policy number 8600 delete the option on page 1 and the optional section on the top of the page 2 and insert the options section at the bottom of page two at the next policy meeting the committee will review proposed policies one six four eight point one and eight five five zero pending further recommendation we ended the meeting at 37 p.m and mr mr ross submitted the minutes there was um there was some concerns from i had gotten contacted by a community member regarding the abolishment of the uh holiday policy that policy is going to be in and implemented through a different policy so we're not abolishing it per se we're just abolishing that policy but it's being addressed in another policy and then um mr mr daily you had made some recommendations um as per mr ross he felt at this time we need to keep the wording the way it is because it's constantly being moved and changed because of uh the vaccines in covit so he asked if we could just be mindful of that and then we'll discuss it in another meeting further in detail any questions yes thank you mr president uh ms fastford thank you for that and thank you for passing on my input um i do have some issues there's there's a lot of discord in in not only in the district but in the country about vaccinating and testing and so on and so forth and we get constant mandates from trenton on a number of things and this is and directives and executive orders and and a lot of this is problematic um i i thought the the way the wording came down from trenton was a little harsh and we're not here to drop the hammer on anybody and um we are in a pandemic we're not in a post-pandemic yet we still need to be safe and secure as best we can and there's many options there's options everybody's preaching vaccine i've been vaccinated and there's others that feel they have issues with it for but we do have an obligation to make be safe and there is a testing option which is also purchases because we all know there's a case of many cases where people have contracted covert hopefully on a mild side even after being vaccinated so um the reason why i brought that to ms bassford's attention the committee's attention i felt it was a little stringent and i thought we had to soften the language and understand that you know there's many points of view out there however we do need to be safe and we do need to address the issues of the pandemic so as bizmaster pastor just indicated we'll continue that discussion going forward mr smith i i know that the vaccination and the mandated vaccination it's in the court it's in the courts right now so that whole thing is probably going to be on hold anyway that's so you know because we're we're being mandated at work to have vaccinations but what's being told now that it's on hold because there's a lawsuit going on about it to be continued any other questions nope thank you next we'll go to um finance mr daley okay now correct so mr daley would you mind doing facilities for me please the facilities also met on november 9th uh president where mr beltran mr canover and president smith and myself administration attending with dr robertosi mr gigaro mr yusi mr shahida mr marcion mr maldonado mr watkins who is our uh architect representative and mr keegan who's our engineer on several projects meeting started at 2 40 uh and ended at 4 55.
in terms of suiting students meaning proficiency on that access for ls or qualifying to exit that was at 27 percent 53 percent of the students tested in access for the first time [Music] 71 of students that took the test in the previous year increase their proficiency level [Music] the next thing we just wanted to take a look at real quick so over the summer we offered a variety of different programs again looking at targeting based on data where students were and offering additional supports so this just lists everything from caps which we offered to exiting kindergartners literacy support which was offered to exiting first and second graders math was the same first and second graders a summer learning academy that was offered to students leaving so it would be fourth through eighth graders coming in metamorphosis which was offered to incoming sixth and seventh graders tier three which is uh focused on our gifted and talented students extended school year for preschool extended school year for k-8 and then a variety of tutoring services whether that was for extended school year esl reading specials or title one so in total if you add all those up it's a little less than 700 students that we were able to service and provide supports for over the summer hello everyone i'm going to go over some of the data that we have collected um which as dan mentioned it's a little bit different than we we typically uh show in a typical year we administer a fall and a spring benchmark assessment to all our elementary students in specific populations in middle school but due to the pandemic we were not able to do that because it's an individually administered assessment so what we did do in order to have reading levels for all our students we had teachers determine a reading level based on classroom assessments typically using their guided reading assessments and as you can see on this slide we had them report out that information as on or above level or below level so this was in lieu of a benchmark assessment i'm not going to read the numbers to you i think everyone can see them so can you okay and now here we have our end of your math assessment that is connected to our envision program for math um this is a group administered assessment so we were able to administer it like we typically do um so you can see that this slide represents the general population of students in yellow and our total population in the purplish colorado so i do want to point out that our 8th graders who are taking our high school courses are not included in these scores they don't take the envisions end of year they take the high school course so our eighth grade highest achieving students are not in that eighth grade bar they're not represented there now on to co-gets kogets are an assessment that um it's a cognitive ability test it's used to assess aptitude it is given to students but individually they don't vary their scores much over a year that's why we administer it every other year so you'll see that as administered at grades three five and seven it assesses verbal quantitative and non-verbal skills the composite is a compilation of all three of those district-wide as we typically see we fall in the average range skewing a little bit towards the upper end of average but still in that average range we use the coget scores as comparative data alongside a lot of our other assessments to ensure that we're meeting the needs of all of our students it's a data point that we use for tier three for high math for our inrs students for child study team evaluations additionally we trained our teachers in how to dive deeper into the individual scores so that they're able to garner a little bit more information about students individual profiles so that we are able to support their growth okay so the next few slides are really slides at the board i'll apologize ahead of time you've seen these for the last two years because this is the last actual uh data that we have where our students actually took the new jersey student learning assessment so that's why it says 2019 up there and so it is a repeat of the data but again we are required to report on the most recent that we have which is this so obviously a lot of changes have happened in the last couple of years but if we're looking at english language arts so this assessment is looking at students achievement as it relates to grade level benchmarks and where that falls in terms of the levels at the top is starting at level one which is not meeting level two partially meaning level three approaching expectations four is meeting expectations and then five is exceeding those expectations so you'll see going down the left side all the different grade levels the number of tests that were and then the actual numbers or percents at each of those areas over on the right it gives what our district students who are considered proficient so that's the four and the five meeting or exceeding and then what the state average is to the far right and that last column so we see in terms of as you're looking down that third grade is lower but the other grades if you're looking at you're seeing the district scores are higher in each of those areas as you move through them in terms of math um so this is the same exact framework it's looking at different major content as well as supporting content as students are looking at different grade levels and different information so the idea of third through eighth again but again as robin said earlier we do have students who are taking the high school algebra course so they then take the algebra one assessment so again a little bit harder to read that because it's pulled out so like if we look at again same framework you're looking at the district percentage which are highlighted in that blue but you will see obviously for the algebra one 98.2 percent because again those are your highest achieving students and it would look low if you're looking at grade 8 in isolation because all your highest achieving students are pulled out of that number the other thing that we are required to report on is different kind of some comparison so again these are comparisons but they're very old comparisons because again this is the last time that we have that data so when looking at ela and math proficiency you can see generally speaking for ela a little bit of a an uptick from the previous year up to in terms of math you see a little dip there uh in terms of growth so that's typical that's growth that kids are making in both ela and math 45 is considered typical growth up through a range so that does show you that students are progressing even different from the proficiency level and then we broke out in terms of the english language proficiency that's what i talked a little bit about with title three and then chronic absenteeism is another indicator that the state looks at and that you can see that would decrease over time that was a state goal that was a school uh district goal at the time actually and then the last piece is we also then take the data and we break it down by subgroups and we report out typically on some of our larger subgroups so again back in 2019 when this was new data we broke it out and we looked at different things related to economically disadvantaged so you see a slide with information on that in those same categories i just went through and students with disabilities and those same categories so again the njsla is a totally different assessment and that's a state-required assessment each year but for last year the state was able to get a waiver by actually having us administer this next assessment that robin's going to talk about but again the two assessments are completely different because new jersey student learning assessments is again that overall working toward standards where this is a snapshot that robin will talk about welcome to start strong okay so this slide really gives you an overview of what the assessment is it basically was created in response to the pandemic as danny's mentioned it's not summative but it's more um a way to assess a sub set of skills based on the prior year's learning and it really is uh there to give an initial summary of information that teachers can use to determine if students may need support it's not to be used in isolation it's not the only indicator it's supposed to be used in concert with other indicators that the classroom teachers typically use to ensure that students are being supported as needed and while it is administered through the same platform and created by the same company as njsla it is completely different it's the the design is completely different and the function of it is completely different it's not intended to predict performance on future assessments but the real goal is to provide classroom teachers with classroom level information on standard space information that they can use in complement with the resources that they already have and classroom teachers have been trained also in how to dig down into individual student scores as well to be able to assist in determining what level of support kids really need at the beginning of the year the intention is to focus on that classroom level support it's not a comparison across the state so you're not we're not going to get state level data to see like how start strong looks in other districts across the state it's really intended for classroom use students will get an individual student report and they're scheduled to arrive beginning of next month and as soon as those arrive we will pass them along to families now on this first slide you're going to see that this is the breakdown of the start strong data for grades four through eight um it's the english language arts assessment but basically it is a reading assessment it specifically assessed the reading information and reading of literature and it was done through multiple choice or tech enhanced type responses there was no written portion in the assessment and also it does not um assess the the writing abilities of students it is broken down into three levels one level one is strong support may be needed level two is some support may be needed and again level three is less support may be needed but again this needs to be looked at in conjunction with other forms of assessment that we have this is the breakdown for the math scores again the same three levels are used strong support some support less support may be needed and this portion also assessed in the same way with no open response it's all multiple choice fill in a number tech enhanced drag and drop type questions and it assess those major content clusters for math and just like danny had shared we have to uh share information in regards to our subgroup populations so this is the language arts slide for our subgroups no surprise our english language learners or ell students did not fare quite as well but that is to be expected and as danny has explained we do our access for ls later in the year to ensure that our students are making proper language acquisition progress either through the access for else or we also use the weda model if they are prepared earlier in the year to make that shift and here is that same information again broken down by subgroup for math now finally this is our slide for science only our sixth graders took this assessment njsla typically assesses our fifth graders and eighth graders and all the data was for the previous year so it's the sixth and ninth graders that took the science so we only have the data for our sixth graders we aren't gonna have a subgroup slide for sixth grade because um it is just one grade level and when you break it out by subgroups we are not necessarily able to guarantee anonymity because those numbers are so small but it measures against those you know science standards thinking about um data critical thinking problem solving skills and connections across all the science disciplines okay so kind of talking then through you know and sharing different data points you know what do we do with that so you know most importantly i would say so start strong was one of the assessments that were administered but we also delivered a lot of different baseline assessment data this past fall to assess where kids are obviously as we've talked about before we had kids coming off of being fully remote for a year plus we had kids who were in school maybe all the time we had kids who were in school part of the time so all different circumstances so really important for our staff to to focus number one on building those classroom routines and structures and number two doing some different assessments to kind of see what their baseline where they were so we did go back to at the elementary grades giving that individualized benchmark assessment so all of our elementary gave the benchmark assessment middle schools gave a different whole administered literacy assessment all of our grades give the dsi which is a developmental spelling inventory to look where their students are in the fall and then again they'll give that again in the spring to look at growth and then part of our math program has a readiness component so that's a readiness to look at what is the content um in terms of that they'll be exposed to through the year and where are they in terms of ready for that that um that level so those are some of the examples but again there was all different kind of things that teachers have been doing just on an ongoing basis just getting to know their kids so we as a district we always look at the district level data both as a curriculum team we look at it in terms of them building levels with principals talk about a different meetings look for trends and patterns talk about what we're seeing and then we turnkey that for teachers and typically that's at our october and service day so robin had mentioned that so we did have grade level meetings with all the different grades and we're able to go through different pieces of data for them that was particular to their grade take a closer look at that show them how to actually read and analyze reports and actually go into those to look down at the student level which is most important so teachers kind of like left that day looking at you know where the places where they think they're students that they need to focus on and then we also have them do some vertical articulation that day in terms of talking to the grade level before and the grade level after in terms of needs and things that they saw that then allowed them to go to the next step which is goal setting so teachers make goals and have pdps that are due october 31st every year then the school level makes their goals based on those teacher goals and then we have those in terms of district level and then what we do is we plan professional development we do curriculum writing planning and implementation based on all that different information and that gives us focus areas so this year our focus areas will be first and foremost we talked about that overall health and wellness getting our kids back into school making sure that they feel safe they feel comfortable that they're they're ready to learn the second making learning visible by focusing on metacognition so that students can transfer what they know or they've learned into broader contexts so that whole idea of really thinking about their thinking and being able to apply and transfer the third area is this is actually a continue we've worked on this through visible