brings it down so the configuration conundrum this has been something we've been talking about for uh probably four four years or so five years in the district you know what about six through eight versus seventy and really the the research and i've i've read through a lot of information on this in terms of what's best right so in terms of the academic progress of students most researchers agree the quality of the school and classroom instruction are more important than grade configuration we talk about this a lot just in terms of our professional growth the bottom line is what happens in the room with the students um and you know that we say that really district-wide but certainly in terms of configuration it's the most critical thing is what happens in the classroom um and then there's you know other research that say mixed results it's just really about the instruction that students receive the state did say that uh on one hand you know they're concerned about a very large middle school um even though i think there is more of a trend toward that with like uh hampden adding on to make their but their sixth grade in hampden middle school and that'll make it over i think 1300 students and they're all on on one hand and then on the other hand the state is also saying more communities are shifting through to a six through eight model so when i think about the learning component of this i went right to the classroom in cheshire to get our information and i pulled the sixth grade teachers in this seventh and eighth grade department chairs and team leaders about you know what is your preference on the inclusion of sixth in the new middle school and we kind of had known that there was a preference from this from the listening tours that were done at the early stages of the smc process but this is um to me a fairly strong visual that 90 percent of our staff either strongly prefer prefer the sixth graders in a middle school environment um with only you know three of the respondents in the neutral category there was nobody that didn't prefer it which i found quite interesting we there was an open-ended component as well so what are the challenges of the six through eight do you think none was the most frequent response which you know i asked them to can you elaborate here a little bit but um larger building in student body we recognize that um and for most of our elementary students when they make the transition it's a larger building now um with the exception of highland uh additional ua and counseling staff would be necessary to ensure that we're providing continuing to provide a high quality experience to our sixth graders if we want them to have that middle school style experience with more unified arts offerings then we need to be able to support that that there's not recess i think two people had said that and then you know the question people were raising is that instead of growing up too fast issue when i asked when i pressed them for challenges on the benefits that they identified they indicated and we talked about this that in many cases the educational standards are clustered around a six through eight uh environment a lot of the resources are structured that way i i can speak on a first-hand knowledge of being the assistant principal and principal dodd for seven years that it is a challenge that students are either coming or going you're either you know induction with kids just getting them into the middle school or you're prepping them to leave that there's not a sustained time period there that we can have a little bit more depth with our students obviously you know people identified more opportunity for specials and extracurricular activities and then you know many people cited the fact that sixth graders are developmentally ready for a middle school environment that 11 to 13 cluster as opposed to being in elementary school with four and five-year-olds they're much developmentally much closer to that you know thirteen-year-old than they are the early elementary student now just like in elementary school you don't put a sixth grade class next to the kindergarten room um you don't do sixth grade next to the eighth grade classroom either we'll talk a little bit about that but i think you know the fear that some parents and you know i have a sixth grader right now who's in a six through eight middle school it's easy to get that oh my god you know my baby's going to middle school they're going to come home with a biker jacket and marlboro's wrapped up in their sleeve or something with a tattoo it it doesn't happen that way but i i appreciate of course you know obviously i'm being a little bit more colorful and facetious uh but there is that anxiety that occurs and i i understand that but developmentally really it's an age group where students are ready to make that transition so middle school teachers also hold specialized certification so rather than um the the really tall effort we make our uh sixth grader sixth grade teachers go through now where you're teaching multiple content areas often um here are their specialists within the one content area and i thought this quote was interesting from one of the people that responded i currently work in the largest elementary school and have always felt despite its size that we're a close community i think the benefits of moving the sixth grade to the middle school outweigh any concerns and you know i can tell you again quite personally from my experience that the middle school is also a tight community and the high school is a tight community though that it's not always predicated based on size it's based on relationships and that's all about uh organizational structures and supports so what did the teachers it i asked them if the community were to move forward with the six through eight middle school what would you recommend and they said you know separate wings restrooms hallways by grade is feasible we do that now um so seventh grade is all on the the top floor at dodd middle school and eighth grade's on the bottom floor i'd do the same thing i worked at moran middle school in wallingford six seven eight uh sixth graders were on the bottom floor seventh and eighth on the top floor it's just that's uh generally by design how you would do things the same way as at the elementary schools they're kind of clustered by grade levels there as well that we maintain teaming pods or houses we have teaming now at the elementary earth excuse me at the middle school if you're familiar we'll have math english science social studies together in one little group the students travel really predominantly within that one little group they may see kids on other teams when they go to unified arts maybe when they go to lunch but it's an intimate environment and that's by design to make sure that we continue to have that close-knit community and then ultimately they suggested that we have to ensure there's adequate staffing so you know we'd have to have another counselor at the middle school in order to to do this well for our kids stuff like that so what is my position you know tony was asking like and again i i i i'm not casting this in concrete i'm saying like as of today where would i fall uh and you know certainly through a lot of conversation with vin and marlene we're a very collaborative effort here that there's unanimous agreement excuse me i wasn't going to sneeze this is just so emotional for me no i'm kidding i um but anyway there's unanimous agreement among central office administration right now that based on what we know today from feedback from our teaching staff again i don't have community feedback around this issue we don't they're logistically is there even space for these things but based on what we know right now we have the strong recommendation that both options be pursued for logistical cost and educational merit and of course community support but we feel like the six through eight uh is the best option and back in in february the three of us had written a letter to the smc kind of outlining that now at that time uh it was six through eight middle school or seven eight middle school in new chapman um and you know i'll share this with you you can review the letter that the three of us wrote um that outlines you know basically why we came to this conclusion but i i think you know certainly everybody on the board in the community cost is one of the three variables that's an important consideration and so you know i am conscious of and i think this is again something that we would have to vet out a little bit more clearly does um if we build a new six through eight middle school and siphon off all the sixth grade and then i i do realize that chapman needs to be addressed sooner rather than later um is that an enrollment requirement in phase one could that be a phase two how does that impact uh financing over time i don't but again i mean this is one of those things where i had thrown out there are a lot of variables that have to be chased down um and so i i share i'll share this with you the powerpoint presentation which has the letter uh and you know this is the kickoff for us as far as i'm concerned but i know tony you had a question i think you know chuck and john they want to weigh in too yeah and i noticed this earlier but in regards to hummuston um last time around uh the sixth rate middle school back in uh where we landed back then we definitely were looking and even post that looking at the building the former lexington building you know we saw opportunities to weave in the alternative high school and board of education offices in a building that size and if it is a sixth grade middle school i would like to see that incorporate into the design and see if it fits again you know parcel and all that but even at two elementary schools would it would it also be feasible i think the board we need to conserve this too is as an opportunity that there's two new elementary schools there's an opportunity to you know move both alternative high school and board of soft offices to one or both those two new buildings may corvette the design and um you know jeff and i were talking a little bit about that a few weeks ago and there's some maybe perception issues between the author of high school and elementary school but you know if you separate things by grade levels you know that might be feasible um and unless you want to add on this uh a couple months ago if it was not three months ago vincent shared a detailed outline of thoughts he had around hummuston and i think this was spawned by jim jinx when he did some research and found that hummuston was uh in historic district that there might be some grant available potentially um to help offset renovation costs and i think at the time vincent was i think i forwarded just a few members of the board i think andrew might have this too but uh it was maybe having the planning committee either as part of this process or in parallel do some research on hummus and see if that's even viable um not that i want to muddy the waters here with hummuston but just something to consider there are options to do something with the hummuston function in any of these scenarios so if there's an opportunity to uh weave it in this part of design i would encourage us to to look into it that's all now adam thanks um if the uh as i mentioned before if there's even if there's not even a parcel that exists that could uh build a sixth grade middle school we do have new technology um and this might be something that's not even been considered could you in essence create a virtual middle school with the technology we have for because i don't know what what you know the interactivity between all of the sixth grade classes um but it seemed like the technology that we saw that with the microphones and cameras that you could have at least an alternative view where you could still um you know achieve your educational goals through the use of technology if the you know the physical middle school was on oh and they was unable to be built is that an option or something that had been considered um yeah i think i think that would be um really i don't know that the experience of the middle school at this time could be replicated through technology as much as we're able to um you know synchronously learn that is a very tall order but just having access to unified arts classrooms you know we'd have to decide if world language you know would receive the same amount of instruction in sixth grade as it currently does in seven and eight uh the extracurricular activities couldn't be replicated um you know the the certifications i mean we could probably address that now and have people strictly teaching one content area except you know from maybe a chapman where you just don't have enough teachers under the one roof to be able to pull that off um so there there is benefit to pulling our students together and that we do gain some efficiency um i know you know many of you on the board have heard me talk about you know if you have um let's say 52 students you know 54 students it in fifth grade at chapman now that's three classrooms that are really small because you're not going to do two classes as 27 in fifth grade there and not have that so now you have three classrooms that are really small the when you increase the pool the number of students it levels off the classrooms much easier so there is some efficiency to it but to try and offer sixth grade and elementary schools on a middle school scale would just be really inefficient because you'd have to bring in more ua teachers and things like that it wouldn't make sense for only that one grade level right so then essentially when you write the when whoever writes you write the ed specs then that consideration would need to be written for when you do if you do the k through six as well two so you can sort more modernize perhaps the requirements in those new spaces true faith thanks um so what i'm taking away at the most basic point jeff is the fact that educationally whether we go k i'm k six or six through eight it all depends on the instruction and really ultimately that's the determinant of success the quality of the instruction and and configuration you know it's um down the list whether it's a six eight or a k five i'm not arguing either way against it but it's what goes on in the classroom regardless of where those classrooms are right for academic success um really it's about instruction at any grade level any configuration primarily um and at the end at the end of the day that's our responsibility is to ensure that the best so my point is you know where i stand i i am favorable to the k-6 but you know if if if the board goes with the 6-8 and and it that is our ultimate goal then you know clearly i can be persuaded but i am concerned um you gotta persuade the parents because they're they're babies you know and and i it's great you did the teacher survey but um i think if you are going to make the case you have got to get to the parents and ask their opinions um just as thoroughly as you ask the teachers yeah i i yeah i wouldn't uh suggest otherwise okay um and you know it probably sooner rather than later so we also have some guidance as we're trying to make this um as we're trying to make this decision as well yeah but i think it's important you know to also have the professional perspective from the people who do this uh so i think you need them both um but uh you know i wanted to make sure we had i wanted to make sure before i suggested from my professional perspective what i felt was best in this particular situation and again it's not slam dunk no-brainer this is the only way you can go but i wanted to make sure that i wasn't out on a limb with uh the people who educate our kids in the classroom every day thinking something else well i totally concur with you and i'm not trying to undermine the teacher's survey no no i know you know the state is also pushing the standards to that you know k568 configuration that is something to keep in mind um yeah my fear is that you know 10 years down the road they're going to go back and another some model and and we'll be doing this again but um just my recommendation is make sure the parents are on board if you're going to make that recommendation that's all yep tim thanks andrew uh a few things um first point is just to help people at home who are watching this sort of visualize what we're talking about when we uh discuss hummuston what what's the size of vin you might know it what's the small the square footprint of our smallest school chapman 50 000 square feet i'm thinking the high school is