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[Music] we have five of our board members present tonight Joyce on vacation Jen is at a work obligation so first on our agenda is public comment we do have one individual signed up of Kayleigh Frank keely frame for can really drive Board of Education I was a 2016 graduate of Brookfield high and I will be entering my junior year at UConn this fall as part of my curriculum at UConn as a Spanish in speech language and hearing science major I was fortunate enough to travel to Granada Spain for my study abroad program where I was immersed in Spanish language in all of my classes were in Spanish I was also fortunate to recently recently share my experience with the fifth grade class at West senior middle school my presentation covered language culture history and geography and was mostly presented in Spanish I provide this public comment to the poor tonight because I was in very impressed with the knowledge of these fifth graders when I attended with Kinnear middle school when your language was offered starting in seventh grade I am using adhesive girls have been sewing Spanish since first grade in the future deliberations regarding the level foreign language instruction at Center Huckabay and whiskey near I would encourage more instruction than less because it is working and we can tell about our level of proficiency in these students they were able to answer any questions that mr.
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Beal asked them and I was very impressed by them and I would like to thank mr. Emma and mr. Beal for letting me share my Spears with the students I hope that I am so I gave them sort of what they could be like in the future if they continued Spanish and what else they could learn thank you thank you very much appreciate the feedback is there anyone else that has not signed up care to speak okay we'll move on to written correspondence enjoys not here but she did provide the written correspondence to me we have from Ron Jaffe regarding an article and Kristina Zimmerman regarding an FOI request next we have approval of Board minutes I'll make a motion that the board approve the minutes listed below as recommended regular meeting of six 2018 second any discussion in regards to the minutes okay all in favor aye opposed okay moving on to superintendent report thank you mister so just a few items to share with you this evening one to let everyone know that the Brookville high school ball field lights the peo has been rendered from the town Town finance office and we are moving forward on that project I'd like to thank the Board of Finance for supporting some of the balance to take care of this as part of an insurance claim for lights and we're very optimistic that we can have the lights ready to go by mid-september in terms of it's typically about an eight week project I have new late polls and full lights installed and ready to go so we're really excited about that and really appreciative of all of the community coming together because this is not only used by the high school but certainly used by the entire community in terms of administrative transitions at each of the schools as you know we've gone through several phases of our reorganization with some assistant principals moving mrs.
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Lukash I know our new principal beginning or huckleberry our longtime principal diamond moving to Center school and and some other administrators moving and everybody's having a very smooth transition and very you know you could feel how invigorated they are in their new positions and people are working to go out together quite well new colleagues so that's really wonderful to hear we also recently put out a world language survey as many of you know it's been a long time goal of the board to try to get an additional language at the high school and so recently this is Holly put a brief survey together asking for feedback on what people would like in an additional language if they had a choice and we just wanted to kind of take the temperature of the community so far about close to 700 full surveys completed with Chinese Mandarin at about 193 I'm showing through the top three there's 20-something languages to choose from but Mandarin at 193 American Sign Language at 103 which is very interesting and Italian at 81 at this point so that surveys out there some are facility projects I want to just briefly are two really big ones in addition to the ball field lights just turn over to Ken for a brief update how they're going sure yes largest projects are here at the high school the water project right now in front of the school unity for all whether the 100 thank yous today and the plan is for the old be filled with a new tank tomorrow and then there's still a lot more work to be done obviously after that with plumbing and wiring and but it is on schedule and on budget at the moment the other prop big project is the paving it was skinnier the sidewalks in front of the school have been removed and the asphalt for the loop in front of the school has all been removed and I think about 2/3 of the sidewalk new sidewalk has been poured so they're going to continue on with that once they complete the sidewalk then they'll start putting the asphalt down and then line in and that will be completed and that again also was running on schedule and on budget great and just the final note from me this month is that Central Connecticut State University Superintendent program asked me to take on another intern you may recall it took out an intern on last year this this is a neighboring principal from Reed middle school Reed Intermediate School excuse me in Newtown Lauren Uberti who is the principal there will be working so you'll folks get to meet Herschel tents and board meetings and attend our administrative meetings and kind of learn the ways of the superintendency as part of her program at Central Connecticut so I want to let you know that you may meet her next month people will say how long is that program it's typically a twelve month to 14 month program kind of summer summer one summer through the academic year through another summer as typically how it works about 300 internship hours need to be complete yes it's quite a bit and that's only happened questions thank you thank you thank you dr.
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Brown you're very welcome okay next we have subcommittee reports first is Cape I can say something to that so the last time you met it was it was kind of a quick meetings that was the same night as the warming up ceremony will be observed suppose so but we had several presentations from aggie burns at WMS she's she presented on the impact of the teacher's college reading program that we piloted we started a pilot last year and so we had we watched some videos of some samples of student work and those sounded really positive so that looks like it's going very well we also got a presentation from principal Belinda on vocabulary instruction and how the professional learning that that's being done on research-based vocabulary instruction has been enhanced the classroom instruction we also took a look and approved the new text for ap physics and the last thing we talked about was the marching band program which in recent years has sort of really declined in enrollment there's only about 20 participants now so rather than a marching band program we explored something similar it's called a blast type format I think blast is actually like sort of trademark name so but it's a it's a type of it's like marching band but it's it's coordinated movements but it's indoors on stage so and a lot of schools have sort of started transitioning into that so and they've gotten more enrollment and a better participation it's like it's choreography but it's also new more new music things like that so the committee unanimously supported the implementation of of a program more similar to that and see if that you know increases participation pretty much just all other than the Sorrell language study so far though sorry that was it well question with the AP physics texts since it is just one text for a class that doesn't need to go through the full board am I correct in that or do we need to approve that book through the full board questions for dr.
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Gruber well I would have to I would have to check our our process on that right no I think about that I mean was approved by Cape would keep after recommends the forum board have to approve that our textbook approval yeah so we'd have to take a look at that yeah so we can look at that frame come back to you for next month great thanks you got on the fan thing did the chief committee agreed to both the implementation of last and the elimination of the marching band or was it just adding and why it was sort of more of a transition into that as opposed to the marching band okay and will that come to the board I believe so I mean we voted on the support of a blast of blast yeah so I believe the students that are currently involved in marching band will will move over into more of that type of format and couldn't they can they can do that activity with the amount of people that they currently do I get a chance to vote on elimination of marching band I don't know yeah I would like to understand more and just like marching band plays at games and parades and outdoor activities does that mean they're not going to be doing that anymore or is this more like where the understanding is the marching for marching band actually isn't involved at games and things like that that was part of the discussion and part of them I mean I wasn't at that meeting so yeah you can speak to that but that that's part of that discussion I think it's I think it's generated from the from the advisor you know the teacher as well as the students they're trying to yeah sustain what they have because there's 20 kids that are in marching bands and they really can't do a whole lot another rewrite enough is just sort of like pointless it is because we don't have enough enough sections we don't have my kids to actually do very many this year I think they tried to pull from whisk in here to get some seventh eighth graders that's proven difficult the last couple of years well why don't we why don't we see if we can arrange a presentation from high school folks and some of the students to come in and talk about the differences and you know what they're trying to accomplish yeah yeah and we want you to do that watched an awesome video of some other schools that have transitioned to this type of format it looks really fun it looks like kids would be much more engaged in this type of program it includes like the same type of instruments but you can also bring in you know like the dance team and like color guard and so it actually gets that's pretty cool so that was really I want to see it yeah I would be very interested in seeing it so yeah I'll be frank I've had this full disclosure I had two children who went through the marching band program so I had nine years of being a marching band parent I was treasurer of the marching band parents Association and it is the single-most market individual influence unlike the children who participated in it and it was it brought discipline and brought the ability to look outside the schools and area setting and it takes commitment by the educators that they would like to do it and since mr.
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friend left we have not seen that commitment so I can't it's hard for me to tell whether this is an issue of the students not having interest of the educators not having it and so I am NOT a fan of eliminating that program I'd be a big fan of adding something that is interesting but I'm not a fan of eliminating a program like that and I'd like to be able to see it and I'd like to have be able have a chance to discuss sure why we should continue a marching band program and find a way to have our middle school educators and our high school educators committed to such a program it's marching band currently done during the school day or is it an after senseless marching bands kind of half extracurricular it's like you ought to think of marching band almost like a athletic team competitions once a week they have that after school practices they have a job just before school summer and the training camp you know where they all learn their bets come back mid-august with its as much more of an act together regular than it really even was a academic program thank you folks thank you and keep you yep analyzer for Policy so when we last met we talked about we continue our discussion of the 3000 series and tonight you'll see to the policies that Cape recommends with Brookfield does not yet have and there will be a lot more probably at our next meeting we will have finished that chunk of it the ones that cave has that Brookfield is not those will be sent if they haven't already to Ken Ken will review them and then we'll be coming to you guys for a first read in September so and we'll also be sort of plugging away at the rest of the 3000 series as well I think that was it in terms of actual policies the communications portion or communications meeting we talked briefly about potentially a future position someone who can sort of be a communication / public relations type of experts that we can we can better get information from the board from the squirrel to the public perhaps this you know could be somewhat of a of a town in school thing or maybe a part-time school thing but we just sort of tossed around that idea and kept coming back to it as something that we potentially need to to keep on our radar as a as a potential addition it's a good idea is unless there is any other additions might be something good to do in conjunction with the town yeah see if we can get something roll in there great thank you so much next we have facilities okay pretty much dr.
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birrell and mr. post took over their reporting on their facilities highlight again we are going to be getting new poles and new lights and I know it will be done before the first game that's very exciting the paving project has started at whiskey near we also discussed moving the press box at the high school Stadium and have decided to request that funds be transferred to have this done in the new press box would be installed on the bleachers and trying to thank just normal summer projects that we work on pH water project a PHS water project that mr. post discuss and paving again and then a floor replacement this year huckleberry is going to be having a railing installed next a handicapped ramp and that's really about it for our facilities so the prospects that's possible now because the life oh yes yes well um karma was on our side and the light pole that was an issue the macro burst took out on us okay so that kind of enabled us a terrific opportunity to be able to reallocate or relocate the press box great so so for for people at home and those people you know while the school in takes advantage of the evening lights quite a bit with lacrosse soccer and field hockey games football games at night the grounds of the school the ball fields and the lights and the bleachers are all actually under the auspices of being taken care of by Parks and Rec so working in concert together on that to Eve's point we couldn't update the pigs we couldn't put the press box that basically fits on the bleachers like an erector set there's a matching manufactured press box that can fit right on the bleachers because there was a light pole in the way one of the old light bulbs with the light poles after the storm one falling and the rest being rendered what's the word inoperable take it down thank you in getting now the replacement lights with four light poles it opens that area up so we don't have to have the existing poles box we can have the new press box the ancillary benefit is we also had a summer project to finally make the old box handicapped accessible and that project now doesn't have to occur we can allocate funds to purchasing the new press box from that project to get the new press box all set and moved on and it'll it'll meet the requirements it needs to meet so it's pretty exciting all that happening so see the sun's the sunshine after the storm it was sunshine after the storm we actually found out about one more sunshiny item after day we had damage at The Whisky near roof section I believe it was around 10,000 square feet that the insurance company had a roof roofing engineer come in and look at it and they are paying to replace that section of roof so it's a thing a little over $150,000 so we just did the purchase order on that so just a mechanic's question on the reallocation upon us for a new press box yes what is who are the approvers of that that's mr.
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Lucas and mr. Dunn submitted for the for the request and we just have to we have to have approval by the First Selectman and the town treasurer to reallocate the 2015-16 funds from not approved projects to ones that are either over so it's coming out of the 1516 five correct and it's one of those prices they kind of yes and it's that were approved but back when they were developed they're not projects that we can readily do at this point so those funds so and how long does that project take once we launch it in technology they ask to be brought up to the past box but it all should be happening yeah that's why getting these POS done before the men you know that this mid-july doing is important it is for sure so to the taxpayers it's costing you zero dollars to have all of these improvements done lemonade are limits okay let's keep you in the husband to solve a witness love being there um we just had a meeting tonight right before our Board of Ed meeting we discussed and we reviewed the survey results from the June 7 public forum that took place at the Burke ville High School Auditorium 487 responses to the survey were received there were 122 views of the presentation on the internet just some highlights from the survey out of 487 people who responded 350 people voted that when and if we do do something that their biggest concern was minimizing the disruption of education for the students during construction so that was pretty pretty interesting the rest of the stuff it was you know ups and downs there was nothing really surprising that we found on the survey tonight as a group Tecton Associates came they gave a presentation we all decided unanimously to focus on one option but we are reserving the right to look at it intrigued at it and we've asked checked and associates to go back and to look at different scenarios for option C anything else yeah you share your option C is so people know what that is specifically yes which option that is yes option C is new huckleberry Hill Elementary on existing site so well we voted on that the option was huckleberry hill school where it is now at the same time when the children are in classes we would begin building a brand new building on the same site what that would do was it would combine Center Elementary School and huckleberry elementary school into one school the tree went back to with the architect was whether we wanted to have pre-k through five in one building we asked them to do what projections and drawings and research that a little bit more for us or perhaps use a portion of huckleberry hill school as it exists now in addition to a new school so we're kind of weighing different options right now and this is all very preliminary they have not reported back obviously their findings for the rest of the great configuration six through eight would be a twist Kinnear and 9 through 12 would be at the high school any questions and we're going to be scheduling another meeting and if I don't if we don't have it before the next meeting I will let you know when that is yeah they're usually no their public forum or not until not not like yeah because really right now what what we want to do is we want to come back and we want to review what Tekken Associates has we have to decide as a committee what we feel is best in what we want to recommend as as being best you know what Park felt for the students in the community unanimously wants you know with with the public and taking a look at everything pre-k through five on one site and so the quite the the the final question that he was talking about is pre-k through five in one building as was proposed an option say for people to take a look at or we were talking and brainstorming as a committee today and the architects came in with some other options within that option perhaps in an idea came up that the building of a new huckleberry that could accommodate fifth grade and center school students as well as the existing huckleberry grades will be away because the bones of the existing huckleberry are very strong there's a lot of good qualities about the old school there's some good qualities and so could you leave a portion of the school up and perhaps house Kay and pre-preschool pre-k programming there maybe even central office staff and professional development learning spaces and still be able to develop the ball fields the parking the driveway all the things you need to do so that that's one aspect we still want to explore before we finalize as a committee what were what we're going to propose to the community and then go forward with more forums and engagement and meet and greets and all kinds of interactions with the with the community and that kind of a thing as well as a timeline a realistic timeline of when we can get all the way to referendum which we're thinking probably early spring like a March 8th of 2019 my concern with sure what that is and I like the options within options but if the next public forum is going to let's be let's say it's going to present an option that the public hasn't yet already seen they're going to be shocked because they're gonna say well I you know you said option C was there and this is nothing like what we were shown previously so sure I just think that the in between needs to be like communicated live in abundance I think the message is gonna get lost and that was one thing that we just didn't have enough time tonight to set up is subcommittees you know for you know tens we're getting the word out and going and meeting and really talking to the community in greater detail and trying to set up as many opportunities as we can to educate the community the TV appoint Rosa we really need to as a committee once we've you know made that decision the van we go full steam ahead on keep the communication plan and so forth so but right now we yeah we don't have that we just we know we want to happen we have a very say in options and students there I think the important takeaway or outcome from tonight's meeting was that we all decided that center school is now off the table we're not going to spend time anymore talking about how we can renovate it how we can modify it it's it's too inefficient and there are different efficiencies that we can realize by having even if it does end up being two schools on a huckleberry campus we can get some efficiencies with busing and maintenance and grounds right and I think really you know the goal of committee one of the things we need to do and it it's all about availability of the committee members but it would really be ideal if to what roses concern was that she brought up there in terms of you know those options within options and alternatives kind of thinking is the committee needs to come forward with the final final recommendation to the Board of Education and the time being of the essence if we can do it before the August 15th regular meeting that would be ideal and so that's just the next you know that's less than a month so if we get another meeting and prior to finalize this and Lisa and I'll start the schedule with Eve and taking a look at the calendar be ready for August so this way once people are excited they're back from summer break they're focused on school then we can we can move forward community would be great any other questions thank you very much thank you all of your work with the entire committee next we have the security task force update I can just give a very brief overview on that via the security task force met last week and essentially we reviewed protocols procedures in place for riskier principle Linda was kind enough to be the first to go at it and we asked him not to come prepared because we wanted him to be able just to answer right off the bat any questions we had in regards to protocols and procedures his responses and our questions led to many other questions and and avenues to go I think we decided at that point though that we wanted to wait until all of the schools presenter procedures are so protocols then we could take the common threads and use those as avenues as to where to go from there as our jumping point scheduled next week we're going to be meeting next month that's where a good any questions good idea having that him come and in the end it's great the other three principals are on board for the next meeting they're ready to yes yes okay so now we have our consent agenda someone wants to make the motion for that motion make the motion that the board approve the items in the consent agenda as recommend second okay do we have any comments questions see we have some retirements I'd like to give a shout out to seal majority and Patricia miracle for all of their work we have 20 years of service for seal and 30 years of service Patricia and that's amazing if you think about it's 50 years between the two of em so definitely thanks many thanks for all of their hard work and their contributions to the Brookfield schools thanks for saying that clip all right no other questions all in favor opposed okay moving on to the business we have our policy thirty five twenty point one motion is that the food policies the thirty five twenty thought one information on security breach and notification for a first reading as recommended by the policy subcommittee second okay Reza did you want to introduce this at all I'm sure and I'm so this one and the one that you'll see next has to do with we already approved a policy for I think at the last meeting or meetings good yeah that has to deal with with some student privacy and how we collect the data and what we do with it and what third-party vendors do with it as well this these two policies have more to do with the information that we collect from students and if there's a breach in security so the policy is pretty straightforward and yeah so I don't know I don't know if you have anything more specific to say about it but yeah so concepts or the last two policies we have had to do with the Bender's and their whim of their responsibilities to us these have to do with ours one's abilities to us or also when we felt we have to post up the holes can have a comprehensive security we've reviewed these these were also standard cave recommended policies that they thought they gave us some options and we selected the options that best fit Brookfield and that's what great so doing of 30 days between now in our guest meeting we do so this will come up for a second radio September so we'll have to wait till the September meeting so when would the policy Communications Committee like any questions in regards to these policies to be forwarded funnel to you with the missus - we meet just before the September meeting I think is our next schedule yeah but the next board though but we don't have a policy meeting over the second is the next policy all right we can answer questions yeah you know prior to that and still bring it for second reading at the first attempt rating okay so yes so by our oddest meeting yep have any questions 15 - Rosa yeah okay that sounds good I'm gonna say that for this one and the next band coming up thank you okay um we have that as a recommended motion so in the did second death you so all in favor accepting policy thirty five twenty point one for a first read my mind opposed right and now we have thirty five twenty point eleven new policy committee class 2011 electronic security information for our first reading it so [Music] similar to although the previous one was talking about a security breach this is I believe just how we will manage electronic information the availability of electronic information educating staff and students about it okay also another very sharp I had this one just demands that we have procedures and methods for protecting it for the second one first one without feeling that breach yes okay this also talks about access to who who we allow and so forth and again we're seeing it for the first time now so if anyone has any questions Keynesian policies Brookfield currently does not have it as recommend okay okay okay all right Oh any other questions then I'm a favor entire post okay that concludes new business upcoming events we just have one day on sunset sizzler 5k is Friday on the 3rd this is the Brookfield high school all sports club they're their primary fundraiser so if anyone is interested in sponsoring or running they can go ahead and check the website for that I should leave to invite more people it's a run walk right so if people it's not a walk they can absolute like a walk I would probably say that they have people they're walking it's a great night it's a great event what what's the date on his third all right there being no other upcoming events now we have the executive session recommended motion that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing and superintendents goals the lawsuit filed by former superintendent of Hampton lavona and a confidential SEC okay all in favor aye host okay that concludes the open portion of our board meeting thank you everyone who are attending and have a good evening [Music] I know [Music]