learning uh teacher clarity so that means having clear learning intentions you know we are t we are explaining kids are learning intentions so that kids know what they're learning and why they're learning it and then success criteria we as teachers are sharing that with students so they know what success looks like and be can be prepared for the challenges the whole idea of accelerate student learning because again we are coming off a pandemic and still in the peace and the thrones of it i should say but the whole idea of why formative assessment and if we're not sure what that is we're talking about checks for understanding quick checks to see what students know and are able to do so that that informs our instruction if they already know a particular standard or content we don't need to spend a lot of time on it if they don't that's the ones that we need to go deeper into the whole idea of technology so we certainly have increased our technology proficiency over the last year plus in terms of remote learning however really the importance with now having kids back in the idea of intentionally selecting tools that purposely support the learning and then prioritizing learning through differentiation and whether that's interventions extensions but differentiation is more important than ever so those are kind of focus areas for all areas so whether i'm a content teacher that means like science social studies math whether i'm a related arts teacher but really all teachers focusing on that and then we did break it out separately into ela and math and then social sciences so as it relates to language arts these are again some focus areas connecting to reading and thinking across multiple texts the idea of you know being internal criteria for that strategy use that gets back to that metacognition identifying text drug structure and recognizing how structure helps to import important determining importance uh drafting and efficient ways to do that both for craft which is more the actual writing versus structure which is more the grammar part and then increase opportunities for conferencing with students so that we're looking at elevating the proficiency of the learner from where they are and making sure they have growth in the area math the idea of we have actually been phasing in and if you've been at meetings before so we are in year three of our math implementation this is our final year to bring in envisions math so now that everybody will be doing it all grades the idea of making sure we're implementing that with fidelity it has a problem-solving piece it has a visual learning or direct instruction piece and then it has a piece where you're assessing and differentiating the second one kind of builds on that looking at minimizing whole class instruction and incorporating student choice and making sure that we're using resources that we have to differentiate the third one looks at the idea of major content so there was areas again during the pandemic that might not have been covered so that idea if we didn't get to something we need to make sure that we're hitting all the major content but also exposing kids to all the required domains the fourth connects to our district goal of that idea of math discourse being able to construct viable arguments reasoning and the practice standards and then the last one is incorporating electronic assessment tools and then the last area is that social sciences so that whole idea of social emotional competencies to support overall health and wellness that that consolidation of learning so what are the big ideas infusing contenary practices uh emphasizing three-dimensional learning we call that so the idea of what are the core ideas what are the practices and then and then kind of generalizing those together looking for opportunities to practice active citizenship and including opportunities to include and reflect on varying perspectives so those kind of give us that that area to focus and we talk about those with teachers for them continue to look and analyze and implement throughout the school year [Music] thank you danny and robin any questions from the board mr megan hey robin hi quick question for you you're the testing coordinator right so when you saw it was first time i've seen the 2021 strong start strong type of analysis when you saw the test results were as a district what was your original reaction this is where i thought we'd be um this is better than i thought we would be oh maybe we got to work on something did you did anything just hit you with oh this is interesting or i wasn't expecting it but honestly i think that the data was was very interesting especially the fact that we were able to drill down to individual students when we look at our district as a whole you know that gives us a good perspective but this was the first year that we were able to actually see student responses and we were able to share that data at our um october in-service and we were able to show the teachers how to really look at our student responses and it gave you a a very clear picture of what they could do or not necessarily could do or couldn't do but it could tell you whether they answered a question or not which would if they didn't answer a question it would reflect on their score but it doesn't tell you whether they know or don't know that subject area or that or that content area but it is important data additionally you could see how they responded so teachers are really able to tailor their instruction based on the way students responded to see you know where those gaps really are so um the the start strong assessment is based on released items from njsla that they've used in the past so this is the first time that we were able to see the questions they're not going to release questions and answers for njsla but since these are released the teachers are able to look at it so it was a new and different way to really analyze the data and actually i think that they the teachers were able to get a lot more out of it than just looking at a number like we typically do appreciate that thank you any other questions yes no were these the assessments that were given in september in school because you know i have two kids and so i got emails about it um so the start strong then began in it says grade four so nothing was done in the lower grades correct yeah so again this was just grade for ela and math it was grades four through eight and then for science it was just grade six and you could as a parent you would know the difference because if your child is used to taking the new jersey student learning assessment in the spring you're typically in the elementary schools taking that for four or five days or at middle school you're taking that for three days versus the start strong assessment was done in one day both ela and math and then we carried the science over just in grade six so you could tell it was a much shorter assessment just had those multiple choice and the the text enabled ones but that's exactly what it was that it was really like welcome back right uh we didn't even have a full week of school the following week we had a day off and then we were taking that assessment but again since it was really just designed to give us baseline data we wanted to do it early as students were coming in and take that that one day to do that knowing that we'd be able to get the most information by having it done and ready to be looked at for the october end service so this would be baseline and to give us a picture of learning laws through the pandemic is that the point of this so the idea i would say more so than learning loss i would just say actually helping with supports so for example there might have been a student who was remote and let's say did extremely well right so they might not need a high level supports transitioning back into the school year there might have been a full remote student who actually struggled being remote they might need what was that higher level in terms of needing strong levels of support um in terms of kids being in school you know maybe they were on a hybrid model so again some kids did better than others in terms of those different days some kids were in school more so it really just gave you information to look at to dive deeper as you look at the actual assessments you were doing in the classroom during september okay i'm asking because i'm concerned about the lower grades how do you assess who needs additional support based on the remote because who suffered the most during remote learning i had two little kids the younger grades so i don't understand why the state didn't come out with assessing you know first second and third like how do you know who needs more support so i would say the younger grades we actually rely on the data that we actually have so like for example in september our students our teachers gave to kids in first and second grade and those younger grades third grade benchmark assessments so not only am i getting to know my students i'm actually sitting down one-to-one as opposed to taking a multiple choice test which really wouldn't be appropriate for a first grader okay i'm sitting down one-to-one and actually reading with kids i have standardized questions that i'm asking i'm looking at their decoding i'm looking at their comprehension so that as a primary grade teacher actually gives me more information okay then start strong would in those younger grades um and same thing for math we did that readiness math assessment so that whole idea we're looking at the content that was learned and again we saw variations there because again in the younger grades so think about preschool kindergarten first grade we had full days last year right we had lower class sizes because you know obviously so we could spread them out and be there and every kid coming every day so in some instances like a kindergartner might have gotten further than they've ever gotten in a school year where they have 20 plus students because they have them every single day in front of them so again there's just so many variables but the most important debt is what we're getting from the classroom and the teachers actually assessing kids that first month plus of school i understand thank you and one other question something that jumped out on me uh by grade sixth grade the math really was the highest that they need you know a higher percentage of students need more support in math and sixth grade do you have yeah we did look at that absolutely um because again as we delve like deeper into that if you think about okay what really was going on there so we had fifth graders coming up who might not have gotten to some of the topics that were in the end because they were we were all on full remote the spring before we had teachers implementing a brand new envisions program so they were implementing new content in sixth and seventh grade so that slows down your pacing in year one of implementation so again they might not have gotten to all the pieces that they typically would so again you have to look at all that information where are they and really what what are they ready to learn but we did notice that obviously in sixth and seventh grade and fourth grade a little bit too okay that's all i had thank you any other questions from the board seeing none thank you again for the presentation moving on to section 5 public comment this meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items over for agenda items only however something happened here sorry i'm on a little medication so i'm sorry however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we would ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person is there anyone who would like to speak public comment seeing none we'd like to close that portion of the meeting moving on to section six approval of the minutes may i have a motion to approve item 6.1 and 6.7 miss ryan motion first miss nole motion second roll call please mrs cappello yes this is everhart yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yeah this is ryan yes promotion carrick moving on to superintendent's report items seven one through seven six may i have a motion mr lanzalata second motion miss fleming any question well i'd like to turn it over to uh our superintendent at this time please thank you thank you mrs everhart and before i uh make some of my prepared comments i just um i wanted to add a word or two to what mrs collins said about the the benefits of the testing for this year i thought that was really helpful and and um you know mr meegan's question brought that out just hearing that it's so interesting how like sometimes a crisis creates an opportunity and some of the flaws to the to the testing prior to the pandemic that it took so long to get the results that you didn't get to see the questions it just the time delay that teachers would already have a new crop of kids by the next year when they got the data from the prior year and then to just hear you describe how the teachers are able to get the data now and it's not as large a chunk but it's a much more actionable slice of data for them and um so thank you for that and thanks to the curriculum department for helping the teachers be able to work with that um you couldn't let that go had to say you know it took it's like only like decades in the making to get to that point where we had that data so that's great um so there's a number of items i'd like to share about tonight um first this is our first board meeting since um the november elections okay and i always wanted to congratulate um joe fizzicaro our president who couldn't be here tonight he's actually um he's helping kids this is this is what he does every board meeting night and even when he's not here he's helping kids because he's the director of the fall show at cherokee so um and they are in like last minute crazy prep time to get ready for the show so um that's also way i i guess i might as well plug it as well like if you haven't gotten tickets yet please check it out so um and anish kanthan here as well who was reelected to our board and so congrats to both of them and also um to jamie lee who was a write-in candidate for the third seat um and uh so she'll be starting her term in january which also means that um melissa plumbing her term will be ending um around that same time and um we'll have more time between now and then to thank you but i just did did want to say thank you so much for your years of service and all your input along the way and we'll really miss it the um so a few other words on the agenda tonight very positive piece we have a recommendation for our next director of special services dr jen bland and dr bland she's actually sitting over there dr bland so that's great great to have you here and she was identified as the top candidate through our interview and selection process for this position i want to thank all the people involved in this election process there were many that final committee was very large but again that speaks to the breadth and depth of that position and how many stakeholders are impacted by the person in that role she's currently a supervisor in our district in two departments special services and curriculum and will bring her skills intelligence her heart for children and her experience as she's been in our district for over 20 years including as a as a classroom teacher as a special education teacher um back in the day and uh that that all those roles carry them with us all the time so our first official day will be january 3rd um so that director position because i'm seeing nicole espenberg thanks for assessment for being here too our outgoing director um will finish out right winner break and so that position will not be vacant even for one day um and i just seeing two together it's like a physical manifestation of the transition that's already started so um that was perfect thank you um the and as well that director position um is now a member of the superintendent's cabinet so we'll see dr bland at our board meetings in the cabinet meetings and board committee meetings um and she'll be sitting with our directors of personnel and curriculum over there um and uh i'd also like to yesterday was education support professionals day okay it's a national day of recognition and if you don't know if that term it's a really big umbrella and i just wanted to mention a few of the some of the rules that come under that aegis to give a little idea of the diversity of roles within a district any district but a district of 850 employees which we are right so within that umbrella of education support professionals we have bus drivers bus aides bus mechanics our transportation office our technology department director of technology frederick case right there man behind the screen all of our building i.t staff our maintenance department custodians buildings and ground staff we have joe idell and tom donahue with us tonight from our facilities department thank you guys for all you do for these meetings um then we have our paraprofessionals our teaching assistants our lunch aides our ecc and teddy bear staff we have our nurses mrs riley's back there i saw um and our school counselors media specialists child study team members including psychologists social workers occupational therapists speech therapists learning disability teacher consultants and it goes on secretaries clerk typists administrative staff across personnel business office curriculum and more and there is more but already that's you can see that's that's quite a list and um that ties in a little bit to my my comments i'm going to say in a second but you know each of those rules is uniquely important and um they could really instead of having a day have a whole month or a whole year of national educational services professionals year so thank you to all of our staff in those roles and um that leads into she says this is the last board meeting before thanksgiving um just wanted to say thank you to everyone those staff all the rest of our staff our board and our families for every effort all year long this year again like last year feels like a collective effort on behalf of an entire community to help children and when i think about that i think about actually texted my dad which probably was like shocked him because i i said i was remembering something he often said to me um and he would say he grew up on a farm and he would say that farms get passed down from generation to generation for a dollar in love a dollar in love and i've been turning that phrase over in my mind not in reference to a form but in the way a strength of a community in a town is passed down from generation to generation for a dollar in love you know and so many of us here we have a multi-generational connection to our town either