over two hundred thousand we've got about eight hundred thousand square feet total i still can't hear vin at all you're on mute yeah i mean great i need an auto mute unmute button um yeah well i'll check on chapman as we're talking here i know the high school is 275 000 square feet approximately okay uh yes and then so we've got another 500 000 square feet divided up among seven schools that includes hummuston which is 15 000 square feet split in half half administrative half uh the hummus in school so it's 75 you could take 7 500 square feet in relation to say 100 000 square foot building it's it's something that uh i mean hummingston has you know its own uses that need to be addressed thoughtfully but at the same time in terms of like land space uh i think it's probably something that would be able to fit in just about any of these options um jeff you had mentioned in your slide deck you had a slide where you had 27 teachers i think who were the what was the what was your group of people was it 27 6th grade teachers you said 90 of of what i didn't catch that yeah so on the slide it's a survey of sixth grade teachers there's 16 of those okay and 11 department leaders or team leaders that died and 90 of them either strongly prefer or prefer sixth grade in middle school okay in three people we're neutral okay and so the department leaders so that's not every teacher at dot it's department so it's like social studies department you have the department leader for each content area including unified arts and the team leaders so we put students in groups on teams and each team has a leader uh seventh and eighth grade so the the group is representative of our you know teacher leaders at the middle school level sure okay i just i didn't quite catch all that with this slide that's what i wanted to understand um let me see uh you mentioned in your slide deck that norton being if i heard you correctly you said that the recommendation of this smc was to demolish norton after a new norton is constructed okay but that was the recommendation it wasn't use the norton site and expand it or anything like that because i don't know no it was built on the norton property at the rear of the property and then demolish the building that's there okay because i hadn't caught that before that that was the recommendation i under just understood this to be use the norton site okay yeah it was a it wasn't an all or nothing recommendation i think that the idea and correct me if i'm wrong chuck or anybody who was on the committee was that um you know that be explored the potential for that like right but the potential for demolishing it and putting up a new one um putting up a new one on the norton site and demolishing that be you have to test fit that you you know we don't want to just say yeah why don't we do that and then realize uh wait a minute this isn't going to work yeah also contingent on a like a service with what is now in essence a unpaved service road between the north property and the neighborhood behind norton i forgive me for not knowing the name off the top my head but that would have to be expanded for legitimate traffic okay so that's another question i had on access i'm not sure if you're talking about sharon drive or farmington presumably one of those two roads have we gotten any have we done like a a title search nothing for okay that's one of those logistical issues that you know again i think we have to explore that if we were to find that you know this is impossible on the norton property what we're looking to do and that there's no other land anywhere to do this well that that really hinders that option or you know if we found that there's no place to build enough for a middle school that would certainly hinder that option so you know i think the logistics uh really are a legitimate factor here they have to be resolved before we can definitively make a recommendation is there anything is there anything holding up like doing a title search or anything on on access to norton is this something we could not play the purge i mean i'm just hoping that something like that could happen i don't know who would do it the town has uh he's talked to the folks over there you know i i did speak to the town planner there is a 50 foot something out to sharon drive you know but the town planner explained that based on the records he has he can't tell if it's a right-of-way and he's meant but we know 50 foot wide and so you know he suggested that we would have to you know basically go to the town attorney to make information on what it is so it certainly can be explored further we haven't taken that step and while i have before him you're right chapman is actually about 54 000 square feet okay all right yeah i mean i just think some of those logistical things hopefully we can get answers to those quickly um just going back to norton that goes empty out sharon drive yep okay yeah understood thank you um let me see uh with regard to the meetings andrew thank you for that uh going back to faith you were talking about bringing in you know getting feedback from parents kovid it's not easy to do that or hasn't been at least in the past year so yeah i i really do hope we can schedule some meetings one thought crossing my mind besides what i mentioned a week ago which is trying to make it accessible making people feel comfortable come to our meetings so i think outdoors would probably be good using the tents would be great just keep nightfall in mind i don't know if we've got lights frankly i think people would probably prefer to have it during the daylight um i know i would but it's just a little bit more awkward having outdoor meetings at night shouldn't be too bad you know as we approach june it's getting you know it's light pretty laid out but i'm totally open to like a week i know we don't normally do weekend meetings or anything but we want to do something you know saturday morning whatever it might be but i definitely we def i strongly believe we should have these meetings scheduled and happen before school gets out because i have a feeling school gets out and people are whew let me see uh and as i would i would like to um you know it seems to me that in either of these options we're looking at chapman that's something happening there so um just moving forward on that and not slowing down on i'm not saying i didn't mean to say that something would happen in chapman because the voters could reject it but in both of these options something is happening at chapman so moving down a path on that right now uh i don't see any reason if we're looking at you know locations and stuff i get that with either a middle school or with norton or a south end school but with chapman i think we should just be moving forward as quickly as possible and then one of the issues there tim was test fit the chapman site sure i think if we're talking about a larger chapman it's the chapman that's there now is pretty tight yep and it's a smaller school if we're talking about that we'd certainly have to test fit that through the help of an architectural firm or identify another location sure no and i get that i mean i realize that this you know i any of these discussions can be um you know with any policy decision there's winners and losers and and uh it's a sensitive it's a sensitive topic but i i'm just saying i think we should move forward as quickly as possible at least i mean at least on the chapman those discussions would have to happen those those uh with the architects and the test fit and stuff but i'm thinking that should be able to move forward right now um and then the last the my last point is i've said it before which is just um well yeah design for a test fit and do all that stuff um and then the last point i'll just make with regard to sort of where i'm leaning that you know i am open to either of these options but where i'm leaning right now as i've said before is uh staying with the k-6 model you know if i hear the compelling reasons the studies that sort of demonstrate that the six through eight model is uh significantly better than the status quo which is k through six then um i'm open to it i'm open to hearing what the parents say you know obviously they're the boss as far as i'm concerned but where i am right now uh is probably just you know k through six model and i feel like there is a you know people move here to town for the schools that's a big part of it um and there's sort of a social compact that exists it's not written written in stone but that does exist there's an expectation there so that's it thank you andrew for the time sure um so for those who have additional questions i i would like to throw it to poliors quickly i'd like to have them weigh in and kind of i've heard i think they've heard a lot of what our discussion has been here tonight in superintendent's report i'd like to hear what they think um as our experts in the field about what our next steps uh may or may not be is that anna are you okay with that i know you're next in the line okay i'm fine with that but i do have something to add okay but i can wait till after i hold it you're next you're up right after the uh chuck all right um yeah we'll make it quick um i i think jeff hit on a lot of good points as he mentioned we talked before a little bit about it um i think there's two components obviously and i think you had on andrew the um town council's busy with their budgeting session and so they're they're um when we left off in eight uh it seemed like a long time ago three weeks ago um they left off and it sounded like they had some questions they wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the financial side of things right and what's financially you know fiscally responsible in looking at those two so i think that that aspects in the town council's side of things if you will um obviously educational is in with this group and the board of ed um and just like jeff said i think the next steps are um looking at these are these test fits um you know are they really feasible whether um it's the norton site and by the way the town planner gave us four sites that they deemed feasible or possible at least town owned in the town for schools um one of them was the norton site one's the casualtano property up on um is it um what's the road up there marion jarvis marion jarvis yep um and that was a test fit years ago i believe um cheshire park um and then you know bartlett park but that doesn't sound like that's a possibility so they didn't mention those four but i think we just we will need to do a test fit engage with the design firm put out an rfp um probably cool chapman include norton maybe look at hummus and we put together a detailed scope of work and and test fit these we were talking about them we're talking about high level you know we need to start getting a little more granular with these options i think and that's the next step in the process like jeff's i think going parallel with doing your community outreach getting some feedback talk about some of the options and and and that was more for suggestion with oscgr we've done the survey but i think they want to make sure hey if you go through with a referendum does the community support and that was really the gist of their recommendation for it um i think really the next step we're kind of in this between we we had a phase two where we studied the options the next phase is due diligence i think we're like a 2b it's like we got to do a little more cooking on the two and the sex options um and and dive a little deeper on those maybe do some of those geotechnical horns that you mentioned andrew but i think the test fits the first the first part before we spend money on test bits and phase one environmental site assessments i think really doing a high level test fit with a design firm going can we fit a building of x amount of square feet have the vehicular circulation the parent drop off the bus drop off because these new configurations especially elementary schools they don't work like you have them now they are there's a lot of circulation so i think those are the next steps um parallels best fits and maybe some community engagement and some feedback so chuck as adam pointed out do you you don't think it's going to lead to more questions like if we go out and we start engaging the community and asking these questions we don't have a site set in stone i mean do you think that's going to be a major issue as far as the site i think you know and i'm just thinking out loud here i think you can i don't think we ask them what do they want to do see it's the recommendation is is you know option six for the two elementary schools which needs to be verified if if for some reason like jeff said if hey if uh through the feasibility study in the test fit it doesn't we can't support it it may lean towards option two but those are the two options i would stick with i wouldn't open the pandora's box again those were what smc recommended now we just got to figure now it's the logistics of how do we execute this plan and we have to study more it's it's it's like it's like a study you go through high level we drill down a little farther we drill down a little bit more we drill a little bit more net and that's we're in that second level drilling down a little bit further now that we have the two options we're focusing on those a little bit more before we go too far into again geotechnical bourns even specs i wouldn't even draft head specs right now i'll wait until we do a test fit and go is it feasible yes no if yes let's do a diagram go to the next phase okay a little bit deeper maybe some med specs maybe some geotech refine those budgets for it but i wouldn't open up to what do they think they want to do just hey you know this is the point we have what's your feedback on on what we're recommending i think that's probably what you're looking for but i'm an engineer so i keep it more black and white so i think that's what we might we need that right um so from what i'm hearing from you is the next step is an rfp for test fit from an architectural firm to do the next feasibility study on the different options good next step i i think let's get a little more grailer we've been talking so high level and you've heard it from us so we you know we think that's a possibility in the northern part of the north or the northern part of um chapman let's sit now and stop talking about it and start doing it and looking at it and get something on a map and really have something for you guys to put your hands on and see in their concepts right they're not going to be the final product but is it feasible yes or no because it might be a check box no all right let's move on let's stop talking about it and move on to the next solution not to hold you to this but how long would you think something like that would take um we could develop you know say if we get engaged like next week and and move you know um we could put together an rfp probably in a week week and a half um and if i'm not sure it depends if it's through the board of ed body uh i know the smc is kind of done with their work so uh if it's through this body we can put those together that rfp uh in about a week you know probably two weeks by time you approve it and redo it get it out in the straight couple weeks to get up get get uh some proposals we would get a lot of activity um we could talk about those logistics there um but uh you're probably talking two two and a half months to realistically get a feasibility study um i think andrew okay thank you uh andrew so chuck essentially what you're saying and i appreciate the engineering point of view too you know i like the idea of a diagram because that's not actually a good thing for us was i think all of us on this board except with andrew we haven't built a new school before um or did a major renovation so it's it's nice to don't take for granted that we know the steps um but we're getting better at that but i think what you're also saying is we need to move in more of an agile fashion we can't be too rigid to say okay let's spend two months on xbox and then spend another two months in step c we gotta do some things in parallel uh so i'm absolutely in favor of getting a location or locations uh identified that will fit one or more scenarios right because without that we're going to be spinning our wheels on things that may not matter secondly you know as far as rfps there is no budget for the board of ed for money for rfps now it doesn't mean that we can't get creative uh but it also means when we get to that point i i would believe the town council