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[Music] we usually have at least one person is rich so with Oh these are wearing different clothes okay every day thank you good evening ladies and gentlemen this is Wednesday August 8th and this is the August regular meeting of the Board of Finance I call this meeting to order if everyone would rise and join me for the [Music] we'll just get the published version of the agenda distributed to everybody that's okay thank you so you can disregard the event that I was in the back Thanks Oh all right the first order of business on our agenda we do have I think some exciting news we do have a new town controller Marcia Marion certified I'm working on that yeah she has enhanced experience unisex patience experience before to working with her eyes we've already leaps and balance papasan okay yeah hopefully so welcome worship thank you very much yes thank you you know aside from Steve the board members that got to meet you ahead of time Dan and myself I mean obviously we gave positive recommendations and feedback to Steve so welcome does anyone have any immediate questions that we want to ask of Marsha or you know I'm sure things will come up as we go through we do have a report from Marsha coming up no I do want to state that you know if you're sitting at this table it's for a reason right not just to fill a chair so when we we open up for discussion and I don't have a problem with you participating in the discussion so I think there is something to add please do all right well thank you I don't think that'll be a problem I attended to the Board of Ed Finance Committee meeting and I said I would keep my mouth shut and I couldn't do it there any members of the public here that would like to get comments okay seeing and hearing none moving on to communications and correspondence received it was a rather slow month yes and we didn't have any moving on to approval ten minutes from last month's meetings I make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from the July 11th regular meetings any discussion minutes as they were distributed hearing no discussion all those in favor of approving the a July 11th regular meeting minutes as provided indicate by saying hi okay moving on the report of the First Selectman on the agenda we put storm-damaged update and many other items that you generally see quite you know primarily what we've been working on since our last meeting is the storm damage and getting things fixed this report that you have now we made some changes to it great name bow skis out this week we we have to stay under budget we have put two things on hold partially that is the land use 70 1980 I believe it is for clearing trails and tree work and also the same on the Parks and Rec side we've done all the emergency work we need to do there's still some cleanup with trails are still closed but we will be doing things like we're clearing the cross-country trail because they're going to start running in a couple weeks we're going to make sure they're completely clear some of this work can be held off until we see the hard actual numbers because some of these numbers you know are estimates they're pretty close but we can't be over budget so we've held that up the second thing we noticed in going over this today you guys have seen a previous version of this I sent out my apologize on Monday morning there was a mistake on the last page where we have the Brookfield high school track lights if you look at the bottom box it wasn't boxing to the Excel spreadsheet and the reason was the lights at the Brookfield High School football field or miscoded so now if you look at it we spent a good portion of today reconciling what's on munis to this report we're still off by a little bit and we think we know where that is but we're going to go through and get it down to the penny so it's a little bit we have 1 million six hundred thirty eight thousand on the munis and 1 million seven hundred thirty seven thousand on the report if I could jump in then if you look at the Excel spreadsheet at least to an accountant it's not intuitive on how it works that accountants kind of like to have this column and then mutually exclusive what other column it goes into so the best place to look on the columns is there's two columns called insurance one is covered by kurma and one is not covered by kurma that those two are the best representations of what's what's out there that covered by karma the his numbers are about $300,000 higher than what's in munis and we've got the the big amounts reconciled that there are some things that he's got in here is estimates and they're not in munis because they're not they're not encumbered there or done yet and then not covered by insurance we're just a little bit off well what the difference is here do not cover column doesn't have the thirty five thousand for it wasn't taken out it was taken out of my version of this but line 39 that we put on hold right and wine eighty nine we put on hold right that's one hundred and six thousand nine fifty so if you subtract that from the 1 million seven thirty-seven 145 I apologize let me just but his numbers are a little higher just because there's things that are estimates in there six people's so if we take those two items out the spreadsheet should say 1 million six hundred thirty thousand 195 and we have 1 million 638 I'm Eunice so or if I eat the house right now which we're gonna find what the differences does that make sense any other questions on the storm damage report no no we want to get it right down and you know Greg is using actual expended today that's where he's keeping track for himself we're gonna take that column out because I have them separated into covered and not covered and I think that column is confusing to people but what are you really doing with that cop so we'll take that out for the next report we have to this could you actually leave it in i like comparing that's the cost estimate to me that make sense no we're not gonna update it though because everything is going over to covered or not covered okay right and then over in the right you can see if it's expended if we've issued a purchase order if it's been paid for so all the information actual is over here on the right side of the spreadsheet so that detail is there it's duplicated so it's the combined the insurance plus whatever is the right over to the right you can see submitted to karma approved by karma purchase order required requested so and we're also putting in the invoice numbers and stuff if we've gotten an actual invoice number that's the hard dollar number okay so most of that information over there right the one thing we did do this week is we are turning the brush art back into a brush art we've got series loose this week we got down to about one hundred and sixty loads on Saturday one hundred and sixty hundred seventy loads that's pretty close to what we normally get in a typical Saturday during the summer so we're gonna cut series loose and we're finished with them so we're not doing any more female counting for brush so that's a good thing we do not have an update from FEMA yet we do want one we're still told it will be towards the end of this month but you could see like yesterday the president declared a county of California as a disaster area they just depends on the level you know they could do whatever they want so we're waiting for that and we really hope that will come through we've been told that we have a very good claim on the public assistance side but on the individual assistance side they said it's going to be much more iffy for all the factors we discussed before income levels amount of damage things like that Marsha and I have probably been spending three hours a day with each other for the last week we're working on preparing for the audit doing the bank recs reconciling all of our accounts looking to restructure and Marshall we'll talk more about it perhaps restructure some of our counts so they're more clear and transparent and I'll let her speak today she's the expert otherwise we're just having a pretty good summer and we've missed two concerts so far I missed the concert is there a lot of fun so any questions good thank you actually yeah um we see in now in town center number businesses going in and I think doing very well when do we see the benefit almost means immediately the tax assessor goes out and looks at these and puts them on the records and starts to believe in October our grant list is as of October but if we have property now we'll do a partial right from now until October and it's a retroactive kind of so you won't see that money today but you will see it in the next bill in January in that revenue cycle the personal property isn't you you're not going to get a ton of money there but it's actually in talking about the four corners I probably should have mentioned this you know 20 station road we did we got the grant to do the remediation study we spent about a hundred and fifty thousand out of a two hundred thousand dollar grant we had a meeting with the state yesterday and we asked them if we could use at fifty thousand dollars to go through the blade committee and knock that building down right we haven't gotten an answer that grant comes from decd so we haven't gotten an answer for them but DEP wants us to go and test surrounding properties to fully determine the extent of volatile gases so you do a test in the ground to see if anything's getting under somebody's basement and also tests the wells that usually is not outrageously expensive and it's probably a good thing to do and they get a lot of say they in DCD I've worked very closely together I'd still like to save part of that I think the owners of the property would have no problem with us knocking that down for free for them and we really want to get that not one of the owners on the corner who's trying to sell this commercial property has that three buyers say I really don't want to be on this street with that mess there so this is we're taking them to our polite committee today was a tax sale day they did pay their taxes on those properties so they get some more time and we're trying to come to an arrangement with them we'd really like them to do it but I know that I think the owners have cashflow issues and so knocking down that building is not gonna be cheap because there's asbestos in it and you also have to plan for look dry cleaning chemicals and things like that you can't just take it and put it in a landfill so it's not gonna be an inexpensive knock down so that's where we are with that any chance of turning into a parking lot I would love to do that I would love to do that there is at this point time there is no possible way to remediate the chemicals in the ground so you can build on that property and the decd would love to see it capped with a parking lot they'd like to see that so we're gonna continue to pursue that we're talking to the owners it gets really complicated with all these issues but we're still pursuing that because we're gonna need that market any questions comments concerns other alright I'm on yours desks and the so you're trying to go through the agenda items that make it a little more exciting than than just listening to me talk and if we look at one thing you had asked about was the status of the fiscal year close that I did watch the board meeting last month on on TV and it seemed to indicate that there would only be one change in the numbers for a tax deferral adjustment and I want to change our expectation on that that we all have different styles of balancing I'm a little anal that I've heard that before and so exhibit a of what you have is kind of gives you the schedule of where you were at your last meeting what had been done at that time the first page is processing putting the transactions into the computer and then every other page is there's one page for each trial balance for each fund that you have so green indicates what was done as of last meeting blue indicates what's done as of today and and most of that is Kevin's work thank you Kevin and yellow indicates we still need to do and we know that the expectation is that you'll have numbers at your September meeting and that is our expectation as well that and as far as the columns on the left of what is meant by trial balance cash investments accounts receivable Exhibit B is our checklist of what we're going to go through for each one of those sections on unbalancing that so there there will be changes from your numbers so to go over just the first page you take now we have these things that have been done the receipts and disbursements now have things actually things have hit the ledger now you or Kevin want to go through the exercise of actually reviewing everything that's hit I do you're gonna hold me responsible for those numbers I wonder is that what this means though so not everything had hit the ledgers when you were there right now that they're caught up in payables to about July 15th and we think we've got most of the junior ends have stopped coming in now but we do we want to go through each of the ledgers that there's some big journal entries in there I don't know what the journal entries are for I want to be able to give an intelligent answer of what that's for I think you're going to hold me responsible for those numbers and I want to make sure they're right yeah so on the the closing checklist obviously it's it's a more higher level review than what we were talking about so for the first couple of months they are just Kevin who's work are you gonna do more than just a simple sample and make sure the things balance are getting going in so what it's gonna happen is one of the things that we've done in the last five days is we have a filing system on the now on the electronic filing system whereas before things were filed by who it was that did the work so if if Dana had done the bank reconciliation you might be able to find it under day does file if Savannah had done the bank reconciliation might be able to find it the file it under hers we've changed that and we only have stuff under our names for when we're working on it temporarily we have a filing tree so that and there is a filing tree for January so that you see there's a checklist for B that someone will go through and prepare that checklist and someone will go through and review it and I would be the one that goes through with review with reviewing it and maybe I'll be the one preparing it too because they're all very busy but that would be the expectation when the auditors come in that things have imbalanced things have been reviewed and it's documented that it's done so trial balance Exhibit B you'll see what on the second schedule it's not the processing let's see what I have here Schedule B trial balance the debits equal the credits surprisingly enough that the system will let you put in a an entry that doesn't balance that that we've looked at the revenue accounts that the revenue accounts are all credit balances if they're not credit balances it makes sense to us of why they're not it's just it's kind of basic we have a general fund trial balance we have education grants funds so it's it's similar to fund although some funds have multiple trial balances so this the the checklist is this a best practice that you pull it from the state or something from your experience or where did where did where did you Cemil this I made it up meet up okay yes I made it up based on what I've made up over the last year 85 years dealing with with clients that I swear every year I say I've seen it all but I think there you'll see in there there's something that says post the actual in the same categories as you passed a budget I can tell you what client that was that that they they passed a budget by by type of revenue and then they posted it by who gave it to them not that doesn't work so so it's it's 35 years of and I'll bet I'll add some more to it so that's where we stand on balancing so there's a lot of balancing that needs to be done so that's gonna be our biggest focus until your next meeting is because it affects everything that you want to see numbers for this year well I don't want to I don't don't want to give you any numbers until they're balanced that and I don't know that we're going to always get imbalanced for the selectmen who meet the first Monday of every month and could be the first day but our goal is to get them balanced for you for your first meeting for your meeting so some months it might get a seven if we go let's say to you know next July July 19 or August 19 we would be reviewing July actuals in this meeting that would be great that's a really tough month just because there's so much at June 30th every month but but in March we want you to be reviewing February so that is that's that's our goal and I don't see why we can't make it once we get caught up so we're going to I just want to call your attention to some changes that were expecting from the prior year that that I'm expecting to talk to you about in more detail again just so that that I've had them in my mind I don't want there to be surprises that but none of them are done deals they're all open to discussion and we'll have visuals of what exactly it means just to start thinking about that one is our financial statements should be prepared internally that we can prepare them that Kevin and I come from the same firm as Kevin that we've worked together and we've done this for 20 clients a year that he's done just a few years I've done it 35 years there's no sense for the auditor to prepare the financial statements like that will get a discount this year because the contracts are already signed and they're probably still licking their wounds from last year but the the reason we would want to do that is is quality as I said I'm kind of anal and I don't want to say Oh cause you capitalized I could not capitalize that I don't control that that you can say something we can do it right away inconsistency that you may not have noticed this but as you've changed auditors some of your things have changed for example the library when you look at their actual expenses depends on what auditor it was that did intial statement some year it's their actual expenses from their checkbook and some years it's their actual transfers that you made to their checkbook and it should be what comes out of their checkbook every year so no that's just a one thing that has come up so far day five that and so next year we'll see if we can get the audit cheaper and and because of that we'll be doing them internally that and you'll be the only town in Connecticut that doesn't internally that 100% internally that you used to get a certificate of excellence program on your comprehensive annual financial report that doesn't mean that you've you're financially healthy not that you're not but it just means that the financial statements are meet the expectations and are up to even the current things that come out you've done appropriate disclosures and so forth you stopped receiving that in 2014 it would be great if we could start receiving that again you may say no because there is a cost associated with it that that you send it off to the government finance Officers Association with a check and they send you back a certificate if you pass but that would again that would show that things are changing that and and I've done this are there any other additional benefits to bragging rights that you would have more information you could have the same information in the file that without a certificate of excellence so you could save the money and say we're still want to have it as if we could earn it that so those two things will also help us with our rating agencies it gives them a little bit more confidence that somebody else does look at these and said yeah they're good and it gives you some of the information for your continued disclosures that you have to put on the EMA system okay so so there's no requirement that you do that that but we'd like to have them there and prepared and the other thing that it does is it makes them be done faster that you can only get an extension for it so pressures that order they're a little bit you can only get an extension for a specific new circumstances you can't use the same excuse over so I believe that's why you don't have them in 50 and 60 and 17 change a policy on the period of availability this means nothing to you now but but it's funny that right now that you can only record a FEMA money you've spent the FEMA money let's say it's approved you could definitely see verbals that yes there we're going to get that money but under the modified accrual basis we're measuring working capital and right now you can think of fund balances working capital it's the same thing and that's why when debt comes in its revenue because it adds to your working capital and when you build a new school it's an expenditure because it takes your working capital that and your policy in your financial statements right now says that you're not going to record revenue unless you receive it in 60 days because it's it's not that's how soon it has to be received for you to want to record it as working capital you actually have an option taxes has to be 60 days or less for everything else you have an option of going up to a year so let's take the FEMA money under the way you have it accounted for now that you're not going to get it by study first hopefully you get it approved by August 31st but you're not going to receive the money so what happens to your fund balance is that here it is and you spend 1.7 million dollars and it drops you can't record the revenue of FEMA because you didn't get it in 60 days next year you get it and it goes back up again and then you've got to sit us in like this that says I just don't understand this and if it's an accounting thing is kind of stupid that but if you changed your policy and say what we're going to do it and if as long as we receive it in a year we want to record it as revenue as good enough is working good enough to be working capital for us that well in that case we can estimate when do you think that FEMA money is going to come in of with if it comes in by June 30th this year we have the expenses but we have the revenue so our fund balance doesn't go down and then it just stays pretty consistent we don't have to say well it's just this weird thing that we do and it makes a lot more sense it matches revenue and expenses a lot better the the downside would be that we could record revenue we could estimate that we're going to get one point two million dollars whatever it's going to be and it could be a bad debt that we don't ever have bad debts when we do it within 60 days but it could be a bad debt it could be estimated we estimate 1.2 when we get 1.1 that you think about it the schools will probably would never the final payment would never come in in 60 days but you know you could estimate that oh it's all eligible costs and find out some of it's not so that would be the downside of doing this but so that were is one thing we're going to talk more about FEMA if you look at that expenditure the last page of that you did in addition to the budget for 1.5 or to separate that added to 1.5 million dollars last year if that's an addition to the general fund budget you're kind of screwed that we're kind of screwed I shouldn't say that because that budget the general fund budget ends at June 30th and you can't keep spending it then we're going to talk about that that's the parks and that's the Public Works issue that the budget ended okay now you have no appropriation to spend it against this year that even though the storm happened last year the expenditures go against when they were committed or for an encumbrance or when they were received for an expenditure so we found a problem that mat with a mismatch there that we had a nice budge in total it's all covered by a budget so so if we do if we do go to 365 we could accrue the FEMA money where we estimated is it would be recorded in last year so we have the 1.5 million we appropriated and we would have the FEMA money and so it would smooth out our reporting so people are looking at this and said wow they're out one there general for my down one point what's your backup according the problem somebody's that's the problem we would have backup to record it that we'd have to wait because the we don't have to have final numbers until the audit comes and they've already told us they're not coming after December 31st so hopefully we get a lot more backup to get a much much more precise number by the time we have to have a final number that and remember we can hold off on doing that if FEMA and let's say the third week of August says hey yes we're you're declaring you a disaster area then we have the backup and we could do it the problem is if we go over the 60 days right will you still play this by ear right wait until FEMA actually makes a decision either way and then you can back it out I think Marcia's idea is a good one yeah we're not gonna do it unless we have backup because we don't want the auditors to say oh we had to make a material adjustment to your financial statements and that's a black mark on us and they could give us a comment on that so one of the things we want to do is talk about possibly a separate fund for the FEMA money that the general fund has the budget issue but if we go back and amend that motion slightly to say the not and I have to look at the motion but have the motion that was passed by the Board of Finance say and have it as a transfer to a special revenue account then that doesn't have the the issues with the cutoff and that's easy enough to do but we'd have to come back to you on that we talked to the attorney about the right wording on that so that's a change that the next slide with respect to the general fund if you look at your 2017 audit you have five trial balances adding up to one general fund the first trial balance is what you use for the budget to actual so those expenditures and the other funds don't really hit the budget to actual and someone could say that's not really that transparent there luckily there's not that many transactions in there some that don't have any transactions we're very much wanna work smarter and not harder why do we have five trial balances that we can handle all that in proper accounting without having separate trial balances so everything goes through the one trial balance so that's one thing we're going to talk about that the library has an endowment that they've told me it's an endowment that I have no reason not to trust them that it's a separate account with Wells Fargo but I've asked for the agreement so we can see it that because you know people don't always think the same preciseness that for example one of my favorites is Oh their CPA well no they're an accountant that that oh that's an endowment no that's just money that you don't want to spend that so we want to see the the document and the treasurer is going to get that for me she happens to be on vacation this week but right now that is in your general fund it makes up half a million dollars of your fund balance that if it's an endowment the category is wrong in the fund balance it should be moved to non spendable right now it's in committed committed means that the town decided at the highest level of government a town meeting that we're not going to spend it if they said we're that you can only spend it on certain things that whoever gave us the endowment said that then it should be moved up to restricted that you can't change that if it's committed you could take it and if it's indeed an endowment it should be non spendable just five different categories of fund balance it makes a difference if it is indeed an endowment we're I'm going to suggest that we don't keep it in the general fund that Moody's is if once it goes to non spendable they're not gonna count it any way that it makes what makes sense to put it in a permanent fund because right now there's interest being earned on that that kind of looks like just regular interest in your general fund it's not regular interest if it's an endowment most likely you could only spend it on library things and it should just be set a pocket of money on the financial statements you'll have a heart and hypertension fund trial bounce that's combined into the general fund that usually those are accounted for with an internal service fund that kind of like yourself insurance for health insurance so it would change it from where you would see it on page 72 to 73 the pages 24 and 25 probably doesn't make a big