you know we are here we're raising our kids here or we grew up as kids here and we're back here and in some ways it's like ibsham is a family farm and we pass it on all of us together for a dollar in love and i spoke in my opening video to staff this year about the greek word hellos which means life purpose you know so like the idea of finding a life purpose goes back even before the ancient greeks but when they have a word for it you know they felt it too and they were looking for it too and around the holiday time like this it's kind of like one of those chances to just lean back a little bit and look around and think about a word like that and for me and i think for many of us here part of that life purpose is really the greatest responsibility that any community has which is how it cares for its children there isn't a greater responsibility you know and the strength of the community is what we do for our children right and and so here we all sit and here we go to work every day all those rules all working for kids to be able to pass on to them what we've benefited from ourselves that family farm of yves sham for a dollar and love and those are the thoughts i wanted to share for thanksgiving so thank you mr thank you dr smith any questions from the board seeing none roll call please mrs capala yes this is everhart yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes this is null yes mr lancelot yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes mission carries hey moving on to curriculum and instruction i have a motion for items eight one through eight nine please miss noel first motion second motion mr canton are there any questions from the board miss noel i just wanted to ask about these two very interesting well they're new to me i'm sorry after school clubs that are on here 8.8 drama for kids and cedar run can someone please tell me about these are they new to the district i mean i've been to cedar run so can somebody tell me exactly what's going to happen and what schools i think mrs mccoy run is new um and they approached us in terms of piloting an after-school club at one of our middle schools so actually right here demesey middle school will be the the school that's piloting it um basically when an outside organization if we don't have a program or something being offered by internally by staff an outside organization could actually choose to do that um so you know i met with them i met with one of our teachers here at dmac we went through the program what it would look like we walked down to the rooms they're going to use like part of the outside classroom here at dmac and then an internal space as well and then basically we talked about cost we talked about insurance we talked about all the different kind of elements of that and then we are getting them approved tonight to pilot that the drama for kids is actually not a new one so that's when we actually had at bieler a few years ago before the pandemic but they are interested in returning back to our school so again in a school that doesn't have a drama performance they might be one who takes advantage of that club right now we're waiting to see who exactly would move forward with that um but it is when we piloted in the past thank you so for cedar run when would that pilot program begin uh looking like december so once they have their dates they'll send the flyer to me for approval and then we'll send it out to all the macy parents and they're going to do a eight-week winter course and then a eight-week spring course as well and then again we'll we'll meet and get feedback and then it can expand to other schools as interest is there uh and the cost would not exceed 99 i think it said 99 correct yeah and it actually will be when we met actually tuesday and we kind of talked through it so it truly will be 99 but we don't allow them to charge more than 99 any club because our parents are already paying a club and activity fee for our clubs so we don't allow them to charge over 99 any outside club offering something because it's a separate fate right okay i understand i know we have bricks for kids and i'm trying to remember that was also 99 then uh that one actually is 95.
he's almost three times the the national average the state of indiana average is 452 so again quite a bit above that meanwhile the average median median income of white river township so assuming uh family income of two wage earners 98 186 so the superintendent's making 2.43 times more than the median family income by himself bargersville by itself seventy two thousand ninety six dollars so three point three one times more than the median income of people living in bargersville while johnson county the median in family income is 62 888 and of those people all of their 401ks their pensions their tsp their thrift savings all that other stuff comes out of their wages and a lot of mr arkanov's retirement benefits are in addition to his base salary most people here don't know that and all of his uh wages our public record and a really quick thank you real quick google search can find those so again i would ask you guys not to approve any increase of benefits or pay while the average teacher or average employee working for the school district is only 45 434 superintendents making 4.72 times more than the average employee that he's supposed to supervise to approve any more benefits for him would show a gross negligence of the board's duties to steward tax funds thank you mr collins our next order of business is the consent items do i have a motion mr russell i move that we approve the consent items do i have second second any discussion i have a motion by rob daniels in a second by scott alexander all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 thank you our next order of business is the action items starting with 7.1 to approve employee stipends dr arkanov thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the employee stipends and mr taylor is going to provide you with some additional information yes thank you dr arkanov this is something that we've done on an annual basis for the past three or four years this coincides with the teacher appreciation grant the teacher appreciation grant or tag grant is all referred to it as we move forward provides 30 per student to school districts throughout indiana and that amount is given is to be paid to teachers state law requires the board policy for the distribution of tag exists and we have board policy 32 20.01 and it outlines the distribution of the tag the grant total will be used to pay stipends to teachers who receive a final effectiveness rating of effective or highly effective for the last school year the indiana department of education has not released the final tag amounts due to some data collection issues surrounding the annual membership report therefore the percentages and amounts below that i will talk about were formulated based off our internal estimates and what we received last year adjusting for new enrollment once we receive the final amount we will adjust the percentages and the amounts below that i'll mention here shortly to match any of the changes that our estimates were off based off what we actually received from the doe we we will then bring the final amounts in january on the personnel report for the board's information as per our policy and the statutory requirement stipends must be differentiated by 25 percent between highly effective and effective rated teachers dr gabriel has estimated that the tag stipends per the current qualifying teachers and the approximate approximated grant dollars and each teacher will receive a 1.25 stipend at the level of highly effective with a floor of no less than 673 dollars that's the same floor as last year if rated highly effective or a one percent stipend with a floor no no less than 538 dollars if rated effective and this is again for last school year two thousand twenty twenty one we're also asking the board to approve a stipend for all eligible administrators all permanent support staff in levels a b c and d as well as abc and c as well as one level d employee who meets the evaluation requirement level a and b employees will receive either the 1.25 stipend if rated highly effective or the one percent stipend rated effective whereas level c and d employees will just receive the 1.25 percent stipend we don't differentiate on their evaluations so pending board approval and payment from the state we plan to pay this stipend by the end of 2021.
the next one we have the first we had the first one today it was wonderful excellent a lot of parents and thank you for having us on your community and on december 2nd we're going to be at rolling greens december 9th at mill valley and in december 16th we're going to be at home we're going to be at ford river [Music] all right i'm going to stop sharing and this is time for you to ask us some questions yes we want questions from our parents anything that you want to ask us we're here gonna go for it yeah we'll try okay that's all right we were really thorough i bet all right well i loved that we got to go to colonial village today there were a lot of parents and even more kids what was really amazing was how they were a bunch of teachers that joined us and they just got right into having playing really like different games with the kids read like green light some mr fox game i hadn't even heard of um it was amazing and lanny right was there she was able to get some books from the kids from when we were in remote it was great it's i i'm gonna be sincere with all of you i'm surprised how our kids can keep that energy even after school they're they're like little energizer bodies they keep on going and going but for our teachers to be engaged and being playing those games it was it was wow mind-blowing i have to be sinful with all of you it was mind-blowing how they had that energy to be with the kids so it was good it was really good and it was so fantastic to be able to look just spend some time talking to parents about hey like what's going well for your kiddo at school what's something you'd like to see what are your own goals like what are you you know how are you thinking about this and i was really inspired by by just being able to like relax and hang out um and just just talk oh you have a question um all right i'm wondering how children now being able to get the covid vaccine may change the environment at the school perhaps it's too early to know the impact and oh i think there's a way to show this okay i'm i'm learning just did this i knew it all right so i think that's a really good question and i'm an educator i'm not a doctor or a nurse um although sometimes i think having four kids i feel like i could almost be a nurse right but um you know i think that um our role really is to mitigate and to reduce the number of closed contacts i think that having the covid vaccine certainly helps um but we know that there's breakthrough viruses so i think you know we still have to remain optically optically optimistically cautious yes at this moment i think that the best thing is um weights and follow the guidelines that they're gonna give us some right yeah no i i i we're gonna keep our parents in form of any information that we get when we you know we really want to keep kids outside as often as possible i know we have some benches coming that haven't come in yet uh driven by the school you've seen the tents up i mean even in winter you know those really nice days we want kids outside eating lunch um [Music] and outside as often as possible um all right it's great all right well julio and i'll stand for another minute or two so if you have any questions or comments thank you for the really kind uh thoughtful oh i gotta hide this now um yeah we're we're excited for all we're excited to be working in collaboration with all of you um jennifer thank you for your comments um yes it's good to be working with a person like tammy she trained to seattle sleep very happy she's always she had a positive attitude that's always good same thing you julia oh my goodness all right well i guess it's bedtime what do you think all right everyone i just want to thank you all for being here with julio and i tonight it was great we'll do this again next month we're going to increase our our viewers from 8 to 16.
he has been instrumental in helping to spread uh circle of security parenting uh cosp please uh correct me if that's incorrect um an attachment-based parenting intervention to connecticut communities communities and community organizations he is interested in the potential for using cosp to create a community-wide approach to build and support secure attachment in children charlie has supported the darcy school connecticut community foundation circle of security parent grant team for the past six years he continues to provide mentoring emotional support and a wealth of knowledge to their team darcy's staff are so grateful for charlie's leadership and unending support to grow this grant in the greater cheshire community the board of education thanks charlie slaughter for going above and beyond for the students of cheshire thank you charlie [Applause] yeah where do you want me to stand over here um thank you so much i'm just touched and i was just totally surprised when i heard from from kim we want to give you this honor and i'm going me but my wife has been laughing about you know sometimes it's hard for me to accept things but but i'm but i'm here and and i'm i'm loving it and um you know one of the things kids bring their attachment history all over the place and especially plays out at schools and you guys have the best team in the state that really is working to support kid more kids having a secure attachment and then helping those kids that don't have a secure attachment and um and that plays out in the classroom but we're also seeing that what happens when they get those better quality relationships it's also building capacities that kids need to thrive in life such as self-regulation curiosity but we're also also thinking it's building joy of learning and i keep telling people in today's economy you want kids that have a joy of learning because they can take that into their adult years the other thing is what's been wonderful about here in connecticut we've had all sorts of people get trained in circle security parenting but then the most amazing thing is when i'm calling this group of people attachment innovators but you've got a whole crew of people here in in with cheshire public schools who are doing innovative work i mean you guys are setting uh putting together i think a model that could be easily adopted by by other schools but but you're you're a leader in this and i'm just impressed with the high quality people i get to work with so thank you so much [Applause] thank you [Music] and you know i don't want to spend too much time reiterating what charlie just shared but there really are people here that have taken the circle of security piece and continued to to move it forward and it starts with barbara stern one of our former principals in the back there barbara presented this to our administrative team uh back in 2016 and it's continued to grow through ann donnery and and certainly kim desert but maura ho and don anatti who are here this evening they presented at a circle of security webinar earlier this week i know i'm sure everyone in the room follows me on instagram so you probably already saw that and i appreciate maura's family blowing up my instagram account uh gave me some street cred with my kids but um in all seriousness you know that team and then you know people like scott jeffrey and other uh other there's just so many incredible professionals scott's team has brought it into their school and it's continuing to evolve and you see the number of parent participants in our community just skyrocket that's one of that was the slide maura and donna were showing that i posted this week if you go back and and check out my instagram account cheshire super it's it's really impressive to see the growth and it's it's only because it's such an incredible program charlie's at the heart of that so we're really uh pleased to be able to honor you here tonight so thanks again charlie [Applause] uh the next person that we get to acknowledge this evening is a retiring member of our team and i'd just like to say a few words and invite her up to the podium if there's anything she'd like to share or at least acknowledge the board back in may of 1997 kelly ann lens submitted a letter of recommendation to the cheshire public schools which said that during the five years i've served as student teacher supervisor for the english department at southern connecticut state university i've observed many new educators but kelly lens clearly stands out as one of the best once hired that year kelly would forego the traditional classroom experience to serve under ralph wallace and gary chesley as the coordinator of school business partnerships that was probably the last time kelly's job description was static over the next 24 years her talent and work ethic meant that she would become the director of adult education writer director and producer of cps today working with some some subpar on-air talent too i might add turn water into wine there strategic planning specialist and even the most contemporary of roles social media influencer of course this doesn't include her evolving role as a mom and ultimately a grandmother she did all of this with remarkable positivity competence laughter and grace for as much as so much has changed over the last 24 years one thing has remained constant kelly is still the best congratulations on your retirement kelly [Applause] that's okay i'll give you um i'm very touched by that thank you so much jeff um over the years i've had um the great privilege to work with incredible educators and support personnel and um i can tell you that to a person in this district people put children first children are at the center and um that is um something that's really special and that stands out about cheshire teams of professionals boasted both at our board level our administrative team our central office team that a lot of times doesn't get the recognition it deserves and then our teaching staff and administrators um i've worked with the best and i've been blessed thank you very very much [Applause] and finally with one last person to recognize this evening you may or may not realize with the election a couple of weeks ago that one of our board members has completed her term and i've often publicly stated that despite my regular attendance at cheshire board meetings since 2005 i never fully understood the commitment a board of education member makes until i became superintendent of schools in 2016.