would absolutely support something like this because they too we need to know okay where will these things fit do we have properties and get some sense of that so you know if we move forward with the rfps uh you know we'll certainly work with the town side to figure out how we take care of that but but i appreciate you uh trying to push that f4 i think that's critical for us to do right now yeah yeah and yeah thank you and uh thank you chuck for your assessment i also appreciate your engineering uh perspective on the whole thing and something that i really wanted to make sure that we start talking about because we were talking about it three four five six years ago a lot was the fact that dodd middle school does not fit where it's located and that was really a driving factor and um for me i couple that with when i listen to the public who is giving me their um their opinions of what they want and don't want in this modernization process i'm hearing loud and clear that people like their neighborhood elementary schools they like them because they're small they're intimate and they're in the neighborhoods well that is exactly the problem with dodd middle school it's in a neighborhood and it doesn't fit there and the parking is a problem and when you have special functions you you have people all over parking all over people's properties or in front of their driveways or whatever gets people upset at any rate one of the things that parents also need to think about it's not just a matter of do i want my sixth grader in a six to eight middle school setting or do i want them in in the elementary school setting they're really also have to weigh that against do i want smaller elementary schools that aren't bursting at the seams so that they fit in the neighborhood and that we can have traffic flow in and out and it doesn't bother um all the neighbors in that neighborhood sorry i got a pop-up and um and those things are really counter to each other so if we kept our we could keep our elementary schools a little bit smaller if we take the six grades out we also solve the problem of the fit of dodd middle school even if it remains a seven through eight it doesn't fit in that neighborhood where it's located and um i just think we need to talk about that more and that's part of the community input that i also would be really um interested in hearing from people parents and neighborhoods people who don't have kids in the schools but still like having an elementary school in their neighborhood and we know that the the neighborhood around dodd doesn't like having the middle school because it creates it creates problems so as our schools get bigger because apparently cheshire is growing and our elementary schools enrollment is is just bursting my i really have a big worry about our elementary schools all of them being made pretty much to full capacity sizes and still having them feel like elementary schools in neighborhoods without disrupting what's going on in the neighborhoods still keeping that neighborhood feel and and i'm worried about that because that's what i'm hearing really loud and clear from people who are talking to me about their elementary schools so i just wanted to add that and make sure that that's something that we are also asking um community opinions about just you know the locations and and that's part of the test fit and i don't hear us talking about test fitting um dodd anymore but i hear us pushing any kind of renovation to dodd down to i don't know how many years down the road um but it's been in a in a difficult situation for a while now and uh you know my hope is that that situation would get taken care of as well as the enrollment problem and as well as keeping our neighborhood schools at a size and and level that makes people happy with their with their school so that's all i wanted to add thank you thank you um my first question i guess i i guess my questions will be directed towards chuck but this may require some sort of institutional knowledge um so uh i remember early on in the process or somewhere around there you had made comments about uh chuck to chuck about how would we get heavy equipment into the norton area to do any kind of construction um and so that brought to mind i was just at a baseball practice this weekend um over there and and i'm and i'm staring at the the addition that was done in the 90s wondering well how did they get equipment back there in the 90s did they did they use that side road coming off of farmington avenue or did they just carefully drive things around the gymnasium and i wasn't sure if anyone knew exactly how the construction equipment got back there to build a rather large edition uh in the 90s that that would that's my first i guess like a statement question i'm not sure how it was done um secondly um and perhaps this is my own ignorance but you you had mentioned bartleum park and i thought that the parcel that we purchased was only 10 acres so i thought and an elementary school cars i thought 20 and a middle school would require 30.

okay thanks you're welcome are you looking for us to vote on this tonight well what we've done in the past is the planning committee would vote to put it to the full board of ed okay but we do have the full board of ed here so we could save a step if there's a you know if there's an inclination to approve it and get it done so we don't have to put it on the next agenda um i'm okay with that if my colleagues okay with that i'm good with it see some head mo all right so um yes i guess i just need a little bit of help as to what the motion would be are we talking is the what is the dollar amount uh i will get his his the um the motion would be along the lines of the following to um extend the contract with performance environmental llc for the period from july 1 2021 through june 30th 2022 with a base contract cost of thousand seven eighty four okay so moved look does the planning committee get to vote on or does the full board get to vote on right now well i'm assuming the full board can vote because it's a meeting it is a meeting of the hall okay do i have a motion for approval yes discussion seeing no discussion all in favor no no oh faith that's a question sorry there's you were frozen go ahead you're on youn still frozen and muted really slow computer tonight there you are um okay so we have one more year to go to extend this contract right after this year is there any way to [Music] set the price for next year also so we at least know what we've got um to do a two-year do a two-year extension i can ask and perhaps you know if nothing else we get um we know what we're budgeting next year and i don't know i open that to the others to see if that makes sense for anybody tim yeah i i'm not really i'm not really inclined to do that when is that we did the bid what we did an original bid in 2014 we went back out to bid 2018.

so is there some sort of um like thought where you would what use the fields that are already there as part of the equation to build a school at on the parcel that we purchased or how would bartland park work in in that equation yeah honestly adam um to that one you know we um that wasn't our recommendation i think the exercise that occurred during our process um because there was a lot of open part there's a large list that's provided by the the planner some of them had open d restrictions some of them didn't have them and we were kind of going through a lot of discussions through many meetings and ultimately i think the the thought was okay let's go back to the planner and ask them to weed down all these open these these town-owned parcels that could possibly be used um i don't think parliament was necessarily vetted out per se for a school like we didn't look at and go yeah we could i don't think anybody really suggested using it it just happened to be one of the four town-owned parcels for it so i i my hunch i don't think anybody's necessarily really looking at that on a realistic scale okay from what i've heard i know i know some of the folks from wesson and sampson that have worked on some of the plans there i'm i'm friends with a couple of those guys i know they've worked on some great plans for their so this is i just want to know that was for one of the four parcels they identified town owned now part of this test fit i was gonna forgot to add is um if we do a test fit uh say at norton site and kaiser tower property i don't know if cheshire park you know that may or may not be in the mix what it's going to do is tell us okay if they don't fit either we have we may have to purchase property and in the budgets we created we added in some budgetary values to purchase properly property what it's going to tell us is is it a yes or no if it's a no then we have some more work to do to go where do we find 17 acres for an elementary school or um i think it was twice about acres you know for um the middle school um for that so yeah barling park was never really we never really looked at it as a viable site to be honest at least we didn't from our side okay thank you i was like because i'm like wow that's like kind of the first time i've heard that and that kind of blew my mind okay thank you yeah no problem katherine thanks andrew um so i i thought well i know for a fact that we did look at cheshire park for a six to eight middle school when t k s p t s k whatever um thank you um so there was a test fit i thought done to place a middle school there right so we don't need to do that again if in fact you're looking at that properly i guess even for an elementary school would fit there if if a middle school would fit there right um so i just went and i thought maybe we'd even i know we looked at the cassertano property that property marian and and i'm just trying i'm just saying these things because right now it sounds to me like we're not even going to know where or whether we can put schools um for a couple of months and so i'm i think we're bumping up against a timetable that is starting to feel unrealistic in terms of getting to a referendum in november i mean i i maybe i'm wrong but um i don't care how many things we run in parallel if we don't know for two months whether we can fit two elementary schools wherever they're going to be or um middle school and i guess chapman at that point would be on the chapman property because one wouldn't be the new big chapman um i'm just curious i mean how is there something we can do to kind of expedite any of this and i may be asking the same question i asked earlier but i'm still confused about how we're going to get everything done in the amount of time that we need to actually come up with a decision that can be put to the voters does that make sense anyone yeah if i if i could maybe andrew just quickly you know i think that's a good point um catherine um we might be able to explain it sounds like it might be able to expedite selecting a firm or bringing a team on with rp process it might be able to solicit a few directly we could talk about that offline but really even getting to typically with most sounds of referendum we really have to have a result by the middle of august because of the referendum requirements to do explanatory texts post it you have your non-advocacy period most districts we work with for a november referendum it's typically like around an august late august time frame by the time you have to have this thing established so you're really talking about four months so i think we there are some frankly you know with the group i think there's some challenges with it but from working with the smc and hearing from town council and rob orris and others they want to get it right um if we can do it for november it sounds like they said great but if not then we'll figure out another time that sounds about right tony yeah and uh and you know there are so many i i do miss the smc group i really do because there's a lot of discussion i don't miss the weekly meetings which seem like i'm sure chuck you know you were a lot of those but i look back to those meetings and i just want to remind all of us that um nobody wants to drag their feet on this and again i go back to three of us you know this is year five right on this journey of long-term plan but we also do not want to push something out of the community that's not ready um i'm confident we can use these three and a half months and have things vetted but in the and if something's gonna come up it always does right if some reason something comes up in this process and we can't go to the referendum in november our school's not going to fall down november uh december 1st you know there you know there's not an urgent pressing structural need that if we don't go to the forum uh referendum this november with a major problem that the pressing need is the enrollment bump coming very quickly but if that means that this process goes into early spring that's okay um so you know well concerned catherine this also came up you know during the last couple months of smc 2 you know giving the timing where we are you know we we got a little bit of a break because we don't necessarily have to have that specs filed in the grant you know in june or july but that's why i kind of you know we want to start this sooner because august will be here before we know it so um let's see where it goes but point taken yeah and tony i wasn't really i wasn't suggesting we that we should be rushing it or not you know looking at all aspects and to get to the right answer my concern was that in fact we were going to be pressured to try to get it to referendum in november and if that's not the case that's fine the flip side of that is though i feel like the momentum's kind of you know the loss of momentum if we don't do that is a bit concerning because i don't you know um wants to see this kind of go back onto a back burner at that point so right right yeah i'm not sad though yeah no someone's on this board this is not going on back burner ever again so we're gonna get it out there it's just but you know i i i share your concern well i think we all do uh the momentum is on our side now so let's take advantage of it but again if this if the board feels we have to rush this um which i don't think is the case uh but let's see where it goes i i i think tony like you said before we we have to vet this out more for the town council i mean that's the other half you guys have a partner again just you having worked with you for a while now there's a partner in the town and and and they have to be convinced to go to november and if if we rush this through listening to all those town councillors they're they're not going to didn't sound like to me they're going to be in a rush to push it through unless it's well vetted and they're convinced and i think the steps we're talking about with the test fits those are steps we need to take to give them better information as well as yourself and the taxpayers to say we've we've looked at the path traveled we've looked at the path not travel why didn't we go there well here's why and it's the next steps and i think um the state of connecticut certainly you know is your partner uh in rough in reimbursement they like seeing a well thought out well-baked plan that you've looked at everything and and i think you know not making november is not the end of the world by any means agreed so hearing everyone's do you have a question tim yeah thank you yeah um catherine thanks for the comments that was kind of weighing on my mind in the past hour or two but the one point that i'll add that really i don't think anybody's mentioned is a special referendum i mean if you want to keep the momentum going totally possible to do it i'm not saying the council would want to do it um but we could we did last time we did it was the pool 11 years ago 10 10 or 11 years ago um i one question quick chuck or jeff i guess it'd be chuck really the realtors are aware that you're you'd be open to looking at property the realtors in town and would give you a call if something came on the market or they anticipated coming on the market i don't think we're at that point yet to be honest i i think honestly tim we you what i would recommend is you get the properties that are owned by town and if those vetting show that it's not feasible then i think there's a bigger discussion with your counterparts in town council the planner and others that go okay what's the next process the vet privately owned because that gets kind of probably scary you know people that own parcels of these sizes are probably like wait a minute you know it can be very daunting for private owners so i think