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let that go out avery yep yep slowly but surely they're making b-line up here passing it back to ritzer doesn't get enough on it yeah no turning it over abby wayne gonna get there just hits it out sure team can get back into position there yeah sometimes that's a good option you know just get it out of there [Applause] yep 22 seconds this game is flying right by today yep
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we do have one of the social workers attached to the social emotional program but she also does see other students not just the students in the social emotional program the occupational therapist we have 2.5 ots and a 0.5 coda a coda cannot assess students they can provide services and a coda cannot do medicaid they have to be overseen by a um occupational therapist gina can you just did i miss something no say that what ot means and what coda means no sorry occupational therapist and the coda is an occupational therapist assistant okay thank you um so the number of students uh for the uh it's the 2.5 and the 0.5 or 100 students a lot of students with ot needs so their their average caseload is about 33 kids and last year we were up to 45 and that was one of the reasons why we did add an additional 0.5 ot because we just couldn't service the the service hours that were that were being um suggested what i did on the bottom is a little bit different than the information that you were provided last year i just broke it down a little bit more total students in district special education students are 367.
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um any board members have topics they would like to bring forward for consideration at future as future agenda items yes yes yes um i would like us to write a letter to i guess it would be governor newsome um and and also um what is it the california department of public health or something like that there is a director of that department um asking for autonomy in how we manage uh covet vaccination and with respect to staff and students and volunteers and i'm willing to draft this letter i'm also open to having staff draft a letter maybe there could be multiple drafts we need us we need a second to approve moving forward with that um i'd like to second so that we can just discuss it for a moment i think it's worth maybe a quick discussion so i'm going to second it i'm not sure how i'm going to vote yet but i do want to just chat about i know it's it's to put it on on the agenda and maybe i don't know if that discussion would be appropriate but anyway i've seconded it so um so we'll have to vote anyway um is what you're seconding um [Music] a discussion on whether or not to draft a letter so it sounds like he's agendizing let me clarify right discussion slash action yeah discussion slash accident drafts to be provided you know prior to distribution of the um the agenda right so discussion action to have a drafted letter and then draft or drafts to be provided in on the on the agenda packet you know gotcha i i believe that it would be appropriate if you wanted to submit a draft to have that as part of the agenda in order to drive discussion am i correct superintendent staley so the board would need to vote to agendize this and then by all means we would have supporting documents when it if it does come back forward we would have supporting documents with that okay i don't think i've we have not yet approved it we have a motion in a second so it's on the floor uh if we approve bringing this topic forward with the would it be appropriate for member tennis to provide a draft document for us to discuss at the meeting yes we could have as he mentioned multiple drafts there could be there are some drafts that are out there on a state level already it would be appropriate for mr tennis or other board members we would just have to consider those they'd have to be part of the agenda and be considerate okay so there may be multiple drafts okay so would we also be able to have a public health representative um present to answer questions or um at that time i'm always happy to ask them to join us and actually they've been very good about it in most cases that's part of your request yeah answer okay yeah and they can they they are at their will so you know doesn't hurt to ask a professional on on on hand to ask questions to okay is it clear then what we're voting to agendize could be multiple drafts a expert to be available to answer questions as we discuss what if anything to draft and send okay we have a motion and a second and clarifying discussion as to what the agenda item's going to look like as it comes forward all those in favor aye opposed two opposed two eyes mohsen fails could i have a roll call vote i was looking in the wrong direction yes absolutely um robinson no i was confused too because i thought i had heard you say an eye i was confused too because i thought i had heard you say an i no i had voted no okay um [Music] where are we anyone any other board members have a topic that they'd wish to present um i'd like to um i'd like to agendize a discussion about creating a land acknowledgement i'm sorry creating a land acknowledgement um for our district to adopt um because we are on occupied machu territory and it's appropriate to um to acknowledge the original people of this land and so it's a i think a discussion worth having um as as the upcoming generations are working to dismantle some of the impacts of colonization on the folks that are originally lived here so my motion is to discuss creating a land acknowledgement for our district to adopt to incorporate in in you know official settings dr kaiser are you thinking of something along the lines of what chico state has done i'm not familiar with what chico state has done was this just for the machuta um it's to acknowledge that this university is on the lands of the tribe and so that gets acknowledged okay i believe that that it is the machupa tribe yeah okay is there a second oh okay i'm sorry dr geisler i misunder misunderstood but georgian is there further discussion hearing none are we ready for a vote we had a roll call vote on the last vote so we will continue with the roll call because we were not unanimous in the last vote um member dobby dalby dr kaiser tennis abstain um do you want to explain your abstention i just don't have enough information got it um robinson i okay so that passes with one abstention thank you for explaining that anything else okay members um it looks like we are at the adjournment point does it need a motion huh motion to adjust do you still have cake left [Laughter] oh phil
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the out of district students when i say out of district these are the students that are at different facilities because our professional staff here can't support the students meeting the needs here and accessing curriculum and i took out and broke down and i didn't do this last year it was really just a total of students who were out of district but 12 of the students out of the 34 students that are out of district are 18 to 22 population which we are obligated by law to educate so seven uh 12 of those students um are 18 to 22.
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last year there were seven um in the budget but i didn't break it down so i just wanted to be are they all doing the danbury program no there's a variety of programs we have posts we have danbury we have newtown okay so it's depending on their need because the three programs do provide a different program okay that's that's it if you have any questions can you just go back to the school social workers and um the average caseload for those compared to what they were last year sure um let me start with huckleberry and you know we have a new social worker at center school but october one count is um meyer glaser who is our school psychologist with supporting those students now that we have that social worker there where she will be supporting a lot of the students because meyer does see over the the 504 students so huckleberry we have one staff member she has 14 students on her caseload and she oversees the 42 504s that are in the building which is also supported by the assistant principal and principal but for the most part the social worker does run those 504s with an admin as needed in those 504 meetings with scanier we have 16 18 students last last year was 23. and keep in mind the social workers not only see students with ieps but they also see regular education students so we try to be very careful of not overloading since we do have school counselors at wisconier and at the high school and at the high school we have 72 students which caseloads are 36.
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last year it was 28 and again one of those um uh social workers are attached to our social emotional program and what was last year's number for huckleberry uh last year's number for huckleberry give me one second was six okay thank you and wisconner was 23 and the high school was 28. so i'd like to get your opinion on uh where is he coming from um these case loads right your judgment about right too high too low again we go by service hours we uh try annual evaluations you know initials we never know when the initials are coming in because we push for them to go through survey prior as as a state mandate they have to have some type of serbia but prior to being um recommended or referred for special education um initial evaluation so gina can you hold there yeah serbia is srbi sorry for scientifically research-based intervention so that's a regular ed intervention period of time prior to if that is not as successful as we would like it to be then the consideration would be to go to ppt and consider and do a full scale evaluation yeah so we we do we look at the service hours we look at you know there for example we may have a student that has 18 hours of special education but those 18 hours may be divided between otp which is ot as occupational therapists physical therapy is pt pt slp is speech and language and they could also have special education services so we we do look at case loads by service hours more so than we do by caseload and the high school caseloads are getting getting very large and that's the core of my question where are you where are your pinch points right now high school high school i did notice that if you looked at almost every category that you've got a four year school at wisconsin and a four-year school at the high school but the numbers at the high school are so much larger is there is that a natural progression with kids age or is that something that's unique here in brookfield well no what happens on when we go back to the survey process we tend to have kids at serbia at the elementary levels so they're they're that time at the elementary and they're in the intervention they could be in for a period of time and released and they could sometimes they go back and forth which we don't want to get into but that serbia process is very very intense at the lower levels when you get to the high school sometimes the continuous of survey they start to hit a wall and then you start seeing more evaluations and more referrals um for your typical ld student more so at the upper levels than you do and then at the high school it could be a variety a variety of reasons for referral okay yeah and are these students that are reaching the high school have they typically been students that have received srbi for a good portion of their time in the lower grades it could be um but sometimes that survey is more hit at the upper middle school and then they hit that high school level and it's it starts to show because it becomes a little bit of a different of instruction a little more independent so you start seeing little little things starting starting to crack let's just say so um i would say yes okay and you never know how many move-ins we may have true so is there any trends in specific needs that kids are now i mean this i'm talking about this big jump at the high school are we seeing needs in a specific um area i know you can't get into yeah i have to because if you have like are there is there a big trend you know where there's a lot of kids with social emotional issues um i'm gonna say not more than the average year that we've had even though with covid we we we really have um a lot of supports at wisconier and you know when they go to the high school it's it's just a different ball game up there and sometimes where they you know they were they were just on the cusp it becomes it impacts them once they get to the high school of accessing that curriculum some of the kids that may be a 504 has worked for them you know through through a whisk and air and then they get to the high school and it's just not enough and they need a little bit more but again it goes back to initial referrals it goes back to move-ins it could be a speech and language student it doesn't necessarily have to be just a learning disabled student there may be some students who are identified as ed which is emotionally disturbed because their emotional state is getting in the way of them accessing the curriculum so to say a trend i'm gonna say no because we do we do have a variety and it tends to be um pretty pretty even um throughout the years i don't see anything skyrocketing if that's what you're asking gina do we have a specific model that we follow at least a huckleberry as far as for the school social workers um as far as the social worker pushing in to provide kind of those services in the classroom like mindfulness lessons that can benefit all the students and yet kind of meet those caseload requirements we do have the social workers push in we are doing the ruler um throughout the you know the entire building we also have school psychologists that push in and we at the middle school we have the school counseling um and at the high school so there's a lot of support there um as far as when the kids get a little older may need some more more needs sorry i'm trying to talk yeah i'm sorry okay my uh the district 18 and 22 year olds is that is that 12 number is that an outlier or is that that's pretty common like a pretty stable number um it depends because we um in the past two years we've had a um transition coordinator at the high school who come is from ed advance and we have had him involved in all of the transition for the 18 to 22 making sure assessments are provided making sure that the need is there we're working with level up so it that could be a pocket of students you know in a certain grade level that you never know until they hit the high school and that transition piece starts happening with the the transition now at 14 and we work with level up to get kids out into the community and doing some vocational so it really depends on when they hit that sophomore year we really know from the transition evaluations whether or not they're going to need that 18 to 22.