the items of discussion was the boardroom renovation beginning election beginning the week of election day and uh i guess miss cheetah has that started officially yes it actually has started uh we're three quarters of the way through president smith has been there along the whole process and um i i'm assuming he'll keep you guys surprised as things go forward thank you very much for that commissioner's suggestion about ingress and egress were addressed about that facility and they're all now compliant as per our architect certification according to mr watkins we do not need to add an extra door to the back room of the executive area all we need to do is add a door behind the day is to stay within the fire marshal's guidelines and in the enlargement board our boardroom area we can fit about 170 in the room for public meeting wreaths construction began demolition on november 3rd the room is now empty we will begin to add the flooring light ceiling tiles mr marcion is securing the permits from city hall we foresee no issues involving moving forward as uh reese construction has already secured all the materials to get the project complete there will be a door there will be a door prior to entering the executive room and closing the bathroom and waiting areas that is now now where the executive conference room is the kitchen will be still functional for staff once renovation is complete we anticipate a reservation to take about a month that concludes uh facilities report if there's any questions i'll be happy to address them okay thank you uh there's a sec excuse me sorry there's a second page to that oh it is i'm sorry thanks joe oh there we go okay sorry um school six hallway was complete the staff was very pleased that's down on the lower level of the building for those who are familiar flamtonian opened the cafeteria for the whole school on november 8th for the students so far a huge success and we had some feedback from our student representative which is very good instruction manager was interviewed and the committee selected the winner to present to the committee award for a vote that will be held tonight it's epic the firm epic is on the agenda storm damage uh was assessed there was a leak in uh school four um there on 17 a water at some water infiltration at school five water infiltration uh leaking roof leak in school two roof leak in school 13 roof leak in number three ccms roof leak water infiltration woodrow wilson middle school water in the tunnel number nine uh had the water some water infiltration number eleven roof leak number fifteen water infiltration and number sixteen uh besides the all the other stuff went on there was some flooding in the parking lot uh all these were a minor concern and all have been addressed is that correct mr cheetah correct okay thank you ccms stadium parking again as in this finance report is 86 650 dollars and that increases some stadium parking in around columbus we spoke to our attorney our attorney on acquisition of a possible school at on valley road transportation hub demo as mentioned in the finance report was forty two thousand eight hundred dollars uh there was trees behind school 16 that were trimmed and cut down or removed that were the ones that were down that's all included in our arborist report it's also correct what's the sheet i'm sorry i didn't yeah on on the school 16 this is well done in accordance with our arbor at street fourth that is correct okay thank you which will wilson uh field stakeholders believe that flipping the field would be best for playing we discussed that a little bit more in detail and i think we're going to stay with the current configuration because of it would be best all the way around for for operational and accommodating spectators and that needs is that still the field right in other words it was designed the the original thought was to have the baseball field facing uh south to the to the north you know as the as your as the batter would face towards more towards the north the current is more to the south or southeast uh but it was this upon discussion the committee and the administration we decided to flip it back to where in a similar configuration that's there now it's not at the exact configuration but a little better this will accommodate both soccer and vase and baseball and provide some room for spectators and easier for the spectators and the participants to access the small field house that we have planned for that facility that will conclude my report any further questions sorry for the faux pas okay thank you uh president i'm sorry somebody yes hi me uh down here um first of all i want to thank the facilities committee for school 16.
oh okay well thank you for all the information sure maybe i'll stop by for the cedar run club one day yeah that's great any other questions from the board mr canton yeah so um if we remember back to the spring we were given all these updates about esser we have sr funds to enhance learning acceleration we have sr funds to combat learning laws there's a portion of esser funds that's designated for activities that are outside of school hours so this year we're able to bring back saturday in richmond for eight saturdays and that's going to be at no cost to families because of the esser funds so saturday in richmond is back it's at no cost to families and it's obviously a very good thing for kids i'm glad to have that back i saw that in curriculum that's exciting yep another sign that we're turning the corner good news thanks for sharing that for the rest of the board any other questions seeing none roll call please mrs cappello yes this is ever hart yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries and moving on to finance and operations may i have a motion please for items nine point one through nine point ten miss miss capela first motion second motion misses ryan sorry his medications kill me all right are there any questions from the board okay seeing none roll paul please mrs cappello yes this is every heart yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carriage section 10 personnel may i have a motion and a second for items 10.1 through 10.10 please first most of mr lanzalotta second motion mrs fleming any questions or comments on the board i have a comment uh welcome aboard miss dr bland i mean you've been here but welcome to your new capacity i also wanted to give a shout out to uh mrs meeker i just sat at this table for a long time and i i just know that she was a previous employee who has now come back to join us and we want to say thank you uh for coming back we're looking forward to seeing you again uh it was great to see you in the audience and it's great to have you back in your new capacity i also want to say good luck to mr cedor i also know him too and it's a great opportunity for him and i want to wish him luck as well so thank you for that anyone else seeing none roll call please mrs cappello yes this is everhart yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan um yes to all that abstain from 10.6 family conflict okay motion carries policy section 11.
last year it was december 11th but we had the money prior to this meeting so we will do our best we fully intend on paying it in december in december it does need to be paid within a certain amount of days after we receive it and so we will make sure that happens that's why we're bringing it tonight just to make sure we have this approved ahead of time we will bring the final amounts on the january personnel report thank you mr taylor are there any questions for mr taylor this is this is a minor pattern this is a statement it's a mine with past practice exactly i i remember we have 15 or 20 days once we receive yeah it's 15 i believe we've also discussed this with our teachers association mr lawson's in the crowd this evening that was about to be represented yep this had been discussed so thank you miss falls and i'm discussing with dr arkanov there real quick i had at my mind just teachers but it there is a set amount that is just teachers yes it cannot be used for anything else the board added a few years ago to add um out of cash balance a similar stipend for the other employee groups and so that's paid out of cash teacher allotment comes from the state any other questions all those in favor do i have a motion mr president i move that we approve the employee stipends as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second thank you thank you mr daniels all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 thank you thank you our next order of business is to approve the superintendent 403 b contribution changes and we'll just throw it back to mr taylor thank you very much um this is something that we've done this will be the fifth time we've done this increase the superintendent's contract contains language that says in any contract year the board may in its sole discretion increase the contribution of the superintendent's 403 b plan provided that's provided that such increase does not exceed 2500 in any single contract year and the total annual contribution does not exceed the maximum contract contribution limit presented permitted by law the current contribution for the superintendent is 25 000 per year it is recommended that the board increases this to 27 500 for the 2021-22 contract year the national maximum for contributions is set at fifty eight thousand dollars for two thousand one so this is well below that and you'll have a result you have a memo from dr gabriel that uh um kind of details some of this and this uh miss parker has that up on the screen now i think that's it thank you mr taylor do i have a motion mr president i move that we approve increasing superintendent's 403 b employer contributions to 27 27 500 for the 20 21 2022 contract here thank you mr alexander do i have a second okay thank you mrs counts any discussion thank you all those in favor say aye aye all is opposed motion passes 5-0 thank you mr taylor thank you our next order of business is the resolution to authorize transfer of health insurance fund and i'm assuming that's mr taylor as well it is i am pensioning for dr gabriel this evening he's at the state business office conference um this is something new something we have not done in prior years um as we know as i've shared during our collective bargaining um and our current premium increases our health insurance fund is to had a hard year it's been a hard couple years to be to be honest we did go seven years with only one increase and then we've had a few increases over the past few all of this is driven by claims some of it's covered related some of it's just kova delayed procedure related um a lot of it's medications it's just been a really hard claims year um and so as we were bargaining with the uh with you tag the association we discussed and shared this also with our other employees that it would be prudent this year for the corporation to add an additional two hundred thousand dollars out of the cash balance to kind of help that fund stay afloat throughout the next calendar year the corporations already estimated to invest over almost eight hundred thousand dollars into the fund to help with these increases um the burden was definitely taken on the on by the corporation as well as the employees in this case but we've tried to take the larger portion on the corporation side and so even even though the premium increases are there it just wasn't enough we felt like we also needed to infuse some some cash balance into this so as the resolution states we are self-funded plan it's ran by anthem but we we've funded that since 2009 to keep our costs down also to allow us to run the local clinic and we currently have in the education fund unused and uncovered appropriations in the amount of the 200 000 and therefore we're asking the board to approve this transfer this evening to be made prior to december 31st 2021 and the amount of two hundred thousand dollars and that would be all thank you mr taylor do i have a motion to authorize the transfer of health insurance fund mr president i move that we approve the resolution authorizing the transfer of funds to the health insurance fund it's a mouthful any discussion um what sorry seems to echo when i turned this thing on um what bucket is the 200 000 coming from is it cash balance it's cash balance currently in the education fund okay thank you and it was uh unencumbered at this time so it's available okay and just so i understand 200 000 it's because of the high claims yes we're putting on corporation shoulders instead of yes that's exactly right this is 100 it will go into the same account the premiums would go into not doing this would cause an adjustment to the premiums to increase the other piece of that is there's a particular and i don't remember what the number is i've showed them on that committee 400 400 000 amount we have to hold i think it's safe to say this is one of those issues nobody likes but we realize we have to do it i think david would agree with that and we're trying to do it the best way for everyone concerned we appreciate the teachers understanding that i wanted to thank the insurance committee for all the time they spent having this discussion and coming up with ideas on this i know mr lawson sits on that committee as well but there was a lot of time and during negotiations we had a good discussion around this as well that's a great point and one thing they've you know they've been studying over the past few months is ways to reduce cost and we're gonna have a large meeting in early december about that and make some make some good positive changes to to help our our monthly costs change um so we don't have to do this year after year okay i've had a first and second all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes five zero thank you thank you mr taylor thank you and our next order of business is the resolution to authorize an approved first amendment to sublease the eoc thank you mr russell this evening i'm recommending the board to authorize and approve the first amendment to the sublease agreement with the emergency operations center and dr long is going to provide you with some additional information here thank you tonight i have the next two topics and with us uh because jeff quackenbush is in at ias bow two where dr gabriel is is brad bingham from barnes and thornburg so again he gets hard questions i'll take any of the easy questions a few months ago we asked the board to approve a resolution and to authorize a sublease with white river township fire protection board since then we've been working the three the two fire departments the bargersville community fire department white river township fire department and the center grove community school corporation been working to to have all all three agencies have an agreement and to have bargersville share the bargainsville fire department share the facilities with the white river township fire department that requires us to amend the lease with white river township fire department and to include the bargersville community fire protection board so tonight we're asking the board to approve the lease or the resolution and to approve the lease both boards both fire protection boards have approved their their identical resolution to this one um i believe bargers phil did theirs i made notes and didn't bring them up on november 10th is that right and then the same with the white river township fire department they both approved those um prior to our meeting uh the the only thing that really changes for the the white river township fire protection board um they'll still have a five-year initial lease with three additional five-year terms for the fire the white river township fire protection board bargersville will have a five-year initial lease and three additional one-year terms and that was really meant to give them the flexibility depending on the growth and where they're needed whether that works out best for them to stay here or whether they need to look for a different place the bargersville fire department will pay an annual lease of six thousand dollars per year and um and the other change to the the lease was that white river township originally was going to pay 58 50 58 of the utilities and with the new lease each of the fire departments will pay 29 still a total of 58 percent of the of the utilities tonight we're recommending