i think the goal is to try to stay on town obviously um but i think we have to get through that first and then maybe that be the next step if that makes sense okay okay um and then the other thing and i don't think i've mentioned this in a meeting before but for me it's really important however this project move forward moves forward that we're looking at uh sustainable solutions i i think it's important that we're looking at the life cycle costs of buildings um you know from my perspective that includes things the you know renewable energies like solar electric maybe uh geothermal heating and cooling i just to me that's to me it's really important not that a project includes that but that there's a real discussion about it i just don't want to maintain this legacy system where you know facilities get put up and this is you know the builders model we always use so this is what we're going to keep using i do feel like it's important to have that as part of the discussion moving forward yeah the state of connecticut when you submit for grant reimbursement um it's required as a minimum um it's called connect high performance building requirements and that's equivalent to uh leed silver and the energy codes have been upgraded as such but one of you know the the the big uh say some of the hot topics recently is the net zero a lot of districts are looking to that and it's just a matter of weighing it out in you know geothermal like you said photovoltaic systems um and having a discussion with the state because some of those uh do eat up some of your building space your mechanical spaces for some more pumps and so forth we just did a school actually in mansfield we just bid those out had a very successful bid came in about 10 under bid um out there for a new elementary school so they're definitely sustainable um for sure but then there's additional levels like you said that you can consider and that's an important discussion during the budgeting process to make sure we're accounting for that or if a site can have facilitated g because geothermal wells take up area sure you know so that's something that's a good point we just have to think about ahead of time and what are the town's goals but it's the minimum can i get high performance thank you thank you and the and the um one last point in terms of life cycle costs i'm not a big fan of bells and whistles they could be nice they can also be expensive both in terms of hardware replacement and the labor associated with it in the future and you know i've heard i've heard stories where it could be in the hundreds of dollars for like uh uh an auto flush on a toilet you know it breaks and then and so not that you wouldn't do that but i think we need to have a like a real thought uh real consideration of whether certain things should be included um just because they have been included recently but that's more down when you get into design honestly yeah yeah right we're not there yet yeah it's down in design just quickly i want to say i'm all for having some um of these open forums under the tents but they're not circus tents andrew apologize catering tents it's not a circus we're running here that's the big top out there yeah i received jeff actually called it that thank you i just want to make a comment um that um there does seem to be a lot to do and we do need to get this right because this is um a a generational expenditure and if we need to exp extend the uh the referendum past november uh i i think that the the towns uh the citizens of cheshire would appreciate that we took the extra time to really get it right to really get um the plan locked down so they know exactly what they're what they're spending their money on and as far as loss of momentum i don't think uh that would be the case at all i think jeff you did a study a while back saying that i think it was like if there is any kind of educational referendum like 80 of the parents would come out to vote and i'm pretty sure that you know 80 percent of the seniors would come out to vote too uh just just because that's how it is um so i i think that uh i would even say that the the turnout for the referendum would be higher than the municipal turnout that's just my thought um so i don't think there would be any loss of momentum if the referendum got pushed out if uh we don't have the detail or that we would have the detail necessary for people to make really informed decisions okay so what i'm hearing next step is rfp for test fit for the schools so tony you and i could talk offline about how we're gonna move that yeah i would imagine we'll talk with jeff and vincent and you know once there's some detail i suggest uh you know we speak with members of town council on council give them a heads up all right you know if there's gonna be some funding for this um um but we all need it and it's got to be answered right away so uh and then i think the other steps andrew you identified two is and then there is overwhelming supports is scheduling some forms um yeah we'll work with we can we're going to work with jeff on that as well makes sense but so yeah i don't have anything else to add okay good i think faith you have a question comment tony just said it it gets get those meetings on the calendar um sooner rather than later so um even if you know we need a little bit of the rfp work but just get them on so we're all aware and we can um make sure we're all in attendance yeah and that being said you know i encourage all all of us to give um uh andrew jeff you know team ideas on the kind of topics we expect to discuss those forms you know questions you probably want to ask the public uh there should be some structure to them versus just that everybody's showing up and sort of conversation goes so you know any ideas can i make that productive yeah absolutely let us let everybody know okay does anybody else have anything they'd like to add before we adjourn no could have a motion to adjourn second by tim all in favor all right thank you everyone have a good night thanks everybody thanks everybody

right correct i i mean i i think it'd be worthwhile just to go out and do the rfp again i mean every you know every few years just to see where the market is and hopefully they keep providing a good service and they give us the best price again but i don't i don't want to do this in perpetuity particularly the kovid i'm totally you know comfortable with this they've been doing it and we still have the cleaning um they know the cleaning routine but i i don't like doing i don't want to just extend extend them in perpetuity any of these contracts not that one year not that one year is but i'm just saying there should be some i just feel like there should be a moment in time when we do go back out to bid no i understand the contract ends in two years but do can we negotiate a rate that covers those two years so we have some constancy in our in our budgeting that's all i mean when we went back out to bed then what was the savings well and they won the bid they underbid themselves correct they did and they actually lowered the price by about forty thousand dollars when they bid this you know for the next they it actually was two years that they bid on that's what we asked for in the bid so they lowered the price by 40 000 because after serving us for you know four and a half years at the time they went to bid they realized that they could make some internal changes for supervision and so they lowered our price when we got the the next two years they they did they give us a two year price lot the first two years of this current contract and i guess that's what i'm asking if they'd be willing to do it again i can ask you know what i what i would offer is you know you rather than hold this up you know if we approve it this evening i could still ask i mean it doesn't necessarily mean we can't go back and change what we've you know agreed to tonight if they come back with a good two-year price and the board wants to consider it i'll bring it back to the board next month a point of order um we're in the middle of a discussion on a motion so we need to either vote it up or vote it down before we can think about uh a two-year extension so or all right so we have a first and we have a second the other option if i get another point order you can also choose a table and definitely take the motion off the table not going on at all yes that can also happen okay um i'd like to have a full vote so can we as the chairman i'm gonna say all in favor for the for the one year yeah for the one year for the motion yeah okay so that's all right fine all right okay okay i'm the one who passes what's that i'm the opposed the opposed faith yeah okay anything else in on that do you want me to go back i appreciate the you know approval but do you want me to go back and talk to performance about just give me a two year price you know we we agreed to one year what does the three-year price look like i mean i think i think you should do that yes yes okay right it can't hurt um but the idea is that you would be going back out to bed after after this contract year correct yeah i think it you know i think it is healthy to do that on on this this contract i mean and that is what we're required to do it's either put it out to bid or ask for a bid waiver um so the plan is to get it catherine i'm sorry i have a quick the plan is to bid it after this extension not if we go out two years it wouldn't happen until after the second year second year right right right and we couldn't go more than two years with that right right i just i was getting confused yeah we're allowed to go five years okay you know you can get a base contract and extend up to the five years and then it has to either be re-bid or bid waiver grant got it okay thank you you're welcome got it anything else that's it thank you okay thank you all right now we're on to the uh main reason for tonight's meeting item number five school modernization plan um we have a couple gentlemen here from collier's tonight um before we get into it i just kind of wanted to give a little kick off to it so school modernization put forth the report um we had the joint meeting between the town council and the board of education back in the beginning of april i hope everyone's had a chance to really digest that report um i know that i'm getting questions i'm sure a lot of people here are wondering what the next steps are and where we're going with this um i think the last thing we want to do is after all these months of work and studies um put this on the shelf and kind of wait to see what happens next um so hopefully what's going to come out of tonight we'll come up with some next steps have a discussion see where we're going to be moving um because i really think it's time to move the project forward we have a tight time frame um i personally haven't heard from any members of the public so what i did was i there are a couple things that i see as next steps i could be completely off base but i know the superintendent has a couple ideas also um but i think as a board we need to come up with how we're gonna get our this project either moved to the town council for november for a referendum um or go back to the drawing board so it's either we have to go in here or we're gonna just kind of be stuck in this holding pattern um so that the the first thing that i think that needs to happen um is the osdgr was pretty adamant that they wanted to know how the community felt about the different scenarios that were developed um i think that it was to schedule a series of public outreach campaigns or public forums community type meetings um i was discussing with vin the other day and we have these great circus tents at all the schools um so in this current world that we're living in with social distancing requirements etc cetera it might be nice to hold some outdoor type forms we have the tents through graduation i believe then so at least through mid-june until it's the end of april so we have about a month and a half i'd like to and i could be off with this but i'd like to have like two or three forms at various times have like a a daytime form for some families you know some people that are home with their kids that they can come and listen different scenarios are what the school modernization findings were um an evening type setting maybe at the thorpe auditorium if we could use cheshire high school um and then another one at another elementary school kind of give various options at various times to get that public input i think we need to hear what everyone else has to say because you know there's little bits on the community forum we've got some emails here and there but i think having everyone in one place where we could field some comments and questions to really get a good um barometer as to you know where we're going with the school modernization um secondly um i think that we need to issue another rfp i think we need to come up with a idea as to how we're going to you know we're saying two new elementary schools one in the north and one in the south um i think we need to figure out where these schools can be located where they can't fit can one fit on an existing school site does that make the most sense we have some information on that but we don't actually have geo tests borings we don't have you know the capacity for the water and sewer and where these it could best be schools could best be located whether it be the new elementary schools or the new 63 middle school depending on which way we go also as part of that our conversation continues to go towards hummuston school and what we're going to do with that um i think that we should have some sort of feasibility study done on hummuston school um i don't think it has to be like complete in-depth but i think that we need to see what the programming is in that school where we might be able to relocate it and actually come up with a menu of options because um things always kind of like fall back to hummuston school and so i want to kind of get that discussion out there and come up with some real data and facts about that building um third and maybe most importantly is education specifications um i know that they were done uh by the last consultant for the new six through eight middle school i don't think they've been done for the new elementary schools um so i think that we need to i'm not sure if we can do all of that internally we might need to hire a consultant to help to move that along um so those are kind of my ideas just you know i've been thinking about this a lot lately because i don't want this to just kind of it's kind of got quiet for a little while the school modernization committee is done the reports are out there i hope that all of you had a chance to read that 68-page document because a lot of information in there um and it was a lot of the question here and read on the community forum if people just take the time to read the report um i think that it would answer a lot of those questions um a lot of people don't have the time that's why i think that the forms might also be good in order to get a lot so that's kind of my spiel i'm you know i appreciate everyone having the time or putting the time away side to come here tonight um and then with that i think adam has a question but what i'm not going to do i'm not gonna go back through all the scenarios i mean i have a slideshow but hopefully we all know what the scenarios are at this point um i think if we have specific questions we can ask um the folks here that are here from colliers but um with that adam your question i think catherine was first or no maybe yeah no captain there you go catherine go for it yes yeah so um i just as a matter of like the timeline so we are as the board of education um are we saying that we're not going to make any real decisions about what we think the right answer is before we do these community forums and um you know get get public input i i i guess i was thinking that we would be a little more proactive or getting you know making some judgments about what we think is the educationally you know optimum um proposal and you know at the same time that we're getting feedback but it feels like now you're it's you're saying that we would go through this uh forum process and then start figuring out what we think educationally makes sense am i getting confused by where we're going which is definitely a possibility no i mean jeff did you wanna yeah i think you know if you don't mind me jumping in here thanks andrew that the the timing is such i think catherine that it it's okay to do things concurrently this is a fluid