difference to you it'd still be separate it still look pretty much the same one of the things that we've done is we've reached out to kerma to find out some of those are commitments that are already made that we and there's a liability there that's not recorded for in claims that have already been incurred but not reported we need to estimate that liability and put it on the financial statements you have a volunteer of wart program that I don't think is on the books at all that and I have to tell you on some of these things especially this one I makes me very very nervous that the firefighters that when they work every year it says that they have to give the finance director a report in January of how many hours every but where how many fires they've gone to and for every year the firefighters work they get a certain dollar amount per year when they when they stop that it's it's called a volunteer award program and I can give you the paperwork if you haven't seen it you've got twenty three thousand in cash for that but we you don't have any liability recorded that it does say in there as Steve points out that in a year that you don't have money you don't have to fund it but the other you've already made promises all the other years think of it like a very small pension and we're meeting with the actuaries tomorrow it probably needs an actuarial report I think that's Marsha and I disagree on this if it's something that we don't have to pay every year I don't want to spend ten thousand dollars creating an actuarial report saying what our future liability would be it's a pay-as-you-go we can stop doing it we stop any time when you want just because there's an expectation that these people will receive this every year that is not a guarantee like a pension has a guarantee even if we went bankrupt somebody still gets a pension right they still have a claim on the town for their pension if we didn't have our pension fully live fully funded so this is cash award that we're giving to these guys and girls that in my opinion we're gonna talk that after I talk to our legal but it seems to me if I can stop it next year and decide not to pay it I don't have to create an action or a table I don't spend ten thousand dollars creating a pension like reporting for it it doesn't seem necessary but we're going to find out I'm sorry don't we have a line item for this yeah I should think yeah but this money seems to be sitting outside of retirement for some we're shooting the language one we give each fireman $1,500 if they met all the requirements that's every year this is for long term service if you've worked in the fire department for 20-plus years and you've done this amount of work and you've we have all the requirements to make that after a certain amount of time you can then get up to 250 dollars a month as a stipend funding it through the operating budget if there's a cash allotment on the back side of this now salary 3000 in the account so what it is what you mean by cash flow but I just heard there's 23,000 dollars sitting in an account on the outside of my budget that's what I just heard we do have an account it's called volunteer award program again I've only been here five days just $23,000 sitting in an account we're funding it through the operating does not we should be able to move 23,000 into the operating budget and take reduce the operating budget you're thinking there's it's there twice it's not we did make a line item for it and there is in the budget $23,000 okay this so and if there's an account with $23,000 in it sitting on the outside I have 46,000 dollars I can reconcile this for you okay don't let us reconcile it so well I don't know of no $23,000 sitting in another account because every year we have 23,000 every year we spend 23 thousand different we do have bank statements for an account called volunteer work program with Wells Fargo its 23,000 that when it's properly recorded that account will be on our balance sheet as cash that that we would still need to put it in an appropriation an annual appropriation to spend it so then when we go what we're spending is to pay-as-you-go so we're spending for firefighters that have already retired and what the liability would be is for the firefighters that are there now an estimate of how much they've already earned for when they retire that we may pay 20 years down the line does that make sense this is just an accounting issue a technical accounting issue or is there two separate funds it's really a treatment issue what are you going to treat this as our you're going to treat it as something like pension or you're going to treat it as an annual stipend that we give out and we obviously we fund it every single year info and we pay it out every year info how do you know how much because we get the list the fire department puts together a list the guys who qualify and you qualify for the next year and that's it that's how much we there's money sitting in another account outside I'm unaware that will we're just trying to clarify if it's a technical accounting issue so the technical accounting issue the the biggest issue comes up on what it's meant on number 16 and that agreement is that you don't have to fund it if you don't have the money that the way I read it means that that firefighters we don't have the money this year so there's no ten dollars being added to your your month the way Steve reads it is the firefighter that retired 20 years ago you're not getting that payment this year and remember these are all volunteers so they're not town employees that makes a difference too so we're gonna we're having a meeting with an actuary tomorrow what our liability is if there really is some liability that we have to it's like Oh pepper right we find help every year but we pay as we go with open but the regulations require us to do the actuarial understanding of what that total liability is we may have to do that with this I don't think we do Marsha thinks we should look at it I agree whether we should look at it okay so then is the site issue that we have the twenty three thousand well we don't necessarily have to use it for what it was intended any line item in our budget we can move around I understand that but I mean the problem is a bunch of volunteers are risking their lives you know very small amount of money it'd be pretty screwed up tonight at least and we did there was some talk I went back to the minutes in 1996 there was some talk in there about fully vested half vested and they talked about it and then something happened over the Christmas holidays and it looks like they never talked about it again that so I don't really know what happened to that we should have that by next meeting and then just the town clerk collects money on every filing that she does for the first page of hey $5 extra under one statute and $30 extra under another statute some of that is money that's restricted to her use it's still if it's in the general fund it still goes to the budget process but we've got Kelly she has calculated that for us and we have to allocate that out the small cities grant that you have housing rehabilitation loans the estimate that I've just heard it I haven't talked to the consultant yet that there might be $800,000 that's over the town and it's to $400,000 programs so 800,000 of grants that you got and you could spend 25% on 20% on overhead so maybe we're talking 600,000 but those are loans that are out there and they should be booked as receivables that education programs and pay-to-play on page 83 of year last year's financial statements you have two programs there there miss named that the pay to play or pay to participate is gone that that program after talking to the board of it is really money that you charge to the high school students for insurance on their iPads or now Chromebooks and the educational of the miscellaneous educational programs is calf custodian reimbursements neither one is named properly and we could clean that up a little bit in the reporting that and the Board of Ed is on board with that additional changes were I would anticipate and I'm open to suggestions as well but you spend 75% of your budget on the Board of Ed and it's one line in your financial statement because that's the the requirement that it's the budget only be one line but that doesn't mean you can't give more information in the budget that to show what it was spent on so I would recommend a supplemental schedule to say here's what it was spent on here's the revenue for example the excess cost current state statute says that it should be net with the expenses but you could show it also it's very clear and transparent what they spent what they have as reimbursements against it and again they're they're very open to doing that let's do that all right let's not make it a all right you haven't just wrote that down there's anything we need to do yeah and it's a great schedule and it it eliminates a lot of questions additional schedules that you've got three programs three funds that have a lot of sub accounting going on underneath it for example your capital non-recurring fund you've got a lot of projects in there do you know what they are do you know what happened it doesn't rip or show that in the audit report we could do a supplemental schedule I copied one in that I from Monroe's financial statements that so at the bottom if you look on the bottom the subtotal on the bottom is the income statement and it just allocates out the income statement by program of where they started what was added to it what was spent from it and where it ended program to program and capital non-recurring there's one called town programs because again we should be doing this to make sure to see that they're going to wash themselves out and then education grants funds again so you know what grants are in there so nobody can say oh I think they just have some slush money that went through there it would be and I'm not considering that any of this has slush money but it should all be in the financial statements so that's actually a helpful document this is a lot this is something we feel you can commit to in order to properly come out in order to properly balance these accounts we have to do this anyway for example capital non-recurring we have to know I have to know what happened program by program because how do I know that the receivables are all picked up if we spent this out and and we're going to get reimbursed for low stuff but we haven't been reimbursed yet I can't imagine balancing without knowing this so we have to do it we have to do it to calculate the different categories of fund balance we have to do it the education grants we have to do it to calculate the deferred revenue so internally we need this and it's on the checklist so it would just be prettying up the schedule and putting it in my do have to say that if if you've had nothing as far as records I might have to say in September well these funds look like they're done but we're still working on getting this to Jive that but it I do have spreadsheets that Steve has given me a lot of people have spreadsheets there's ways to put that into munis Kevin's going to work on that so that we can give you um so we can again work smarter not harder if you remember from last year's audit report they said we did a good job on capital projects for the prior two years but the third year before that we did and they gave us a little thing on that this will eliminate that and I think and I don't remember if i put it later but with expectations on the audit report that steve has already said that he expects that there will be no material weaknesses if they're doing it properly they're going to say these were not corrected during the fiscal year and they're going to continue that there is actually it's right in the audit rules that so that's not my expectation my expectation supreme really nice to them and hope that they just say oh that's good now and move on but I have nothing to fight back with if they say oh that's the rule because that is the rule bond rating slide five that we spent on busy five days we met with Moody's on Friday and they did not change your bond rating that you have a bond rating of double-a - that has been down in a negative outlook that that has been down for the last few years I did go back to 2007 the high the highest it was was double-a one it was never a triple-a it was a double-a one and the state divides up all the towns by a DRG group which talks about your education and your wealth and and the highest group is a you are be the there's only one B in all those years that I looked at that God a triple-a and that's Greenwich was much bigger than you are but none of the other in the B group were ever triple-a that but you were double-a one so there's a few things that they don't like on the next slide that oh I should first put that in context Moody's does bond ratings for about ninety of the town's a year one-third of them twenty nine they looked at last October when the state hadn't passed their budget it was like they were a little pissy that and they said you know what this is pretty scary the state hasn't passed their budget and that you get a lot of funding from that the ones that got the most funding from the state for example summon northeast Connecticut get almost sixty six percent of their budget is funded by the state they were downgraded that that was twenty nine a different 29 this happens to be the same number went from a stable outlook to a negative outlook so it's not like you're in a vacuum here that you're in very good company so some of the major issues the dependence on Connecticut revenues what they look like look at as a statewide issue that the funds balance levels we're going to talk about that in a minute that those of there's some changes in the past few years about where it should be they didn't like the number of times it took to pass a budget and the weakness is reported in the financial statements and then there was one other that they noted that happens in Connecticut they didn't like that the WPC a they didn't feel as though they had enough of a question they found a positive fund balance but they want to see that the revenue is covering just like any commercial thing the bankers always like to see that the revenue covers the principal and interest and I think they went back three years I didn't test him on it you know their numbers to see but that was another item that they added if you take a look at the next page this is the bond ratings for Moody's all the Moody's towns that are rated as of November 17th so you can see the ones that your goal double-a one and where you are now double-a to which is the biggest amount of the towns are rated double-a - they talk about being based on a fund balance percentage so this is the dark blue line is the fund balance the light blue the dark blue bar the light blue bar is your total revenue and what we do is we make that into a percentage and you have about 8 percent of your total of unassigned fund balance available fund balance of your annual budget so that would be when you think of it in working capital that would be you of that one month's working capital that when I first started this 35 years ago the rule of thumb was you should have 5 to 8% as working capital about 10 years ago the state the first time was the first time the state cut the earth the town's budgets mid-year and that scared Moody's and they said Oh in Connecticut they'd like to see it at 10% as a minimum of fund balance to handle situations like that and then the government finance officers are the ones that are really the drivers of best practices it's the biggest membership organization for municipal governments and they're talking now that the rule of thumb should be about two months working capital which is sixteen point six percent yeah that they don't they don't have to get reelected that they don't have to try and pass a budget sixteen point six percent that's two months 2/12 that but one of the things that Steve has had charged me with is setting up a policy for you to look at on where our fund balance should be and how we're going to get there and the easiest way on the how we're going to get there because you're not going to pass a budget that's got a profit in it that I'm pretty sure that but but if you don't spend everything or if you have a budget surplus if you had a policy that said we're going to keep it all or we're going to keep 50% of it that that would be a way to start because the the fund balance is just very similar from the point of view of if you come from industry fund balances like retained earnings so so if you just retain the earnings that that's how you would get there so the fact that's what we've been doing for the last three years and that's how we grow the general fund balance Marsh is something to note and keep in mind the Board of Finance did make a commitment to the Board of Education to I guess go on one of the state statutes that says I'm gonna get it wrong precisely but I not percent so that is some 10-2 for taa I say that just a prove I'm honored that and that is that's a pretty funny statute because it is my three sentences long and so they the Board of Ed I have to tell you I've been so pleasantly surprised how inclusive they've been that because as a CEO and signing these things and signing the audit report they're just a line in the budget and even though state statutes kind of they all go by that general business practices the CFO is the CFO of everything that I tried to say that nicely that I would like to just come to their meetings sit be quiet but know what's going on and I lied on the be quiet part but this was one of the things that we talked about is they had talked about this and they have to come to you for a policy and I gave them a sample of a policy that I said that it like to continue the discussion that just because I would expect that if they bring you a policy you're going to say what do you think about that and I hate to you know say I hate it that but there's different rules with that so the legislators are not accountants and they said that if if they don't spend all of their budget they can spend it now or spend it later it was the legislators love education that so and it can grow up to 1% it never says that yet to spend it on education but I assume that's what they meant but that's great but then the concern is that the citizens and some boards of Finance a concern is oh they're going to have this huge amount of money and so when they come to you is really your only chance to look at that and to control it so you should have a policy of what you want and you want it to come to you do you want it to go to the Board of Ed you want it to just be the business manager this I will use some of that money did anyone tell you that there's a draft that'd be great they didn't they didn't say that that but one of the problems from the accounting end is the same year the legislators passed that this rule gatsby 54 was passed that said here are the rules for a separate fund they said I let's put it in a separate fund the accounting government accounting board said oh you can't just put anything in a separate fund this is what happened and so trying to balance that it wouldn't qualify as a special revenue fund on its own so you couldn't just put it in an account by itself and use it on whatever you want because the majority of the money has to be restricted or committed so there's some different rules that we're trying to balance the two together and one is that you could put in a capital projects fund to be used for future capital projects you could put it because they don't really specify you could your market and the general fund but then you've got the budget problems with it how do you what if you don't pass it for a budget or you could put it into the educational grants fund just rename that slightly assuming that most of the money is still from education grants and then they could spend it on you know other special should cost that they have so that there's a lot of rules though we're just traveling I just wanted to make sure that I was on your radar it is on my radar and they brought me they talked about it at that meeting that they invited me do the Finance Committee of the Board of Ed they said don't come to the Board of Ed movies we don't talk finances there that so this is the where you stand your kind of low compared to these because we I'm sorry we face a lot of stuff on this dirt be a lot of are and we always hear Derby Derby can we get the bond rating for each dirt B and the general fund balance for each third feet so we could stay in here so it's not in here for all of us at like labeled dirt B there's a few people on the dirt bid their bond rating correct I can put the bond rating in the cavity writing at them and the the bond rating and the general fund balances we always compare ourselves on everything we do to dirt be dirty dirt be where do we spend are we low on our general fund balance compared to the rest of because if you look at the bond ratings it looks like the triple A's are mostly dirt beasts there are two steps ahead of us and binary yeah I think what you really need to look at is how much what percentage they have in general fund versus their spending doesn't matter what the dark is it does matter because we compare all of our Board of Education funded yeah Harrison to the third we're trying to be in dirt be we're trying to compete with dirt be but what level finances are we compared to the dirty syllables as far as fund balance as far as bond ratings if we go back Monroe is double eight to New Fairfield is double a two and up until last week I was the auditor of New Fairfield and I know that they have an Aston Barry I think is negative okay correct okay all right so okay I can do all this scientistic all the time I would say we're not competing that reward event says we're 13th in the dirt where last night spending doubts about are we the word is in the dirt if I can just finish what's more important to the rating agencies they don't get to demonize karencc you're missing my point we are competing every statistic that gets thrown at us for when we're doing bored of it budgets is we are the lowest spending dirt be where the lowest I'm trying what does that have to do with bond ratings where do we stand financially compared to the other towns you have against other towns not against the dirt and you look at the moon why radiate more than it compares us against dirt they want when we want to get it doubly one rating we are gonna compare ourselves against what our rating agencies I got your point Greg and we can do that and I just picked the ones from Fairfield County do you want me to do it to all of them would like to see the third me I'd like to see cuz we're always like I say we're always saying we're the lowest spending and third beyond education per student I want to see where we are in the bond rating in the dirt B are we the lowest in the bond ratings are we in the middle because that'll say we should be able to spend more on education or and where is our fund balance compared do they have more money in the bank are they more financially secure where they can expend more on board on education and we have to maybe be a little conservative until we get to that point it's fun to me it's a direct correlation to the Board of Ed Derk statistics to the finance sounds like a very appropriate benchmark yep this is all I'm trying to say it to me it's a benchmark that's not a problem and I've got a spreadsheet that has all the town's so I'll just take off the the filter for just Fairfield County I'll do all the dirt B's and every comparison every comparison we have will do against all of them we can do that the next one is just a comparison of against 169 towns this is the orange line is their fund balance that little black spot over there they're alphabetical is Brookfield so you can see in total even though that you were kind of the same as the others that we just looked at in total you're a little bit low compared to everybody else so so that's what they're talking about it Moody's so I've got a listing that I've been doing we I get about one page a day of things that we should be doing policies we should be thinking about stuff we want to look into I've got it in four different categories accounting that we talked a lot about the accounting things today controls and compliance that making sure we have a segregation of duties efficiencies and savings and then organizational the do we talk so just you know the biggest of the categories of that for accounting that we you see it there the the worksheet in the checklist for how we're going to balance the months and everything we talked about earlier for the controls not tightening the tightening segregation of duties between functions authorization record-keeping custody those are the big things that should be separate our offices record-keeping we shouldn't have any authorization rights we shouldn't have any custody rights that is not the case now so we'll be making some changes you'll probably be hearing some complaints but that's what our goal is that right now we get money just dropped off on on the desks that that we're record-keeping we don't want custody it's pretty it's pretty easy but not not so easy to change but we did meet with a banker and we're able to do evidence bags for the money going to the bank so that because we don't have those locking bags anymore at banks but evidence bags they they'll make sure that everything comes in one if it's open they'll call us if it doesn't come in an evidence bag they'll call us so that is where we're going with that but there's a lot of different areas there without anything you were suspicious of or you're just implementing best practices that's just best practices that that that it's just it's just kind of a glaring thing that well we shouldn't have cache that because what if we have cache we can say look at that I put that in my even checks the biggest Dixon Illinois was the biggest investment in municipal history about town the same size and it was all checks so it's not just cash that I could put it in my pocket and just say oh it's a deposit in transit er oh it just should throw a credit into somebody's account and it's gone that but absolutely they don't suspect anybody I don't it's just it's it shouldn't be done that and it's most cargo myself because I don't want anyone accuse I make that so we're we've but it's covers everybody that right now we're working a lot with vendor payments that it's a hugely inefficient system where people are putting scanning stuff in and then the finance office prints it out puts a sticker on it scans it back in that we've got everyone gets a bill from frontier we have 17 bills some of them that Mark have credit sauna but because they're separate accounts they can apply the credit from that account to this account so jerry has been working on that eve me as a plan set up and i just didn't have time to talk to him today it is a whole report written up of how we're going to do that just ordering things that the Charter says that we will the order centrally we're not ordering centrally people are paying different prices for the same thing things like and this is really Lorraine and Kevin that have been really on this that we're using the state bidding thing well we're thinking maybe an Amazon account as well the stapler that we got yesterday for $36 on the state bidding list is six dollars on Amazon that so just trying to free up some of that so that's just some of the efficiencies and savings then that's the big one that we're working on now and then organizational oh my gosh that I can't even focus I had to clean my office that that we've set up the filing tree that so it's by topic instead of by the preparer we have a master calendar now so that we know in April that we have to pay the rent payment once a year to missus over that we have a centralized context for contacts of we need to know call the banker that we all know the bankers number and we have the notes underneath about what accounts this banker handles what accounts this one handles and we're just populating that we've got three people in it right now we had an intern in her last day was today but we have got financial stuff in four different places in the Town Hall none of it is organized and my desk was the the latest thing I could find when I opened the drawers was a vendor letter from 2006 I'm like you know as I said Lisa calls me number eight that I mean that's a lot of finance directors it never threw that thing away that so we are trying to get everything organized and so every year is going to have a different color insert into the folder so that you can look now there's blue folders over there they're there 18 there's yellow folders over there there's 17 I think 19 is going to be pink but just to try and organize it so again we can just know where things are get them to them quickly we found duplicate files and bank reconciliations they balance it twice or what what's going on we found some files that we didn't have any but that's that's in process we did here at a staff meeting this morning that students at the high school need to have 200 hours of volunteer time starting with freshman class so I reached out to dr.