the board approve the uh resolution and the amendment the first amendment to the sublease thank you dr loan do i have a motion mr president i move that we approve the resolution and sublease agreement with the white river township fire department and the bargersville community fire department for the emergency operations center thank you do i have a second thank you mrs counts i'll open up discussion with i attended one of the meetings where they were all working together and was very proud to see how you guys work together i've attended a county meeting council meetings over the years where that wasn't the case because fire departments had to fight for what they needed you know but you guys really worked very well together for the benefit of the school so we greatly appreciate that any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed thank you the motion passes five zero thank you thank you please take back your boards our thanks and appreciation for all the work and chief funk and chief feldspender and knife of chief funkhouser and mike i don't know what your title is these days but thanks for all your effort head whatever's deemed necessary by management uh we were talking about it earlier but tentative move-in date is january we think we'll get moved in that week uh right before christmas and be operational by january 3rd i think is that the monday at least a day before the students come back right great that's that's assuming we can get the garage doors let's just see if they're on positive thoughts for big garage doors just everybody recycle your aluminum so we can get more aluminum faster so awesome okay our next order of business is to prove the new course proposals at the high school um jumped right over marked it ahead let's go back to resolution for financing of middle school building projects thank you kind of important you got it so this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the resolution for financing of the middle school building projects and dr long will provide you with some additional information so i know how much you enjoyed dr gabriel's 53 slide presence 53 slides presentation so tonight i added 10 more to that we only have 63 slides to go through tonight um no actually he narrowed it down i'm just giving paul a hard time that he's not here uh if you'll recall we did 10 28 hearings for the middle school projects in october september and october we've waited the 30 days for the the remonstrance period and nobody filed the paperwork for remonstrance so tonight we're asking the board to approve a resolution to lease the middle school projects as you know uh the schools can't do that we have to use a building corporation there's one the center grove 2000 school building corporation we're asking the board to approve that resolution amendment to lease and the amendment the fourth amendment to lease for both middle school projects but as a reminder we we presented uh what we want what we intend to do at both middle schools this middle school central will add add some security cameras begin renovating classrooms that haven't been touched since probably 95-ish we're going to add classrooms we're going to add 12 classrooms 2 including two science rooms and two art rooms new furniture if you recall when we built walnut grove we replaced all the furniture in the elementary schools during the high school renovation project we're replacing all of that furniture and now it's time for the us to address the middle school we'll also renovate and expand the cafeteria and kitchen at middle school central and the nice thing about both of these projects combined is we will be able to do that without by maintaining the current tax rate we can do it without raising taxes middle school north a little bit different this time the first phase through there is we need to add a a music room whether it ends up being a band room or an orchestra room or not they're still kind of working out the details of that we'll expand expand the cafeteria again and put new furniture up there we'll do some of the temperature controls and add some security cameras to enhance security at both middle schools the estimated project uh the cost for the project is there it's a total of about 30 million 800 000 including all the soft costs the hard renovation costs are about 22.6 again this is just the schedule we did a 1028 hearing i was off a month in august and september tonight we're here for the financing resolution to be approved and then on january 4th at our first board meeting in 2022 we'll do an additional appropriation at that time we'll then start working with the architects to to develop a plan and hopefully open bids sometime next next year and and be done at middle school north by 2023 by middle school central by 2024 you've seen the portables out in front of middle school central hopefully we don't have to add any more before we can at least get the the additions at um done in middle school central but we might need to add a couple more out there paul add on there the first payment of the bonds will begin in 2024.
but you know what we could have this little private party too this was amazing so thank you thank you well awesome thank you everyone good night bye juliana
the time and emotional energy required of a member of the board is trying even in the best of times catherine hallen was first appointed to the board in december 2013 over the past eight years she has navigated the incredible highs and challenging lows that come with leadership she did so with grace dignity and a respect that earned her the position of board of education chair in 2018-19 as the leader of the cheshire public schools it is obviously important for me to thank miss halen for the countless hours that she has committed to ensuring that the children of this community receive an outstanding education she has been a fierce advocate over her tenure on a personal note however i can't thank her enough for the support that she gave me as a superintendent and a human being through some of the most difficult times i have ever experienced every superintendent and community would be blessed to have someone like catherine in their corner on behalf of the cheshire public schools we thank you for your service congratulations catherine [Applause] good thank you dr solon and whoops this is gonna come right out here um i just went last couple of weeks i've been thinking that i would write a really good speech and it would be very compelling and thoughtful and of course i never got paid you know pen to paper um but i know what i would want to say and what i want to say is and kelly pretty much just said it um i have spent the last eight years um really you know just amazed at the staff that we have in the cheshire school system from dr solin and his team in the central office to every building administrator every teacher the maintenance staff nurses i mean the the list is endless and all i know is that every school i've gone into every program i've seen has been you know just so impressive and and our kids are benefiting from this amazing group of people every single day and it has been a true honor for me to advocate for the teachers and the administrators and everybody that works here because i i our kids are doing so well um and so and they're doing well you know under really tough and challenging circumstances and i just want to thank all of you um who put in so much time and energy and effort and love and dedication to the kids of cheshire um whatever piece i was able to you know contribute i'm glad and i will miss all of you i'm sure that sam rosenberg who is going to be taking my seat will do a fabulous job but it has really been a pleasure and privilege to work with all of you so thank you so much for the opportunity and thank you dr solon for your support for me so and my fellow board members sorry thank you to all of you it's been a lot of fun we've had our ups and downs we don't agree on everything but you guys are a great team and i know that you all always are trying to do what's best for the kids of cheshire so that's all i have to say thank you thank you dr sullin uh i know it's not on the agenda but you know if any board members would like to make any comments for for kathy i certainly want to say kathy uh catherine um i i don't know what to say i i folks that have worked with you on the board administration and our educators pretty well know your commitment over the years i think everybody outside of that will actually know the effort and time and the fierce advocate you are for our students and um it's true we don't always agree here on the board of ed doesn't matter who it is but captain's always been a professional uh has always been a staunch supporter for doing the best we can for students staff and for the board and uh has worked incredibly hard on a number of things and as chair should deal with some you know difficult situations and let the board through that and uh certainly going to miss you i can't believe eight years has already gone by it feels like you got on board here yesterday i'm sure it feels a little differently for you and i for that matter but uh i will miss you for sure uh you know you cannot be replaced um you know um for sure but i know sam will do a great job but you're leaving behind a really good legacy and you know take pride in knowing that a lot of your efforts over the last eight years has helped the treasure public schools become what it is so you're leaving you're leaving us in good shape uh thank you um i'm sure we'll be in touch um and hopefully get together over the holidays and stay proper goodbye but i want to thank you catherine thank you tony that's very sweet adam go ahead catherine congratulations you made it uh we as you mentioned uh we have had our ups and downs over the years uh but it has been a great pleasure serving with you on this board so we all know it is a uh we we get paid exorbitant amount of money to sit up here and give our time and i just want to thank you for your service and uh to uh wish you well in your future endeavors so thank you and it's been a pleasure on policy and there were a couple other things that we've served together on so it's been been good fun thank you ian and then andrew catherine my neighbor my friend and board member extraordinaire i just want to say you know how i feel about you but most impressive is the way over the years the eight years that you have really supported the system that is cheshire public schools and um in my opinion that's what boards of eds are supposed to do so thank you for your service for these past eight years and i'm gonna miss you for the next two while i'm still serving my term so thank you catherine um i just wanna thank you for um when i took over as the chair of the planning committee the first couple meetings he really helped helped guide me helped push me through the agenda and i really appreciated that and over the past two years i really enjoyed serving with you and i always appreciated when we were be talking about the superintendent's contract how you would always stick up and stand up for him and um i think we voted together a couple times on that and so i'm gonna miss you but i hope to see you around town for sure thank you catherine you're welcome tim [Laughter] efficient and to the point thank you everyone uh moving on uh we have audience uh if there's any members of the public that would wish to address the board you're more than welcome to do so as soon as there are none we will move on to committee reports uh starting with curriculum and that's you hi so we had uh the curriculum committee met for the sole purpose of approving a couple of textbooks and so i don't have a committee report per se but i would like to make a motion to approve a couple of textbooks so based on our review and following the public viewing period the curriculum committee recommends to the board approval of the purchase of the following textbooks inspire earth science mcgraw-hill for grade nine and precision machining technology cengage grades 10 through 12.
um you know it looks it looks great i saw as they were cutting it um the unnecessary trees that were dead and laying down and looked so much better for the students going there particularly for the residents who live right right um against that area two things mr daley if it's possible to take a look at uh for facilities two things but for one area the softball field in front of columbus we talked in the past about while it's a great field everything is awesome about it just two things are slightly missing one is nets for rape potassium foul area because there have been a lot of parents and a lot of folks who have been watching the game and the first thing as a foul ball goes towards the stadium wall is whose car is going to get hit and it's happened and i think a net would help our insurance company because i'm assuming if it's a softball we would have to probably cover it right for cars damaged uh second thing another thing that's missing is a bench a stance bench for the crowd to sit because a lot of the parents are sitting on the curbs are standing on the curb across from uh right in front of columbus across the way from over the street i'm sorry from the field and i only asked that about that now only because i think it's better to take a look at it now prior to the spring coming ahead of us so this way we can be prepared and not say we should have worked on it or thought about or talked about it i don't think it would cost much i don't know anything about any of that stuff so it's my recommendation to you guys i'll be happy to pass that on and also since you raised the issue with the softball fields we've asked the administration to address the the maintenance and to upgrade the maintenance contract probably with a new vendor because the people who are involved with softball wanted a natural grass field and that takes more maintenance a lot more maintenance and that needs to be done properly to maintain the quality of that that has been a little bit on the short side uh up at this point and we need to correct that so i'll add that to the committee's agenda thank you very much thank you mr daley yes mr spencer um through you to the superintendent um i had we requested some people from the community requested the wall school five to be painted because they put the new fence in they actually did a really beautiful job it looks so neat and tidy a lot of people were making comments on election day how it just sets the place off really nice so thank you to whomever was the facility person on that i think he's sitting in the audience thank you very much it looks great yes i agree with you it looks fantastic anyone else okay let's move on to um public recognition yeah there's still some committee reports oh i don't have it i thought i finished it oh i'm sorry i didn't scroll up uh mr kanova technology please uh the technology committee met on uh all the dates not listed there but the only board member president was data beltran administration we had mrs kuslovich and mr mountain the meeting time was five to five twenty the item of discussion was remote participation in meetings uh mr mountain reviewed the different options available for remote participation from the public and our commission's call and et cetera and depending on the format desired by the board the recommendation is to refer this to the policy committee uh joe do you know what date that was they just put november on that i believe it was the 11th it says november 11th on there no new yeah mine just says november it says it on the executive content on the bottom there it says technology meeting minutes november 11th 2021 pdf yeah on that but on the official minutes it just says november that's got to be corrected please to have the exact date on there okay no questions for mr canova we'll move on to public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-residents of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality they live and a subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by board members the board asked that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when they are speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments okay anyone wishes to address the board please come to the podium in front of me at this time good evening my name is catherine morrison i'm a teacher at school 11.