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and our typical life skills students will be doing the 18 to 22. but if that's typically like a third of the total number sometimes yeah it really depends on the population thank you i just want to go back to the whole middle school high school stark difference thing that i keep i think i'm receiving from you is that's what i'm getting um is there anything that we can be doing at the middle school level or even earlier curriculum wise programmatically so that there isn't this wall that kids seem to hit at the high school well remember the intervention services have to take place for a certain amount of time so that usually happens at the lower levels right so when you when those lower when the students start moving forward you know grade four grade five you know some of those intervention services are not working so now they're transitioning grade five and we're we have initials at at the middle school level so the intervention kind of pushes it a little bit further more so than what you see at the elementary so those intervention services down at the elementary the reading piece of it is huge you know as far as the data collection and kids reading the fluency the accuracy all all of those type of interventions are happening so it's developmental so you put them in the intervention for a period of time and they tend to be growing over time and progressing over time but sometimes they reach a point where it's that serbia is not working so there's something else that's getting in the way and that tends to happen a little bit later since serbia was put into place by the state okay i don't know if that answers your question if that's what you're yeah i just want to make sure that we're we have wonderful intervention or escalating the issue as quickly as i mean not as quickly as we can but at an appropriate speed so that kids are not sort of like thrown into the high school which is a totally different beast and and now all of a sudden they're dealing with this new plan no because again there could be move-ins coming in there could be initial evaluations for different reasons and it it it's it's not anything specific it's just it tends to be sometimes there's bubbles sometimes there's not so you know to pinpoint that no but what i can tell you is when the state implemented the serbia we have incredible survey here in both center school and huckleberry and it really supports the students in closing those gaps but again it pushes out the kids you know more so when they hit that middle school where that initial evaluation starts to come up or at the high school okay as far as occupational therapy um is it district wide really or is there more of a trend of students needing those services at the elementary level or middle or high school it's it depends on the on the disability so um you know there there are um at we have a uh one ot at center school we have one ot at huckleberry and we have the coda that splits between wisconier with the part-time and the coda or or the yeah the coda up at the high school because it's service-based however we have our ots who can only do the testing that will have to go to the high school and do whatever testing takes place so we have our full time more at the elementary than we do at the upper so yes at the elementary level because of the programs we have there they're fine motor skills and that tends to improve over time again with the program that they put in place at the elementary and you tend to see the services drop as they get older unless disability requires it i know you can't say what the needs are as far as occupational therapy services um at the elementary level but is any are they um more aligned to handwriting um needs you know would that just fine motor okay all right any other questions this is really informative this is great thank you any other questions thank you thanks gina okay the next item is the district enrollment report all right so after gina tired you out with all that information i will be uh i'll be able to be brief here this is the report we do each year again as gina mentioned this is why gonna mentioned it is the october one based off the snapshot on october 1 that is a state requirement that all districts take the enrollment snapshot it and then provide the accounts there so we report it accordingly so this report has the last um four years and the enrollment as of uh october one and that's on the second page we always just let everybody know that was as of october 1.
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every day there's changes with students moving in students moving out just like gina was talking about students might be identified a student with profound needs might move into the school which changes all kinds of dynamics and services so if you take a look at the second page we really we break down holistically by grade and then by the the three big sub categories which is students with special needs students who are english learners and students who are economically disadvantaged or what we call free reduced lunch and so as you look down you will see jumps in certain grade levels where we would expect that for example in kindergarten there was 132 students in kindergarten last year but now there's 176. well that was obviously because of the pandemic because the year before in 2019 there was 176 kindergarten kids it's a pretty stable number matter of fact uh bob mentioned in enrollment uh a quick enrollment study we did with dr prada who's a a known um statistician around the state uh he's he's projecting for next year so it's still a pretty stable number about 180 182 kids uh that was his draft report so that'll be part of this what gina presented tonight what i'm presenting here leads into the report you'll receive next month which is the just doing a little uh look ahead here what dr ruby will share which is the the class size reports next week all this is going to feed into december 1 when the superintendent's budget proposal comes forward this is all the backup data essentially that we're starting to front load for you um so you can see you know you've had the report you can take a look down there's some you know classes that are a little less classes that are a little more um you can see um our total student enrollment as of uh the 20 the 21 uh october 1st excuse me is 2588 students and then when you look at the students who are in the 18 to 22 program or outplace those 34 kids that brings our enrollment to 2622 as you can see there and relatively stable but considerably up by you know to 58 kids 58 kids more and remember a few years ago everybody was projecting that enrollment be going down and we think in brookfield obviously we've had the pandemic people are moving from the city to the suburbs the real estate boom um aging population turning over housing turnover so all of that's uh contributing to that um and you can see that we have i mentioned earlier that we have in my report my superintendent report that we have over 350 students so going back to some of gina's data students identified with special education services is 367.
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we have 103 kids identified as english learners that's been relatively steady for the last couple of years of course there's a little drop off last year and again you know we're not sure exactly why that is in terms of drop-off but again the pandemics affected a lot of a lot of families a lot of people and then we're pretty steady in our free and reduced lunch was at with it which is at 539 students there's about 20 percent of our population uh receives free and reduced lunch services john i know this is as of october 1st but to your knowledge have we had any large group or influx of students blood in um nothing that stood out to say oh there's a group of kids from this area or for any particular reason they've not had any questions okay all right thank you everyone uh next is the prioritized 2022-2023 and updated 10-year capital projects discussion and approval and the facilities committee has been reviewing this plan for several months and given the fact that we have several approved projects from prior years that are still in process we agreed that it was best to uh limit ourselves to bringing forward our top four priorities those are paving and concrete at the middle and high schools seating in the whiskaner seminar room and flooring in the wisconnier cafeteria as joy mentioned earlier there's a tbd in the cost for the flooring project because at the time of the most recent committee meeting we did not have an estimate we've since received an estimate of thirty five thousand dollars which can be added to the document if the board approves the plan with that modification and ken if you could just share it share with the uh with the board that the timing that we try to uh work within to get this over to the town into mr dunn for the town planning as well sure the uh the plan is for the town wide committee to meet sometime in november which is why we're looking for approval uh at this meeting tonight obviously we probably could go to the next one if we need to but we'd like to get over get it over to them as soon as possible and i have to once it's approved i have to do some more detailed worksheets that have to be submitted to the to the town for the uh the committee's uh consideration so the sooner the better um could you remind me about the item that says design construction of outdoor restrooms food service and storage um i know that's different from the locker room project but the locker room had restrooms right i think our outdoor accessible restrooms it does so restrooms accessible from the outdoor but they weren't right they weren't in the school yeah could you just remind me about this particular project this is a project that has been on the plan since before i even got here and it was to um like it says construct outdoor uh food service and storage and and built out buildings out in the in between the fields um and hundred thousand hundred ten thousand dollars was for design money much like we had uh designed money for um the boys locker room project and this has we've generally put the hundred and ten thousand dollars in the first year of the plan in a number of years i've been here and it's always been deferred it's like another building like almost closer to the tennis courts made a suggestion of maybe getting some donations or finding a sponsor to have an outdoor concessions yeah there's something yeah we've talked about it trying to get this uh it would be a concession stand multiple lavatory so student athletes and and the public can use the the facilities as well as can uh concession and storage so like almost like a field house that's what i was gonna ask i think i've heard the term field house that was this project many many high schools put these field houses in because at one time they were like we are they are using porta johns for all of the um you know for all the events and i mean we've been doing it forever and um you know there's a there's i think more attention to hygiene than ever and now the way we have our new bleachers set up and so forth you know concession is well behind the bleachers it would be nice to have the all those great folks who volunteer at concession to be able to see the athletics going on and then kids being able to use the facilities uh you know go to the bathroom but also wash up and so forth have electricity out there so as you know the fields go on and on and on and we really want to have a healthy and safe environment in proper storage as well and this 1.5 number is just a placeholder i assume right because we don't we don't probably wouldn't have any idea what the estimate would really be that's what this is correct does there a reason we're deferring that to year two the only reason is like i said we we've got a number of active projects out there already so we tried to just take bring forward our top priorities that we really believe need to be done soon and that we can manage so yeah my biggest worry with uh with the sheet is you've got 270 000 dollars of projects you're screening for in the first year but then you've got a list of things that are between two and a half and set six and a half million dollars every year for the next ten years and uh it just it feels like we're we're under shooting in the first year and it's just making the pile bigger later and i just said it was not clear why it was that we're not trying to get to a kind of a steady you know that's how much you have to spend over here sorry my microphone wasn't on sorry yeah like i said i think the the real reason is that we have we do have a number of projects that are still in process that were we really so this is a capacity issue yes exactly exactly bob well so how will we handle projects that are two and a half four and a half six and a half million dollars over the next couple years if we i have such little capacity that we can only do 270 000 worth of project well i think if we get two of which are two of which are paving correct yes so those should be quite easy to do and we should be able to get caught up then and then uh hopefully with our building condition study will help us prioritize which projects we can bring forward and you know and the ad fight off more of them the ad hoc committee for the town maybe meaning the capital the capital yeah yeah i think the town capital committee bob i think that's the this is the first year mr dunn is implementing yes and so i think that's a big part of this too bob is that um like like you're like looking at um and i really appreciate your perspective is pushing reality onto people not only the capacity of what we can do but the reality of of what it costs to maintain and improve our facilities and i think related to the building conditions that it could help us prioritize with that um but it's a little bit of a budgeting question um and how the town thinks about budgeting right if we add this up over the 10 years this kind of goes to your question rosa earlier about updating our needs study there are a lot of needs here and i would think we should be asking this capital planning committee that we ought to set a amount of maintenance budget that is more steady right and then we fit projects into that right um you know so if we're looking at i agree we're looking at an average of two and a half million dollars a year maybe we ought to be budgeting for two and a half million dollars a year and then we start filling projects in underneath it because what will happen here is you're gonna come in with a six million dollar a year and it will never get approved it'll just never get approved and and so i think there's some different thinking and it's how they approached the paving question years ago is we know we have the needs we have to build up to it so maybe it's not all that you don't leap to it in the first year but we have a more of a strategic view of how much capital we should be setting aside and then we start fitting projects into it um because this is i'm looking at this as kind of an overwhelming problem and it's um it's like we're gonna trot around the track in the first lap and then we're gonna have to sprint the next nine laps right and it's kind of not how you run a race right you want to pace yourself when you run a race and so that's just to me it just felt light in the first year not that if you don't have if you have capacity issues it's one thing but i'd urge us to talk to the capital committee about a different way of thinking about our major build these are our most major buildings in the town now i say that in light of the fact that town's just spending a ton of money building a new school so um so i've got a i i i defer to it's a very capable committee given the membership of that committee to think about it but i don't know the answer yet yeah and one of the problems we have is we had like i said we have a number of projects that are ongoing and we have a certain time frame where we have to complete them and and we just don't have the capacity to do a lot more plus what we've already got going on yeah i guess a lot of these are you know boiler replacement steam piping electrical service kitchen appliances you know fixing a buried tank they're they're all smaller right they're not they're not like like people think oh i have to re-roof the entire building or something like that although that's on the list too um but it's i think we need to think differently about how do we budget for capital right and i would urge the town to think about that and i can't solve it here tonight yeah no but i do worry if the capital committee is going to be meeting next month that this doesn't really present them with a very accurate picture of what we can not only our needs but what we can actually do so i worry about bringing this forward to them and saying these are this is our plan when there's no way that we can follow this plan i mean is this what has the facilities committee what about capacity yeah and it's also about what's to to the the root of it is how we plan for strategically capital which is a town function and how to how to fund capital and i know there's been a lot of conversation over the last couple of years that mr dunn and marcia have talked about and to the points that were just being brought up the the issue is in our first year even if we didn't have capacity issues and we asked for things um because of budget you can't get everything and it always gets deferred and pushed that's another big part of this so um yeah but but that's a self fulfilling prophecy and the problem with the low capital budget in the first year is all budgets are done year to year right so that's now the basis on which they have money for the following year so eventually this is what happened to us in paving in this town for years we had this little tiny bit of money in the budget for paving because somebody made a decision back in 2001 because i remember that we were gonna we're gonna bond everything and they it took us 15 years to get the nut up with a lot of hard work from the current finance committee and their predecessors to get it up so it's more self-sustaining and uh um the building maintenance is the same way all right it's something you have to consciously say i have a strategy and not i'm going to look at a couple of projects so my worry john is with a low number in the first year you're going to never get more than 270k ever and that's a problem so i mean we can go back as a committee and talk about it and we look at it no i would just recommend that you when we bring it to them it comes with a different discussion right how are we going to go deal with this right 10 years worth not just one year's worth and get the focus on the broader picture and i'm not sure i would change the submission because they're going to look at all these projects and move them around anyhow as a committee they have to think properly as a committee and just for everybody listening capital is not a school board