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okay so we're still on do we have any comments from board members I remember even the whole summer they work I've seen in the arm Saturdays and I worried about if they're going to be competing with some of the mountains and I said the heels the dirt looks very nice seniors standing there Gladstone I would thank you very much for Derek for driving us around getting this back safely and I've any lose incredible unbelievable super exciting school year in Florence worried the transformational very unbelievable I mean I think the entire neighborhood thank you okay so now we're moving out to nine point two this is a food chain our number one architects MSP dong for Dalton elementary school underground utility replaced it what are the richest looking for yes this is a time extension there's no cost of both but just due to the the amount of work that was required some extra time is added to the agreements with them 5:09 grab some high school and very elementary school improvements yes in fact is if you turn in your agenda to back to more pages you'll see the change waterlogged there and on then you can see that at Murray for example there was some need for additional equipment and disposal trucks try to move some unfortunately thickened concrete slabs there was the new storm drain that needed to be included well you know we're in the process of this the non-operating back below bell that needed to be replaced and then at gladsome high school the existing work including fixing up the front of it for example the paint and the light fixtures and the the name of the schools all extra work that's being done and the handrail was extended a little bit and so things to finish off the project Oh Spencer thankfully for Capri changer number one DC artichokes Azusa High School and Senate middle school fencing and eight project extension time one of the issues that we ran into is some of the materials were late the fencing materials toboggan we expect it to arrive leave something two things one is we have on October 23rd of government workshop that's scheduled to start at 9:15 and there's one of the board members has a schedule conflict and so I'm wondering if it's okay to start with everybody if it's okay with you need to start it at 3:00 p.m.
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burrow who I'd worked with once before in Bethany and I was the auditor he was a superintendent and see if you could put me in touch with the accounting teacher at the high school and we will take an accounting student to help organize these files if it's free it's for me that quote Kevin's line and then just establishing weekly staff meetings with the staff you have out projects follow up the next week how are they doing on the projects so we can just start crossing some of these offering before you too far they go back one more time I'm sort of blown away with the stapler thing what is the state has I know that and I've heard this before actually I've heard it from teachers I've heard it from other people but where is our purchasing agent in this battle I'm some where how is he authorizing a 3060 - not that but who authorized they have an authorization I think it's a staple in a paper punch I'm not regardless how does this process work because I'm sort of blown away if you have some let's say you have grant you can use the state bid but but that's a process to though of where is our purchasing agent because to me I would have staples in WB Mason here and the WB Mason rep is actually going to go to the schools and and work with the teachers and give out things for the teachers why aren't we working closely with these reps so this is this is what we taught it but we were paid it doesn't sound like we are I guess so this is I got a bad feeling right now Kevin there we go case closed Steve tastes closed you speak and you don't listen okay no Steve so so this is what the plan is Steve this is what I'm saying where is our purchasing agent wear pants so I'm the money for this guy and where are our say it is because the only savings he brought to our table if this thing was he negotiated oil he negotiate like tryst you don't negotiate oil and electricity they are set price he's not negotiating where is the value in this position so they the purchasing agent was on vacation last 36 the purchasing agent was on vacation last week that on Monday we had a staff meeting we talked about centralizing this we need a plan to centralize it we were going to meet this afternoon and then we had some other things that came up but he's got a plan he's got a written plan he showed it to Kevin that of what we're going to do to get this centralized Steve and I talked about it that we're going to try and get all the low-hanging fruit that we can and then we're going to recommend to you that we get there's different vendors that do this I happen to know of one that that our firm used called expensive reduction analysts and they'll come in and they'll look and say you're getting everything at the cheapest prices it's free oh it's it's not a fee but they get for the first two years I think it is they get a percentage of the savings so if we can get it down as low as we can and then see if they can get it down lower that's what the goal is going to be I think the frustration here correct me if I'm wrong is that we thought that we had a head count that was doing this or striving to do this over the past X years and if it turns out that we need outside vendor to do this it is frustrating it is very very frustrating that's where a lot of that comes from the procedure of getting the best price we need to know that we're checking that and that is just laziness having a purchasing agent check every $20 purchase is really difficult to do we do hundreds of purchases why are we doing 100 purchases a week again because the amount of money that we spend outside of salaries doesn't equal a hundred purchases a week if we're not consolidating and we're not if we're making a hundred purchases a week we're not running our town properly I can tell you that right now it doesn't add up to the 12 million dollars in expenditures and we're spending three million dollars on health insurance that the numbers of transactions don't add up that we should be doing this many purchase orders it doesn't make sense to me that you do a hundred purchases a week of stuff what could we be buying a hundred things of a week I'm glad we're on the same page because it doesn't that those numbers don't add to me they don't make common sense to me to sit there and tell me we make a hundred perc then he's not doing his job because he should be making one pay per purchase for a year one purchase with WB Mason for most of the school items because they should know there's school items pretty much one purchase orders should go out to beat we're not managing this at all I gotta be honest with you this is in disarray but we're paying someone $90,000 to manage this I'm sure we share what the Board of Ed and the Board of Ed he's done a lot of contracts with them that so I can't tell you because it's been five days but but I can tell you that that he did this before we talked about it he did this before when he was in Richfield they had centralized purchasing and so his charge on Monday was to come back and tell us how he's going to accomplish that here and so I will get either him or was written plans for next month okay thank you I think and that we are gonna team Kevin Martin all together or seeing sadder than there we have ISA who does payroll she's been been in over 10 years and he give us a lot of background we have Lorraine who has been in there for about two months doing payables she is setting up the system trying at the remedy for what is best practice and we're going to wait and talk to the department at all some of what we want them to don't want them to do Jerry this and then we're just hard time helping us get it up [Music] [Applause] but but he's worth it you know we have a lot of work to do we know that we've made some progress over the last half years we have a lot more dough and we're willing together and that [Music] and we [Music] so ternal communion this and not not the correct and when we do go through they've got a PowerPoint that I usually compare it to the different to the Dirk that and I give you some history of where you've been where you are now just so it's probably six pages of the financial statements and twelve pages of comparisons and graphs and things good any other questions thank you all right we don't have any reports of committees did we miss anything not put not all business to report I move that we take both police requests before the Brookfield volunteer firefighters so I move that we move those two business items first okay we had two requests for police outside service fund utilizations from the First Selectman I did at that chief Purcell here not only to present them but also filled any questions chief yourself like shot a couple of comments I want to thank you on for inviting me on Marcia's first night I'm not sure she's chatty and secondly I want to acknowledge Glen Murray for following through on his commitment at the Board of Finance meeting when we did accede to your request for moving some of these funds to come from the outside services fund he did say he was going to buy me a cup of coffee and in fact I went into Dunkin Donuts and Rosana said Glen watching this coffee at any rate are our two requests tonight the first one is is the capital technology that we moved out of the capital budget with the understanding that it would be appropriate as a capital item to come from the outside services fund we ask that you do that the number is unchanged it's the same that was in the budget did you look at and that we talked about at the board of finance movement meeting and so we asked that that be approved from the outside services on the second item is the pickup truck that was discussed at the First Selectman and Board of Selectmen level we mentioned it at the Board of Finance hearing that it was something requested the Board of Selectmen moved it out of the budget with the understanding that it would come back through the outside services fund the amount was different okay what happened originally our proposal was to to go with an f-150 a brand-new police interceptor pickup outfit it and so forth it was about 46,000 and change over time the proposal now is that we purchased the former fire marshal's vehicle which is an f-350 it's a used vehicle there was some discussion with the volunteer fire department that they were gonna purchase it for $25,000 it's my understanding that that money was included in the revenue side of our budget and so the town needs to capture that 25,000 so the proposal that you see before you tonight includes a purchase price of $25,000 for the truck it includes all the up fitting the computers the cameras and everything that goes along with it we also have to paint the vehicle because it's red police don't like red so the whole vehicle has to be painted that's a significant expense and the $60,000 number that's there is is a is a high number it's not 260 thousand as what I'm looking for it will not be sixty thousand or at least somewhere in the neighborhood of 54 I believe but we had had different discussions at the department level where we're going to put a camera in it where we're not going to put a camera in it we decided not to so the number will probably come in about 54 but it's the request is for up to sixty we won't use that much searching for something what is the purpose of it what is what is the expected future well there's several perfect purposes that we're gonna use it for one week we find ourselves in a quandary all the time every time we have to set up a roadblock a detour which is quite often we can't transport the cones the barricades the a-frames and so forth and the patrol cars is there sticking out the window it's dangerous and so forth so we need a pickup truck type vehicle and within the agency we also we just we've been using it because it's town vehicle it already exists you charging in for mileage and we took it down to the incinerator in Bridgeport with our one of two drug burn shipments last week it's going to be used for that kind of thing the car seats they had a trailer they need to tow around at their different events this will be capable of towing you the new Police Interceptor utilities aren't tow capable so we need a vehicle it'll tow the scuba boat we need a vehicle it'll tow the utility trailer we need the vehicle that'll tow the UTV trailer if we had to get it to another town to be used or we had to get it to a remote part of our town to be used we need something with towing capacity this will give it to us right there it's not going to be used as a routine police vehicle to 350 so it's a truck and it drives like a truck so nobody's going to be using it for patrol but it can be used in snowstorms and and more difficult terrain it could get up into Hershey Park with no problem at all is the fire department to be shorter vehicle now no no there was a commitment on the part of the fire department and I think they changed their minds now remember they had asked for incident command vehicles so when the police rolled off their vehicles will transfer those overs incident command vehicles so we thought that was a good compromise that's spending fifty five thousand dollars on each of those but they had the vehicles they need right now there was kind of trade off to that that was the fire marshals truck he was the town employee at the fire departments yes never as a client where those the fire marshal strung the current fire marshal didn't want that big 350 truck yeah so he got a used police car repainted it and it works for him took off the decals and and now they use that we have we all help each other oh yeah can we do we work it out between us we are about to hire a new fire marshal a permanent fire marshal and will come out in the next couple of days I mean it's the four-year old cars the truck is a bi-election condition is for the meta money that needs to be spent to outfit it is it worth the investment he was a youth vehicle first yeah we never would have agreed to it if we didn't first have deburr the town mechanic check it out and give it a good clean bill of health the body's in good shape there's no rot or anything like that it's only been used around town doesn't have a long again it's not going to be a patrol vehicle so it's not a vehicle we're using every day as especially useful some I'm just confused about the flow of money's coming from the house a service is fun too so they so we had funded one of the vehicles in land juice pending the sale at a Fire Marshall's truck and they originally was gonna go to the fire department for 25,000 plus the 12,000 would get us a 37,000 that we need for a new vehicle in land juice so our capital budget shows set $12,000 in land use it anticipated the sale of this truck to the fire department now they decided that they don't need it so the police department J has agreed yet that it would work for us we'll give the town of 25,000 right so it's just rather the game so yes that makes sense yeah okay thank you all right I know that the Board of Finance who the board of selectins request for appropriation not to exceed $60,000 from the police outside service fund the purchase of a 2014 model f-350 Super Duty Ford utility pickup and associated and sent up here a second further discussion all those in favor I'm on the board finance approved Boris lectins request for appropriation not to exceed sixty one thousand seven hundred thirty-seven dollars through the police department outside services fund to purchase the capital technology items at first from the town capital budget as listed on the attached worksheet second discussion indicate by saying hi Oh [Music] make sense next order have new business physicals or the Brookfield volunteer firefighter with a request from Anna five-carbon soup for the appropriation to have physicals completed for volunteer and firefighters in town you know so for the past 35 years bookful family medicine has brought us agreed to donate to the town the physicals for all of the firemen they no longer can do that being part of wch and Western Connecticut Health Network they decided they want to charge for it so the fire department went out and got bids from three different medical facilities as to what it would cost to have these three types of physical stun and the lowest bidder was about thirty-five thousand dollars in total you've got all the detail there the types of physicals and the number of people these these physicals are required by OSHA for our fire men to be certified so they have to be done I don't think it is fair for our firemen to pay for for firefighters to pay for it themselves I think we get their volunteers we get a lot of work from them they do an amazing job and so this is an appropriation if I'd known it they this was gonna happen it would have been in our budget proposal it's not there it's something that we we have to do so we're requesting that you guys approve this spending of $35,000 and there is one option that's that's opened that one Steve and I talked about it that do you want to make it an additional appropriation which would add to the the bottom line which I think given Moody's feedback we should do as little as possible and just it just keeps you using more and more money or do we want to do a transfer this early in the budget he didn't know where there would be a place that's under there's going to be something that a thunder but we just don't know it yet so instead of an additional appropriation the other option that I like is taking it out a contingency and moving it over and when there is something that says Auto ability that much money in some other account we can transfer to contingency as well and I agree with Marsha on this we don't have a large contingency but we do usually at the end of the year end up the low budget is it fifty fifty thousand in the contingency [Music] that you have to take it out of general fund what are the mechanics of this so that the unassigned general fund is if you're going to add to the budget so that wouldn't that would be an additional appropriation you're going to increase the bottom line of the budget that comes out of unassigned general fund fund balance that if you're going to just transfer it between categories you don't deal with the unassigned general fund fund balance at all you either deal with contingency or you deal with some other account let's say you thought that you were going to come in under health insurance and you're just moving the budget from one to the other but not increasing the bottom correct the contingency fund is a line item in the budget that that you passed it looked like it had been about was it three hundred thousand last year and it cut way back to fifty thousand this year that so it is a line that it's just there to transfer back and forth so you don't have to do an additional appropriation the rating agencies who look really askance at appropriating general fund for thirty five thousand dollars just clarifying all right I move that the Board of Finance improve the Board of Selectmen is request for co-creation from the contingency fund from the amount not to exceed thirty five thousand dollars they have physicals completed for all Brookfield volunteer firefighters for fiscal year 2018 19 further discussion hearing none all in favor net get by saying aye aye [Music] next Department of Public Works operating budget yeah Dan divorce it's and did a good thing and asked for more detail and exactly what we would be spending money on so Ralph today I asked them to put together exactly what he would spend money on you know our public works spent approximately a month and a half really just working on storm damage clearing rights away and things like that so a lot of this work road maintenance tree cutting equipment maintenance just wasn't done and so we'll be under by this amount in his budget at year-end fiscal 2018 so we would like to appropriate these funds for this year so he can continue to do the work that we need to do [Music] and for this proposal yes but this is something that if we talk to the rating agencies we say listen we had a massive storm this is what happened we weren't able to spend it in this year we couldn't encumber it because we didn't have actual bills you don't get a bill for god working on the side it wrote cutting a tree down right you just don't you have to have an actual physical if they wanted to put it in last year's budget as a by June 30th they would have had to do have a firm commitment either with a purchase order to somebody or they would have to have a contract signed and and that didn't happen because they're doing it through their own payroll and on some of this stuff so what you have to do it now before we get into why do we have to appropriate money now for this I'm looking at road maintenance tree cutting equipment maintenance why can't this be absorbed into the budget right now pay the bills as they come and we talk about this Jim Joe April May why are we talking to this now why are we going to the bank why don't we manage the expense why don't we take a proactive approach to say all right we had an unexpected $31,000 a $40,000 come in whatever the heck it is 41,000 why don't we take that and proactively manage it within the budget this year the operating budget why do we have to go to the general fund with that and it's 41 thousand dollars that wasn't spent mm-hmm and it's not like it's earmarked for because we didn't pave that road and we didn't do this project it's here's 41 thousand dollars that we could use for other stuff that is just kind of in my mind as either paddock patting the budget or just just using it because it's there as opposed to having specific uses for it it was not like there was a project that didn't happen that we're now going to use it's not like they're there that this road should have been paved it because of the storm now we have this it's not that specific is from what I can tell well there are many little projects when within these categories and I see Glen's point entirely I do that we tell what elf to continue to do the work he's doing try to manage within the budget he's in right now and if we need more money we can come back right or find it elsewhere in the budget it's gonna drop to general fund yeah the 41,000 would drop directly to general fund at year-end increase it by 41,000 is great yeah but if we appropriate the money now that means it still drops at the general fund I mean why would we try to manage it within the process and that's what we were talking about earlier if I'm missing at the 65 60 days of 365 days we're trying to eliminate removing money from the general fund and putting it back in the general fund if I miss that or if we have a debit where you have a crescent watch that say we're trying to limit the moves out of our general fund right so this would allow us mm I miss your presentation or my listen we know he's in a hole we know we had expenses no one's saying there was an extra expenses to the storm but we can manage it within the budget and operating why would we go through this process Wednesday at 1,000 we don't know I think that's a perfectly reasonable way to approach it that we go through the year and if we come in the spring and you say listen guys we have these things we need to do and we don't have enough budget for us then we'll come back to you yeah [Music] so bad it's so table you want table you make a motion to table yeah you know you move the motion then you're gonna vote no removing say Oh table yeah you should vote on that though it's a table just a second a second discussion [Music] favorite give us a night alright alright if anyone have anything else to come before the board that finish let me get to origin [Music] like a public comment I move that theater one second [Music] we are adjourned that so if everybody could correct gather your stuff up and help me stick it in there [Music]
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