may i have a motion in a second for items 11-1-11 plea please first motion miss ryan second motion ms noel any comments or questions for policy we'll call it this time please mrs cappello yes this is everhart yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs knoll yes mr lancelata yes mr meagan yes mrs ryan yes mission carries okay moving on to committee reports would any uh chair of their cur of their committee wish to share any additional information for the public or the board ms knoll i'll share about finance committee this month and um so we did meet last week the finance committee and i'm happy to report dr smith and mr rashinti have been working hard on the draft first draft of the budget for 2223 they've been working very hard and now um reduced to i believe it was like a 1.25 deficit so far right now and our state aid is being had been reduced to 1.6 this year yeah okay so um in addition mr rashinti has tasked the department heads and building principles to reduce their budgets by five percent those are due back in mid-december so they'll incorporate um that reduction as well into the budget um and let me see what else i had the only other thing that i want to mention is was happy also to hear that the administration has been working closely with the township administration to continue with the car sharing if you remember last year for the sros so that is extremely promising that uh we're working together again because they're putting their budget together right now so dr smith mr ashinti have been meeting with the township manager deputy manager the mayor to discuss that moving forward so that we can get additional help um for 22.23 and that's all i had for this month's finance committee thank you mrs knoll would anyone else at this time like to share anything from their committee seeing none we will close that and move on to old business is there any old business seeing none we will move on to new business is there any new business seeing none we will move on to open public comment this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however if your questions or comments pertaining to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we would ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person when anyone wish to speak at this time please step up to the microphone please yes it's okay yes and at this time please state your name and address for the board my name is renee schmoback my address is 994 carlin drive in southampton pennsylvania i am a teacher in the district and i drove i'm sorry i walked in at eight o'clock at night um but the only reason because of the distance that you know for me to get back here the only reason i was coming tonight is because i was there wasn't an there was i'm hoping there was an announcement regarding our new director of um special services did that happen tonight or is that not a question i'm allowed to ask it it did occur it did occur are you allowed to tell me yeah yeah the dr bland was recommended for approval and she was approved and uh you missed it but i talked about it in my superintendent's comments so i didn't even get a chance to read it but i'm so glad you did but for whatever you're going to say i'm just glad you took the time to come so yeah and that is a huge win for special education i'm so proud of dr bland that is a huge win for special education that's all i have to say thank you thank you very much anyone else like to speak at this time please step down to the microphone thank you welcome just state your name and address for the for the public thank you my name is nicole tate um address is 324 revere road and i'm in marlton thank you for letting me come and speak tonight um i've actually been living in marlton for about 15 years i have um three children can i ask you to please speak up please oh i'm sorry can you hear me yes so i just i just stated i've been living in marlton for about 15 years i have three children two of which attend the amazing eshams township school district i'm a former medford teacher i've been retired for a few years to stay home with my children so i wanted to publicly say that i love our district i love our school my local school is van zant we have amazing teachers i know you know that and our principal is a 10 plus he is amazing so i wanted to preface that before i um say what i'm going to say now um so uh as a a parent i've had my two older students or children in half day kindergarten and i have my younger daughter is in preschool at this moment um so that is something um i don't want this to come across as complaining but simply wanted to start a dialogue with you um regarding your kindergarten program so i actually have a question for you i know that um like many districts we offer full day kindergarten and we also offer half day kindergarten so my question to you is why do we do that dr smith so first of all state thank you for coming and thank you for the preface um and thank you for the question because um it's a vital it's a very important question it's very important question um there are multiple ways to answer that okay so and i'll still give a few different answers but really i i would view them more as rather than answers maybe continuations of the conversation that you're looking to start that makes sense so because the topic is that big that makes sense that for something like the question and answer is just part of a conversation so which we can continue later too so i'd be glad to do that um the a a full day so our our arrangement here has been in place for a long time um so that's one thing so once you know a change along the lines i'm imagining you you're thinking that like maybe i don't want maybe why why why are we why do we have tuition based full day is that yes why do we have that and also half day why do we have why do we have two options [Music] so to make oh no that's fine i actually have just one more um how many other districts in burlingame in burlington county follow that model in charging a tuition-based uh full-day kindergarten in public school [Music] so i appreciate miss skipford's guidance on that so because i i was i'm eager to i like conversation so i'm always eager to like have conversations so um especially when we're talking about ways we can improve and help kids so that's you know that's a standing thing um so uh and it's it's funny it's it's not funny it's actually um really serious and wonderful that you asked that because we we do look at that we do look at what districts where districts are at with with full decay um we're in the minority there you know the trend overall is districts moving towards um just having full day kindergarten period no half no tuition just full day that's the trend um and more districts are you know we're still where we're at more districts have moved towards that direction um the uh the reasons are complicated you know back to your your first question about why why why are we why are we where we're at and and not where the trend is going right um the uh it's a it's complicated i mean i'll just say it the district i worked in before coming here had it in its long-range plan to go to full day k without tuition 20 years ago and they finally got there last year well two years ago before i left so and how did they get there sorry to interrupt but did it have something to do with the s2 formula and they were just pumped in with several million dollars more a year well money is a factor money is a very big factor so that's let's not forget how they got full decay what money is a big factor but it took them about 20 years and and part of that process was um so you can see like it's it's slow work um it depends a lot on freeing up financial capacity to do that um which is for us currently um currently a challenge um we're heading into year five of seven straight years of the state funding reduction um so you know which again these are all like little beginnings of conversations if that makes sense but um that's that's it i'll just say a beginning part of the conversation to your questions um which are really good and um maybe we can talk about more of course appreciate it just one more comment if you would if you allow um so i just wanted to give you a perspective of a parent who's sent two children in half day kindergarten one in pm on one at am so i've had two different perspectives my main comment would be um this and this is from my heart that we as a family have felt slightly as a second class citizen i don't feel that my my our my children truly felt part of the school which had nothing this has nothing to do with the principal or the teachers who are amazing simply just the schedule we didn't really feel fully part of that school until they were in first grade simply because they missed many of the social um things of school just being part of that that you know wacky schedule so that's really what i wanted to address this evening is that lack there i appreciate your time thank you so much i appreciate it i appreciate that last piece you added as well thank you we'll reflect on that appreciate it thank you thank you for your comment anyone else wishing to speak at this time okay seeing none guess we will oh would you like to speak again go ahead good i don't think you have to say just your name would be fine this time yep um and again you know this is my first board of education meeting ever so am i allowed to kind of piggy not piggyback but i haven't i kind of have a pretty good answer i think i could help that um lady out with or is that not allowed i i would say i mean just a thought would be since we got a conversation started that you could go continue you could continue with the conversation with her directly if you want that's or right now or afterwards well anytime you want i guess but but public comments really more like to engage the boarding conversation rather than i'm learning the ropes yeah yeah yeah i mean basically all i wanted to say was regardless if it's half day or full day kindergarten we are offering as a district the same exact curriculum we are whether they're coming a half day or they're coming a full day they are still getting the same exact curriculum they they truly are it's just things are spaced out in a different way if that is of any help to that nice lady from vanzant um it it it's yeah and that's all i have to say thank you thank you i won't raise my hand that's fine you absolutely can no problem there's no limit i don't think to questions okay i see there's i saw her hello please state your name and address um so i'm rachel willey and i don't live in marlton but i'm a teacher here please speak into the mic yeah sure so uh my name is rachel willey i don't live in marlton but i'm a teacher here at marlton middle and just jumping on board there if we're going to talk about kindergarten my daughter is um in kindergarten at mes and i'm absolutely thrilled to be a teacher and to have my daughter in kindergarten and to be so excited about the program so please keep that up wish is awesome thank you very much for your comment anyone else wishing to come to the mic okay thank you come on down please state your name and address please kristen nardello and i'm at 94 kent ave in marlton um to piggyback i'm here in support of the kindergarten questioning um to piggyback off that i would be interested in seeing if you guys collect any information about the um like the reading assessments and math assessments with the half day versus the full day i know coming from we're now demacy i have a jagger demacian rice kid and my um the vanzant kid that we used to have uh in that class from half day kindergarten i believe there were like 12 to 14 kids who needed a reading assessment like that that you know that whatever that course is that they offer for first grade um i would be curious to see what that looks like from the full day kindergarten in addition to what the like the math help that people get in the summer program from half day to full day so i know that we talk about the curriculum being the same i don't believe that that's totally true um [Music] yeah so thank you guys okay thank you for your comment yes ma'am please step up to the microphone actually we haven't yep you can all stand there yeah you can all make a line there that's okay please ma'am you can come up yep there you go renee again as far as the kindergarten yes data-driven instruction is huge however there are so many factors you need to consider when a child enters kindergarten for example like what she was saying about like she would like to see you know the data that's very you know that that's understandable but you also have to consider some kindergartners are entering kindergarten for just turning five there are so many dynamics to a child entering kindergarten which although data does exist you have to consider that big umbrella of children date of births previous you know whether they went to preschool whether there are so many other things regardless of that data i mean data yes we can all agree does drive instruction and is very important however you have to consider what a true kindergartner some and their birthdays their previous experience their you know if they were read books every single night before bed um if they practice sight words there's just so much to that so i hope that helps thank you thank you very much that was the last time thank you very much hi please state your name and address hi i'm sarah applegate from 329 revere road in marlton um i just wanted to say that i really love this district too um we're very happy here we have three children we actually live right near the tates um and our boys walk to and from school together so we really heard you when you said the thing about community what i would encourage everybody to think about is really how we treat the youngest in our community do we welcome them with open arms in the same way that maybe we do for our older students um you know we were lucky enough to age in to the rice preschool program through early intervention for my oldest very excited about your presence from a special education perspective um but just in general wanted to also think about how this impacts us as being like a destination of choice when all of the surrounding community communities have the full day program right eventually it comes down to budget if we're not drawing the students we're not going to draw the teachers we're not going to be able to keep up all the programs that you know we get funding for from the state at what point does that become a consideration for all of you to think about what you're doing here and whether or not you're going to open the doors and take the hit initially to cut that funding that you're getting from the full day program for people like me who can afford to pay it and are practicing sight words at night um but also limiting other people and their access to what they need and then making it sort of a disadvantage for all of us in the community so thanks for hearing me out thank you for your comment please step up and give us your name and address please hi my name is dorian carlton 130 deerfield avenue in marlton i just like to add my name to the conversation about full day kindergarten i have four children it took me three to realize that half day is not enough i paid for my oldest to go to a private kindergarten because at the time it was cheaper than marlton's full day program now i stay home so the idea of reconciling that budget-wise just doesn't work for us i can hear while i disagree with the statement that the curriculu the curriculum might be exactly the same but if a child learns it crammed into 2.5 hours compared to learning it and repeating it throughout the day and being able to do it in multi-faceted manner it's different also there is great value in the social aspect of school to have a child limited to a fraction of the time that another child the same age they have less experiences they are less equipped to enter first grade then i think that it's important to not just focus on the academic aspects but also those social aspects pre-k um private preschool is an hour and a half longer than marlton public kindergarten half day that blows my mind my son's in private preschool right now and next year i'm telling him he's going to be home at 1107 am two hours before he's done right now so he's basically stepping back in many ways that now he's being