item we submit things to the town and town approves all capital right so it's a it's a function it's a separate function of the budgeting process and so we're influencing and providing input to it not approving it per se so correct i just i'm treating this this way right you know we have a list of projects here and i just worry we're we have to change the discussion you know it's a capacity strategy how we're going to deal with it over the long run so to the people who make those decisions right so joy do you need approval of this tonight when you take it so that you can take it like approval yeah and what i guess like what's the if if everything's going to get switched around when we give this over to the committee okay fine but are we proposing is does our approval mean that this is the plan we are this is our submission they're making our subjects what you're recommending it's our submission i wouldn't even call it recommended it's our submission for their consideration okay all right when is the next meeting joy the next month so the first wednesday was it november second third the first wednesday third third third and when are they requiring this input from us they said they're going to be meeting mid-november right i don't know if there's an exact date i don't have the exact date yet i don't think they've set a date yet sometime in november okay now are there any other questions on this okay so then when you bring this to the committee you will just have a more broad strategy discussion are you on the committee yes yeah i thought you were so you know you've kind of gotten my thoughts and if you need me to help you with that i thought i'd be very happy to help formulate the speech yeah they said they would be in touch about the exact date but it's going to be soon i'm also on the committee you're on the committee too i think they're waiting until after election right that's probably wise so i i would suggest we submit it as it is and then work the work the process okay can i suggest that we change also change the tbd to thirty five thousand dollars since i do have an estimate do you need a motion for this a vote probably let's do that yeah typically we do i will go ahead and move that the board approved the 2022-2023 updated 10-year prioritized capital projects list as recommended by the facility subcommittee with the addition of the 35 000 um for the flooring at the middle school in in year one in year one second all right any other questions or discussions on it all right all in favor all right thank you okay all right um the 2223 budget assumptions and priorities okay so again annually at this time as we get ready for the budget season and we talk about the budget being a financial statement of our values and what we believe is important for our students and for our facilities in our district it's important we start with what's called we call it assumptions and priorities so the first page is our assumptions and our assumptions really is a framework for how we're going to operate it's kind of a statements of agreement that we agree on certain things as a board and administrative team as we go forward to give us those uh what's the term you've used before about guardrails as you say you know that framework dr ruby likes the term framework i know she likes that term and you like guard rails so it all works for everybody so you know that framework really starts with our portrait of the graduate our strategic plan goals uh ensuring the students are critical thinkers and collaborators communicators and change makers as they um move and matriculate through our school system um and so this this is a uh i think it's ten point or eleven font type and two and a half pages so i'm going to summarize and hit the highlights you've had this since friday um and we will continue to go back and forth and revisit this through um us starting on october 1 which brings us to mid-may which is our eight-month budget process here in connecticut and in brookfield and so the first thing is supporting the strategic plan which is making sure that the budgets provide sufficient appropriate resources promotes continuous improvement affords sufficient flexibility uh for entirely including it in the operating budget but being ready to continue to support needs and contingencies should the pandemic response to the pandemic have to continue in the next year next year's budget making sure our commitment to ensuring appropriate districts in schools organizational structures that promote the plan the strategic plan and intentional implementation of that plan maintaining our valued and established programs while responding to changing needs working to attract and retain highly competent faculty and staff things like having ski trip chaperone opportunities available for them is always something nice and fun um and uh making sure that uh board approved practices concerning class size uh and adjusting uh are maintained and then adjusting staffing patterns based on enrollment and we just talked about enrollment we talked about special education and the caseloads all of that impacts our guidelines for class size as well and who who teaches the students teachers and support personnel and all that enrollment and how it's based on student needs is affected and that's how that impacts the where we prioritize our finances provide the necessary resources for social and emotional needs for students after school programming so when we say after school program all those stipend positions we have for faculty and staff that are advising clubs and sports and uh everything else that we have for the kids are our drama productions et cetera um working to continue to develop our curriculum um and really supporting technology in a digital learning environment and really making sure those specific areas i emphasized in my report english language learners students with special needs etc making sure we bolster our pre-k programming to make sure our students are ready to go um and that kind of thing technology infrastructure is another important one and then really adhering to in this is a big one for us because we have a lot of laws and mandates that we must follow including state federal idea et cetera and all the contractual obligations that we have in collective bargaining and so forth as well as purchasing and transportation we just talked about that tonight and then adhering to policies and practices of the board specific board policies and then always working on cost containment and any efficiencies regional or otherwise that we can achieve so that's hitting it hitting it quickly but that's the framework we work within and we kind of agree to as we go forward and certainly as i'm presenting if you're having ideas and we'll discuss it afterwards if there's other things to add or reword or think differently about that's what we're here for tonight so this list is the same pretty much as last year it's it's it's um thematically the same it is there's there's been changes but it's it's pretty much the same framework we work within it's really important to define that for all of us in the community as well so they know why we're making certain decisions um then you get to page two and that's where we really get into the priorities that you can start to envision we'll be thinking about uh prioritizing for next year in the budget and whether is that continuing to put resources there or looking for enhancements and so forth and so and that's not all fleshed out yet because the principles are working with their school teams and then we have to meet to get ready for the december 1st presentation so important pieces for curriculum instruction and assessment which i just like to say simply teaching and learning it's it's it's the most important thing we're doing right we're keeping kids safe and teaching and learning that's why we're here in school and so we want to maintain and support digital curricular tools for our students to support blended and personalized learning continue advancing uh the integration of technology and resources into daily instruction supporting access to digital tech so a lot of you know the there's a lot of investment in technology that we must continue ongoing support for our faculty to develop the capacity in assessment literacy and evaluation expanding curriculum development aligned with the state standards specifically working on continuing to develop our social studies curriculum through the grades extending the development of the aligned assessment in supports of standard based grading as we have completed k4 and starting to really look into grade 5 now revision alignment with the science at the high school as well as k-12 social studies i just mentioned in alignment with the connecticut frameworks and ngs standards we do need to some of you who were on the board four years ago and five years ago were very involved as community members we'll remember that early on when dr ruby and i got here we started to really work with the teachers and and the principles and look at some of the curricular tools we had it's time to you know five years into having different ela and mathematics programs start looking into are these programs we're going to stick with are they do they need to be enhanced or adjusted and and or do we need to go with something different so we're going to form committees next year as we then analyze and look toward where we're going to go and we need a lot of input on that and a lot of analysis um let's see what else obviously um using the art funds for our instructional coaches our tech integration specialist ken went through some of that today continuing that in the very intentional plan of how we over time work that into the budget so we don't hit any kind of a budget cliff working with gina who's just up with mrs weigonick with finalizing talented and gifted identification process um and also revising and refining the the policies and alignment with new legislation that's come out and that goes to you know i see amy and mike and deb over there and our policy audit and the work we're going to be doing with dr mastaro from cape there's also a state mandated state mandated curricular course that needs to be offered at high schools that's black and latino studies that there are some districts piloting that this year but you must offer a course next year and so that's we have to be prepared for that and the high school has been starting to ramp up and plan for that comply with state mandates for bilingual education uh it's important for we've talked about this on and off with our resource provision for english learners when you have students in the number of of 20 speaking the same language in one school in a given year and this year we have that at huckleberry spanish is that language the following year by state uh legislation you must have a bilingual program so we have to prepare for that and that's part of our will be part of our budget preparation um let's see looking and then and then examining our tesol uh teacher student ratio uh we as as you all know you invested last year and then a second um english language teacher so we have two now in the district um success plans uh grades six through twelve we have those in district um and there are mandated a new mandated uh parent collaboration with staff requirements and that may um we're digging into that will likely require more release time for teachers and staff to meet so that there's a cost to that because there's a substitute provision and things like that similarly social and emotional learning there's a new assessment requirement through legislation and so we need an assessment tool that's the first thing the second thing is we need time release time for staff to analyze the assessment and plan and then the other part is we need to be aware you know it's we think these things through an assessment may reveal significant needs in one or two or three areas and so we need to be prepared to provide resources if we have uh rising uh areas that are of need so we need to be ready for that um and so that could that could be some kind of uh in the form of some kind of intervention beyond just a regular classroom intervention uh so that's all kind of in the teaching and learning area that really is student focused um in leadership we want to continue today oh sure sure you would stop there that's fine it's a good section to stop actually joy please so this new legislation um is there a a place that we can look quickly or find that or get access to that absolutely absolutely there's um just so you know the csde has a memo out there's a number of different memos but if you wouldn't mind i mean i know lisa will be writing it down but send me an email and i i'll make sure i send it out to the whole board there's a there's a whole we have a whole legislative to-do list and so i can get that to you and many much of that is focused on some of the policy work that we have to do as well okay the state mandated course is that gonna go come through cape oh yeah that's all that's all got to be worked through that yep absolutely john real quick the uh t soul because uh you mentioned that we get we add that t soul teacher we also lost two tutors so are we is that gonna is that part of that uh teacher student or sorry the teacher student ratio yes so what we're gonna do mike is that that's where that's where the bottom up uh budget development process is so great we we start at the school level so we look at this we start with all these student needs we're talking about right all this different information this data and then we'll work with miss holly with kevin she will demonstrate to us and show this is the data and this is why we need this program that program this staff member and that kind of thing so that's all part of that and it's not finalized yet we're not ready yeah we're always just really getting i don't want to kind of make that but we're also trying to read the tea leaves and and project for you folks so you know what's coming you know to get you ready we've got to be looking at these it just it just didn't seem that you know to kevin holly's presentation that one teacher was going to solve the overwhelming need for the the tutors as well so i was i was curious about that and cameron could always come to a cape meeting and and talk about how things are going and i'll give you guys an update there's added needs that'll be in the budget of course so of course okay how about i enjoy himself uh the mandated parent consult is that a plan that is coming out of covid or that's just a new i think that was actually i think that it's hard to remember all these laws that legislation uh was passed maybe uh a couple of years ago and so when these laws are passed sometimes they have implementation so that we have to get ready for them and is there a time stamp on these as far as um when they have to be implemented yes some actually there there's implementations to get started on this year in this current year and then really ramp up the budget for the following year and are these priorities in priority order or are these in just 16 here's 16 items we're going to focus on these are the items we're going to focus on there there isn't we didn't prioritize them that way what we'll do is typically i mean if you think back to the i'm glad you asked that bomb the um the budget presentation we usually break that down into you know four five six goals big goals then we break it down that way we try to prioritize for you folks in within those budget goals those specific budget goals okay so with leadership uh we have a real focus area as you can see on um social emotional learning developing our our leadership capacity i'm part of that our school administration special education supervisors you know you know the folks here um really getting better at that understanding more learning more about it focusing on school climate one of our district implementation goals the fourth goal there's reading writing math and then there is a school climate goal um and also a lot of great work has been going on uh dr ruby's been a big part of it and so what ghana's been a big part of it are building administrators in terms of trauma-informed instruction you've heard that before so a lot of work there and then um collective efficacy you know and how are we together better as a team than as individuals so um those are areas we're going to focus on we plan to focus on and then the next is operations and facilities which really will go into some of the pretty quickly you'll see operational things but also kind of kind of capital focus so in operations and facilities which is the last section um we want to make sure we implement our transition plan to the new school and so there's summer preparation preparation work to be ready to go we need to have ready in terms of getting ready for candlewood lake middle the middle school needs to be concerned too because you've got different scheduling you have to think about with six through eight um and then so all the considerations right you've got staffing certifications leadership uh organization enrollment transportation we've got plans for start time changes and things like that we're getting ready for uh all general operations and protocols so we need to be thinking about all of that as we prepare for the new school um just like i was talking about sel there's actually new legislation for school resource resource officers to learn about social emotional learning um that we'd have to work with jay purcell and chief purcell and that would come from pd from the uh from the police department so it's it's a focus it wouldn't come out of our budget necessarily and but it doesn't mean the sro couldn't participate in our pd as well so there's that kind of thing but there's very specific things for officers as i understand it at this time um eric will be looking to update the classroom presentation stations um uh real with a real focus on wisconsin has been completed over the last couple of years continue to invest in our chromebooks and really get it get us to a point of completing the the full one-to-one initiative looking at adopting a new adaptive website that's something we want to uh eric's really looking at how we can improve our website part part of our our our website limitations uh we we have stayed with this the i think it's called uh oh gosh what is it community in town or something is the name yeah yeah and uh but it's the same as what the town has and so there are other options out there that eric's going to be taking a look at so it could be a more user friendly and uh just a better enhanced experience new transportation contract we talked about that a little bit tonight ken's getting ready to go out to bid on that finance committee's talked a lot about that um engage the arc architectural firm for the building condition study we just talked about that one of the things we have to remember is with a building condition study that's how we started really analyzing center and huckleberry and was it worth the old phrase a lot of people talked