does that work for your schedule this is um October 23rd yes it normally would have been nine to say eleven thirty years ago so if we started to really even put them three six well the other thing is we're trying to schedule another time when the board members can look at three different companies who have electronic agendas we're familiar with this one but there's two others and so Kathy is trying to coordinate with the companies to see if we can get them all here on the same day but what I'll do is just to ask you to kind of look ahead at your schedule so let me know if you know there's certain days a week when you can't come the under certain times and we'll try to stretch it all around that and then I'll send emails out to see what works so if anybody has any time restrictions that they know of and said let's look at September you have any time restrictions that will try to work around that [Music] extending it's good or not good thank you very much a PEZ dispenser first of all Russian five-zero template 8 becomes a plant one I make a motion to food by showing you some in so secondly for percussion especially oh I'm sorry okay first I'm regarding page two and I just want to know if you can please explain the difference between the accept the following resignation of employees and accept the following and Questor release of contract I know there must be ok so the first one is prior to their contract beginning typically like a resignation the separation is retirement for example or leaving private to their contract starting for the new school year so now they're not necessarily found so say a teacher left over in the summer they haven't started their contract for the following year as we start the new fiscal year in July 1st and moving forward some people's contract depending on who it is may have started sort of the lease my second question was I noticed on page we have asking for oval timing for maintenance and custodial Thank You lemon trapa patient don't do you do this every year or what is the purpose all of a sudden we're giving all this overtime first question who is issuing overtime to be sure that everyone gets a chance to get not just you know the same person that we're rotating our homes going to be doing this graduates so one of the things that we've implemented since we've had our vignette audit and one of the recommendations is that we establish procedures similar to what we do with all of our other employees to have all the business services completing them what used to be a system which is what these are and workflows so this is the first Bank business service folks actually participating and getting this approval process so this is the start of monitoring actually in the past business services has not had orcas and they didn't participate in that process and it was just monitored internally so this will be board approved moving forward for every employee and every employee will be the same in that process and next is a rotation that you mentioned so one of the things that we've discussed with all the portions of the mounting maintenance transportation routes is documented place in transportation it's part of their agreement document and log that happens for maintenance and it documents every time that and overtime is put out there and then there's a rotation that goes and if you decided to skip that is turn it down and there's turndown logs that are created so that way everyone full view of what has been offered and what has been turned down and how many hours folks have worked that was a question I think but also you know cause we talked about the helio and I know but not do this keep track of who is receiving and on top of that folks will submit these hours in advance so say somebody submits for a hundred hours that typically will take you in six months sometimes a whole year in the event that there's a need and emergency they're pre-approved so that we can access them so that explains kind of the numbers as to why is it 100 hours that's usually in span of time sometimes six months sometimes a year thank you very much we do know first in a second pestis five-0 template child came to [Music] the contract is for well I'll tell you what my concern is reading the language of their whole contract in itself and in the procedure and as the relationship internal controls that project for the financial state my second concern is showing this report yes but we do we contract for two portions of the audit which is the general audit and that's the majority of it and then there's there's an audit that's required for any of those any bond measures and that's the second part of this the second contract was attached to this and that reports concerned annually with the COC Committee and we shared that last year with them and there was no findings and the audit process is a kind of a true back and forth it's not a Abbess Ariel relationship we work with our auditors to help us improve our practice so we're we're on the it's not just at one time a year to time my time so here we're constantly on the phone with the auditors asking for best practice asking for have ideas on how to deal with difficult situations so they're kind of our go-to throughout the year in a in a few weeks actually they'll be coming to start their next on it they'll identify where they're gonna come in and look and each year they kind of shift focus so that way we have a true kind of touch on all of our departments to make sure that work in compliance and anything that they address we establish a plan or corrective action and how about implementation schedule that is rolled out and anything that is not corrected from the prior audit is something that you guys will be made aware of so any of those pending items that we did not correct it's always what we we open our books completely they work closely with our accountant group any information that they've asked whether we always comply and we actually will even provide more we're not trying to hide anything we want and if we were in that adversarial that would come out in their report they would say and you'll see that from some other districts reports where there is I have a different question right so we had our board policy last school year about the length of terms and out of there we decided we were going to have a length of term so it actually is exactly to that six here and then at that point we would switch auditors and I believe it is Amman of the board policies that you're approving for a second read tonight [Music] motion passes Spencer some point to the human resources Association so this is a requirement as we enter into the new year for bargaining each Association and the district Sun shines for the public to see one of the topics that we will be focusing on at the bargaining table it's an opportunity for the public to review and if the public so designers they can comment so tonight CSEA is sun shining their initial proposal that the following board meeting the district will sunshine its proposals for all three tables the next so we're not to talk like to Helios implementation update so it's my pleasure to invite to co-presented yeah one of our awesome HR employees melissa Veera who works on the certificated side and spoke a little bit earlier about the amazing team we have and we'd like to provide the board with an update on Helios and for the public for the benefit of the public and the benefit of the board you can't think you can throw them just a little bit down things like that things well so if you look you know some of the things that we're trying to accomplish with eNOS is reduce overhead you know double entry errors and delays make our operation more efficient and to help with staff productivity and kind of that that's stress that can come with the position in our classified employees and all employees feel that every once in a while streamline the business HR process and I'll get into a little more detail about that and then really making the information and accessible and live to our employees but also for us to generate reports if you scroll down a little bit more caffeine a little bit more to get all those descriptors right there a little bit right there so everything from onboarding from hiring to retiring Luke eNOS is going to really help us digitize and make the experience a lot more 21st century for everyone from hiring recruiting HR management at some point position control eval absence reporting credentialing and monitoring time and absence reporting and payroll all these things will be streamlined which is going to really help in some of the districts such as Clermont and Burbank and other districts that are jumping onboard Latinos are experiencing some positive gains in productivity and just overall efficiency but the team has decided in order for this implementation to be as successful as possible we're going to go slow because change is hard for any organization it's a new operating system there's a great deal of change that comes with this so melissa is going to talk to us a little bit about phase one and you know we're not publicly to mention with this side you've taken on a great leadership role doing this for us and thank you for your hard work she's gonna walk us through a little bit of phase one which is replacing the earthís system with workflows and what that looks like so maybe no that's yours let us say you want to may be logged in and in the meantime while you prepare that let it pass out for the board and I'll make some copies available for the public handout she prepares the demonstration and well it's just what the new personnel report would look like starting at the next board meeting now this is a draft because we're still working out some of the kinks and some of the bugs so one of the nice things about Helios is that when we when anybody enters a workflow which is what Melissa's going to talk about in just a minute Helios automatically generates the personnel report and makes it in a format very much like a spreadsheet okay which is what you have in front of you and what's really nice is that that saves hours and hours and hours on both the certificated and classified side of entering it manually it just pulls it and then we are able to manipulate and we're going to make some changes to what you're seeing there the handout that I cut out so for example we're going to shrinks themselves and we have all of the names of the additional employees we're going to try to shift them over to just needs of employees but you have actually more information at your fingertips than our current personnel report you'll be able to know the requisition number the tags whether it's earnings or what it is and then of course the names of the employees but once again I want to reiterate that it automatically generates from the workflow that our administrators generate directly to the agenda and the personnel report so there's not that middle that little bit and then you have to manually create the personnel important this will help minimize errors you know titles and those types of things in the long run I want to make sure I front-load the board and public that we're working out the bugs and making sure that it's the best possible product and the most efficient operation that we possibly can so I would like to the board to look at it provide us some feedback what you think if there's anything that you think that we should possibly change add if you like it you don't like it your feedback would be greatly appreciated okay so take a look at it we will be starting this effective our next board meeting today was the last day of what the current personnel report would look like and then we'll shift to a new format can you just explain like this first one in all of us and all these names it's sure so very much yeah very much like the current personnel report well you'll see the workflow ID is just which which document it is so that's an identifier in case there's ever a question about it we can refer to the exact number instead of searching through a number of what I used to call purpose so here the second column is the name and it'll be additional employees so say this person they work or where they work and Health Services this person is a health aide so you can see the employee type classified palpate the tasks were assigning them additional hours we will probably eliminate that column there whether it's hourly that doesn't matter total number of hours we will keep but we will probably shrink it and then the next one is what is that payroll care that we just discussed earlier is this a duration of six months into the year what are the six hours for maybe it's a one-time professional development and just like we have these separations you'll see something similar this is a new hire this is a separation so it'll be that information so it'll be more of an Glantz easier to breathe for medicine what do all these names in the right hand side who aren't great so then all these names on the right hand side are the same classification so that will probably shift that over to Maine and just list them all in one column to make it easier to read so we're working with our programmer and he goes Edie to fix those things but to to make them automated so where my staff our staff doesn't have to do that it just automatically happen so we're super excited our staff is super excited about cutting back on some of this work and we can focus our energy in other areas are you ready okay great go ahead Human Resources I the coordinators contact between anyone stay in the human resources is the starting planet Department to begin working with you those we've designated Azusa hi Blackstone and sophisticated secretaries and as a pilot team there are some faces to begin your program as we explained the first phase of the news program was the workflow process don't work flow cleaning new hires locations transfers a tracking system for employees work hours other than regular hours today examples overtime extra hours extra duties and this is an example of the workflow process here on the screen here on the screen I'll just give you a brief description it's a one page where the other system with several pages some of the fields are drop-down boxes so and then something new that will eventually flow with the county is the pay period once you enter your date of your workflow from your starting to your end date you can then go ahead and select all the pay periods so eventually this will flow with the county when they run their reports into their single topic I'm going to show you how all the secretaries have been utilizing this all the data is going into here as you're entering a workflow and number is given this is all the information that's being cool for report see the multiple taken so all the secretaries have been trained and phase one is working up is it something running by the district office and all the partners as Minister Colorado have explained it's the it's working with our district departments both sides MOT Nutrition Services everyone is utilized in one program now we're tracking over time our next step is Phase two which is going to be the absolute reporting and substitute for filming which is currently being developed everything eventually is going to flow together the feedback has been positive [Music] one of those things is important to know is that the pilot that Melissa described we identified the distance I advanced on my MOT and - a chart and a few other folks from Lexie SVA and we gave them an opportunity to be trained early in July and they tested it and they came back for a subsequent meeting with some really good suggestion sharing some best practices oh how do you do this and how you do that along with some challenges then we brought the second group on August 2nd and we said ok all the secretaries are not changed then we flip the switch and we promise the board back in June or May when we implement it that we would go live August 1st and we actually went ahead of schedule in July so the ecosystem is no more as you heard from Melissa the feedback has been very positive Wow one page all in one a lot you know the interface is very user friendly and then when it does meet with payroll their workload is going to be tremendously reduced in terms of manual data entry and when you reduce manual data entry the likelihood for error is far less and that's what we want efficiency accuracy 21st century so we wanted to provide the board an update it's going well we're excited about phase 2 the absence reporting system we've kept our old systems because we want to make sure that we're cautious as we implement that we provide the training that we work out the bugs so that the likelihood of experiencing success and wanting to embrace this is far greater so that's where we're at right now we will continue to keep the board informed as we move towards position control payroll onboarding monitoring credentialing digital paperless so the potential is there and we're some excited thank you so much for your time questions accesses information there okay so Melissa and I are the kind of the needs mister book mister Barbarino is also one of our leads and we've given access of course the MAS and all of the secretaries for the school sites are using it principals are going to be giving a cheat sheet to explain how they can help support the implementation of this and then at one of our managers leaders meetings that are about meeting in September I will be sharing some more in depth and Melissa will help us training principles as well and they continues to roll out to other departments such as business but they will also be trained but when they get into this program is there a password thing even use yes sir that not everyone else can you sit there and that is correct there are some safeguards for privacy at some point Paul I'm glad you asked the question that's that's what I was going Tristan how much information could someone yeah yeah logging I get the fact that you know you want to know all about overtime you know know if the certification is compliant those are fine but how much so information about a first right that information is limited to who we identify primarily admin many upper management and confidential employees but I do want to make sure I highlight a couple really positive points all employees have the Helios profile all employees will be able to access update upload documents at some point even received training like our mandated reporting you'll be able to receive it through Helios but your certificate uploaded and you're done if you want to check your vacation balance currently you know or sick leave currently you've got to either wait for your paycheck and you know it may hope that the information is is current or call business and say with my information you know my friend though he knows you have that at your phone at your fingertips the other exciting thing you know thank you to mark and M is is that this along with T goes along with our email and along with our copiers are all single sign-on which means same password I'm saying username same password you don't have to remember different passwords it's just a lot more efficient for people that they say oh my email and my password are the same for heels the copier and you know it's exciting and that each user has kind of unique access to their profile in their site so the approval process goes through different steps so if it's a site position and a site secretary puts it in the system nose to the next person to approve it is whoever is listed as the site principle and then from there it goes to whoever's paying for it so if Susan brochet and paint brown one of our grants and it goes to Susan if it was being paid from special ed then Aaron so it's very dependent on who you are as to what you're gonna see what do they need to logon for business turn turn off at a certain time and there are security measures to protect our information great question all right we'll keep the appointment and Melissa thank you again for all your hard work and for staying so late [Music] thirteen points you resolution 18 - 1983 workman's compensation coverage for volunteer personnel so through a skip recommendation we're putting this forward in an effort to protect our volunteers in case they're injured when their when they are volunteering through our work program and it's like a little insight yes it's a recommendation mark can you explain the is there a cost and are there some financial advantages to living the forward this way sure so there is no cost for us doing this in that it's being covered from a scam the financial advantage of doing this is that it protects us from lawsuits outside of our comp if they are covered under work comp than they are unable to sue us in the as a lawsuit and that helps mitigate some of the loss that we could occur from a large lawsuit they're only responsible for the covering so when they volunteer in a school site parents the the things will have like a sign-in sheet so you know who's on campus to prove that you know the person got hurt when they were doing helping in the classroom I'm hopping anything wrong it it's not necessary that we have a sign-in sheet as long as there's witnesses that can verify one of the things that we'll be switching up for the 1819 school year and going forward is there will be a thorough investigation of every claim so there's gonna be a process established that if somebody's injured then a site admin is going to be required to investigate and that where witnesses will be questioned about what they saw who saw wet before the clean so that that changes 13.33 services so Business Services is implementing tons of new things for the 1819 school year and we're changing systems working with HR and wanted to share with you some of those things and this is just kind of a narrow scope first and foremost another thing I'm most excited about is bringing the new playgrounds to our elementary sites every every elementary or will receive at least two new playgrounds some of them three and these new playgrounds will be safer they will be more entertaining more fun more learning for our kids and no keep our kids safe from kind of the hot Sun issues of the metal some of the following issues of some the jungle gems that we have and the play surface is gonna be improved and because right now most of ours are sand which we have to monitor the level or the depth with these they'll all be the poor in play or in place service which is soft spongy it'll all have fall zones that are measured and in all within compliance so very very excited to roll those out we should start demolition in a couple of weeks we had our first meeting already to figures out the projects and Gladstone Street will be one of the first sites or sees the playground so the last sites will be the ones that are under construction now like Louie and Dalton those will be kind of moved to the end of the project list and we should be all done by the end of October and or at the latest November these are kind of the sites that we're doing in the number but at least to her site Valley do age range so we'll have two different sets of equipment we'll have once for the little guys which are the two through five areas and the ones that are for five to 12 so different size equipment for different players this school year in the beginning of the school year work we're gonna have demo in the very very beginning yes so we'll have a cordoned off the installation happens very quick yeah yes I was hoping for this summer we had some details with contract negotiations that needed to be ironed out before I was comfortable signing off so I needed to to make sure those were perfect before we the next is Saturday Academy this is huge for the district for two reasons one is gonna help us recover our lost ata and revenue from when I from when our kids are absent next is we're gonna extend our learning opportunity to the weekend it's not a program that's designed to like drilling kill the kids on Saturday is the opposite of that which is come in do something that you're interested in doing science activity with your favorite teacher football camp for kids that are in football it can be designed by our teachers for their kids it'll be at all of the school sites where we can get enough kids to want to go so hopefully all of our school sites we're letting school sites volunteer for this and the initial rollout so that way we make sure that we're not forcing it upon them we have teachers that are willing to implement and that'll be kind of our first base yes yes there will be fed is one of the requirements of the program but yes they will they will have food service so currently it's a business services and will work with end services on some of the