process and there are a lot of variables that play into this decision and so i don't think it's a problem for people to articulate where they stand today with the understanding that we're reasonable people and that it's it's not we're not at the starting line we're midway through the process and that there are going to be a lot of variables that we kick around to ultimately come to that conclusion uh i think anybody who says this is the only way that can be done today is a fool that there's just you know it's it's premature to come to you know conclusions i think we have opinions based on um information shared to date tony had asked me to kind of share my perspective as it stands right now with the board and i i wanted to just take you through real quick um where that is i i'm hopeful that i can do that in like 10 minutes um so i'm just going to present my screen real quick uh well jeff before you do that do you want to andrew do you want to attain adam's question in my comment before we get into it sure adam um i'm guessing probably uh jeff's presentation will probably answer a lot of my questions but i guess but my comment really is my vision for for me personally is if we're gonna invite the public to come and ask questions that we should have some answers like where do we think maybe these schools could be built and how much do we think that it's going to cost the taxpayer do we have an idea of how much their taxes are going to go up if we pursue project a or project b um i think those are that's some good information that we could have and i don't know if like the test fitting that you mentioned um if those if that could happen in a month i don't know if it could happen that quickly or not or to have some kind of idea because even like there were questions from smc if there was even um you know talking about the sixth grade middle school if there's even 30 acres available to build a school that large in this town that that was a very big question and the one that wasn't really answered in all of the meetings uh that that they had so i think that's an important question because even you could be an advocate of six to eight but if you can't actually build it anywhere then then what do you do so even if perhaps that's the best option for modernizing our educational system what if you can't build it somewhere what happens next um so i think that's kind of the questions that maybe we need to have some preliminary answers for before we go to the public or else we're just listening to people give their opinion and that's great but they should also have some facts to base their opinions on yeah i i i'm i'm gonna admit jeff thanks for chiming in about doing things in parallel i i have no issue getting public input before we make a decision but damn's point and catharines we need some details um you know um you know i know the preferred option for him to see he's at two elementary schools that that is the way to go you know is that gonna be the same model we have today there's any different programming is that an opportunity to do things differently you know where would they be located you know how does it impact my kids if i'm in northern cheshire right you know the whole region so and we have a lot a lot of facts around that and i think by the time we begin engaging our stakeholders they'll there'll be more details to share i think that jeff will talk about some specs tonight a little bit um but yeah i i will tell you and i did talk to uh chairman orris earlier to see in atlanta that we are meeting tonight and i say one of the things that we all asked and was lingering from smc is what land is available for any of these options and all right well they truly fit and the last time we did this um you know we had a design done at a school and then i don't know if we got as far as a test fit uh but it would be good to know if it is option six with the two elementary schools is a norton property chapter and you'll accommodate that yes or no i wouldn't assume if it's six or eight you know so we can do all that stuff in parallel but the only thing i want to say is android disagree by no means are we any type of holding pattern nothing slowed down we're not dragging our feet maybe you feel that way but i certainly don't the presentation was given to us april 6th lots of information and discussions had since then with the administration here we are tonight so i don't think that's the case at all uh that being said though uh with town council i can tell you that they're finishing up their budgets so they'll be actively engaged in this in a couple weeks uh so some of them so by time they get engaged maybe we have some answers uh especially if they do test fits we'll probably need their help so that being said let's get cracking i think that was my introduction um so uh let's see [Music] okay so everybody can see the powerpoint okay yes yes all right so you know actually the previous slide preparing for 2034 the relevance of that is that's next year's kindergarten class it sounds like a science fiction date but you know that's what we're building buildings for students who are going through starting our school system now have to be relevant then i wanted to share these pictures they're not out of a magazine or some faraway place this is on the left guildford high school on the right depaolo middle school or jfk has the exact same design in southington on the left that's eli terry elementary school in south windsor on the right that's the auditorium at hampden middle school and i share this because you guys are all familiar with our buildings our communities familiar with the buildings i i can pick any districts almost in the surrounding area and pull up pictures like this to illustrate again just providing the importance that we have to move forward a very quick recap i know andrew talked about where we've been but for the community you know there's a strong agreement across the board that we have to move forward uh the committee put forth two um preferred recommendations first of all they have a primary recommendation i think andrew said it was 9-3 i think that's that's what it was uh in the vote on the committee to move this forward as the primary two elementary schools one located at the north end one at the south end possibly at the norton site uh the existing norton elementary school site so basically taking trees down in the rear of that property building a new elementary school and then there are subsequent uh phases that you see at the bottom there renovations to the other schools basically so the cost of that the primary cost option the estimate was that it would the the total of all of the work to be done on the high end would be 329.76 and that's you know so the way that it was uh priced out for the average taxpayer was that we do all of this within a 10-year window which i think is ambitious probably isn't even the right word insane might be a better word um so i i really don't think we're gonna do that in a 10-year window but for the sake of argument that's what it was phase one only which are the highlighted items on the sheet new elementary school north and south cost the average cheshire taxpayer 3256 a month and it services uh 1332 students at the peak between the two buildings that's the enrollment peak between the two that it would be servicing at one time the secondary option called for a new six through eight middle school and a new k through five elementary school to replace chapman uh potentially on the existing site based on a test fit similar remainder to phase one and similar in phase two and three where we're renovating all the other schools the cost there is 340 million on the estimated district share on the on the high end uh in this case if we were to do both a new six through eight middle school and the new chapman uh in that first phase that cost would be an average of uh 46 a month to the average taxpayer it would serve 300 more students at 1687 total students so what are the next steps we've got all that information where do we move from here and you know i'm just echoing i guess a lot of what andrew suggested earlier that you know we have to identify what additional information is necessary to move forward and that's something you know that that um chuck had um shared with me you know in a phone call before too that this is what we we really need to consider that so would a new school fit on the chapman or norton property is a question you know what impact does swing space have on on future costs so um if we were to renovate buildings and not have dot available there's a fiscal impact on that versus um if we had dot and we're able to put students there while we renovate other buildings it's safer faster more efficient cost wise but i don't know the net on that and that's something that we would need help with how does the community feel about preferred options obviously that's a critical piece that and brought up that we need to to kind of vet out what are the available options for the hummuston building again like andrew said identify the educational benefits and the preferred option i think that's something that we all hold particularly in this body to be quite critical um what's the merit of that and i'm going to speak to that momentarily i mentioned further engaged stakeholders in the modernization review process whether it be through forum survey more how do we get feedback on these different ideas that we're pursuing to make sure that it works for the town and then ultimately you know extending our relationship with colliers to make sure that we're talking about ed specs that's not something that we have the professional capacity to fully facilitate and we did that previously on the middle school with the help of another firm um and you know we would need that sort of similar help here to spec out elementary schools and for me as i thought a lot about this and talked to ben and marlene a bit the it comes down to those three terms at the bottom the logistics of these things is it even feasible is this does this mix how does it impact learning and then what's the cost um and as i mentioned before there's not really there's no magic bullet out there there are there are different ways that we could go about this and still meet the needs of our community and our students at a cost that makes sense so we just have to you know identify those areas so my perspective on the two different proposals on the primary proposal learning in essence it's a status quo certainly the buildings are updated but we look a lot like we did before with six uh k through six elementary schools again that's that's not a bad thing this is that's a good thing um logistics uh it's it's pretty straightforward and the fact that students remain in their home schools and the cost significantly or excuse me slightly less than secondary preference before consider considering um swing space or for hummus to needs on the second one i mean that's um a much different animal and the fact that we're building a new six through a which is different than the configuration that we have today so uh the logistics of that like the elementary proposal it's pretty much students are in their home district still the difference being in sixth grade now you go to a middle school as opposed to the elementary school that you were in previously again slightly more expensive cost with the construction of the new chapman before we consider swing space i don't know what that does to the cost but i think it brings it down based on previous conversations over the over the long term i mean it brings it down so the configuration conundrum this has been something we've been talking about for uh probably four four years or so five years in the district you know what about six through eight versus seventy and really the the research and i've i've read through a lot of information on this in terms of what's best right so in terms of the academic progress of students most researchers agree the quality of the school and classroom instruction are more important than grade configuration we talk about this a lot just in terms of our professional growth the bottom line is what happens in the room with the students um and you know that we say that really district-wide but certainly in terms of configuration it's the most critical thing is what happens in the classroom um and then there's you know other research that say mixed results it's just really about the instruction that students receive the state did say that uh on one hand you know they're concerned about a very large middle school um even though i think there is more of a trend toward that with like uh hampden adding on to make their but their sixth grade in hampden middle school and that'll make it over i think 1300 students and they're all on on one hand and then on the other hand the state is also saying more communities are shifting through to a six through eight model so when i think about the learning component of this i went right to the classroom in cheshire to get our information and i pulled the sixth grade teachers in this seventh and eighth grade department chairs and team leaders about you know what is your preference on the inclusion of sixth in the new middle school and we kind of had known that there was a preference from this from the listening tours that were done at the early stages of the smc process but this is um to me a fairly strong visual that 90 percent of our staff either strongly prefer prefer the sixth graders in a middle school environment um with only you know three of the respondents in the neutral category there was nobody that didn't prefer it which i found quite interesting we there was an open-ended component as well so what are the challenges of the six through eight do you think none was the most frequent response which you know i asked them to can you elaborate here a little bit but um larger building in student body we recognize that um and for most of our elementary students when they make the transition it's a larger building now um with the exception of highland uh additional ua and counseling staff would be necessary to ensure that we're providing continuing to provide a high quality experience to our sixth graders if we want them to have that middle school style experience with more unified arts offerings then we need to be able to support that that there's not recess i think two people had said that and then you know the question people were raising is that instead of growing up too fast issue when i asked when i pressed them for challenges on the benefits that they identified they indicated and we talked about this that in many cases the educational standards are clustered around a six through eight uh environment a lot of the resources are structured that way i i can speak on a first-hand knowledge of being the assistant principal and principal dodd for seven years that it is a challenge that students are either coming or going you're either you know induction with kids just getting them into the middle school or you're prepping them to leave that there's not a sustained time period there that we can have a little bit more depth with our students obviously you know people identified more opportunity for specials and extracurricular activities and then you know many people cited the fact that sixth graders are developmentally ready for a middle school environment that 11 to 13 cluster as opposed to being in elementary school with four and five-year-olds they're much developmentally much closer to that you know thirteen-year-old than they are the early elementary student now just like in elementary school you don't put a sixth grade class next to the kindergarten room um you don't do sixth grade next to the eighth grade classroom either we'll talk a little bit about that but i think you know the fear that some parents and you know i have a sixth grader right now who's in a six through eight middle school it's easy to get that oh my god you know my baby's going to middle school they're going to come home with a biker jacket and marlboro's wrapped up in their sleeve or something with a tattoo it it doesn't happen that way but i i appreciate of course you know obviously i'm being a little bit more colorful and facetious uh but there is that anxiety that occurs and i i understand that but developmentally really it's an age group where students are ready to make that transition so middle school teachers also hold specialized certification so rather than um the the really tall effort we make our uh sixth grader sixth grade teachers go through now where you're teaching multiple content