about when i first got here throwing good money after bad to keep fixing these schools but they're well past their their useful life or to go with a new school so what we really need to dig in on is you know while we know 10 or 12 12 years ago maybe now there was a major renovation to the high school um we still have lots of issues at the high school that that you know we've all kind of inherited and so um we need to to really start to think long and hard about the high school and the middle school really analyze what are the needs and you know do we are we gonna have to go into something as big of an investment uh as any kind of renovated new renovate as new type of a project or like bob was talking about with roses you know going through um and and having a more aggressive capital plan that isn't necessarily a renovate is new but we we really tackle these projects that may mean we have to have some kind of additional project manager that we hire to go with that so we have the capacity to do all these projects so those are things we need to think about but the buildings are older and they need serious maintenance um we need to action plan for the strategic plan so that's something operational like i just talked about tomorrow we're going to start to get that first link that thought exchange out there which is really exciting for everybody it's really fun and exciting to talk about the future and what we want for our kids um rather than this constant survival mode we've been in for a year and a half so you know the administrative council yesterday you could just see the joy in the administrator's faces start just talking about this stuff again and thinking about kids and what experience we want them to have and what skills that we want them to to leave us with um we really talked seriously about the need um the need at the k through eight schools to have a secretary available all year long uh the current practice is that our secretary or principal secretaries are available 11 months and not 12 um and so um there's consideration of that as well that we'll be seriously talking about to to really staff our schools properly uh in the summer um i think many contracts and the way we've operated is that everything just shuts down in the summer and just a quiet time where everybody can relax and as as the board knows for sure summer is is in a lot of ways our busiest time with hiring and getting the schools ready it's you blink your eyes and it's over and there's lots of family needs and so forth not only for registrations but everything else that goes on maintenance et cetera we've already talked about contracting contracting with cave for the policy service um making sure the arp ester grant is properly implemented and transitioned through the operating budget over time which we just talked about and then the last piece is really just advocating for the constant upkeep of our fields and and with the parks and rec department and so there's a lot there folks and that's why it was important to get to you last friday to give you a chance to take a look at it ahead of schedule that's all i have thank you so what what are the next steps on this then in terms of our budget planning schedule so the the next steps are if the board is comfortable tonight with this make a motion to uh approve it and move forward with it um if the board you could also approve it with a couple of amendments if there's some other ideas for it but between now and november 3rd november 3rd is the next meeting um we're going to be talking about the transition to the the plan is to talk about the transition to the new school and then december 1st very early we might be the first one in this in the state to be presenting the budget for next year um we'll we'll be presenting the budget so it's important that the administrative team has that knows the framework and knows that the board is supportive and comfortable the framework so we could develop the budget because in the next week or two we start the meetings with the principals and really thinking through what we need for next year and you'll get us the information that the administrators are requesting or what the teachers are requesting as far as budget yes i'm glad you're reminding me of that any other questions all right um well then i will move that the board approved the 2022-2023 budget assumptions and priorities as presented by superintendent dr john burrell second okay all in favor okay moving on to old business we have none um about the candlewood lake elementary school building project um dr brill do you have any updates to share on that i know you've been in touch with um yes actually paul and i had a brief chat today um he really the main thing he talked about is the one one continuing um action item for the nbc uh the other was you're just talking about some of the concrete forms and some of the pores the concrete pours he uses all that industry language that i'm not super familiar with so thankfully he and josh are on the committee um so he's talking about that a little bit but but things are moving along um as best they can at this point and um but the main thing we're still waiting on is to really get a um i was gonna say concrete but that wouldn't be right a firm uh calendar moving forward um he's expecting something next week he's asked ong to do that um to make sure that i mean everything's hinging on no right now assuming we're going to be uh moving in in the fall so that's gotta you know partially moving in with the you know the the uh the kids so we've got to get that ready um in short order and we've got to know that that's gonna happen so omg should be getting us a calendar in the next week and um we'll make adjustments based on that and we'll make adjustments to what our our current thinking if we have to if not we'll move forward with our current thinking uh either way we'll be talking about it in two weeks for sure so as of now we're on schedule as far as i understand we're on schedule and well they have the basic building enclosed so it can be in inside work before the weather turns cold and bad that i'm not sure of and one of the things that that you hear talk of but i haven't had any official word on is what we're all thinking about holiday presents paper goods supplies of all kinds in in the supply chain and what you see off in the pacific so um up to this point we've been on time um and so that's i think that's where paul's concern really lies is he wants to make sure that they can commit to being on time with everything um and so that's what we're waiting for and i know i talked i think i talked about that two meetings ago and still really waiting for no more talks we really need to see something on paper so we could you know budget start time staffing everything hinges on knowing that um because we start we have to start the budget process so early which is all the resources that go into this and we have to be very cognizant of the lives of our staff members and you know transitioning and moving people around as well as our families and our students so people just need to know and that's what we're waiting for thank you all right um moving on uh to public comment um we don't have anybody signed up in this book um the crowd is very small tonight is anybody would anybody like to speak sorry i i just don't understand why you know you give us certain words as to what time we have to sign up by and then it changes i just wish there would be consistency okay well then we'll have everybody sign up by seven o'clock then okay okay moving on to three main points uh i was thinking of the covid update dr brill provided and maybe a mention of us continuing discussions about the buses also i thought it would be important to mention the special services update from mrs wygonick and then the 20 22 23 budget assumptions that's what i was going to say yeah i'm good with that can we roll in the enrollment maybe with the case load yeah absolutely yeah i think that's important to be able to share that in a lot of different ways and all those reports there was a lot of reports ever every meeting every it's important for the public to remember to every subcommittee that we talk about uh anything of the board all the minutes the agendas everything is online uh on the website people can ask access at any time and within a short time period we turn around even even the minutes from these meetings but you know when we do our three main points it also gets it out there on the facebook page i think it's so valuable absolutely to let people focus on right now on facebook it really is yep [Applause] okay uh upcoming events okay at center school the fall festival and book fair is this saturday october 23rd from 12 to 2 and october 25th 26th and 27th is 1220 dismissal for conferences huckleberry has the virtual book fair and the huckleberry hustle fundraiser is ongoing through october 30th they also have 12 20 dismissal for conferences on october 25th 26th and 27th and they have spirit week the week of october 25th culminating with the huckleberry hustle on october 29th whiskenier has a psat for eighth graders on october 28th and they have a spirit day wear your costume on october 29th and the fall ball and homecoming dance at the high school is at the amber room on october 30th and all schools have no school for students and professional development day on tuesday november 3rd november 2nd thank you all right um any other uh upcoming events all right well the state foreign oh yeah jj stacks this saturday october 23rd from one to four is this brookfield skatepark fundraiser everybody's interested yep okay all right then uh without objection meeting again thank you thank you [Music] you
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thank you okay [Music] thank you [Music] mike's oh thank you it is now uh commissioners are we ready too bad where'd it go there okay good evening everyone and welcome to clifton high school uh i'd like to open our regularly scheduled board of education meeting for october 21st 2021.
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all right time is 7 00 p.m and we will call the meeting to order kimberly if you do a roll call please present danny hi here andrea corey here greg meyer here scott middleton here thank you very much we have a quorum if you'd all join me in standing for our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you i'd like to welcome the public for attending our wonderful meeting this evening so would everybody get a chance to sign in perfect thank you and do we have any public comments not all at once just well thank you for attending anyway uh correspondents i think that's being passed around right now no correspondence okay we're just flying right through this though perfect all right on to our consent agenda agenda yeah um you've got all of your reports as per usual resignations you'll note are mainly transportation i just want to take the opportunity to say anybody with a desire to learn to drive a bus we will teach you anybody with a cdl we could get you that bus endorsement on it should you desire uh we are hiring a cook which is great news we are still one employee down in cooks we would like to have another cook but uh those are pretty much the the main things there with the vacancies we have a part-time custodian that we're going to be looking for the assignment for that would be a floater and then we also would like to post for a transportation secretary we uh talked more about this in executive session but uh we did interviews for transportation director this week and um we're gonna look at the secretary and see if we can find a different solution to that so um with the only addition of posting a vacancy for transportation secretary kind of like the transportation director we'll fill it if we find the right person otherwise we'll make do until we find that right person so with that i would recommend we approve the consent agenda as presented questions comments concerns all right i thought i'd entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented i'll make the motion thank you tyson tell your second second thank you lisa kimberly your real call please [Music] yes andrea corey yes yes all right okay so we'll go on to uh our communications reports and presentations and first the presentation of the 2021 annual financial report and audit from i'm not even going to pronounce that if you would pronounce the name of the firm please it'd be great okay from jim there we go that one i can do the floor is your sir thank you so thank you for the opportunity to be here i will reflect personally that for years i would come here and make the presentation and as i did i would look out and i would see sister-in-law linda marshall sitting in the audience i look up this year i do not steal in this marshall apparently she wasn't coming for me i'm kind of hurt but um that's the way it goes so i will also tell you that in this time of code there are challenges in practicing that we didn't experience before many of them we have under control one of them i do not quite have solved is my glasses keep fogging up when i wear my mask however i've got most of these numbers memorized so we should be just fine so let me first tell you to report to the board the manner in which the audit was conducted and the overall condition of the records so we did the audit we did it in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards and governmental auditing standards we applied those specific regulations and standards that apply to illinois school districts specifically we tested the assets liabilities revenues and expenses of the district we also tested separately the federal monies which you received in connection with your federal contracts and you were subject to what is called a single audit which is additional testing required based upon the dollar amount of federal monies which you received in the current year and so the dollar amount of revenues which you received exceeded that threshold which is 750 000 and as a consequence we performed additional audit tests specifically as mandated by federal regulation on the federal monies which you received i will tell you that you have no question costs in your federal monies we found no no discrepancies in the expenditures we found that the school district complied with all of the provisions and conditions associated with the federal grants that's really a credit to the financial structure of the administration and specifically as much as i hate saying nice stuff about her in front of her julie who does a really nice job and who made sure that all of those federal monies were appropriately accounted for i'm happy to tell you that there are any number of audits that we conduct where we find issues not huge issues but discrepancies relative to the requirements and conditions associated with the receipt and expenditure of federal monies those grants are specific as to all of the requirements associated with that and many many organizations end up with a comment or or several comments you all have none and so that's really a credit to your administration we did find overall the books and records to be neat and orderly we had the complete cooperation of your administration there were no disagreements over accounting issues no disputes over access to accounting and auditing records and documentation no disagreements over the financial statement presentation no attempts to unduly dissuade us from our opinions in all ways the audit went really very much textbook as you would want it to be so as a result of that work we come to you with a draft clean opinion subject only to your approval and then we're ready to issue i should also mention the afr which is the filing for the state of illinois is all complete and ready to be filed as well and we simply can't file it until we have a completed audit we don't have a completed audit until you accept it and so here we are and so if we then move past the clean opinion the draft clean opinion to page four of the financial statements i'm going to walk you through the uh financial items now at the risk of telling you what you already can see there are 69 pages to this report and at an average of one or two minutes a page we'll be here for about an hour and a half however we're gonna we're gonna do an executive level kind of briefing of this and simply give you the set of highlights page four which is your assets and liabilities on a cash basis of accounting which is the regulatory basis accepted by the state of illinois for school districts it starts with cash and investments of a total of 19 163 000 split between 6 million 132 and 13 million and change in in the investment line item now i will tell you that you all have done an especially proactive job this year in ensuring that your monies were invested in interest-bearing securities and you have placed them into a dietrich bank money market account which has actually given you more flexibility and interest than you might have otherwise earned with your cds or other bank kinds of investments so you've done a nice job especially this year in investing those monies now unfortunately the interest rate environment is such that is we'll discuss notwithstanding your best interest your interest income in total is actually down relative to last year but that's rate driven and is despite the fact that you've done a nice job of investing all those monies at the end of the day you can't get water from a stone or interest from your monies so total cash and investments of 19163 that's up just a little over the previous year you then have your general fixed assets land building improvements other than buildings and capitalized equipment that number reflects the on significantly reflects two items the ongoing construction activity which you had in 2021 and actually were able to complete in 2021 and place into service and some additional unusual expenditures specifically driven by coven and two school buses so specifically you had roughly 2.9 million in capital expenditures in 2021 of that amount approximately 145 to 150 000 was to buy two school buses you had another not quite two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in chrome books and other computer equipment much of which was covered driven and then you had the expansion of the facilities you had another 2.4 almost 2.5 million dollars spent in the building through train which was completed all of that then went into your fixed assets so 2 million not you also had some depreciation of another million six or so that's a non-cash charge that gives you the balances that that are in your equipment total assets then of 60 million 914 000 on a cash basis consisting as we said of 19 million and a little bit in cash in the rest of fixed assets on the liability side the big dollars i mean you have a little bit of activity fund liability obviously but the big dollars are you see 12 million 140 000 in bonds outstanding at june 30 2021 that number is after the payment of 3 million 270 000 in principle as scheduled in the bond indentures for 2021.