stretched socially academically half day kindergartners don't get lunch with their friends to socialize they don't get recess every parent-teacher conference i've had with my with for my children i don't ask them about academics first i ask them how are my children engaging socially how do they behave and i'll never forget speaking to my daughter's kindergarten teacher i said how is she engaging socially and she stopped and she said oh we don't have time to socialize that was her public teacher at mes and i think we need to do better thank you thank you for your comment excuse me um let's make sure nobody else has a public comment before we let someone repeat again anyone else wishing to speak public comment okay okay come on well you had yes you had your hand up yep renee again um another thing i want to say about the kindergarten is i hear these parents loud and clearly i do i do we also need to consider that change happens slowly dr justin smith i believe was hired during i want to say july in the midst of covet am i right dr smith okay now you have to consider before from my perspective as a teacher i look at it as and i hope i'm not crossing boundaries by saying this dr smith was handed a bunch of problems and millions of dollar deficits that have happened from previous previous previous previous and previous years he was then handed that and he came in and suddenly looked like he was you know the not so good person or the person that's you know putting powers benefits on the line and all of this stuff because again change is going to happen slowly i think now that we have a new guy in town i think you're going to see that change but we can't snap our fingers and say next year full day kindergarten for absolutely everyone that's not feasible and i think everyone in this room could agree that that's probably not feasible i don't know this is my first board member meeting um but i hope people see the potential that this man does have um but again you got to consider when he was hired and that's all i have to say okay thank you for your comment anyone else wishing to speak during public comment okay please come up i appreciate you giving me one more moment please just real quick does money matter more or do our kids matter more it's the only thing i'd like to say thank you thank you for your comment anyone else wishing to speak seeing none like to close public comment moving on to board member announcements does anyone have any board member announcements miss ryan okay well first i would like to thank um everyone for coming and also wish them a happy thanksgiving can't wait to see mrs meeker back at the board meetings and you know back in the district she was a bus driver for my kids for many years so i'm so glad that she's back in eve shams so congratulations on a new position we had a pto president's meeting myself miss mcgoula dr smith and all the pto and pta presidents and the one thing that they all mentioned was that they were so happy that the kids are now back engaged and they're excited to be back at school and they could sit on their face a lot of them you know run book fairs and are getting ready to run holiday shop and the kids are just very excited and the parents are very grateful and i think we decided that there'd be a lot more grade level um type activities starting and everyone involved with the ptas and ptos have been working so hard to make sure that the turn of events from kovid has turned into a positive direction so i wanted to just to quickly just address those parents who feel like their children aren't included that's something we can bring up at the next pto and pta presidents roundtable maybe we could find a way to get the kindergarten students half day kindergarten students feel more welcome and engaged in the school as a van's aunt parent a former van damn parent and a former vanzant pto president i know that was very important to us to make sure that every student felt included and had a very good relationship with the school and i agree mr deblasia is fantastic and the teachers are all great but so is your pto so if you want to reach out to them or i can give you the contact information of the president and maybe you guys can um find a way to get more involved and have have your kids feel more include included in what's going on but i do know that the ptos and ptas have done an amazing amazing job and it was so great that they were sharing ideas they were collaborating freely and i think that was probably one of the best meetings i've been to sitting at a round table this past month and i mentioned it to everybody that they're doing a phenomenal job so if you don't follow their facebook pages follow their facebook pages even if it's not your home school thank you to everyone for everything you're doing for our kids i appreciate it and i know that we all do happy thanksgiving thank you mrs ryan has anyone else wish to make any board member announcements miss fleming yes i just would like to thank mr canton again uh congratulate him that he won uh mr joe pisacaro and uh miss jamie lee so i'm glad that uh they were able to get on the board and again happy thanksgiving um and that's it thank you very much mrs fleming miss knowle good job right yeah okay yeah um i just wanted to thank thank dr smith for coordinating with the burlington county of health i just found the email in my spam folder about the clinic the vaccination clinic well i don't know why they all go to my spam folder from you anyway in case anybody else is one in their spam folder the vaccination clinic on sunday rice and vansant of course no pressure voluntary and that's for ages five plus administered by walmart i'm assuming the pharmacy tax will be there and um so that's wonderful i just want to say how great that is and i was telling my my family last weekend my sister-in-law and her kids were there and i said that we were working towards this board of ed and my little nephew said i want you to be on my board of ed i just thought it was funny so um thank you for that and i also i was speaking to my sister-in-law and told her i read on new jersey department of health website she's a speech therapist in a school that she's eligible for the booster she had no idea so i just want to put that out there because i know our moms are very very busy working mothers may not be paying attention she had no idea so i want to say that anybody who is working in a school any position can go get their booster shot and last thing happy thanksgiving to everyone because we will not be here um again and happy hanukkah i know it's early this year so i didn't want to miss saying that um [Music] so happy hanukkah to those that celebrate and happy thanksgiving enjoy time with family thank you mrs noll anyone else have any board member announcements mr canthan yeah so while we're on the topic of cultural holidays um the township had their first diwali celebration uh last week dr smith and i got to attend that that was pretty cool out of i always try and find an aspect of kids whenever we have these township events and at the diwali celebration there were three parents who we got to talk to who helped set up the event every single one was either a current or former etsd parent so i think that's great when we talk about the sense of community and the the fact that kids should come first so absolutely i just want to say also piggybacking on that so joe who's not here tonight you know he's doing his thing over there at cherokee and he's probably got a lot of eastern township school district students that came up through the ranks singing and dancing right so great job eaves from township thank you any other board member announcements okay i'd like to say happy thanksgiving on behalf of the board to everyone and uh moving on to the next item so i don't think we have a need for any public action or an executive session so i'm moving for a german do i have a motion to adjourn mrs brian second by mrs fleming thank you and have a safe and happy thanksgiving good night oh you
again we can do this entire project both middle schools without increasing taxes thank you dr long do i have a motion to finance the middle school building projects sorry i moved that we adopted a resolution that's not right resolution for fans i know that we adopt a resolution approving the form of the lease with the center grove multi-facility building corporation thank you mr alexander do i have a second second thank you mr daniels any questions for dr lone we are past the remonstrance period yes it ended i believe it was october 25th okay and the other key point is no raising taxes yeah you want me to say that again loud we can do both projects yeah that without raising taxes that's my line that's my question every time which is always very nice any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 thank you thank you now we will move to approve new course proposals at the high school thank you mr russell this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the new high school course proposals and dr hoover is going to provide you with some additional information each year the high school makes course proposals to add courses to what is available to our students the course requests are vetted through the department chairs as well as the high school administrative team proposals here this year include multiple courses to support the next level programs of study in business family consumer sciences and in the engineering technology departments this chart that i provided summarizes these proposals by course department grade levels and i've also included if it's the next nlps course for your information that's a new edition you'll also notice on here that i'm going to ask you um to think that you those nlps courses that you're approving approve the pathway and don't worry about the the number and the title sometimes slightly changes especially in things in development and this year the high school would like to add 17 course descriptions for potential courses at the high school along with two requests to revise existing courses these courses courses match the descriptions approved by the indiana department of education for high school course offerings these requests include on the following departments there's three courses in business one in english one in engineering and technology nine in family and consumer sciences one in music one in physical education one in social studies and two that are multi-disciplinary the decision on whether to offer these courses next year in the future will be determined by the scheduling requests process that the high school uses and based on the request numbers staffing student need and instructor availability as a reminder during the implementation of nlps approval for additional courses may need requested outside our normal process and i may need to come back and add for the um come back at a different time in the year not just the fall and ask for additional courses so we appreciate your flexibility that you provided tonight any questions thank you dr hoover any questions real quick for i i just every year we talk about course new courses the courses that came in because nlps uh and because workforce said you need these right but is this it's going to be hand in hand other courses that aren't necessary pathway yes so you'll see some other courses if in that next to the last column it says no those are courses that are not nlps they're just courses that you know the course catalog's about that thick i know when i was a teacher i was reading through and seeing what i could offer as an english elective class and creating classes based on um courses the state said you could provide and so our teachers are doing that every year trying to find i would say it's a lot of us based on student engagement we're trying to find things outside of those core subjects to engage students whether it's more core english math science social studies classes or in those elective areas so now two things to keep an eye on is what what students are wanting and what nlps is needing yes yes any other question for dr hoover are we maybe it's dr hoover and dr henderson are we we gaining momentum for an rotc program is there quite a bit i can express i asked that question one senior that would have loved it i asked that question because in case i was asked i'm sorry there is a waiting list to become an arotc school however we want to have it on the books in case another school drops it and there's availability and then that there's another one on there that call it the um the elective physical yes with the military leadership um that we could possibly be an entrance point because we could partner with um someone that the what someone in the armed services would send to provide us that would co-teach a class so that would kind of start getting our foot going down that path one step at a for students time get involved and having a military star program in place and we've met with several officers to discuss the implementation of that that gives you a leg up and i know there's a whole bunch of other things that come along with this so it's not just you put the course in the catalog but i'm glad we're moving in that in that direction so it's on the radar yeah definitely want to be ready if if there's an opportunity okay do i have a motion to approve new course proposals at the high school uh mr president i move that we approve the new high school course descriptions as presented for inclusion in the high school academic guide thank you mr alexander do i have a second second thank you mr daniels any more questions all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes five zero thank you thank you dr hoover thank you our next order of business is to accept a donation for center grove elementary dr arkanov but i assume you're throwing it to someone no actually i get to do this one this is uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the donation from center grove elementary's pto um it's a it's a hefty one they're looking at opening a pavilion valued at about seventy six thousand seven hundred dollars you can see in the document there that it's uh it's going to be located on the center grove elementary grounds on the north side of the school and i think pam if you open up the attachment down at the very bottoms a couple of maps right so you can see where that's going it'll include sidewalks to and from the pavilion area and of course it will be ada compliant they're hoping to get it installation into spring of 2022 in the audience today of course is principal mrs nelson and i would assume the folks from the pto so if you'd like to do some introductions there chris that'd be great um with the help of pto our uh president they have been behind this and have worked endlessly just getting quotes and um we want something that is a quality product um and i spoke with dr long today and daryl has been a part of this process and has kept an eye on what gets you know what's might be in the way or anything like that it's really a nice addition to the upgrades that we've put into the playground and the the play areas around it so it's a really nice addition there what what's the ultimate goal i mean yeah get kids outside but what will be contained in there that yes so we have some our classrooms right now are setting you know the life cycle of plants um looking at animals the great you got that they have that great pond area back there we have a little friendly i don't know muskrat or something that comes and visits us every day so we'll be able to sit there and watch him go back and forth but it's to get the kids outside one with nature some of our classrooms are also doing some raised gardens similar to what was at walnut grove elementary school that they started there we would like to bring that back down here to cges and be a part of that program um i know you reached out to well water with the dukes and so that would be almost like a so they can see a beginning and an end situation i will tell you i was subbing there once we saw mom fox moving her pups around the pond the recessed kids were glued to that fence so there's yeah seeing that kind of stuff for the kids is great any other questions for mrs nielsen i'll see you soon i need a motion mr president i'm moved that we accept the donation for the outdoor learning pavilion at central river elementary in the amount of 76 700.