areas often um here are their specialists within the one content area and i thought this quote was interesting from one of the people that responded i currently work in the largest elementary school and have always felt despite its size that we're a close community i think the benefits of moving the sixth grade to the middle school outweigh any concerns and you know i can tell you again quite personally from my experience that the middle school is also a tight community and the high school is a tight community though that it's not always predicated based on size it's based on relationships and that's all about uh organizational structures and supports so what did the teachers it i asked them if the community were to move forward with the six through eight middle school what would you recommend and they said you know separate wings restrooms hallways by grade is feasible we do that now um so seventh grade is all on the the top floor at dodd middle school and eighth grade's on the bottom floor i'd do the same thing i worked at moran middle school in wallingford six seven eight uh sixth graders were on the bottom floor seventh and eighth on the top floor it's just that's uh generally by design how you would do things the same way as at the elementary schools they're kind of clustered by grade levels there as well that we maintain teaming pods or houses we have teaming now at the elementary earth excuse me at the middle school if you're familiar we'll have math english science social studies together in one little group the students travel really predominantly within that one little group they may see kids on other teams when they go to unified arts maybe when they go to lunch but it's an intimate environment and that's by design to make sure that we continue to have that close-knit community and then ultimately they suggested that we have to ensure there's adequate staffing so you know we'd have to have another counselor at the middle school in order to to do this well for our kids stuff like that so what is my position you know tony was asking like and again i i i i'm not casting this in concrete i'm saying like as of today where would i fall uh and you know certainly through a lot of conversation with vin and marlene we're a very collaborative effort here that there's unanimous agreement excuse me i wasn't going to sneeze this is just so emotional for me no i'm kidding i um but anyway there's unanimous agreement among central office administration right now that based on what we know today from feedback from our teaching staff again i don't have community feedback around this issue we don't they're logistically is there even space for these things but based on what we know right now we have the strong recommendation that both options be pursued for logistical cost and educational merit and of course community support but we feel like the six through eight uh is the best option and back in in february the three of us had written a letter to the smc kind of outlining that now at that time uh it was six through eight middle school or seven eight middle school in new chapman um and you know i'll share this with you you can review the letter that the three of us wrote um that outlines you know basically why we came to this conclusion but i i think you know certainly everybody on the board in the community cost is one of the three variables that's an important consideration and so you know i am conscious of and i think this is again something that we would have to vet out a little bit more clearly does um if we build a new six through eight middle school and siphon off all the sixth grade and then i i do realize that chapman needs to be addressed sooner rather than later um is that an enrollment requirement in phase one could that be a phase two how does that impact uh financing over time i don't but again i mean this is one of those things where i had thrown out there are a lot of variables that have to be chased down um and so i i share i'll share this with you the powerpoint presentation which has the letter uh and you know this is the kickoff for us as far as i'm concerned but i know tony you had a question i think you know chuck and john they want to weigh in too yeah and i noticed this earlier but in regards to hummuston um last time around uh the sixth rate middle school back in uh where we landed back then we definitely were looking and even post that looking at the building the former lexington building you know we saw opportunities to weave in the alternative high school and board of education offices in a building that size and if it is a sixth grade middle school i would like to see that incorporate into the design and see if it fits again you know parcel and all that but even at two elementary schools would it would it also be feasible i think the board we need to conserve this too is as an opportunity that there's two new elementary schools there's an opportunity to you know move both alternative high school and board of soft offices to one or both those two new buildings may corvette the design and um you know jeff and i were talking a little bit about that a few weeks ago and there's some maybe perception issues between the author of high school and elementary school but you know if you separate things by grade levels you know that might be feasible um and unless you want to add on this uh a couple months ago if it was not three months ago vincent shared a detailed outline of thoughts he had around hummuston and i think this was spawned by jim jinx when he did some research and found that hummuston was uh in historic district that there might be some grant available potentially um to help offset renovation costs and i think at the time vincent was i think i forwarded just a few members of the board i think andrew might have this too but uh it was maybe having the planning committee either as part of this process or in parallel do some research on hummus and see if that's even viable um not that i want to muddy the waters here with hummuston but just something to consider there are options to do something with the hummuston function in any of these scenarios so if there's an opportunity to uh weave it in this part of design i would encourage us to to look into it that's all now adam thanks um if the uh as i mentioned before if there's even if there's not even a parcel that exists that could uh build a sixth grade middle school we do have new technology um and this might be something that's not even been considered could you in essence create a virtual middle school with the technology we have for because i don't know what what you know the interactivity between all of the sixth grade classes um but it seemed like the technology that we saw that with the microphones and cameras that you could have at least an alternative view where you could still um you know achieve your educational goals through the use of technology if the you know the physical middle school was on oh and they was unable to be built is that an option or something that had been considered um yeah i think i think that would be um really i don't know that the experience of the middle school at this time could be replicated through technology as much as we're able to um you know synchronously learn that is a very tall order but just having access to unified arts classrooms you know we'd have to decide if world language you know would receive the same amount of instruction in sixth grade as it currently does in seven and eight uh the extracurricular activities couldn't be replicated um you know the the certifications i mean we could probably address that now and have people strictly teaching one content area except you know from maybe a chapman where you just don't have enough teachers under the one roof to be able to pull that off um so there there is benefit to pulling our students together and that we do gain some efficiency um i know you know many of you on the board have heard me talk about you know if you have um let's say 52 students you know 54 students it in fifth grade at chapman now that's three classrooms that are really small because you're not going to do two classes as 27 in fifth grade there and not have that so now you have three classrooms that are really small the when you increase the pool the number of students it levels off the classrooms much easier so there is some efficiency to it but to try and offer sixth grade and elementary schools on a middle school scale would just be really inefficient because you'd have to bring in more ua teachers and things like that it wouldn't make sense for only that one grade level right so then essentially when you write the when whoever writes you write the ed specs then that consideration would need to be written for when you do if you do the k through six as well two so you can sort more modernize perhaps the requirements in those new spaces true faith thanks um so what i'm taking away at the most basic point jeff is the fact that educationally whether we go k i'm k six or six through eight it all depends on the instruction and really ultimately that's the determinant of success the quality of the instruction and and configuration you know it's um down the list whether it's a six eight or a k five i'm not arguing either way against it but it's what goes on in the classroom regardless of where those classrooms are right for academic success um really it's about instruction at any grade level any configuration primarily um and at the end at the end of the day that's our responsibility is to ensure that the best so my point is you know where i stand i i am favorable to the k-6 but you know if if if the board goes with the 6-8 and and it that is our ultimate goal then you know clearly i can be persuaded but i am concerned um you gotta persuade the parents because they're they're babies you know and and i it's great you did the teacher survey but um i think if you are going to make the case you have got to get to the parents and ask their opinions um just as thoroughly as you ask the teachers yeah i i yeah i wouldn't uh suggest otherwise okay um and you know it probably sooner rather than later so we also have some guidance as we're trying to make this um as we're trying to make this decision as well yeah but i think it's important you know to also have the professional perspective from the people who do this uh so i think you need them both um but uh you know i wanted to make sure we had i wanted to make sure before i suggested from my professional perspective what i felt was best in this particular situation and again it's not slam dunk no-brainer this is the only way you can go but i wanted to make sure that i wasn't out on a limb with uh the people who educate our kids in the classroom every day thinking something else well i totally concur with you and i'm not trying to undermine the teacher's survey no no i know you know the state is also pushing the standards to that you know k568 configuration that is something to keep in mind um yeah my fear is that you know 10 years down the road they're going to go back and another some model and and we'll be doing this again but um just my recommendation is make sure the parents are on board if you're going to make that recommendation that's all yep tim thanks andrew uh a few things um first point is just to help people at home who are watching this sort of visualize what we're talking about when we uh discuss hummuston what what's the size of vin you might know it what's the small the square footprint of our smallest school chapman 50 000 square feet i'm thinking the high school is over two hundred thousand we've got about eight hundred thousand square feet total i still can't hear vin at all you're on mute yeah i mean great i need an auto mute unmute button um yeah well i'll check on chapman as we're talking here i know the high school is 275 000 square feet approximately okay uh yes and then so we've got another 500 000 square feet divided up among seven schools that includes hummuston which is 15 000 square feet split in half half administrative half uh the hummus in school so it's 75 you could take 7 500 square feet in relation to say 100 000 square foot building it's it's something that uh i mean hummingston has you know its own uses that need to be addressed thoughtfully but at the same time in terms of like land space uh i think it's probably something that would be able to fit in just about any of these options um jeff you had mentioned in your slide deck you had a slide where you had 27 teachers i think who were the what was the what was your group of people was it 27 6th grade teachers you said 90 of of what i didn't catch that yeah so on the slide it's a survey of sixth grade teachers there's 16 of those okay and 11 department leaders or team leaders that died and 90 of them either strongly prefer or prefer sixth grade in middle school okay in three people we're neutral okay and so the department leaders so that's not every teacher at dot it's department so it's like social studies department you have the department leader for each content area including unified arts and the team leaders so we put students in groups on teams and each team has a leader uh seventh and eighth grade so the the group is representative of our you know teacher leaders at the middle school level sure okay i just i didn't quite catch all that with this slide that's what i wanted to understand um let me see uh you mentioned in your slide deck that norton being if i heard you correctly you said that the recommendation of this smc was to demolish norton after a new norton is constructed okay but that was the recommendation it wasn't use the norton site and expand it or anything like that because i don't know no it was built on the norton property at the rear of the property and then demolish the building that's there okay because i hadn't caught that before that that was the recommendation i under just understood this to be use the norton site okay yeah it was a it wasn't an all or nothing recommendation i think that the idea and correct me if i'm wrong chuck or anybody who was on the committee was that um you know that be explored the potential for that like right but the potential for demolishing it and putting up a new one um putting up a new one on the norton site and demolishing that be you have to test fit that you you know we don't want to just say yeah why don't we do that and then realize uh wait a minute this isn't going to work yeah also contingent on a like a service with what is now in essence a unpaved service road between the north property and the neighborhood behind norton i forgive me for not knowing the name off the top my head but that would have to be expanded for legitimate traffic okay so that's another question i had on access i'm not sure if you're talking about sharon drive or farmington presumably one of those two roads have we gotten any have we done like a a title search nothing for okay that's one of those logistical issues that you know again i think we have to explore that if we were to find that you know this is impossible on the norton property what we're looking to do and that there's no other land anywhere to do this well that that really hinders that option or you know if we found that there's no place to build enough for a middle school that would certainly hinder that option so you know i think the logistics uh really are a legitimate factor here they have to be resolved before we can definitively make a recommendation is there anything is there anything holding up like doing a title search or anything on on access to norton is this something we could not play the purge i mean i'm just hoping that something like that could happen i don't know who would do it the town has uh he's talked to the folks over there you know i i did speak to the town planner there is a 50 foot something out to sharon drive you know but the town planner explained that based on the records he has he can't tell if it's a right-of-way and he's meant but we know 50 foot wide and so you know he suggested that we would have to you know basically go to the town attorney to make information on what it is so it certainly can be explored further we haven't taken that step and while i have before him you're right chapman is actually about 54 000 square feet okay all right yeah i mean i just think some of those logistical things hopefully we can get answers to those quickly um just going back to norton that goes empty out sharon drive yep okay yeah understood thank you um let me see uh with regard to the meetings andrew thank you for that uh going back to faith you were talking