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okay we will bring this uh meeting to order this evening the regular school board meeting um our mission statement here at center grove is we develop knowledgeable confident and responsible citizens through inspirational and innovative learning opportunities if you all stand in your own homes wherever we will have the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay before we get going tonight i need to read a statement here because things are a little different because this evening's board meeting is being held virtually we will be using the webinar features in zoom to facilitate public feedback specifically the q a feature if you have a comment please type in the q a box your name address the action item to which you would like to comment and then your comment as we do in in-person board meetings we will take the first five comments that are related to an action item i will then share those comments during the public comment section of the meeting just to clarify your comments need to be in the form of a statement so let's move on to action or adoption of the agenda do i have any comment on that from board members mr president mr president i move that we adopt the agenda as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second was that mr daniels yes thank you now because of virtual meeting we go through a roll call so i'll start with mr alexander hi mr daniels hi mrs counts aye and mr hubbard i and myself motion passes five zero we adopted the agenda let's move on down now to action items our first action item this evening is the first reading of proposed policy revisions mr dr arkanov who are we going to give that to um mr president you know what we skipped over something thank you mrs parker's right on it uh i apologize to everyone let's back up to the consent items number five do i have any discussion on our consent items any questions no see you now here's none there i need a motion mr president i move that we accept the consent agenda as presented thank you and we will have a roll call i'm sorry do i have a second i'll second thank you mrs counts so first by mr alexander second by mrs counts now do roll call mr alexander hi mr daniels hi mrs counts aye mr hubbard hi and myself 5-0 motion passes thank you for reminding us of the consent items now we will move down to the action items we have the first reading of the proposed policy revisions thank you mr russell uh this evening um the board will uh take no action this is just a first reading on some revisions to and editions of some board policies uh as they're presented in your packet much of these policies have been revised mostly around the impact of the pandemic over the last two years and some of the actions that the boards have had to take it primarily with electronic meetings and so forth so with that um i just present those to you for your review and questions so i will open the floor for questions and comments and discussion about these items this evening but no action is required tonight any questions or discussion rich do we do did we solidify the process in which once we approve these at the next board meeting that the appropriate online updates will be made yes we do yes thank you anyone else and and i will clarify for example the bylaws the new bylaws around electronic meetings those are outside of a public health emergency they do not pertain to a public health emergency okay thank you dr arkanov our next action item is 6.2 approved statement of benefits and compensation thank you mr russell this evening um i'm recommending that the board approve the updates and statement of benefits and compensation for non-teaching staff and this evening mr taylor will provide you with an update on that and some information for your review yes thank you dr arkanov um this is something we typically do in the month of october after we've been able to settle and negotiate a teacher contract many of these changes will align with what the board approves for the teaching staff at the last meeting but we do update all these documents you'll see it's updated to reflect the staffing changes that we've had in the past year it includes the rays and the changes to benefits that we have this year again updating names in the directories of each of these we did take a look at our year-round employees and so we had a discrepancy in our holidays versus our peer schools and as we've added both martin luther king and presidents day is full holidays now for the school we took advantage of adding a couple holidays for the year around employees we did add some language to clarify um how to how and how not to use lost time during an e-learning day for some staff updated again some more staffing changes and names updated and changed some of the sro the school resource officer compensation based off their years of experiences added those positions that we've talked about of police lieutenant and safety and security integration specialist and we updated a 15-day waiting period we made a change for our long-term subs to waive that 15-day period moving forward typically they're paid at a lower rate and then they go up these are subs who typically have an emergency license or a full teaching license and are helping us out i think that's it all of the summary there is on one page i do want to point out that on some of these like the insurance change when we talk about a 12 increase that does not equate to the percentage increase we we provided in the staff raise this year 12 of our employees premium is far less than um the seven and eight percent increases that we did give earlier this school year um it obviously varies on annual earnings um but the the most are uh our plans went up or 40 and that was for our highest health plan and some of them were as low as five dollars per month um whereas the hopefully the salary increases were closer to uh you know 100 or so for even the the lowest earner in our district and for some folks their monthly might have went up by um four or five hundred and it just kind of depends on how much they make so those two percentages don't equate i just want to be clear on that for some folks um and just let you know anything else mr taylor no i think that's all thank you i'd welcome any questions you may have any questions from the board and sorry i just caught this i didn't i didn't catch this when we were when i was reading this prior to the meeting jason we added a position of lieutenant do we have someone in that in that role we did promote from within yeah it's just an additional compensation we didn't actually have an office jason beck is doing that mr alexander oh okay awesome sorry i should have asked that no no it's fine we're really happy to have mr back doing that yes sir anyone else i just want to say congratulations to jason um he's a good guy he was in case you guys don't know who he was he was our last board meeting there with us so he uh he's a good guy congratulations okay do i have a motion mr president i move that we approve the revised statement of benefits and compensation as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second call a second thank you mrs counts roll call mr alexander i mr daniels hi mrs counts aye and mr hubbard i and myself motion passes five zero thank you everyone thank you for the hard work on teacher compensation and other compensation thank you jason our next uh agenda item approved certified staff handbook 6.3 thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the certified staff handbook and mr taylor will provide you with some additional information thank you dr arkanov this handbook applies to our teaching staff and some of our administrative staff minor changes this year we had to make some changes to clarify updated snla language we did add a section on military leave to clarify we've actually got a couple of active service um folks or they're in reserves but they're being called back and forth for service and so we wanted to clarify some of that and then we updated our workman's comp uh benefit that's actually switching providers and so we had some addresses and names we needed to update um but other than that those are just the three changes this year thank you mr taylor any questions for mr taylor i think this is the fewest changes i've ever seen jason job okay do i have a motion for approving the certified staff handbook mr president i move that we approve the certified staff handbook as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second is that mr daniels yes thank you roll call mr alexander hi mr daniels hi mrs counts aye and mr hubbard aye and myself motion passes 5-0 thank you the next item of business is to approve support staff handbook mr dr thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the support handbook the changes to that and again mr taylor will provide you with some updated information on it thank you a few more changes here this covers obviously the about half of our employee employee group so um added a lot of new positions and titles things that have been approved on various personnel reports over the past year added some language to help folks out during inclement weather and emergency closing time where they could actually have work from home option approved by the supervisor same thing on those closures uh same fml language we did in the certified we did give a little more flexibility on funeral leave there was a clause that would be three days beyond such death we went ahead and extended that so folks have more flexibility the military leave language is identical to what we did in the certified staff handbook clarified some paternity leave language under fmla again talked a little bit about the sro experience incentive we've got that in here for some other some other positions and then finally the changes for workman's comp that we talked about just a moment ago so a few more cells but not just about the same amount of changes thank you mr taylor any questions for mr taylor i'm glad to see that uh you know we we all love mrs toomey and the service that she provided but i'm glad to see we updated to acknowledge mrs counts as uh as our new board member that you just that's good any other thoughts or questions i do appreciate you worked a little bit more on uh support staff having other ways of checking in for work on emergency days because i know that was an issue they were concerned about we've got a lot of folks that are able and willing to work remotely during those situations real helpful well they're very dedicated and this this helps them stay that way okay do i have a motion on approved support staff handbook mr president i move that we approve the support staff handbook as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second a second thank you mrs counts roll call mr alexander scott mr alexander are you still with us you're going you're muted listen you're muted there there you go mr ben all right mrs capps i and mr hubbard and myself 5-0 it passes thank you everyone our next thing is resolution to appoint board of directors for building corporations and i assume that's to you dr arkanov thank you this evening i'm recommending that the board approve a resolution adopting board of directors for the building corporations and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information on this item thank you we use building corporations to assist in the financing of our school construction projects this is a very common practice in the state of indiana and currently we have three different building corporations each of these has a board of directors that is appointed by this school board and normally these directors serve for the life of the bonds which finance the projects which is typically 20 years and since this these these uh building corporations don't meet typically this causes problems for us when we need to contact someone that may have moved as a result we'd like to uh establish the same three people board members for the three building corporations that we have those people are lisa porre uh brandon ferguson and jennifer rachael and and we've talked with them they're all obviously active in the community and and willing to do this so the resolution that you have in front of you accomplishes this change we've been working with our attorney jeff walkenbush to prepare this resolution and we're asking for the board approval this evening thank you dr gabriel any questions for dr gabriel do i have a motion on this to appoint board of directors for building corporations mr president go ahead go ahead amy i move that we approve the resolution appointing the board of directors for building corporations thank you mrs counts mrs counts if you would uh look and see where you can turn your camera on my camera's on okay mrs counts was the first mr alexander was the second this time roll call mr alexander aye mr daniels aye mr scouts i and mr hubbard and myself motion passes 5-0 thank you our next order of business is to approve the 2022 budget and the resolutions and dr arkanov thank you this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the 2022 budgets for all funds and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information this last meeting uh in in september we had a presentation on the budget uh since that time there have been no questions or issues raised and no changes made the presentation is here but i don't see the need to go through it again since it was presented a month ago so at this at this point we are asking the board to adopt the budget as presented along with the resolutions that are included thank you dr gabriel any questions for dr gabriel on the budget uh dr gabriel do we have a more updated student count at this point that we had a month ago we do um we know that the final count is going to be uh 9071 which is less than uh we anticipated a month ago so but we do have that final number now yes and what did we anticipate a month ago yeah that was my question well the budget was built on 911 and last month we were [Music] we were expecting it to be about 90 80.