curriculum items if we struggle minutes it's a program Iranian or you guys are just going to be developing it from scratch so it is a program that was approved by the board to bring in where we share three dollars back to a company that is doing the organization okay and then my other question is so what is the incentive for the students of the families to attend and how are they so the target is gonna meet kids that have an absence so as long as you have an absence you are in the target room it doesn't mean that you're the only kids that can come it can be any kid even if they have a hundred percent of attendance we don't care every kid is invited but because it will be targeted with invitations and phone calls well because they have at least one absent the the other piece of it is we're asking the teachers to help us recruit the kids so we're going to option what do you think and they go to this class secretaries go back and change the apt into a what so actually the secretaries have to do nothing that's what we're paying the $3.00 per kid for this are they gonna take the absent after system so that's the contract that we have with the agreement that we have this organization they are going to update the attendance records so that way we mark the kids where they were once absent on September 15th it'll now say that they have a reason code of Saturday Academy oh it still shows that they were not there on the 15th but the excuse code is marked as Saturday Academy and it'll have a written comment that will show that they came to Saturday Academy on whatever it is October 15th and that is why they were now being able to work for parties like in the Java 34 times in that consider an option we don't lose the 88 for targets so school sites could make those rules for kids that are working on attendance incentive at the site but we wouldn't have lost an Indian Territory yes so it's a 5 line because we do not want to use this as a punishment system for kids we want to use it as a mechanism to say come to our Saturday program because we have this awesome program and you're gonna learn about fill in the blank for the grade level and so we're hoping that our teachers come out with the things that they really want to teach during the day but we have so much jam-packed curriculum that they don't get to teach this extra fun assignment and those are the types of things that we're hoping that are taught on Saturday an hour at each site there will be a site coordinator that will be paid to be there on Saturday well you know kids and then the rest of the teachers will be paid at their our power thing raped it'll be good for our staff and it'll be good for our kids and then do you know which sites you're going to roll this out yet already so we have four sites that have already kind of push this which is a zoo Sahai Foothill Valley Dale and it was Murray but we have to talk to the new marine festival no you can't you can't earn above under % 88 you reckon and you can't earn 88 for a future absence either so if you have a makeup day and then you miss the next Monday you can you can only capture before actually that's in our contract for our employees the next is a another recommendation from vignette is to have a work order system that allows them to track more than just what is broken it'll allow us to have all of our employees in put in work order but on the backend when our guys go actually out to fix it they can track the labor cost they can track what piece of equipment it was and that additional data is gonna allow us to have kind of an analytics as to what happened with different pieces of equipment for example the piece of equipment that's keeping us cool right now has been broken three times in the last probably month and a half so knowing that we can start looking at is it worth replacing this air conditioner or should we continue to keeps me on the parts and keeping it alive and so we can look at that cost ratio is it worth replacing or is worth continuing to to fix and other pieces that we can track our equipment in their maintenance schedule so we can automate the implementation and when we change filters at the manufacturer recommended intervals for all of our equipment and so we have the summer gone out and inventoried all of the air conditioners across the district and all of our heavy equipment so that way when we roll this product out we have a whole database data inside the system and we can have the maintenance schedules automated so this is coming up from Darren so Darren is directly monitoring the system and rolling it out one of the pluses of this is it helps to distribute the leadership or it's not all on his shoulder sense as everyone knows Darren has so many hats and part of this is taking it away from where every work order in the old system where maintenance was going to Dan and distributing it out where depending on what type of work it is it can go directly to one of our folks that is leading a group of guys so that way we can distribute out those assignments but Darren still has the ability to go in and see what hasn't been done in a certain number of days is competing so when the work is completed the person who submit the ticket will get an email the gentlemen that complete the assignment can also attach photos so they can see the completed project and there's also a chance for them to provide feedback on that completed assignment on the input of the work from the from the user side they can also put an attachment of a picture so that way you know there's a spot on my ceiling take a picture so that way they can make sure that we're getting the correct spot so it has a lot of advanced features that are correct folks don't have on top of the analytic side that we don't so we're hoping or by the end of August that all of em MT will be trained and then for the M for the general employees across the district we're hoping just to do some screenshots because it is very very easy to follow there's just a few drop-down boxes to input so it has to be done through what is it giving him access to those in the car and so then it parked them aside and how accessible is this that they have to come into the office know they can do it so all of our guys have a cell phone and all of them will be able to go through the work orders on the app that comes with it to respond to the ability to put these in will for the most part be on them on the district website so they'll go in don't log in through their user account they'll put in a work order ticket and then that will go according to who or what type of work it is it'll go to the correct person thank kind of in the same way that qvo s-- does it figures out okay this is an air conditioning issue at Gladstone high school all my ACS go to one of these three guys and because it's that Gladstone high school this gentleman is in charge of that site so we'll go to his mailbox where the old system regardless of what it was it went to Darren and Darren had to then vivillon all their assignments so it's gonna make it a little bit more efficient from our current system and then it can go right from the user to one of our one of our lead guys so I think you already answer my question but so with the previous system issue with Wi-Fi access so you're saying now they're gonna they're gonna complete their work order peace via cellphone so their Wi-Fi foundation it's not an issue on the old or the new system as much as it was with that even with the case they can access it over the cellphone but with the tablets that they had out there that was the issue compatible this will be able be able to do an app as well and they'll be able to build those out oh so how are we ensuring that it's going to happen that they fill out the forms right I'm asking you process wise internally how are we going to or we're rolling out our training to the MOT crew you know within the next couple of weeks we're gonna explain to them the requirements that we're tracking but now we have a live view as to work production and it will show us how many work hours was done by each employee and then they're not closing their jobs their production is not going to look as good as action and the end users will now also get a email confirmation when that work is sorry so the venue said they can if what the work orders complete they're still able to get feedback yes yes so next is something that Ivan mentioned a little bit earlier arm shift in work huh we're gonna have a lot of different ships I'll just mention a couple on our clerical staff currently there's a lot of paperwork that they have to do if somebody gets injured there's forms that they have to fill out there's papers that have to go with the injured employee and that doesn't always happen correctly which delays service which creates timing issues and claim issues for both the employee and for the district as far as record-keeping moving with a skip and part of that is company nurse what will happen is if somebody is injured they're gonna go to the office and the Secretary's just gonna give them the company nurse phone number and they're gonna call that the company nurse is an actual nurse and they're gonna help them to figure out whether it's a real claim that's an actual work hump injury that requires them to go to our clinic to get service or whether it's something that's just first a to only so it's gonna help limit the number of folks that actually get to the clinic because a lot of the ones that go it's really only just first aid so that will help us reduce our number of claims second if it is a real claim or it is a claim that needs to be seen by a doctor they're gonna do all the paperwork for us which ensures if it's going to be done timely and and the next piece is once that claim is in process we're gonna be requiring our administrators to investigate every single claim ensuring that we have good documentation as to how they were injured who witnessed it the injury what were the things that caused the injury and it will help us gather data as to what were some of the factors is there some some things that we could do to limit our potential risk to additional injuries in the same way is there a curb that's somewhere that is a repeat offender is their staff or is there a chair that we need to get the ladders people to keep falling in the same spot so looking at what some of those cost factors are start logging that data so we can respond and live in our risk and a scope is going to help us to review that data so this is actually play the largest shift especially on the fiscal side in saving money and bringing some of those dollars back from those evil lawyers and cable doctors that can eat up so much of our resources and put it back into the district's hands that we can use for our kids and our employees the next big shift is our consolidated printing so we signed an agreement and threw a piggyback thing with socal office technologies and it's leasing machines across the district and also shifting all of our toner and maintenance into one contract and so what that means is our schools don't have to order toner anymore when the machines run out of toner they they ordered their own toner and it shows up to the site it's labeled with a label that tells it what machine it belongs to the other pieces as Ramiro mentioned everyone has an ID badge your ID badge so everyone has a badge and all our teachers everyone is going to get a badge and all you have to do is walk up to the Machine tap the Machine and it unlocks it it knows who you are and you're you can then make cottons if you're on your computer you push print you walk up to the Machine tap your badge push the button your print job pops up and so what that means is we're moving away from our inkjet printers which are very prevalent 2017-18 to coffee machine printing so you're moving from anywhere from 12 to 18 cents a sheet two point zero zero one sensation for black it's it is less than three cents for a color it was like to point something says so we're really shifting our cost and per color you're looking at you know close to 25 cents a separate so for district staff that have the badge to access the doors and for principals it is the same ID and for our school staff we're gonna do a kind of a two-part process because I want it to make sure that everyone got their ID badge right away so everyone's gonna have a card that's gonna save print ID and they can just slip it under next to their other card from the school site and then the following school year when we when we reprint everyone's new ID we'll give them the same ID with that picture on it so for a whole year our schools are gonna have to have two cards but they can just put them together they don't have to be separate because some so their issue is some of our school sites don't use IDs like some of them - and so like our high schools they do one of our middle schools does but no one else does and that'll be solved through this process so I've already met with our district photographer he's gonna work on getting photographs of all of our employees district-wide and our school sites and then we'll be able to roll this out or we're not impending on preventing teachers from making their copies on day one which is the issue that I did not want to have where you know I have anybody that's prevented from making their copies for their first day of class so that's what I want to make sure we had all right next is something huge for the district as you know we worked really hard in conjunction with ed services principles and of course nutrition services to get those meal applications in last year we went from 83% unduplicated to 85% and what that be food was four of our schools being able to qualify for a hundred percent free and reduced lunch and so charles lee clifford marie center and sierra all kids regardless of status will be able to get free and reduced breakfast and lunch at their sites and as we continue to push for folks to get those absent we can attempt to get more and more of our schools to qualify for a hundred percent what that does is it makes it easier for everyone on site the lunch lines go quicker there's less waiting it's nobody's not eating because they don't have the money they miss qualifying by a few cents it makes life so much easier for everyone on set next another program that I created so this program will monitor and give access to our site admin district admin their budget so there'll be a weekly upload instead of using a rather for coaches and it challenging to read for many and also missing any details as to what the money has been spent on we'll have this new tool that will do kind of two things it will allow them allow our sites to see how their budget has been spent with a weekly update and also what they spent which is something that they don't currently have what they spent it on so that way if there's any discrepancies and maybe where something was charged they can see that the second part is working with Jennifer and Arturo coming up with a transparency piece for our El Cap dollars so looking at big picture which is kind of that donut chart that you see there how much money has been spent by goal out of the allotted money you guys have agreed would be for each goal you can look by who is managing that budget you can look down to the goal level and then below you can see the employees that have been charged to that account and you can see the items that have been purchased with those accounts so it's complete transparency as to how we're spending our outcome dollars so you can see the entire budget which is that first thing that I talked about line by line and you can see any details that you want within that as to who purchased what about the categoricals titles so right now it would be viewable underneath the general so the general one you can see anything from any fund and with recommendations I can add special reports for the same data if we wanted a categorical page we can definitely add that as a that's another option there would already be kind of drill down and look at some of the percentages of spending for those power bi it's a Microsoft product I'd like to just give mark a compliment on this because the County Office of Education has been working already two years putting together something and their projects a little bit delayed it's going to take you're supposed to be the fourth year of implementation and maybe we'll get them but it's we're still a long way away at the county to get this and you know his initiative to go ahead and create something for our principals that's usable now really deserves a lot of thanks and recognition and it wasn't just me though I want to say putting my head together with Meghna understanding how we want to replicate kind of some of the things that are out there and ecstatic report I'm working with Jennifer from our troves team as to what some of these reports should look like is in reporting out what would be simple for her to see she creates the reports for you guys at the board level so it was definitely a collaboration and I had the programming skills but it takes how could I user input to figure out what it should look like on the news next is another thing that that was district approved school line which is kiosks that will be available at some of our schools very soon we're hoping probably in the next four or five weeks we'll see our first ones rolled out so so far the sites are Azusa High foot film and Allenton and Gladstone just and padded themselves to the list but these are free to the district they are amazing tools in which we can advertise our events on these screens they allow users to also kind of interact with the screen so you can click for details on things essentially it's like a big iPad and the cost to the district is that there will be advertisements that our district approve advertisements for for items that are you know products so we have about 85 percent of the time of the screening and then obviously it rotates through and it will show some advertisements don't meet other caveat is that it cannot turn off during like during the school day so we have to keep them on obvious if there's no power that's in the exception then we can turn them up in this summer to save electricity so it does have kind of a a protective over I guess a piece of plastic that goes over it but it's touch sensitive so you know we have to kind of roll them out in phases so we can see how our students are using them and making sure that and where will they be like why the main office survived locations in the school so or Foothill and as oosa high they want theirs right next to the main office as students walk in and Foothill once there's come in that passageway that goes into the school so it would be protected during the off hours that way all the kids are walking by they have that screen that's there it can look at all the current events that are coming up at the same next is something Darrin and I have put a lot of time and thought into rolling out which is how do we move from what was done prior to me which is you know few LEDs in one room at a time - let's just bite the bullet how do we move forward with LEDs district-wide and so we're rolling that out as we speak we've already had some of our sites flipped over so Gladstone's pretty much finished as one of our first site so our County sites are going first and then we'll be rolling out with our Azusa City sites and we're doing this through through funds that are outside the district's fund so Edison is kicking it for a good percentage of them and we're using our prop 39 dollars for the remainder and on top that will be writing additional rebates from Edison and from the city so it's a really cost neutral install project and then on top of that will be a saving electricity which will save the general fund money so it's a huge huge win for the district yeah yeah and you know then there's also the long-term effects that Romero's mentioning these lights last ten years last six months so what is that the labor but also the work comp issues that we have when you're when you're climbing two and a half stories up to get to a light bomb the risk of fall is great and you know we've had a similar place so it eliminates that risk to the district feeling like we've accomplished so much just in a short summer and it's I wish we've said a couple more week so we can have day 100% all this stuff installed and your team and everybody that works around you and me resilient I want to go back to board meetings when we first brought you on and pull up a lot of the comments that were made and things that were said and just nasty you know and so to me watching in here you know deliver you know this update and watching you know everything come to fruition like I have to say I want to show my kids like you're ever in a position like that you gotta fight through it you know you do it resilient you're gonna keep stay on top of things because that's incredible and being able to bring people together and work with people and you know you're always about teamwork all of you guys and that's that's awesome that's awesome hey did you need a babysitter they had to say that in a position where I get to say that okay so we're moving on to 14.0 policies and violence bear with me I'm going to read through all of this 14.1 first reading important policies regarding to lots of think old objectives and comprehensive plans new amended or deleted board policies BP and administrative regulations they are BP and a are zero zero zero zero vision BP 0 100 philosophy the PISA of two hundred goals and declan's for the school district BP 0 400 comprehensive plans BP 0 for 15 equity AR 0 for the 20 school class site comes only BP and air or 0 for 21 school based program carnation BP and air 0 for 20.3 school based student motivation and maintenance program BP 0 for 20-25 school based decision making BP and air reserve or forty district technology b04 50 comprehensive safety plan BP and AR 0 for 16 I'll cap vp0 500 accountability BP and a are 0-5 to 0.2 so will program approval schools feet and a 9:05 23 title 1 Improvement Districts and vp0 520 point for quality education investment in schools and that's it for fourteen point one was a lot of reading do we have any changes policies ok excellent fourteen point two first reading of white policy regarding operations amended board policy BP administrative regulations ar e P at a are three five one four point one pound reduced substances a are three five one for clean tuna integrated pest management BP three five one five nine two disruption Newport phones to defeat administrative regulations ar e p3 v 1 1 3 plate horn drug and alcohol free schools EP and a nine three five one five point five sex offender notification any changes questions comments there 14.3 this is a first reading to board policies regarding push now I'm in a board policy is beat Pete and administrative regulations a r8r 4 1 1 2 B P 4 1 1 to point 2 certification vp 4 2 1 1 and VP selection ok cool 14 points for and that brings us to the end of our meeting is for Pam thank you everyone for good night everyone thank you very much
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now we'll move on to the US so we have dairy Bibles local and I'm here at Madonna hi Neil could not be here tonight it works so she will not be here tonight so moving on to item 4c approval of the agenda from the caution second by Yolanda reduce Pena all right moving all we have item 5 recognition in the woods we have five point one employee recognition first I wanted to you did in collaboration with business services in making the venture and consolidated print project I don't know we understood the scope of work all those obstacles your dedication your commitment to thinking through all the issues that we may have all your sight time for our three guys going out making sure that everything got handled and with that we're gonna be kind of stepping up our game the school sites teachers helped will have revolutionary machines that they can used to print a copy of your classrooms be able to move more into an electronic world where we don't need to use as much paper reduce the amount of work that we have as far as billing that we build every single individual machine into these small compartments centralizing that process it was your dedication your thoughtfulness using these machines Eddy delivered the print cards out to everyone yesterday so all of our teachers have their card ready to go even mr.