about bringing in you know getting feedback from parents kovid it's not easy to do that or hasn't been at least in the past year so yeah i i really do hope we can schedule some meetings one thought crossing my mind besides what i mentioned a week ago which is trying to make it accessible making people feel comfortable come to our meetings so i think outdoors would probably be good using the tents would be great just keep nightfall in mind i don't know if we've got lights frankly i think people would probably prefer to have it during the daylight um i know i would but it's just a little bit more awkward having outdoor meetings at night shouldn't be too bad you know as we approach june it's getting you know it's light pretty laid out but i'm totally open to like a week i know we don't normally do weekend meetings or anything but we want to do something you know saturday morning whatever it might be but i definitely we def i strongly believe we should have these meetings scheduled and happen before school gets out because i have a feeling school gets out and people are whew let me see uh and as i would i would like to um you know it seems to me that in either of these options we're looking at chapman that's something happening there so um just moving forward on that and not slowing down on i'm not saying i didn't mean to say that something would happen in chapman because the voters could reject it but in both of these options something is happening at chapman so moving down a path on that right now uh i don't see any reason if we're looking at you know locations and stuff i get that with either a middle school or with norton or a south end school but with chapman i think we should just be moving forward as quickly as possible and then one of the issues there tim was test fit the chapman site sure i think if we're talking about a larger chapman it's the chapman that's there now is pretty tight yep and it's a smaller school if we're talking about that we'd certainly have to test fit that through the help of an architectural firm or identify another location sure no and i get that i mean i realize that this you know i any of these discussions can be um you know with any policy decision there's winners and losers and and uh it's a sensitive it's a sensitive topic but i i'm just saying i think we should move forward as quickly as possible at least i mean at least on the chapman those discussions would have to happen those those uh with the architects and the test fit and stuff but i'm thinking that should be able to move forward right now um and then the last the my last point is i've said it before which is just um well yeah design for a test fit and do all that stuff um and then the last point i'll just make with regard to sort of where i'm leaning that you know i am open to either of these options but where i'm leaning right now as i've said before is uh staying with the k-6 model you know if i hear the compelling reasons the studies that sort of demonstrate that the six through eight model is uh significantly better than the status quo which is k through six then um i'm open to it i'm open to hearing what the parents say you know obviously they're the boss as far as i'm concerned but where i am right now uh is probably just you know k through six model and i feel like there is a you know people move here to town for the schools that's a big part of it um and there's sort of a social compact that exists it's not written written in stone but that does exist there's an expectation there so that's it thank you andrew for the time sure um so for those who have additional questions i i would like to throw it to poliors quickly i'd like to have them weigh in and kind of i've heard i think they've heard a lot of what our discussion has been here tonight in superintendent's report i'd like to hear what they think um as our experts in the field about what our next steps uh may or may not be is that anna are you okay with that i know you're next in the line okay i'm fine with that but i do have something to add okay but i can wait till after i hold it you're next you're up right after the uh chuck all right um yeah we'll make it quick um i i think jeff hit on a lot of good points as he mentioned we talked before a little bit about it um i think there's two components obviously and i think you had on andrew the um town council's busy with their budgeting session and so they're they're um when we left off in eight uh it seemed like a long time ago three weeks ago um they left off and it sounded like they had some questions they wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the financial side of things right and what's financially you know fiscally responsible in looking at those two so i think that that aspects in the town council's side of things if you will um obviously educational is in with this group and the board of ed um and just like jeff said i think the next steps are um looking at these are these test fits um you know are they really feasible whether um it's the norton site and by the way the town planner gave us four sites that they deemed feasible or possible at least town owned in the town for schools um one of them was the norton site one's the casualtano property up on um is it um what's the road up there marion jarvis marion jarvis yep um and that was a test fit years ago i believe um cheshire park um and then you know bartlett park but that doesn't sound like that's a possibility so they didn't mention those four but i think we just we will need to do a test fit engage with the design firm put out an rfp um probably cool chapman include norton maybe look at hummus and we put together a detailed scope of work and and test fit these we were talking about them we're talking about high level you know we need to start getting a little more granular with these options i think and that's the next step in the process like jeff's i think going parallel with doing your community outreach getting some feedback talk about some of the options and and and that was more for suggestion with oscgr we've done the survey but i think they want to make sure hey if you go through with a referendum does the community support and that was really the gist of their recommendation for it um i think really the next step we're kind of in this between we we had a phase two where we studied the options the next phase is due diligence i think we're like a 2b it's like we got to do a little more cooking on the two and the sex options um and and dive a little deeper on those maybe do some of those geotechnical horns that you mentioned andrew but i think the test fits the first the first part before we spend money on test bits and phase one environmental site assessments i think really doing a high level test fit with a design firm going can we fit a building of x amount of square feet have the vehicular circulation the parent drop off the bus drop off because these new configurations especially elementary schools they don't work like you have them now they are there's a lot of circulation so i think those are the next steps um parallels best fits and maybe some community engagement and some feedback so chuck as adam pointed out do you you don't think it's going to lead to more questions like if we go out and we start engaging the community and asking these questions we don't have a site set in stone i mean do you think that's going to be a major issue as far as the site i think you know and i'm just thinking out loud here i think you can i don't think we ask them what do they want to do see it's the recommendation is is you know option six for the two elementary schools which needs to be verified if if for some reason like jeff said if hey if uh through the feasibility study in the test fit it doesn't we can't support it it may lean towards option two but those are the two options i would stick with i wouldn't open the pandora's box again those were what smc recommended now we just got to figure now it's the logistics of how do we execute this plan and we have to study more it's it's it's like it's like a study you go through high level we drill down a little farther we drill down a little bit more we drill a little bit more net and that's we're in that second level drilling down a little bit further now that we have the two options we're focusing on those a little bit more before we go too far into again geotechnical bourns even specs i wouldn't even draft head specs right now i'll wait until we do a test fit and go is it feasible yes no if yes let's do a diagram go to the next phase okay a little bit deeper maybe some med specs maybe some geotech refine those budgets for it but i wouldn't open up to what do they think they want to do just hey you know this is the point we have what's your feedback on on what we're recommending i think that's probably what you're looking for but i'm an engineer so i keep it more black and white so i think that's what we might we need that right um so from what i'm hearing from you is the next step is an rfp for test fit from an architectural firm to do the next feasibility study on the different options good next step i i think let's get a little more grailer we've been talking so high level and you've heard it from us so we you know we think that's a possibility in the northern part of the north or the northern part of um chapman let's sit now and stop talking about it and start doing it and looking at it and get something on a map and really have something for you guys to put your hands on and see in their concepts right they're not going to be the final product but is it feasible yes or no because it might be a check box no all right let's move on let's stop talking about it and move on to the next solution not to hold you to this but how long would you think something like that would take um we could develop you know say if we get engaged like next week and and move you know um we could put together an rfp probably in a week week and a half um and if i'm not sure it depends if it's through the board of ed body uh i know the smc is kind of done with their work so uh if it's through this body we can put those together that rfp uh in about a week you know probably two weeks by time you approve it and redo it get it out in the straight couple weeks to get up get get uh some proposals we would get a lot of activity um we could talk about those logistics there um but uh you're probably talking two two and a half months to realistically get a feasibility study um i think andrew okay thank you uh andrew so chuck essentially what you're saying and i appreciate the engineering point of view too you know i like the idea of a diagram because that's not actually a good thing for us was i think all of us on this board except with andrew we haven't built a new school before um or did a major renovation so it's it's nice to don't take for granted that we know the steps um but we're getting better at that but i think what you're also saying is we need to move in more of an agile fashion we can't be too rigid to say okay let's spend two months on xbox and then spend another two months in step c we gotta do some things in parallel uh so i'm absolutely in favor of getting a location or locations uh identified that will fit one or more scenarios right because without that we're going to be spinning our wheels on things that may not matter secondly you know as far as rfps there is no budget for the board of ed for money for rfps now it doesn't mean that we can't get creative uh but it also means when we get to that point i i would believe the town council would absolutely support something like this because they too we need to know okay where will these things fit do we have properties and get some sense of that so you know if we move forward with the rfps uh you know we'll certainly work with the town side to figure out how we take care of that but but i appreciate you uh trying to push that f4 i think that's critical for us to do right now yeah yeah and yeah thank you and uh thank you chuck for your assessment i also appreciate your engineering uh perspective on the whole thing and something that i really wanted to make sure that we start talking about because we were talking about it three four five six years ago a lot was the fact that dodd middle school does not fit where it's located and that was really a driving factor and um for me i couple that with when i listen to the public who is giving me their um their opinions of what they want and don't want in this modernization process i'm hearing loud and clear that people like their neighborhood elementary schools they like them because they're small they're intimate and they're in the neighborhoods well that is exactly the problem with dodd middle school it's in a neighborhood and it doesn't fit there and the parking is a problem and when you have special functions you you have people all over parking all over people's properties or in front of their driveways or whatever gets people upset at any rate one of the things that parents also need to think about it's not just a matter of do i want my sixth grader in a six to eight middle school setting or do i want them in in the elementary school setting they're really also have to weigh that against do i want smaller elementary schools that aren't bursting at the seams so that they fit in the neighborhood and that we can have traffic flow in and out and it doesn't bother um all the neighbors in that neighborhood sorry i got a pop-up and um and those things are really counter to each other so if we kept our we could keep our elementary schools a little bit smaller if we take the six grades out we also solve the problem of the fit of dodd middle school even if it remains a seven through eight it doesn't fit in that neighborhood where it's located and um i just think we need to talk about that more and that's part of the community input that i also would be really um interested in hearing from people parents and neighborhoods people who don't have kids in the schools but still like having an elementary school in their neighborhood and we know that the the neighborhood around dodd doesn't like having the middle school because it creates it creates problems so as our schools get bigger because apparently cheshire is growing and our elementary schools enrollment is is just bursting my i really have a big worry about our elementary schools all of them being made pretty much to full capacity sizes and still having them feel like elementary schools in neighborhoods without disrupting what's going on in the neighborhoods still keeping that neighborhood feel and and i'm worried about that because that's what i'm hearing really loud and clear from people who are talking to me about their elementary schools so i just wanted to add that and make sure that that's something that we are also asking um community opinions about just you know the locations and and that's part of the test fit and i don't hear us talking about test fitting um dodd anymore but i hear us pushing any kind of renovation to dodd down to i don't know how many years down the road um but it's been in a in a difficult situation for a while now and uh you know my hope is that that situation would get taken care of as well as the enrollment problem and as well as keeping our neighborhood schools at a size and and level that makes people happy with their with their school so that's all i wanted to add thank you thank you um my first question i guess i i guess my questions will be directed towards chuck but this may require some sort of institutional knowledge um so uh i remember early on in the process or somewhere around there you had made comments about uh chuck to chuck about how would we get heavy equipment into the norton area to do any kind of construction um and so that brought to mind i was just at a baseball practice this weekend um over there and and i'm and i'm staring at the the addition that was done in the 90s wondering well how did they get equipment back there in the 90s did they did they use that side road coming off of farmington avenue or did they just carefully drive things around the gymnasium and i wasn't sure if anyone knew exactly how the construction equipment got back there to build a rather large edition uh in the 90s that that would that's my first i guess like a statement question i'm not sure how it was done um secondly um and perhaps this is my own ignorance but you you had mentioned bartleum park and i thought that the parcel that we purchased was only 10 acres so i thought and an elementary school cars i thought 20 and a middle school would require 30.