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if you all would please rise for a salute to our flag followed by a brief moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mr uc roll call please mr abedrabo here mr awad here miss passport here miss beltran mr canova here mr daley here dr danny here vice president casper here president smith here we have a quorum uh mission statement uh miss vice president casper would you please read the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world open public meetings act the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight uh just to remind everyone uh by governor's order uh if you're in the building you're expected to wear a mask however the ordinance also states that you need to be three feet apart etc so this board on the dais we are three feet apart we have plastic barriers between us and we do quite a bit of talking so board members if you feel more comfortable not wearing your mask that would be okay if you get up to move around you would have to put the mask on visitors if you wish to sit separately from anyone else six feet apart and wish to take your mask off i would not have an issue with that if you're near other people then you must keep the mask on if you are not vaccinated you must keep the mask on so if you are more comfortable keeping the mask down please just sit in an area where you're not close to other people okay i think that will make us all comfortable abide by the regulations and again that's your preference if you wish to keep the mask on obviously please do and board members uh feel free to remove the mask but especially when you're speaking one of the complaints we got from the meeting last week is they couldn't hear commissioners with their masks on so if you are keeping the mask on when you speak if you would kindly just lower it while you're speaking and then put it back on thank you all okay okay we are fortunate tonight to have paula regoza our pbsis district coordinator with us and she is going to make two presentations as the pbsis showcase of the month to uh grade seven students from christopher columbus middle school so uh miss rogoza if you would uh come up to the mic good evening everyone thank you president smith vice president casper commissioners of the board of education dr robertosi and central administration for the opportunity to continue to showcase the positive behavior support in schools framework during the clifton board of education meetings the foundation of pbsis is based on daily preventative practices these practices include building and sustaining positive student and staff relationships in clifton schools staff provide students with praise specific statements paired with a point or ticket when students display these pro-social behaviors and follow school-wide expectations these daily practices amount to students feeling supported and loved tonight we highlight outstanding student participation in the pbsis framework or the champs program as it is called at christopher columbus middle school ccms utilizes chance points to recognize students for efforts and maintaining the positive landscape of their environment so james and joseph zuniga are twin brothers in the seventh grade at ccms both james and joseph were top champs points recipients in grade six and remain at the top five percent of champs tickets recipients in grade seven to date these ccms scholars have accrued over 250 000 pbis reward points since last year folks those are 250 positive interactions that they shared with ccms staff academic teachers yes big round of applause academic teachers cycle teachers and school staff admire their positive attitude and appreciation they both show in their school environment in their daily habits behaviorally and academically both students have fulfilled or exceeded pbsis expectations thank you james thank you joseph for your positive daily disposition and actions thank you christopher columbus administration pbsis team and ccms staff for leading the and demonstrating the champ's way so the video that you're about to see is a collaboration between mr uh mr genki and mr labriola over at ccms and mr mcconney and the ch and the high school cast senior three student interns so as you can see as you're going to see it's a great collaboration between the high school and the middle schools middle school thank you all for coming together to celebrate james and joseph suniga so commissioners i invite you to sit in the front row if you could kindly or wherever you want i'm sorry wherever you want the screen is going to come down and we're going to play this video foreign i could die [Music] it's a pleasure to speak with you today regarding james and joseph zuniga on a daily basis these two outstanding students fulfill our classroom and school-wide expectations well the school is a lot bigger we have a lot of a lot more activities and sports stuff like that and the classes are bigger as well and i'm more comfortable in my clothes um there are a lot more people that i get to interact with that i've seen before there are a lot of kids that go here that i that used to go to some of my old schools so it's definitely nice to um reunite with them so and there are a lot more clubs a lot more opportunities and activities that you get to embrace here last year and again and again this year these brothers were top pbis reward earners the champs team and the christopher columbus school family is very proud of them and their positive contributions to our school community they truly represent the pillars of our champs program and the pbis framework i feel very happy and it makes my day like just all the better because i know that these i won this because of how much effort i put into my work and how i how hard i worked and i'm i just feel happy for receiving the awards for my hard work it makes me feel proud i definitely feel proud of myself and how much effort i have been putting into the work that i do and to how i get along with people and what i do in the community and in the school and i love winning prizes oh the sixth graders love champs they're excited energetic once the kids hear that little ding they get excited and they want more and they want more and they want more so i cheer them on when they get their prizes and they're just so happy when they get to pick whatever prize from the box that they get that week we focus mainly on positive behavior and the children rise to those expectations it's really nice to recognize students that are constantly doing the right thing again it's a program that recognizes student behavior but not necessarily for doing something spectacular but for doing the things that are expected every single day and it's really nice for students to be recognized in that way because i don't want my students to change their authentic selves but maybe behave so they're the best version of themselves it's just fun for them it's fun for us i love watching their enthusiasm and i wish we had this program when i was in school [Music] [Applause] thank you president smith would you kindly join us in the front gentlemen would you kind us join us in the front we would like to present you with a certificate of achievement smile thank you beautiful congratulations one more for mom one two three thank you [Applause] is [Applause] uh [Applause] there we go thanks guys congratulations [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen commissioners of the board it's my pleasure to be here with you today to discuss a brief presentation about state assessments tonight's presentation is very brief because it is really just a statutory requirement and let me explain why typically i present to you our state assessment data as well as our local assessment data and i will be presenting our local assessment data this fall but our state state assessments in 2020 the njsla new jersey student learning standards assessment the dlm for our special needs students for only one percent of our students and the way to access the assessment of english language attainment were cancelled as a result of a federal waiver due to the pandemic so that was in 2020 now the pandemic obviously continued with disrupted education throughout the 2020-2021 school year once again although we did not receive a federal waiver for njsla new jersey was allowed to implement an alternative for the general education population and our general special needs and ell students that is called start strong so right now these last few weeks our students have been taking a very brief baseline of language arts and math in grades 4 through high school as well as a very brief science assessment all less than an hour on in real time in class in school this was not a major testing however it served to fulfill the federal esea or elementary and secondary education act requirement to test students in those grades in language arts in math and at three grade spans in science what we were not allowed to postpone last year during the pandemic was the dlm assessment of the one percent of our most severely cognitively disabled students and the ell assessment for language learners our english language learners which is called the we to access the data that i'm going to show you is severely skewed data but we are required by this esea law to present it to you why is it severely skewed we were not allowed to administer it remotely forty percent of our special needs population even when we were back in the spring remained remote at home by choice over 50 percent of our el population remained remote by choice last year so this data that represents less than one percent of our special needs population and represents less than 50 percent of our ell students still has to be presented to you so that's what this evening is about so what are these assessments the dlm is an assessment that is designed to be more developmentally appropriate for students in grades three through eight as well as eleven and it provides a snapshot of how those students our most students with the most significant intellectual disabilities how they perform in english language arts math and science at the high school level how they perform compared to regular grade level standards if we're able to do this assessment in person with all of our students we show the growth that these students make so what we see here we see that at all grade levels except the high school those few students who did participate and as you can see the numbers are really quite low we're talking handfuls on five children at 11th grade seven children in eighth grade six children in sixth grade two students in fifth grade etc of all of the students tested with in all grade levels with the exception of eleventh grade their greatest strengths were in language arts their greatest challenges were in math in 11th grade that is flipped we actually showed greater strength of those among those five students they showed greater strengths in math than in language arts the access for ells is the assessment that measures english language proficiency of all of our english language learners we must assess all of our current ls those students enrolled in esl and bilingual classes as well as any student who refuses esl or bilingual services so our team of ell teachers spent a significant amount of time in the spring trying to assess our students and obviously in a socially distanced manner but they were only able to do this for those students who were actually present attending school in person so this is an assessment access for ells which is administered administered k through 12 we give it each year to show student growth and they show their growth in listening speaking reading and writing and how they perform from level one which is an entering or emerging learner who comes in probably with almost no language skills through level six students must remain in an english language learner esl or bilingual program once they've entered until they can exit at a level five we can't exit students below level 5 anymore but we can use multiple measures to provide support so what we see here we see that 246 of the students were not able to take the test because they were remote and this shows their um where they fell on the grade span so we have um 8.7 percent of our students were level one the majority of our students were levels two three and four um with three percent of our students attaining level five and less than a percentage point attaining level six but once again there was only one student who was tested who attained level six where this is this represents around three just over 350 of our english language learners and at this time this year we already are approaching 800 english language learners so that is all i just needed to i wanted to share this information with you as is required under the elementary and secondary education act and i would like to thank you if you have any questions um please feel free to ask i thank you all for your attention have a wonderful evening thank you no no we we we had around six something last year but only half took the test because only half of chose to be in person correct [Music] thank right okay we thank um mr ragoza and um miss miss kusulevich for uh those two great presentations okay next we'll have the adoption of minutes of october 7th 2021 regular meeting so moved second by mr abu drabble second by vice president casper discussion seeing none roll call mr abba drabo yes mr awad yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes dr danny yes vice president casper yes and president smith yes motion carries okay next we have our superintendent's report dr robertosi thank you mr president good evening board of education commissioners members of the community and public i want to update the board on an incident that was brought to my attention last night several board members reached out to me several members of the public reached out to me um about a social media post and normally we don't react to social media posts but um parent had made a post about a student who was being bullied and there was allegedly a video so again several people brought it to my attention i had already been contacted by the administration at christopher columbus middle school who were on it last night and while i can't give more details publicly i do want to share a few things tonight with the board this was not just a bullying incident this uh this video that i hope is is not out there but this video was was a vicious assault that made me extremely angry when i saw it angry first um you should know that the offender has been identified is being disciplined accordingly the bystanders have been identified and i have to say that i'm most disappointed by the bystanders the people who think it's okay to take out a phone [Music] and videotape something videotape an incident instead of not even intervening you don't have to intervene you just have to say something say stop don't videotape it and those other uh the students who video will be disciplined too the victim was identified he is not uh currently one of uh our students but he is a a young man from clifton and although he's not one of our students we will make sure that the student is receiving the appropriate counseling and any services necessary and the reason why i'm speaking about this publicly because it was a very public thing it was a it was on social media and again social media is not the be-all end-all but it was out there it was big and several board members brought it to my attention and i wanted to update you and i want to be very clear to the board of education to the entire community that i will not tolerate that kind of behavior in our schools or in our community and if it happens the young people will be dealt with accordingly and severely perhaps most importantly though we will also educate them and counsel them any assaults or bullying incidents in our schools or even outside our schools we are required to investigate new jersey has the most stringent anti-bullying law in the country i can assure this board i can assure the community that anything that is brought to our intention is investigated and it is dealt with i don't have to tell you what bullying can do to a young person threatens their physical and emotional safety and it impacts negatively their learning and i want to believe this is an isolated incident but i don't know but what i can tell you is that we are proactive in this district about trying to prevent bullying we have several programs in place including our pbsis program which you saw on display tonight these are evidence-based programs we train all of our school staff and we educate our students on what bullying is how to prevent it and how to prevent it from even starting in the beginning and it while it doesn't mean we're going to eliminate all forms of bullying i do want you to know that we are proactive about it and we are doing our best to um to educate our young people i want the public to know and i think the board knows this but let me remind you that we do have an anonymous reporting tool on our website i was having a conversation with mrs basford this morning who who actually told me that it might not be in the easiest place to find so we're going to put it prominently on our website so that any member of the school community any member of the entire clifton community can go onto this portal and report any type of violence intimidation or bullying and you can report it anonymously and and you have my word that it will be investigated so that's all i'm going to say about bullying tonight but i will say that i was very very upset from this video it really shook me to my core as a father of four children makes me sick and i will do everything in my power and my authority to prevent it from happening again on another note um i do have a lengthy report tonight and i apologize in advance there's a lot of stuff that i want to make sure the the board is aware of we have a uh our november break coming up uh starting november 1st the week of november 1st and there's been a lot of questions and concerns about traveling and whether or not people will need to quarantine upon returning from travel and what what i want to do is explain to the board what um i plan on doing and what the guidance tells us and make sure if you have any questions i want to answer them tonight publicly so everybody knows where i'm coming from as of today new jersey does not have a travel advisory it's no longer in effect it has not been since may that means you are not required to quarantine upon returning from anywhere in the united states in new jersey however the cdc and the new jersey department of health does recommend that you quarantine so it kind of puts a school district in a difficult position so it's not a mandate it's a recommendation and we know that we have many staff members traveling many hundreds of students traveling and so the decision is what do we do do we quarantine all these people do we make these students miss all of that in-person schooling do we can can i open a school with enough staff if staff members have to quarantine now you do not have to quarantine if you're vaccinated but we have a number of staff members who i respect are not vaccinated and we know all of our students 12 and under can't be vaccinated so in order to maintain a more normalized educational structure and continuity we are going to adhere to the following protocols after break we're going to be open for full day in-person instruction for all staff and students after all breaks had a couple parents email me saying they heard a rumor that we're closing let me be clear we're not closing unless the national guard comes in here and tells me we have to close i'm not closing schools our children need to be in school but because quarantine is not required for travel within the united states since it's only a recommendation we are not going to require it i am not going to require that it will impact too many students it will impact too many staff members however we will enforce the international travel quarantine and again this this is on the honor system so if a staff member or a student and their family are traveling internationally they're going to need to quarantine upon return and the quarantine is seven days excuse me i just want to read i don't want to mess this part up i want to be clear in what the guidance says what the sorry international travelers um most quarantined for seven days but they can return after a negative test tomorrow i will be sending a letter out to the community with all of the information so that everybody understands exactly what our protocol is so if anybody has any questions about that i do want to address that tonight right now because i do want to get that letter out to the community tomorrow all right on a more positive note we opened up school 16. let's go [Applause] they said it couldn't be done but through the work of of hard work of many many people we had a great re-opening on october 12th at school 16.