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Garcia here who's our printer of the print cards is here tonight so thank you as well so I just want to say thank you the four of you for everything [Applause] awesome to make this happen obviously we move forward with a lot of efficiency and a lot of collaborative atmosphere in our work environment and thank you for that and with that School District Board of Education to you by recognizes four divisions obviously the needs of our cell or cell for her contribution in the implementation of the district point consolidated printing project and presents this recognition as a token of appreciation for education to the [Applause] how's turned out so moving on now we have item six items from the floor public comment we have one new car so from tornado solace he would do what you would like to speak that item ten point one 10.2 and eleven point three [Music] that's a question to the minutes you know I just you know at least say instead it was favorable find the body okay again the minutes I know they're not supposed to be 11.3 you know I mean I mean [Music] I just want to thank for doing such an amazing job that's what we strive for so I expect them to meet our model Department in the future and thank you for that for thank you like at the end I do so enjoy your website anyone wonderful especially the calendar and I want to also thank MIT for all the hard work I've seen him around working late hours but being sure the job is done in one video appreciate your hard work dedication we have a beautiful honey here with the board and I want to thank everyone what the students received our children in the community receive free haircuts and backpacks I just like to know how we can help connect the dots either I'm not sure HR or how we can notify our community about this fantastic event that goes on every single year and I'm just okay I went to the Marie Marie school really grand opening and mochi the groundsman's idea another mineral and her firm and I've seen while working very hard in his speech but they wanted to be sure it was done so when the kid came back to school and also official Athena mom home she did that beautiful mural was she did many people murals to our school district and her also with doctor of aitikaf and they're going that is her you know it so shortly there alone but she was working at trying to be sure that it was done and got there very beautiful mural okay anyone wants to go and see that so thank you all right so I'll go next since we've met so recently a lot but I want to family forward to Thursday with my son start and this is Mariah's class at Longfellow and really worship preschool program that's funded by our Al Capp so I'm very excited to have my son in that classroom and looking forward to the new school year I think yesterday when I attended I was able to attend a small bit of the teacher the Kelly day for the teachers and it was really great to see all the teachers and these high school classrooms really engaged and building deep into think-pair-share so I'm gonna see what it looks like in classrooms and then I'm gonna take a point of privilege and introduced Angela Vasquez who walked in and she is for many of us as many of you know CSB inspiring local community engagement style right so she is the CSB a community that public affairs and community engagement in representative for the San Gabriel Valley so if you that floor members haven't had a chance to meet with you I think she's trying to be with every single school remember in that did you want to thank you so that and then obvious I'm finished with the request I want to follow for us on page start I'd like to see if I'd end up in the next board meeting and honestly if if there's no way that we can have a dual health a way to have both fliers and electronically all right Kanna can we go and research some other options because I'm really concerned about the impact it's having on on our parents and students to be able to participate in things because they just don't even know that it's happening so that can be the net worth Helena put those message in to please um so saying that um we'll move on to the next item item 8 comments and reports by cabinet superintendent and so we'll start with you just want to say thank you to all the folks that are in our departments that are working behind the scenes that are getting everything ready for our staff to come back you've been buying several of our sites the board has you can see that there was a long ways to go in a very short period of time to get ready and it's their dedication their level of commitment getting that done and also for the folks that work here like are not counting purchasing staff they're working hard to get our retro out for our staff on certificated cuspid side they're working to make sure that we're closing our books accurately appreciated so one of the things that I'm really happy about being a human resources assistant superintendent is that we get to work with folks from hiring all the way to retiring and I'm very proud of our board and our district for supporting our new teachers and onboarding them with really two days of orientation on August 9th people science teachers new teachers were brought in before everyone else given an orientation at their school site to make sure they're acclimated to the culture of the school and the resources they're given some time to prep their classrooms lesson plan and prepare for our students on August 10th there was a collaborative effort for day two of new teacher orientation with pet services business services and Human Resources to welcome our teachers to the district to inform them of some of our initiatives our instructional strategies some of the expectations that the board had established along with the resources so is an awesome new teacher orientation and we are super excited for the new school year yes I just wanted to piggyback on your comment we had our first professional development day district-wide yesterday at a glass on high school we did ask participants it was their exit ticket to get out for feedback I did read all four hundred-plus of them and I just want to share seven themes that came out of those evaluations number one one thing that came one theme that came out was kudos that this what we did yesterday apply to different content areas so it's a lot of a lot of comments about Wow finally something that I can use in my math class my art class my GED class the second thing the second thing that came out was the appreciation of being in heterogeneous groups with different school sites and different levels maybe not so when they first got there they were like what's going on but the feedback on the forms definitely there was a lot of comments about how awesome it was to be able to work with people that they normally would not work with the next thing was how awesome it was to see our in-house presenters and the capacity building of our teacher leaders and seeing them on the stage and providing this professional development another thing which is good for us was more like what's next where can I find more resources you know what's the first thing I do the next thing was a willingness to try say I'm I'm gonna try this I commit to do this once a week I'm committed to this dream I just a lot of commitment statements second-to-the-last we've got a lot of good pointers and a lot of suggestions things that we definitely have not thought about as a Cali team so I'm excited to share that with the team some of the things that came out of that and then lastly the last thing that came out was the appreciation of the lunch boxes they really appreciated how quick it was to get in and to start eating some of them personally came up to me and said even though we might have sacrificed a little bit on you know a barbeque or tacos or me what we the little that we sacrificed we gained a lot by being able to get in quickly sit down and just have time with our our peers so just wanted to to show that what everyone let me start by saying again when some of the other people have commented on or notice the wonderful grand opening of the new entrance to Murray elementary school I heard a lot of comments from staff and from parents just about how welcoming the place was and some interesting comments about things that I hadn't thought just in terms of the design of the cement work and the pavers how it really moves families and makes you kind of walk right into the entrance following that the color scheme and get in there but just a lot of positive things and again thank you to all the people involved with that certainly two facilities construction crew the facilities team that supports it the MOT who worked so hard for it the teachers the staff who get input in terms of what they wanted and the board towards supporting this project for our schools and the community of course for voting for that the Medicaid so that we had the funds to actually address some really important issues as we're moving forward the next thing I'd like to share with you is this new website and I have to commend this vignette we were trying to keep it secret until here but you're already on it so this is as of almost just an hour ago or so and well before we go into it I like it wanna want them let me see this thing come in come on up we want to thank you because she really stepped up say that but she really only sent up and she have been working and working on this tirelessly I probably interfered with a whole bunch of other work that she wanted to do to really prepare this and make it something that's ready to go perchik kitchens turn the lights off a little bit or some of them so we can see it better and let's see if we can scroll through this a little bit this is our new homepage there are some quick links on the left there's a calendar why don't we just click on the calendars of the killer you see there are some things coming up right away but then you can also open up a calendar and then you can see that we're in a board meeting right now some of the other things that are happening you'll still see and probably want to visit school site calendars I'll show you how to do that but this the home page is really district-wide events of interest let's go back to that I don't know I have to look into that big it's coming off of our Google Calendar to create it but I don't know how we subscribe to everybody okay actually Kennedy or whoever's doing this gonna work right back up to the top for a second and click on those three bars there on the right that's how you can navigate to a lot of different parts of this website so now go back to me don't mind them let's go back to the home page little bit back to the home page so we have a video of some of our band kids and just go ahead and scroll down a little more keep going down there's a lot of different links there that each two are flying right now we'll put this on agenda but right now that links Kathy could you click on the Keystone Chris that has a lot of different announcements and it also has some instructions for companies that wanted to strip the information okay let's go back to the home page and let's listen sit down to the bottom of this because there's some more picture we want to show you okay so just things that will change that you're showcasing some of the highlights for a school district and a link to our Facebook page and a variety of resources a lot of state and governmental resources there for folks let's go back up to the top and take a look at a couple departments we won't look at everything but just to give you some sit all the way up to the top on those 3 bars click let's go to the Board of Education and click on the Board of Education one little we're trying to get a company to fix it it'll repeat the page as well as the title of it the pricing that were can be difficult lead a new picture so mr.
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Garcia don't have to work with you to update our picture but you can see this this peach Fanta leads the setup of most of the pages there's a center section as larger that generally has a picture in it on the left-hand side of a variety of links and on the right hand side is contact information and continuing down the middle are other features news notes information exhibit ok let's I think Kathy can you go on the quick links there is there one state no no I'm so I go right on the left hand side there is there one actually on buses I can't see board meeting dates instead of that one yeah just go down yeah let's click there there's the calendar and so that's but there's a note on this page too that that changes you can kinda find them so we'll try to as it changes we'll try to update it but it's there for folks to use as a reference let's go back to the home page in or the actual just go to those three bars up there let's look at a department okay me and any gentleman anybody want to volunteer their department okay so you can see there are a lot of different things on it let's go to the first one says educational services yeah see the setup is the same we've got the links on the left some kind of a picture in the middle as well as text and information about the department and then contact information on the right and photo which one would you like them to see one of the links on the left you see those couple dots on the bottom that means that there's a series of photos and cool it in here and you can basically scroll through them you'll see that comes up after a while but I thought once you tell us a little bit about what's on this page and then some of Wick links things related to the El Cap or vaccines our indicator record our needles survey now status and whatnot and then you'll notice that because you're in ed services right now those links are ed services links so it knows that you're in services right now so all of those things like their parents academics Ares and all that it's Brett services that's a nice feature there's the picture came back Kenny can you get on click on the buttons let's see what we've got different pictures this looks like my dad she grew that part of the L can we get some former picture as parents working together and this is our little primary school website okay Kathy if you can go all the way up to the top of those bars again let's go to the parent section so we've given your parents got some contact information it's cooled a little bit more see what else we have so there are variety of links is there one for parents of the year you see that I can't find out let's go on that one also that's what my arm recognition that we held last year and scroll down a little bit I mean we've got everybody named I mean to school site okay and then if you want to go back to the home page for parents there's a number of Link's there of information that should be useful for parents and ranging from academics to enrollment issue you know child a little things like that a variety of things and there's more than one way for many of these links there's more than one way to get to them you can go through say for them on in enrollment you can go through the chub welcome attendance area or in on end services or you can come to the parent section here any questions or anything it particularly likes to see thank you well let me go I do there's one more thing I want you to see if you don't mind you just out of it go back up to the the bars well actually just go to the home area consumer says schools click on schools because not only did we update the district website but every school updated their website too so it's all consistent let's see there we go um how do we just get to the home to the page under schools okay okay so let me try something else Kathy close that one build up the three bars find out about us and I district our vision graduates our schools let's go right there and take a look at our schools so we had to chase down one principal about a week ago to get the picture of the school and you can click on a website for any one of these schools let's try that Center right any one of them just click on the website and their websites are redone to similar format as you can see it's got the school colors in here you don't have their calendar and their links so a lot of work inca there certainly was the one who pulled it all up together for us and chased down everybody to make sure that they finished their their portion the thanks goes to all the schools for participating and to the departments Marvin I'm you know and Mark and their folks for all helping out to make sure that it would be as user friendly as possible to share information that actually just thought it was a silly setter when she came when they had the with the according amount of wheels and then a speech incentive not to go faster so have fun exploring it if you find any glitches let us know we want to fix it up don't don't be shy and give us your ideas I continue to make this a good place to showcase what's going on Board of Directors has five positions they call at large Hispanic Asian African American County and a neighbor and so those positions are actually elected by the delegate assembly remember so they're the ones that will vote in at the states be a conference in December for who will be the Newark at large this is just Oh nominations are open so any membership organization any organ is any district that the member can nominate somebody for director at large and Katherine oh man right now is the current bank director at large there's a motion second any other motion with me Mike motion passes 4-0 moving on we have item 10.2 approve the minutes of the regular meeting comment you're making 2018 there Marshall there's a motion and a second on any discussion I do a request for this I'm since we're now videotaping all our all of our meetings is there if there's a place that we hold our minutes is there where we can include a link to the actual video so somebody wanted to go in and see what would send detail you could go to the video thank you all right moving on we have we have either 11.0 the consent calendar all matters I sit under the consent calendar Olli will be considered by the board to be with Gene and will be enacted by the board in a single motion any idea any idea would be no discussion of these items prior to the term board staff and hope there's be no discussion of the items prior to the making of the actions of anybody was just to pull an item now seeing that is there a motion looking to improve consent concur I don't see any point to 20.6 all right moving on we have item 13.0 Human Resources we have item number thirteen point one is this Unified School District and these are such occasion association losses the educators association sunshiney proposal this is an information item only so thirteen point one is the district's proposal and relationships and kazusa educators association AEA this is these are the topics that we wish to bargain it's our responsibility to share with the public and that is what we are doing this evening on thirteen point one and on thirteen point two something similar with the Zeus Unified School District and Azusa Federation of adult educators level six zero nine eight CFT afl-cio sunshiny proposal and it's correct the same thing with ours is that Federation of adult educators the difference for this item is that Sousa Federation of adult educators anything and the district the same topics moving forward all right and I am 13.3 is just Unified School District in California School Employees Association reduce a chapter 299 correct that is the district's proposal of its intent to bargain with CSC a the topics listed and the attachment for the public to review all right so moving on at 13.4 I will open the public hearing sorry for public hearing on the California School Employees Association is used to chapter 299 collective bargaining agreement proposals for negotiation between is DC Unified School District and the CSC is TNC a proposal so the public can now open anybody wishing to address the board on this item please approach the podium I'll make a motion okay all right there's been a motion by all the questions that go by Yolanda Pena closed the public hearing motion passes 4-0 moving on we have item 13.5 the Board of Education is required to officially adopt the California School Employees Association proposals for the negotiations so early July it was announced an aluminum educated aluminate education was merging with more other companies to become one super company with the name of illuminate education and will have the backbone of illuminating one of those companies was a current product that we use which is used to be Edom x' had just been converted to io and so that's one of the companies that they were merging into as as soon as that information came out we held meetings with our directors with our teachers of special assignment to talk about the impact because we did not have to jump to the minute right now we could have waited this out a year year and a half until we were forced into it but we decided that it was the best thing to do we had a conversation with a ea president now uh just to be super heads-up and of course let her know that it would support all staff through this transition so if M&A education is on standby we don't working very close together so we can have a smooth transition into the school year yeah so it looks like there's a financial impact right here right now but there really is not I only made out of the out cap and so the amount of portioned to i/o is really really close to this amount right here the reason there is some funding right now is because we had negotiated with IO at the end of the year we felt that they didn't deliver some of the things that we had requested and we put a lot of work into it at the end of the year and just the product was not there and so we went to bat with the company and we were able to negotiate a hefty discount so that discount that we saved is what we're using to make up for jumping over to dominate but they're pretty much the same exact price initially the biggest impact is going to be now I'm going to be going to illuminate education for my district assessments we have plans on how we're going to do that illuminate education and up for all intents and purposes is more intuitive smarter and cleaner so we don't anticipate a huge you know mindset or shift and paradigm shift and the way they do things but we are ready to support that include that into our existing trainings that we have right now so that it's very minimal we're feeling in regards to that the ultimate goal is ultimate goal is that we would start off right with district assessment hey but we also want to be realistic we have worked with a company and we have struck a deal that if that's just impossible and it's going to cause more mayhem than then good that we would continue with io4 district assessment a and then jump over for B and C this is so there's three layers layer number one or the district assessments there are three a year for language arts and three a year for mathematics is what we have right now so it's layer number one and then layer number two is a lot of our teachers or departments or grade levels do common formative assessments and so this is someone where they would also house that information so luckily it is now within the same family so that should not be too big of a deal but that is something again that the moment we get this signed and going we're gonna start rolling up our sleeves with Marvin with our toeses with Jennifer myself to ensure that we work as exceedingly as possible to to turn on my son that is what we're expecting so because they bought out I know we thought that it was the perfect opportunity to jump over to this product we knew that if we factor children is instructed correct and we were gonna we don't know the timeline I do know some people in illuminate so I can get some straight we did not know that timeline it was gonna be a year a year and a half two years before they knock on your door and say because remember there's five companies coming together or that we're gonna knock on our door and say okay it's time you have to jump over now what we do know is that the people that are supporting us for heigh-ho their email addresses have already changed to eliminate so they're moving in that direction and we just felt that it would be the most prudent to get ahead of the game and just jump over now instead of being forced to do that the district before I came in eleven twelve if not maybe one two years before that the district had been looking into a variety different information systems to consider and haven't come to a decision and when I came in during that first year is when we heard about it and we went through the process again the second year in adopted enemies so that would have been in the 13-14 year [Music] I haven't seen that because really until aluminate came forward there was really almost only one option or two options one was Aries or something they offered that other piece too and I'm suggesting that we switch over but I think that it's to make sure like within a cycle we evaluate but what our current system offers I know and we're not bringing people up and they know with something like barely getting into Aries right and I think you for moving over to a system that that align do they have a whole comprehensive system I don't think it'd be good to read it for the board to understand like what would be a good timeline to evaluate research that is Marvin all right motion on the floor already right so okay item 15.15 policies in my love and 15.1 the first reading of board policies regarding community relations new amended or the view support policy administrative regulations and exhibits vp ten twenty youth services ii exhibit 1100 communication with the public board policy one one one two media relations for coffee and ar111 three district and school websites his websites one word or two words or VPA ar111 for district sponsored social media or asean an administrative reg one one five zero commendations and awards administrative regulations twelve twenty citizen advisory committees for policy and administrative regulation one two three zero school connected organizations or policy and administrative regulation one two four zero volunteer systems or policy one three zero two point one measure i citizens bond Oversight Committee procedures or policy twelve thirteen complaints concerning the schools are there any questions or comments from the board regarding any of these four policies alright moving on to item 15 point 2 while the first reading of or close policies and administrative records regarding students we have a board policy 1521 non-custodial parents for policy 5022 student and family privacy rights ar-50 22 student and family privacy rights for policy 5 12.5 open closed campus administrative regulation 51:41 132 health screening for school entry any question now all right and in fifteen point three first reading of amended eliminated or new board policies administrative regulations and exhibits regarding instruction we have eliminated board policy sixty one sixty two point five two high school exit exam we still have that on our books eliminated administrative regulation 61 62 points by two high school exit exam or amended work policies sixty one sixty three point for student use of technology eliminated and mineral-rich admission regulation 61 16.4 sunnah use of technology new exhibit sixty one sixty three point for student use of technology amended work policy sixty one seventy for education for english learners I made an amended administrative regulations sixty one seventy for education for English learners any questions or comments so I just do have one Norma I know I know you're pulling together I thought our in our Friday packet you pulling together I'm group to look at to look at what we do with English learners in the context of the e although that the roadmap right so it would be really great for us to think about how our formed you guys develop what our focus is going to be in our vision for English learners and how we're going to hover administer their needs then we have a board policy that reflects that I think that a little map has some really big language about about rigor about inclusivity about critical thinking and and the cultural piece and so I think it's a overall for any student I'm sorry let us see it in our report policies alright thank you so with that those word policies will be any other questions those word policy will be on the consent calendar at the next board meeting and with that we'll move to item six point out adjournment seven point at 7:00 p.m.