bhs has had a special board located in the commons recognizing students have earned a minimum composite score of 30. the a.c.t club 30 are jacob dugar sierra haddock austin hazlitt and briley huber the act club of 30 also had seth jarvis draven myers and will suresey the a.c.t bronze award is the third highest act score in the class congratulations bradley huber and trevin myers who both scored a 31. the a.c.t silver award goes to the second highest act score in the class congratulations jacob dugar and sierra haddock who both scored a 32. the a.c.t gold award goes to the highest act score in the class congratulations austin hazlitt and will suresen who both achieved a 35 out of 36 on the act way to go awesome guys honors graduates students can graduate with honors based upon their cumulative seventh semester gpa honors graduates will be given an honors medallion to wear at graduation honors graduates for kuma lottie gpa of 32 to 3.49 are jordan avengroth mckinley anderson allison buckridge and cassidy combs allie cornine jaren garland maddie huff chloe madlock maggie seaman jalen wright honors graduates with a magnum cool not a gpa of 3.5 to 379 include daniel bartley elijah caldwell samantha cofer isabella fiedler selena flynn chrissy hall carson hess john howard briley ish jaden monosmith brian pair brady rand lilly roth will ceresig abby sleazer addison varvel and drew thorpe honors graduates of summa laude gpa of 3.8 to 4.0 david allen gracie becker caden birkenmeyer aiden caldwell nick davies jacob dugar emma fuhrman and sam griffin sierra harrah gloria hammy austin hazlett alicia hernandez brylee huber seth jarvis trevin myers and allie schneider braden slawyer lydia stedel michael watkins and chloe zaman that group kept them on their feet in the classroom yes they did students are graduating magna laude or summa laude will also receive the presidential award for academic excellence to be eligible students must have earned a minimum gpa of 3.5 congratulations now let's get to the money and are you ready for some local scholarships i would like to say thank you to our local scholarship sponsors for your generosity to the class of 2001.

so ladies and gentlemen can i get a big round of applause for outgoing board members we don't get a golden key to the district yes it's in the mail okay so that brings us to 5.1 we've got a few people that have a few words to say i think we do all right eugene gatewood [Music] we have a face with cameras that would be great yeah that's good that's why you keep me around all right [Music] that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of member of the board of education board of education of the second community unit school district number 308 in accordance with the constitution of the united states the constitution of the state of illinois and the laws of the state of illinois to the best of my village i further affirm that i shall respect taxpayer interests by serving as a faithful protector of the school district's assets i shall encourage and respect the true expression of opinion by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees i shall recognize that a school board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a school board i shall recognize and that decisions can be made only by the majority of a school or meeting i shall abide by uh yes i shall abide by majority decisions of the school board while retaining the rights to seek changes in such decisions for ethical and constructive channels as part of the board of education i shall accept the responsibility for my role in the equitable and quality of education of every student in the school district as part [Music] district i shall foster with board extensive participation of the community formulate goals define outcomes and set the course for oswego community unit school district 308 i shall foster the board extensive participation of the community goals define outcomes and the sudden course of our studio community's unit school district reality i shall assist in establishing a structure and an environment designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework i shall assist in establishing a structure an environment designed to ensure all students have the i shall strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children they will find sustainable i shall strive to ensure this assessment in all conditions of our children and violence i shall serve as education's key advocate on behalf of students in our community school or schools to advance the vision for oswego community unit school district 308 i shall serve as educational [Music] and i shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision the board has created fostering excellence for every student in areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision the board has created fostering excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal development yes [Music] um but there's a little bit of um descent into how to say the next phrase is google gives us one explanation and our attorney gives us yet another let's go we're gonna go with their google if you want to see i'm gonna try i'm gonna trust you over google so take that responsibility with great seriousness i would say make a motion to adjourn sign you die and google would say synodia so there you go we will if i could please have a motion to adjourn in the synodia of your choice i make a motion to adjourn signing diet second oh you are on that all in favor aye [Music] carpe next diem [Music] tony tony she's gone yeah [Music] appreciate you saying that thanks very [Music] much [Music] [Laughter] thank you sir thank you congratulations [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] goodbye i already forgot how to pronounce that thing is this yours yeah [Applause] board members newly sworn in if you could please pick a chair any chair because we're gonna play rearrange the chairs thank you i worked really hard on that for about 30 seconds thank you i thought about that and you missed a really good joke but that's okay we could have music and make it musical chairs however there's one for every person i'm just talking [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] may i have a root a roll call vote of the newly established board of education mrs storial present mr gatewood president mrs johnson president mrs krohner present dr moreno present mrs simonton present mrs swanson presents brenton this one's new all right where are we at i recommend to appoint superintendent of schools dr john sparlin as president pro tempore to preside over the election of the board of education president can i have a motion please actually i make the motion yes i just did it awesome may i have a second second [Music] all in favor aye aye well thank you mrs doyle nominations are now in order for the office of president any member of the board may nominate any member of the board including themselves and nominations do not require a second nominations are now open for the office of president of the board of education i nominate dr donna moreno for president dr donna mourinho is nominated are there any other nominations for the office of president are there any other nominations for the office of president are there any other nominations for the office of president if there are no further nominations the nominations for president are now closed dr moreno being the only candidate nominated for the office of president the chair hereby declares you elected by acclimation and i ask that ursula record that into the minutes congratulations president dr donna marino what's up i'm fogging up my reading glasses now so bear with um right now we're going to take nominations um are now in order for the office of vice president are there any nominations for vice president i'll nominate ruth croner ruth crawner is nominated for vice president i would like to nominate latonya simultan latonya simultan is nominated for vice president are there any nominations for vice president one more time are there any other nominations for vice president okay if there are no further nominations the nominations for the office of vice president are closed since we have more than one member who has been nominated for the office of vice president i'm going to ask you to vote by a show of hands for either ruth croner or latonya simultan you may only vote for one member and to be declared vice president one member must receive receive at least four votes board members who wish to appoint ruth croner for pre for vice president please raise your hand we have three votes for ruth croner board members who wish to appoint latonya simultan for vice president please raise your hand and we have four votes for latonya simultan congratulations latonya simultan for receiving the majority of votes and you are now elected the position of vice president i've never been on this side of the table it's super fun nominations are now in order for office of secretary are there any nominations for secretary i'll nominate ruth coroner who does a fantastic job right now are there any other nominations for secretary there any nominations for secretary and then i say if there are no further nominations the nominations for the office of secretary are closed captioning not available okay 9.4 the board of education will establish regular board meeting dates time and place can i have a motion to establish the board meeting dates time and place i make a motion hold on to establish a regular board of education meeting dates and times for the 2021-22 as discussed and presented second mrs croner hi mrs johnson hi dr marino aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye mrs simonton i motion motion passes now we will hear public comments on behalf of the board of education i would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents interested in speaking to the board this evening are asked to have completed a comment card and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name i ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback please note that comments are limited to five minutes per person and that no discussion of personnel matters or responses to questions are permitted the board does not participate in discussion during public comment follow-up to your questions or concerns will be addressed by administration through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you jared ploger thank you board uh i came up here unscripted so that should probably worry everybody but uh jared plogger2776 la jolla court aurora um i thought somebody from the general public should say thank you to the outgoing board thank you board members heather and matt i see that you stuck around and i think that's apropos heather i can't thank you enough for what you've done up there um you've just been a wonderful person a wonderful board member and uh appreciate everything that you've done i appreciate your ear and everything and and matt um i remember the first time that you ran and uh being a uh a citizen who really tried to understand what was going on with my uh my sons and their education i knew right away that you were someone i supported and uh we we didn't always agree but uh i always appreciated you up there thank you really appreciate that um and now we we're here on a historic night and we need to move forward and um i i think the message that that uh i i wanted to bring tonight from also from uh i'm hoping a very large segment of the community is um this is this is brand new and we're going to move forward um we need to build on this this is such a positive and celebratory evening i i can't hardly contain myself between my emotions with with those that i'm connected with and and just seeing this this is just such a positive thing and and uh we certainly need to move forward better than uh we're moving forward with wolf road don't get me started on that um that's my poor attempt of humor um but um uh um i i i want to remind us that we are all here to support and we want to see our board of education succeed what's what's the alternative right i mean the alternative right is that that our most prized possession our greatest resource here um does poorly and that's not what anyone wants to see right and we want to see all of our students succeed and that's what i think tonight's about right is is that promise to see all of our students succeed and and i can't hardly contain myself with the excitement and and this is a historic evening uh for for the communities uh involved in our school district and uh i'm excited and i wanted to say thank you to the new board members because you voted you ran you you engaged with the community uh and and you showed a commitment and uh unfortunately that's not something that that the majority of us always do and and thank you thank you for for doing that thank you for getting involved and um and appreciate everything uh that's being done here tonight and then i'm excited i'm excited for this transition and excited for for for the community and that's all i wanted to say thank you thank queue you up always good evening good evening my name is kiwana boris i reside at 2529 lambert drive in aurora illinois i sit before you representing two organizations twofold one is parents for education and global success which is a recognized organization by district 308 and the second organization is in double acp of dupage county we represent oversea kendall will kane and northwest cook want to thank the outgoing members tony brent and matt for your hours of service and dedication but i'm here to celebrate with our district i want you to know that the naacp of of dupage county would like this opportunity to recognize the historical event of the election of two african-american candidates latonya simonton eugene gatewood along with a woman of jewish descent and jan johnson who on the when we interviewed when we interviewed you you said you were open-minded and willing to grow and learn we celebrate you the constituents of oswego voted with their ballot for educational equity and diversity representation when we look at our current board it represents our community but we have more work to do we have good work to do good trouble we believe we believe that the school board this school board for the next four years will be solution oriented bridge builders engage in courageous conversations implement strategy with action that focuses on our children with accountability to ensure that district is a place where all students can thrive we will hold you accountable and we look forward to partnering with you thank you 11.1 a motion to return i make a motion to adjourn second we are adjourned