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specifically there were no payments scheduled for the 2014 bonds there was 240 000 scheduled for the 2017 bonds 3 million and 30 000 in the 2020 bonds all of which was paid on a timely basis uh all of those bond issues that make up the 12 million 140 000 the lion's share of which is the 2020 bonds the 2020 bonds have 9.9 million left in them as of june 30 2021.
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it turned out to be 90 71. do you think that the uh the lower head count i mean it's not significantly lower it's just a few a few here or there but do you think that's going to have any impact of us being able to satisfy this budget uh we're gonna we're gonna have to take a look at making some minor adjustments but but i don't anticipate anything big and um we're still waiting on our final uh head count for vocational education which generates a lot of revenue for us so that's a big unknown that we don't know yet basically the way the state operates we pretty much have to adopt the budget as it was presented and then make adjustments after it's been approved by the state so i would anticipate we'll be making some minor adjustments in january and february after the budget has been approved but being down by nine kids you don't think is going to have a significant impact though is what you're saying it may just be a couple minor adjustments that's my hope yes okay thank you any other questions for dr gabriel do i have a motion for the budget mr president i move that we approve that 2022 budgets for all funds that's presented along with the following resolutions resolution to adopt the 2022 capital projects fund plan resolution is to adopt the 2022 bus replacement plan resolutions for appropriations and tax rates resolutions for blanket appropriation modification resolution to transfer amounts from education fund to the operations fund thank you mr alexander do i have a second i'll second thank you mrs counts roll call mr alexander hi mr daniels hi mrs counts aye and mr hubbard and myself motion passes 5-0 thank you everyone thank you dr gabriel's very happy right now yes thank you very much i didn't ask this when does this have to be submitted to the state by we have we have five business days after it's approved tonight to get this submitted to the state okay thank you so board members need to find a way to sign these resolutions because they want you know live signatures on solutions as that we turn in breakfast in the morning i will stop and do that once once i'm headed north we've made everyone aware of that where it will be ready to sign in the morning our next order of business is the 1028 preliminary determination hearing and resolutions cpf maintenance elementary school and other miscellaneous thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the revolut resolutions approving the issuance of bonds on the appropriations for the following bonds and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information this is a hearing i believe mr russell has to read a statement you're muted miss russell mr russell you're still muted there it goes okay did you hear what uh dr arkanov said earlier just a while ago yes this evening's board meeting has been approved appropriately advertised as a consolidation uh 1028 preliminary determination prior to selling bonds to finance the pleasant grove elementary renovations and miscellaneous projects facility improvements equipment and land improvements i will turn it over to mr russell to begin the week thank you doctor i would like to call on dr gabriel to make a presentation about projects the financing of the projects and actions we are taking this evening so at this time dr uh gabriel yes there are two series of bonds uh where we we quit we are having this 10 20 hearing on this evening uh series 20 21 a and 121 b and the amount of 5 million 575 000 uh in each series the first bond series speaks to our need for maintenance projects and technology projects we've been issuing bonds to support these this area of the budget for a number of years we typically pay these bonds off in two years so that when we issue these bonds we add new bonds in this year and the bonds from two years ago [Music] fall off and mrs parker if you can display the slides instead of the memo as i refer to them please um the process of developing the budget mr taylor and dr long to talk with principals and central office departments to plan for the coming year and uh the results of that analysis is a list of specific projects to be funded in 2022 on slide two you see the maintenance projects to be funded by this series of bonds and on slide three you see the technology projects to be funded by these this series the second series uh 2021 b this year we are selling a second series to allow us to catch up on some of our miscellaneous building and construction needs the largest the largest items to be accomplished are the completion of the pleasant grove renovation project and improvements to the high school entrance on pennington lane and you can see on slide four a list of these projects in the 2022 be 2021 b bonds the chart on slide 5 shows the total school tax rate and the debt service fund tax rate for a 13-year period once again our tax rate will be less in 2022 than it was in 2009 tax impact of these bonds should be considered as part of the total tax rate the total tax rate for next year will go up by eight tenths of one cent compared to 2021 our projection is that the school tax bill would increase by about six dollars for a home valued at three hundred thousand dollars the 2022 debt service tax rate is expected to increase by 2.12 cents compared to last year and this increase includes the cost of paying back all of these projects discussed as well as the middle school renovations projects that were discussed at the last board meeting and we're pleased that we've been able to maintain a relatively low tax rate for the district and you've seen these slides uh on slide six and slide seven that that show the ten year tax rate and also our comparison of uh how we our tax rate compares with the other school districts in the county so that concludes the uh comments that i'd like to make i'll turn the hearing back over to mr russell thank you dr gabriel uh i do want to remind people that if you have a comment please type in the q a box your name your address and the action item which would be this hearing at the moment to which you would like to comment and type in your comment of course remember it needs to be in the form of a statement so now this is the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on the information presented this evening are there members of the public present or have put something in q a dr archdolf do we have anything in q a all right let's see bear with us please give everybody a little bit of time let's see uh stacy do you see anything we want to make sure if we have any says she does not see anything in the public regarding the hearing it does not appear to be anything in the q a that is regarding to the hearing at this time so we will move forward i now close this public hearing are there any board members who have any comments or questions are we still getting pretty favorable interest rates dr gabriel from the bond bank uh yes we are we would anticipate um these to be around two percent interest we've projected them based on on a little bit higher than that but hope they'll come in around two dr gabriel in comparison just for my own kind of edification what what's the range of typical bonds rates that we'd expect to see for this type of project yeah if you're asking about the rate um and it depends on you know the rate for a bond depends on how big it is and how long it is and you know these are relatively small and they're relatively short and that's that's why we are uh and anticipating something in the range of about two percent um i guess i i i can ask it differently i apologize maybe it was maybe i wasn't clear scott askapoo was a favorable rate and you said yes so what what's the basis for saying it's a favorable rate i'm not sure what you're asking mr daniels um you know historically what would what would an unfavorable rate be i would say something above three or four which we have for many years we've we have developed our budgets based upon four and five but as i think people are aware right now interest rates are very low very low and you know we we benefit from that in in not paying very much interest so moving forward now you believe we're going to get a favorable rate as opposed to delaying this and moving forward some later date because the rates are in such a good position oh yes i want i'd like to get these sold as quickly as we possibly can and that's what i was trying to get i appreciate that thank you any other questions for dr gabriel so i now may i have a motion to approve the 1028 preliminary determination resolutions presented this evening let's go back to closing here are there any questions oh i'm sorry yeah you're right i was right i was right you're wrong anyway i now may i have a motion to approve the 1028 preliminary determination resolutions presented this evening mr president i move that we approve the resolutions approving the issuance of bonds for the projects presented and the resolutions are proving additional appropriations for these bonds thank you mr alexander do i have a second i'll second as long as i don't have to repeat that entire statement thank you this one was a tough one rob a lot of words to wrap that tongue around okay mr alexander roll call mr daniels hi this is counts hi mr hubbard hi and myself motion passes 5-0 thank you everyone thank you for your patience and getting through that it's just a little different tonight so our next order of business is to authorize additional appropriations and this again is another hearing thank you thank you doctor yeah thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending the board approve additional appropriations and um this evening's board meeting has been appropriately advertised as an additional appropriation hearing and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information once you open up the hearing thank you doctor so i would like to call on dr gabriel to provide information about the additional appropriations dr arkanov yes you see on the screen the amounts that we're asking to be appropriated uh in the operations fund we're asking for 350 000 an additional appropriation this will pay the staff raises of seven percent uh for the last six months of 2021.