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and we are ahead of schedule have a great thing
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[Music] good evening tonight is Wednesday August 15th 2018 I'd like to call the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order if we could all please rise with Pledge of Allegiance [Music] can we have six of our seven board members here this evening Debbie was called away for our family emergency the first thing on our agenda is public comment we have no one signed up is there anyone in the here in the public that would like to speak okay moving on we have written correspondence so we have two articles that were shared from Ron Jaffe thank you all right next we have approval of Board minutes recommend a motion that the board approve the minutes listed below is recommended regular meeting on 718 any discussion questions okay all in favor aye aye opposed moving on superintendent sir quick dr. Brooke Thank You mrs.
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Thurman it has been a fantastic summer very productive very busy and exciting for all of us with a lot accomplished through our consent agenda and new business tonight we'll get into many of those things that we've been working on this summer however in my report I just wanted to do some brief updating our Parent Portal in PowerSchool which is our student management platform has opened so students know their teachers if they're in the elementary school they have their schedules if they're in secondary schools and they're all calling each other and comparing notes so all that's going on for those folks watching at home and for board members just so you know if you hear from anybody that says they aren't able to get into PowerSchool we started this last year it's critical for our seamless transition with data with the State Department of Education that we make sure and for safety that all of our records are kept and so to access parents need to update all of their information cell phones email health records etc so we have them go through that exercise and they've been asked over the last two months to make sure they do that if they haven't done that then their access is they can't get in and see and so the motivation is come on over to the school we'll give you the schedule or the teacher assignment and please go through it will set you up on a computer and you could go through the portal and update everything that that needs updating so we had accurate information so we won't even tell them the their teacher until they come back and they had to update their and we wanted to update their information so you won't tell on their teacher well I don't I mean the print typically that doesn't happen but the principals have they come to the next day and they get everything all their information okay yeah and it worked out we were able to update our information last year and we asked people I mean for the last two months we've been sending communications home to ask people to update their father of course I but parent hasn't filled out the paperwork and they agreed to come in and do it we should tell them of their kids teacher so that may be the case I mean I'm not on the other end of the phone oh okay then it's not the case in that situation so that spirit portals open in terms of projects going on this summer we have an incredible project going on directly under the auspices of the partisan Rec Department when the light poles were damaged in the may 15th storm they were rendered you never think of the work event condemned I don't know why that evades me all the time they have a rendered condemned and it was one that actually came down so they were removed immediately for safety purposes insurance covered and then the Board of Finance supplemented the remainder of funds to ensure that the light poles would be installed and we have just started this week and the brand-new four brand-new light poles 80 feet tall LED bulbs beautiful will be will be installed hopefully over the next two to three weeks and it should be ready before the first evening games so we're really excited about that an important note on the lights is we had done a light studies for safety and you can't play with the way our lights had deteriorated over the years and and the new standards we couldn't play small ball on the field at night small ball we talked about lacrosse and things like that or even soccer you know and field hockey because it was unsafe for the goalies the way things were played at the ends of the field so now we're gonna be able to do that Plus tournaments and everything else so we're really excited thankful to the board finance and thankful for parson Rex leadership along with our facilities director can you imagine that you can catch some more passes the other piece is with that we also have new soccer goals field hockey goals and the goal posts for football well everything's kind of a combination those were replaced because they were damaged in the storm as well and so insurance covered that the water project there's plumbing and some engineering pieces that have to finish here at the high school but that should be finished up in the next week or so same thing with paving project at we seen here the sidewalks are done in the front with senior and the whole circles being redone and I think another layer of asphalt and then the striping and it should be completed and the the roof project which that was seen here there was some damage up on the roof about 10,000 square feet insurance covered that as well on that project that's underway and I know you'll be talking probably a little bit about this in facilities but these are big news items I'm sorry that people are interested in yeah it's really really great stuff I want to turn over the end of the year fiscal fiscal year 1718 - can you just review for us then we're ending thank you early on in the fiscal year I realized that we were gonna be over budget in special education solution professional services and transportation and at that very same time last summer we were faced with the uncertainty of the state funding so for those reasons we implemented a spending freeze and continue to closely monitor all our expenses in the winter when it became apparent that the savings from the spending freeze would not be enough to offset the over-budget condition in special education that the Board of Education requested a supplemental appropriation from the town the boards of Finance and selectmen agreed to provide a revenue transfer before seventy thousand five hundred dollars to the Board of Education the revenue transfer savings from the spending freeze and additional staffing Sage's offset the projected overage as we neared the end of the fiscal year I reported to the Finance Committee that I estimate we would end the year between twenty-five thousand and fifty thousand dollars under budget since it is not uncommon to get fiscal financial surprises at the end of the year I was being quite conservative in my estimate fortunately we did not have any negative in fact we received some positive surprises including a $33,000 refund from our school for a module that we thought that we found on satisfactory and refunded for and larger than expected savings from the spending freeze and savings and electricity and use of absence so as we finished closing out the year it appears that we will end a year under budget I actually buy a little over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars so while I'm comfortable reporting this to you please keep in mind that we are still in the process of finishing up our reconciliations of the town and our records have not yet been audited the order will not begin until January but I'm comfortable that we will be under budget this year thank you any questions sorry John no no please okay Thank You Cathy well I'll just add that that's a Finance Committee we had a chance to also since the time with Kent on this it goes law and line by line detail so what was on Dragon Ball the solver it was very well done so thank you Ken you're welcome okay so I wanted to the one of the last items is enrollment just to let everybody know that our projections for kindergarten and first grade especially the kindergarten that's always we're not always exactly sure we do the best we can with with during the spring figuring out how many kids are going to come through registration we plan for 149 kindergarteners with eight sections and we actually have right now that this can change 151 so our average class size is 8.9 or you know 19 and that is actually our target in kindergarten so we're in good shape there would remain in range for the for the other grade levels as well in the range so we're right now two weeks from the start of school in good shape and then the final thing I wanted to just I'm sorry jack I go back to be as your overall enrollment yes yes and how do those compared to the Milan macaron study that just came out their update pretty question so we have let's see here just make sure we have two thousand five hundred ninety nine right now okay move along to make Bruns projection is 2608 so the difference of nine now melona mcbroom the one thing I haven't gotten clarity on is are they including in there the students to show the nor our place right now we have 30 children who are out placed so if you do 2005 99 plus 30 we're looking at 2629 so melow Newman would have been under you know a little over time okay okay and again Maloney McBroom is using the October 2017 formal consensus data that we have to report to the state I know in the spring we were going back and forth as we were making our projections what we have right now in February in March and April because there's a lot of you know I think will be interesting to see our October 1 report this year really look back and see we remember yeah absolutely thank you thank you and then final thing I wanted to just introduce we have a special guest here in the audience tonight Marsha Marian our new town controllers here and I just wanted to make a face introduce her to the board and to the folks at home I don't know if she'll end up on TV or not but Marsha our new controller and it's been an absolute pleasure working with with Marsha just in the first month here and we wish her the best and and thanks for all the help already greatly appreciate it thank you thank you for joining us this evening welcome Marsha and that's all I have things next we have subcommittee reports first we have the finance subcommittee all right so we met on August 2nd and and much like many of the other committees that July and August are not normal committee meeting months given all the summer vacations and the like it's always hard to coordinate so but we had special meeting of the Finance Committee because Ken wanted to share with us where where we were landing on the fans so we spent an hour ago that detail and I'm not going to repeat what can't just walk us through so thank you and very well discussed the important thing coming out of that for us as a board is we're gonna open discussions with a Board of Finance if the numbers land about creating an on lots of fund and we asked dr.
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Brill to meet with his cabinet about what would be the priorities on that use of that fund would it be used to offset some of the budget cuts that we've already had this year we had some capital items that were cut you know what what are the things that we might want to talk to the Board of Finance about when we have that discussion and we haven't seen that back prior to the probably revised list but it will be coming shortly so we'll feed that discussion we have some time here so other than that we had a small discussion on Medicaid this year Medicaid if you remember we had planned for Medicaid reimbursements of about 50k this year and 100k for next year but the take-up on submitting those and was extraordinarily low and can remind me it was like 5k or something five for this year for this year instead of 50 and so it was a pretty healthy negative exposure when we were went through the financials and so we've talked a doctor so Paul and Ken about how do we talk to the parents and given the constraints we have in this small program to try and get take the issue is that parents need to give consent to be able to file and sometimes it's a it's it's $100,000 in the self coming to your budget so that's big enough for us to be worried about so so it's an initiative that would kicked off out out of that meeting and other than that we had a brief discussion on the Pomona lawsuit and invested that I thought that had been delayed but we've all seen that in the press already so and that's it thank you any questions moving on to strategic facilities okay um at our last meeting Texan associates came with another plan that we had asked them to look at we had all agreed on option C at the meeting before hand this past meeting we looked at something called option C 2 and we all felt that it was not in the best interests of Brookfield so checked in presented us we have a combination of everything as the committee directed them to of our wishes our likes our desires and it was all based upon our community forums and the surveys we got back the feedback from them and then we had a good healthy discussion about we are we wanted the town to go what we wanted to look at what we wanted for the children for our educators and they were actually able to provide us tonight with something called option C prime and later on in the meeting we are going to be presenting that and I'm going to with the board's permission I am going to give a quick report before Jeff was in ski from Tecton takes over to give that presentation so I encourage you to all watch the presentation I believe that you got it in an email beforehand so you had plenty you know time to look at it and digest it and you know estimate healthy questions because this is a big decision this has been talked about for 20 years in our town and the past 13 months this committee has worked so hard and so well together that I'm proud to announce tonight we have our work done to present to the Board of Education for your questions and a possible vote so that's coming up so don't turn your TV's off but before I give over the mic I'm also the chair on the building and facilities and I was hoping that Joe I could tell us and spread some wonderful things that she has been doing a huckleberry for our students some of it of the past weeks and moms and three hazel of our high school students I'm working very hard to paint inspirational and powerful messages around the school go Barry we're almost done with nine completed URLs for from a portage each of the floors one being this arrow close like sprayer kind of like Betty crying it's been a really great experience our you know I'm really looking at kids'll come back with an excited feeling dizzy I think about start on the air it will encourage kindness and promote just a great morale school and huge change in beginnings that were open internal and actually a lot of the teachers have been wonderful and I've been really embracing it and I'm giving us great feedback so much so that they asked us to do their bathroom that we are working on and we just say relax refresh renew and we're decorating the mirror and we're gonna put a couple more coats it's not a teacher you're an educational rockstar we'll do that one so we want them to feel valued as well and be able to come in you know the building has kind of a not a great reputation so we are hoping to breathe life back into huckleberry so I want to thank you know dr.
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Burrell and Miss Liberty Anna for letting us kind of take this on and cons we sprung it on last minute but we're glad we were able to really push it forward and get it going and Sherman Williams was nice enough to donate all the paint and a lot of the supplies so that was great so it really didn't cost much at all they thank you a beulas and this is something that joy spearheaded with a group of parents that she knows on her own and so for all of us fiscally responsible people this cost of taxpayers zero dollars and thank you joy so much can we get some pictures of some of those males posted on the Brookfield school's Facebook yes I did some of them put them up at Joy's going to be going around or someone from the team is going to go around and do some final pictures of the century let's get him over to us thank you great guys thank you any questions for Eve or joy moving on um security task force report the security task force meant actually just yesterday if you remember during our first meeting or our first meeting collectively as the full group we had miss Dorinda from whisky near calm and we kind of asked him questions in regards to security and safety protocols and procedures yesterday we had the principal's from the high school the center school and huckleberry and we did the same thing I think we are getting better at asking the appropriate questions and the procedures because it went very well and the task force has enough information now I believe that next time we get together we'll be able to formulate a little bit about what our needs are and where we need to go as far as improving security or revamping security protocols we will be also talking with Dan Caldwell next time as well to just kind of give his idea and impact perspective as far as the security and safety I'm on that committee and I will just say I'm very impressed with our building leadership and their their knowledge and their honest response protocols we ought to all be very proud of the teams and what goes on in our schools if there was ever a threat or a danger it's not just threats its dangers and you know it's you know what would happen if what was the term that the police chief yes the dance of the imaginary imaginary portables that's what you tend to do in those meetings you know you you come up with these crazy scenarios you know what the protocols dealt with every single one of them and and it was great and the police are very tightly connected with our leadership they really aren't and I was very not been very impressed so far other than that board retreat report that I think that was just a placeholder right before this meeting the board met in what we hope to be an annual retreat just as a self-evaluation it was meant to be self-evaluation and goals we spent the entire time doing self-evaluation which was an executive session so we will be meeting again publicly and we'll post that at a time just to discuss our year goals going forward with that okay so drop this next we have the consent agenda recommend a motion of the board approved the items on the consent agenda as recommended new hires and resignations any questions as usual during the August meeting we have a large list of new hires how many how many people there's a little less to or is this the total horde we have already had from July and then we have some hires that were still processing so those will be formally on the new staff members doing well we're looking at about 20 20 well 20 okay after what we have a chance to meet from oh yes typically we'd like to have the September meeting where we bring everybody here to introduce them and they'll be introduced also and you know some of the principals depending on how they like to introduce them give a little embarrassment a little fun and welcome their convocation on the 27th in the morning so we'll have some problem but we really brought in if I if I may you know I have to thank the HR department Terry and Beth and Michelle are just you know or benefits person as Michelle and we know Terry Cavanagh is our HR specialist they have just processed you know the not only when people retire or resign there's a lot of guidance and mentorship provided during these transitions in people's lives and then of course onboarding our new people we do three days of onboarding of our new people beginning this year will be on August 22nd 23rd and 24th before the rest of the teaching staff comes in and it's not all teachers it's lots of substitute teachers that get processed in the summer as well some paraprofessionals we have some exchanges there our part-time occupational therapists we've hired so it's not just faculty there's you know all kinds of employees so it's it's a big job big responsibility and we're really pleased with the people we're bringing on just so everybody knows is there's a statewide shortage in the following areas special education teachers speech language teachers Spanish teachers and English language learners are outstanding positions in some areas that we're still looking in the interview process of special education speech and language and Spanish so you know when there's there's openings in all the communities and so teachers are looking at their ideal positions where they can be closest to home and so forth and you know what they think might be the best fit for them and so if there's an opening in one area and they already have a job there they're moving around we're all we were talking about that at the commissioners back-to-school convocation today in Hartford with my superintendent colleagues and we're seeing we're all seeing the same issues so that's an area we need to we need to fill in quickly and we're working on that [Music] all in favor I'm opposed okay moving on to new business we have textbook approval recommend a motion that the board approved the following textbook for both filled high school ap physics as recommended by the Cape subcommittee college physics author Raymond and a serwe Chris vo 11th edition pronounce that better than I could I was as we went through that thank you for having me come and present this uh this textbook for AP physics and I think it's important just to give a little background about AP courses and how that works at a school in high school so basically when we have an AP course we're gonna run here at the high school there's a couple things that have to happen number one we have teacher has to be trained they have to go specific training usually it occurs at apt over like a three-day period we send our teachers there to be trained specifically in the techniques and skills required to teach that AP course at that college level those AP teachers then also have to submit a syllabus that has to be approved by the College Board so it's not approved by me the College Board actually reviews the syllabus that the teachers are going to use and then they approve it so what we've done here and we've had a textbook that we've been using I think was 2004 was the publishing date when ap physics was around back then and has continued to evolve since then it was more of a calculus based program since then College Board has made some changes in 2015 they made the change to a more algebra based program so that students and they split it to physics one and physics two so that more students could have access to it and that was a real conscious decision made on behalf of the College Board to allow more students to come in and participate and experience a high level course in physics our book was in 2004 so as a resource nothing really it didn't the line all that well the teacher was struggling coming up with ideas and how to use resources they were there certainly but the course sequence didn't follow is naturally cows board is really clear they don't really vet textbooks because that would be kind of a conflict of interest as you can imagine so they do contract out with a program called learning list that does this kind of reviews of textbooks they don't recommend they just review textbooks that say things that could possibly align with AP college of AP curriculum and since there's a pretty static curriculum and teachers have to align their syllabus to that it's a pretty Universal approach across the country so there's only two or three four books that really are gonna align really well to what we need to do for our college physics one and two for AP so our physics teacher physics teachers because we actually have two physics teachers now we have a second teacher is also certified in physics thank you to the board for that hire that allows us to bring somebody else in so that's great and so reviewed the curriculum with a alignment syllabus took a look at the the resources and the books are pretty close there's a couple options there's there is an online completely open source textbook which was an interesting perspective what we really kind of felt that we wanted to go with more of a print version there was one that was called Wiley's plus comprehensive advanced high school physics another one we looked at that was college physics from Pearson was called the strategic approach they're very similar textbooks because again they're aligned to what the College Board has said they have to do the reason I bring this book to you before you is a couple reasons number one well the price is great quite honestly the price is right is where it needs to be within that price we're also going to get some really great things we get a a workbook that goes along with it so not only do you have the book here and I'll pass around so you can see it [Music] so not only do you get the the textbook and the workbook that goes along with it that's called the road to the five that's gonna support all the resources that are in the actual book you're also going to get students get online access for free as well so that's the teacher can actually use a program called WebAssign to give interactive online assignments as well so now we're hitting multiple modalities kids have a workbook we have online versions there's a lot of different ways that kids can get practice to help us improve our AP scores one of the other pieces was that it also has a free PD that comes along with it so now we're not just buying a resource and throwing a teacher out and say okay figure out how to use this well she certainly could do that it's also nice to have somebody to connect with to say okay how can I best utilize this textbook the other piece is is that this textbook doesn't just align to the physics one it aligns to physics one and physics two so when we move to get more enrollment and increase our physics numbers to physics 2 we can also have the opportunity to use that same book we're not purchasing a new textbook for that but with the digital there's a lot of flexibility you know I see with a digital version of the textbook online as well as a print I see a lot of flexibility for us as our enrollment numbers increase that don't require us to continue coming back to the board and sang need to buy more textbooks need to buy more of these we can I can see using one set for physics one I can see using an online set for physics 2 there's certainly ways that we can look at doing this as we expand the program and this one one of the other great features about this particular book is at the end of each chapter there is a structured AP practice right that mimics exactly what the test is and none of the books that we looked at have those options so this is why we brought this book forward to you for approval and here to answer any questions that I could have answer for you any questions for mr.
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