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it was heartwarming we had the woodrow wilson middle school band playing outside as the students arrived at school i mean the students faculty and staff were elated i visited that morning everybody looks happy and that's that's what you want to see when when you're a superintendent you visit school you want people to be happy you want everybody to be happy students have been in person for over a week now everybody seems to be reacclimated and just on behalf of the board of ed i want to thank all of our staff members and our community members for being patient with us as as we as we fixed school 16 to get it ready we really came together as a community as one clifton and i'm thankful that our students are back from this meeting on uh and every meeting after i will be giving an update on the referendum as this board knows last year april 20th this district passed the largest referendum in state history to improve the facilities in our district so i will be giving an update at every meeting next tuesday we will be interviewing for um construction project manager that's the company who will oversee all of the projects that are going on in the district there will be just too many things going on in the district for our own staff to do that and that was included in the referendum so we anticipate that the board will select a construction project management company at the november 18th board meeting last friday we met with all stakeholders at the woodrow wilson middle field regarding the placement of the football and soccer field in the field house at woodrow we're going to be adding a retaining wall there and drainage system to ensure the field doesn't get flooded after heavy rain and when we were selling the referendum for lack of a better word we told the community that we were going to be flipping that field and now that the actual real drawings have been done that that might not be the case just because logistically it can't work to get the size of the fields that we need we might not be able to flip that field that's still a work in progress we're still making decisions on that but i will update the board when we do our assistant superintendent mr jingaro and our director of maintenance marcion have been visiting all of our schools with our security camera company we're adding security cameras inside and around all of our buildings so far they visited all of our secondary schools and all but five of our elementary schools and we anticipate that all of our buildings will be visited and the preliminary placement of all cameras will be outlined by thanksgiving i want to invite the entire community to the clifton high school open house which will be held on november 11th from 6 pm to 7 30 pm also the clifton high school state of the art kitchen will be opening for students a soft opening next week and a grand opening the week of november 8th it is absolutely amazing board members got a little tour of that kitchen tonight it is a state of the art kitchen students will have multiple choices and i think they're going to be wowed i have received some complaints from parents about the lunches at the elementary and middle schools and i will tell you that those lunches will get better as this kitchen is now open and there will be more variety we haven't been able to serve hot lunches but when we come back from break november 8th i can guarantee you you will see a difference in the lunches that your children are eating we have jobs open if you are interested please we need nurses school nurses or registered nurses esl teachers math teachers paraprofessionals for preschool preschool special education teachers and substitute teachers just last week the new jersey department of education opened up a new pathway for people to become substitute teachers previously you needed a minimum of 60 college credits the requirement has now been changed it's supposed to be a temporary thing but we don't know that you can become a substitute teacher now with 30 college credits if you are presently enrolled in college and you are at least 20 years old at our last board meeting the board of education approved my recommendation to raise the rate of substitute teacher pay to 125 dollars a day so if you have 30 college credits you're a college student and you're at least 20 years old we have a job for you please apply online all of our positions are listed on our website on december 1st at 6 30 the clifton clifton school district staff will be playing a basketball game against the harlem wizards now i am not playing because i don't want to hurt myself but we have some staff members who will be taking on the wizards i think i'm going to coach and the proceeds of this event will go towards the superintendent's scholarship fund which directly benefits clifton high school seniors last year with the help of some very generous donors we were able to give out eight thousand dollars in scholarships to clifton high school seniors this year i'm expecting to at least double that and so if you want any information about attending the harlem wizards game against the clifton staff will be a great time december 1st 6 30 information is on our website and finally just a couple quick announcements some some really good student and staff news our very own mrs poland school librarian at school eight um who was the 2020-21 support staff member of the year has published her first children's book called sammy the sock it's inspired by her tale of the wayward sock and his adventures so the students at school 8 got right into it and actually held a a sock drive that benefits local homeless populations um working with an organization called socks for homeless souls s-o-l-e-s and we distributed them to uh people in need in new jersey and new york and school 8 donated over 500 pairs of socks students at school 2 15 and 17 will be running their sock drive next week so if anybody has socks you can drop them off wants to donate socks i think everybody has socks i hope everybody has socks but if you would like to donate socks please you can drop them off at school 2 15 or 17.
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all three of those bond issues are fully paid in four years so over the next four years with debt service payments they're completely paid and substantially paid after three years you then have fund balances and the fund balances in total come to another 48 million i would point out that every single fund you have has a positive fund balance and before i turn the page i will pause to see if anyone has any questions on page five the statement of revenues and expenses specifically because this again is cash or state of illinois regulatory basis these are cash receipts and cash disbursements to the far right you see the total column you see 19 sorry 31 million 973 000 that is somewhat comparable in most cases to last year let's talk about the specifics local sources of 18 million 438 000 that's almost identical in round numbers too the previous year last year was 18 million 440. i'm going to talk about some of the unusual differences embedded in that within a minute you have state sources of 3 million 824 000 again that's comparable last year the federal sources of 1 million 264 that is up as we discussed from 769 000 in the previous year and some 714 000 a year before that so you were actually subject to a single audit last year although just barely this year if you're going to be subject to a single audit you'd like to be a little more over the 750 threshold as you are this year you actually turn back to page 60 and 61 just real quickly you can see the federal monies both expended and received and you can see that the department of agriculture for food and such increased from 214 000 to 392 000.
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um and then in the education fund a number of different items um we need to budget about a hundred thousand dollars to pay the stipend to the non-teaching employees that will match the teacher appreciation grant which goes to teachers money for the teachers will be received from the state uh sometime late this year however we need an appropriate appropriation to cover the non-teaching staff and this is just an estimate as we don't know at this point the amount of the teacher appreciation grant but we're just going based upon previous years in the education fund we need to appropriate a million four hundred seventy thousand dollars which pays the staff raises of of seven percent or eight percent for the last six months of 2021. and we need uh to appropriate 260 thousand dollars to pay for the new staff that were hired at the beginning of the 2021 school year as part of the budget that was just approved this includes a net increase of six teaching positions three classroom aids an aquatics director and a behavior coach those are the new positions in the budget that total is a million eight hundred and thirty thousand in the education fund money for this additional appropriation will come from a cash balance combination of cash balance and new formula revenue that we will receive in the second half of 2021.
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clifton merchant magazine will be featuring the sock drives in their next issue in early november congratulations to the boys and girls cross country team who won the north jersey invitational at garen mountain on saturday our boys soccer team is playing in the county semifinal this saturday versus wayne versus wayne valley at 3 30. admission is 5 elena pepitone class of 2009 graduate of clifton high school is also written her first book she's an author and she wrote an author and illustrator of a new book called there is only one kind of special and that is you and she credits her book to living with cerebral palsy and the lessons she learned about having a disability so that book is available on amazon please support elena a former chs grad and finally i want to wish carla rodriguez seventh grade uh science teacher at woodrow wilson middle school good luck as she is running the new york city marathon you know i have a hard time driving 26 miles i couldn't imagine running for 26 miles my feet hurt driving so carla good luck that is just an amazing feat to be able to enter that competition i'm sure you will do extremely well and good luck sorry about the length of my report tonight that's all i have mr smith thank you thank you dr robitosi next we have announcements board members in the future if you have any announcements that you would like uh announced please send them to me so that i can add them to the list so i'll briefly go through the announcements that we have in the district the first is a sock drive school number 15 will be collecting new socks to distribute to a wonderful local organization called socks for homeless souls they deliver the socks directly to the feet of homeless folks living on the streets of new york and new jersey [Music] so if you have the ability to donate some socks the drop off box is by the main office of school number fifteen october twenty fifth through october twenty ninth so please uh try and help out and get some socks to them various schools will be starting their trunk or treats um a very popular event so uh let's see christopher columbus will be holding their first ever trunk or treat on wednesday october 27th uh in the front parking lot at ccems um so it's always a fun event so if anyone has the opportunity they're looking for some donations of a candy so if you like to donate some candy you can drop that off at the main office of christopher columbus anytime before wednesday october the 27th uh we have next um sila a um is presenting a fall make and take night a sun catcher leaves that's going to be on november 10th here at clifton high school all star students are welcome to attend you must register in advance by the 29th of october uh all attendees will receive a kit with additional activities prepared by a young lady who is doing this as her girl scout gold award project so that sun catcher leaves event here at clifton high school on november the 10th um let's see we have that's the same one we have a seal a um has a 4h game design challenge have you ever wanted to create your own game now's your chance um so the last event for this is going to be on thursday october 28th it's a virtual meeting from 5 to 6 p.m and uh passaic county 4-h is partnering with us uh to bring you the virtual game design challenge as a family you'll be given the opportunity to create and play your very own board game you'll receive instructions and more information via an email after you've completed the registration process so seems pretty exciting if you wish to develop your own game as an individual or as a family organization in town uh the red hat angels um they raise money for the relay for life um and they're having a bruno's pizza fundraiser on november the 10th so if you could all put on your calendar for november 10th to order some stuff from bruno's the red hat angels get a percentage of that cut and that goes to cancer research so if you want to eat out that night please eat at bruno's here in clifton one of the events that's coming up it's uh very dear to my uh to me uh as i've been part of this program for many years uh vice president casper joined me last year i was the first year that the recreation department did it a salute to the veterans but we changed the venue a little bit they used to come and have a beautiful concert at the boys and girls club and they love that but uh with covet last year they made a um a food drop off so every veteran that was registered they would receive a meal and delivered to them and mr casper and i truly enjoyed um not only the feeling of of satisfaction of delivering something to a veteran but how welcoming they were how excited they were many of them took pictures with us and just really made us feel good so that's going to be happening on friday november 12th meals will be delivered to the veterans home between 5 and 7 pm if you are a veteran please register and sign up with the recreation department or call them and um on channel 77 on that day starting at 6 p.m they will be playing the 2018 and 19 salute to veterans concert that was held in those years so um it's a true a true appreciation to our veterans um they receive a hot meal consisting of sliced turkey mashed potatoes vegetables cranberry sauce roll dessert bottled water and a special gift that we give them so i again with mr casper will be participating in delivering those meals and i ask any veteran that is watching that they please uh register so that we can get a meal to you also in clifton our clifton students are very fortunate to be able to participate in the halloween parade and harvest fest that's being held this sunday at the city hall complex they first start off down on van halton avenue and move and parade into the complex it's all led by our wonderful mustang band and then there's various different events at city hall judging of costumes and other fun activities that are available so please sunday 12 15 pm it starts the parade will move up from urn avenue to city hall property where the judging and all will take place so if you have time to come out so many of our clifton students participate in this and it's truly a fun event i love seeing members of the band that dress up in costume and march at the same time and play their instrument it's really something to see in the event of severe weather the costume contest will be held at clifton high school gymnasium um and obviously the parade would be canceled judging will follow the performance of the mustang band here in our gymnasium and there'll be limited games available here at clifton high school if the weather is bad i saw sunday's forecast and it looks great so hopefully the harvest fest will take place and many of our students will take an opportunity to be part of it there is a day of remembrance candlelight vigil that the board and residents have been invited to um it is being held in uh east orange on main street east orange at 6 15 to 8 o'clock p.m so if anyone would like to be part of the a day of remembrance candlelight vigil we did receive an invitation to that i believe the board members have received numerous sports uh booster clubs that have sent you an opportunity to buy some spirit wear to the public i believe it is on our website as well so if any of you would like to stock up on some gifts for the holidays or just need some extra clifton high school items you can go to the website and order your items directly i know we received hockey and boys basketball over the last couple of days so if anyone would like to participate and help those kids in their booster clubs by buying one of their spirit wear items we ask that you support them as best that you can that is all i have an announcements is there anyone else that has something else that i did not add here very good uh mr uh president smith the only thing i would say is um we the only other announcement with the election yeah um yeah i was gonna do it under my comments but okay yeah i'll do it here um so everyone please uh remember uh we won't have a board meeting until the next time we meet so on november the 2nd tuesday november 2nd is election day we ask everyone please to go out and vote however you choose your candidates whoever you choose who you wish to be represent the board or any other position that's on the ballot just please go out and vote starting this sunday there are ten event ten days that the um that early voting has been established early voting takes place at clifton public library and most of the days are 10 to 6.
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you can see that the dollars passed through the state of education so the department of education also increased from 549 000 to 752 000 so a 200 000 or so increase in the food another 200 000 increase in the education fund on the next page you can see that there are new funds for emergency and secondary school relief of another 188 000. those are new dollars that you hadn't received previously and i went ahead and highlighted that won't be in the final but for draft purposes i highlighted it for you the million 348 000 in expenditures of federal monies this year versus expenditures of 780 000 last year as i said 714 000 in 2019. then if we turn back to page five the state on behalf payments of 8 million 444 that's a little bit theoretical the state doesn't send you that money they simply put it into your retirement funds and so you see it both as a revenue and an expense unusual items for revenues this year relative to other years i already mentioned interest interest income last year was a hundred and eighty thousand issues some seventy thousand on the food service revenue side as you might imagine last year your food service revenues were over four hundred thousand roughly four hundred and twenty thousand this year they were at ten thousand dollars so a dramatic decrease in the food revenues in your revenue profile sports fees last year you had 26 000 in collections for people coming to sports events this year you had none um the the other one that jumped out was the tech fee the techno fee that you charged this year for use of chromebooks and such so that was 42 000 in revenues receipts for 21 that was not in 20.
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