so the motion is that the cheshire board of education approved the purchase of the following textbooks inspire earth science and precision machine technology as recommended by the curriculum committee it's very second time i'm sorry adam seconds any discussion yeah could somebody just i mean it looks straightforward to me but could somebody just explain it a little bit the textbook marlene or jeff or ann so we have a couple pages in our packet on each each of those textbooks including the cost per unit and the total purchase cost and um also the criteria used for material selection so what what i'm just just wondering about also for the public is what's the content of the textbook just curious i see a math book i see algebra one and i think okay i understand this that's pretty straightforward but this is a little bit different so i was just curious sure happy to elaborate on that yeah so the um the textbook that's precision machining and technology that is a text that is used in the advanced manufacturing certificate program through nagatok valley community college so when we aligned our course with them we also need to align our resource and so that has post-secondary readability and matches the the credits for the courses that they would get at the community college so um that is the information on the those the precision machining technology the other is updating an earth science textbook and that really is because the others were very outdated and that was prior to the implementation of the ngss the new science standards so the that they had to do a review of new textbooks to see what they can get to align and this one they like specifically the readability because it's for a variety of levels both the cp and the ccp earth science of course thank you one that say you mentioned that it the precision machining technology that actually helps students get credit at what you said in nagatok valley is that auto tuck valley it's a dual enrollment course is that the waterbury community college okay well i know there's there's a few community colleges around the state and that one's the one yeah okay so that that's fantastic so thank you i know you know when i got on the board two years ago i spoke with the superintendent and one of the things that i'd like to see is i i believe i'm a firm believer a strong advocate of education continuing throughout one's life um but i'm not a believer necessarily that it needs to be a formal education or in this instance necessarily like a four-year bachelor's degree that any students need to go on to i think education is important and i think a community college to be able to take advantage of that and you know not spend quite as much money and take on as much debt i think that's a i think that's a great opportunity for students so i just wanted to highlight that so thank you and uh miss lana quit if i'm wrong but this also i believe the expansion of the machining program at chs also helps students gain certification or steps towards certification steps towards it i think with what sean has presented to us in the past about how he wants to use the perkins money is really for us to build upon and create a certification program but that takes a few years to get these all aligned so this would be a course towards that thank you uh adam and then ann uh just quick question um the units that are mentioned um in the uh the write-ups here are those actual textbooks or is it a combination of textbook and e-book or how does that how does that look nowadays we had two textbooks that also have a platform component or i should say that the earth science has a platform component but the textbooks themselves were on display both at our offices and at the public library so there is a hard copy textbook that will be available to students but the online um portion of that has just a depth of material that isn't found only in the textbook so it's more so the if the intention is it the main uh body of of the uh text is more an ebook and not it's a textbook if you want it but it's more of a interactive uh book yeah okay yeah thanks i just wanted to add real quickly that i have seen some enthusiastic proponents of um of our programs at chs but none more enthusiastic than this manufacturing courses as they've been evolving and coming to fruition so um it's it's been wonderful to see and i i agree with tim i do think it's it's really um it's an important addition to our curriculum for our high school students and uh just the last comment and i my mind uh is lacking here but was it this past summer or last summer that we that sean won that big cnc machine multi-access uh that we was able so i mean he's just been the point has been building and building and building so it's awesome to see this take off so uh kudos to the team i will pass that along yeah please let him know um that being said the i lost my motion the motion is that the cheshire board of education approved the purchase of the following textbooks inspire earth science and precision machining technology as recommended by the curriculum committee all those in favor it is unanimous thank you i think that concludes the curriculum committee report up next is finance mr grippo thank you mr chairman um i will give a much less exciting uh finance report than vin could as reflected in the above summary which unfortunately is no one else can see at least except for the board members here um through october 31 2021 our approved budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year is 77 million uh 1052.
on august 6 2021 school 11 lost an integral part of our school 11 family diana max simoetz was a beloved co-worker teacher and friend diana made school 11 a better place diana was known to her students as miss mack when i walked in her room i would love to see the photos of her students on the wall miss mack really loved her job and the students at school eleven on monday the 22nd at four o'clock we'll be honoring her by dedicating a little free library outside of school eleven we would like to invite dr robert tozie and the board of ed members to this dedication we would also like to see students of miss smack there we will have books by the teachers of school eleven each book will have inspirational words on the cover to inspire children of clifton to read miss mack may no longer be with us but she will still promote the love of reading to the students of school eleven the plaque on the library will read in memory of diana max simwitz forever the heart of our school re we read to know that we are not alone thank you for your time and hope to see you there miss morrison could you please email me that information when you get a second thank you very much thank you anyone else wish to address the board good evening to all my name is lori lallam and i'm the president of the cea i just want to make a couple of comments now for the high school that they're going to do a female flag football i want to know that i was the original powder puff football player in 1975 don't do any math so wait i'm sorry what year old but anyway junior year and senior year i was the star kicker so i i played that very well and the boys they were the cheerleaders so keep that in mind that was a fun time back in the day i want to thank you dr robertosi for recognizing the fact that your staff works very hard and they really have gone above and beyond the call of duty and that makes them feel good because this has been very tough on the staff and my email gets larger and larger every day and it's not a complaint i wish i had a magic wand to take us back to pre-covet because this has been difficult on everyone and is i want to find out is there the policy on on vaccine and testing from strauss esme okay good all right just want to check but uh thank you again for for recognizing your staff because it means a lot to them and i hope everybody has a wonderful thanksgiving and i am thankful to be the president of this association and working clifton so that's my thankful mr president um can i just tell her what policy it is so she showed up it's first reading miss lama it's eight point thirteen okay anyone else wish to address the board seeing our most important man make a comment appreciate miss la lama thanking me for recognizing the staff but my problem and where i have mixed emotions is that i wish i can do more than just thank them i i know what it was like when i was in the clay when i was a classroom teacher and my last period of day was my prep period and i taught all day and then the principal or vice principal or somebody comes up to you and says i need you to cover this class and you're exhausted from the day you have your own stuff to do and that's been happening all too often and it's a bigger problem than clifton it's a bigger problem than new jersey it's a national issue there's a there's a labor epidemic there is a there is a national reckoning of employment in new jersey in the united states in what people will do for money and i'm open to suggestions i'm open to what can we do to get more substitute teachers what can we do to fill some of the regular teaching positions we have i need math teachers i need special education teachers so i'm open to it but what i will promise uh the staff is that we will work together to solve the problem it's not something i created it's not something you created but if we meet together maybe we're not going to solve this national problem but maybe we can come up with something that can ease the burden because believe me i get it i get it and i wish i could do more than say you know thank you and i understand sometimes that just doesn't help too much so i just wanted to say that thank you mr smith president smith yes i'm sorry really quick just uh dr robert toziz um have we thought about perhaps talking to certain universities institutions that have adjunct professors and to see if any of them may be interested maybe they don't know that hey i teach at a higher ed institution maybe montclair will ep community college and that may be something that we can bring in as substitutes you can't bring them as teachers because they probably won't be certified just a thought and idea okay we'll move along uh unfinished business we have none next move on to education administration we have ea one through ea seven motion what's your favorite second by mr abedrabo discussion seeing non-vocal mr alvarado yes mr wad miss patsford yes ms beltran yes mr canova mr daley yes dr danny yes vice president casper yes president smith yes morgan carey all right next we have personnel i'm asking to have a p15 separate so we're going to do p1 through p23 with a separate on p15 so i moved so mu by myself mr alvadrava second second by dr danny and discussion uh yes and i'm abstaining on p19 board conferences my name only thank you ms beltran yes mr canova mr daly yes dr danny yes i'm abstaining on p19 board conferences my name only vice president casper i'm going to vote yes and abstain on my name only on p19 and president smith yes motion carries okay now uh p uh change in employment status motion motion second mr avadravo second by ms basford um discussion um i pulled this separate because it's a change in employment status it's always nice to recognize our current employees that maybe uh are moving on to a new position and the board likes to recognize them and here we have um i believe four individuals here um who are having a change in employment status moving up in our district and we're very proud of our staff that does that so i congratulate all those that are in here and at the conclusion of this uh motion uh if there's any of those people here and wish to come up to the mic they can do so so let's have a roll call please mr abhijava absolutely mr wod miss bassford yes ms beltran yes mr canova yes mr davey yes dr danny yes vice president casper yes president smith yes motion carries um i believe i see mr maldonado if you like to come up to the microphone if you wish [Applause] good evening president smith board commissioners dr robertosi mr jingaro who's not present mr uzi ahmed ms kasilovic and all our clifton families i would like to take a moment to thank all you all very much for approving my appointment as the director of the building and grounds department thank you for your continuing support on the job that i have been doing and will continue to do moving forward my goal is to continue to provide a safe clean healthy school environment for our students staff and our community i'm very excited for this new position i want to thank my family with here present my wife inaudible my son eddie iii and jacob armani my family is the one that keeps me together from the bottom of my heart i want to thank you all for this opportunity and i will not let you down thank you all uh thank you eddie you are um a true hard-working dedicated individual and this board recognized that and we're so happy for you and know that you'll do a great job and we thank his family for being here tonight and he didn't mention uh his son jacob but jacob is one of our star football players that's going to be playing in that big game tomorrow night so we wish you all the best we wish you all the best and i know you have a little extra baggage there on your hand i'd like to recognize our superintendent's effort to give the board a pop quiz but he does i think he doesn't realize that we're his boss and not the other way around so but uh but to to his suggestion uh what do we need to be thankful for um we we need first of all we need to be thankful for you for uh you know superintendent for a while and you've more than exceeded i think our expectations and i don't i speak for myself but i don't think anybody on the board is going to disagree and and you've made a huge difference in the way this district is moving forward and we thank you for that um i'd like to also thank the administration and our staff and our teachers for their very hard work as you uh noted just a few minutes ago and um the other thing we need to thankful is in terms of the board is the board itself this is a tough time to be a board member and if you've been reading papers and watching news clips a lot of other boards have embarrassed themselves in their community and that has not happened here and i thank each and every one of us who are participating here at that board it's it's uh it's very important that as elected members of this board or any board you we represent the community and how we behave and how we act reflects upon how our community functions and i like to note that each and every one of us have done i think a very very great job in doing that in such a tough environment with so much controversy throughout the country so uh that's what i'm thankful for so i may take a few more minutes mr maldonado because she's just left like to thank him and all the others for their uh promotion um i'd like to thank our uh uh mr rugosi mr gozi on her presentation and andrew on his presentation and all those who spoke tonight and everybody in the community have a very happy and thankful and enjoyable thanksgiving under the circumstances it's not as bad as last year but it's not what we expect so but everybody have a great thanksgiving in the community thank you mr smith thank you mr daily next we have dr danny please um so what am i thankful for okay well i'm thankful for my family first of all because i think family is very important i think that thanksgiving that's a time we spend with our family and it's those moments that we always cherish [Music] i'm thankful also for people that come into my life that touch my life i think you know there's that saying that you know some people come in for a reason some first season and whatever it is there's always something that you learn about yourself you know whether somebody's there with you in a parking lot for just a few hours or something it's always nice it's always nice to to share moments with someone um and i'm also thankful for the clifton voters for putting their trust in me and it's truly humbling you know to be elected for fourth term to know that people do recognize and see that you care and that you really want to make a difference [Music] and on that you know i'd like to thank all those out there that helped me during my campaign run you know my family my friends relatives boyfriend and everyone that just played some part in in helping me and i truly truly appreciate it um and it was really a pleasure to talk to so many of the voters uh to hear some of the issues that they were facing in regards to districts some to hear about how pleased they were what the district was doing so it was just really nice it just sort of made me think about roosevelt's fireside chats you know would just be so it was just just really was a warming warming feeling talking to some and so i would also like to say condolences to the family of miss mack on the passing so sorry for your loss and congratulations i know he's not here anymore but mr maldonado and um congratulations to mr allen paris um on your win and you know i have to say special congratulations to miss basford because you know we were in it for so many years and you know we you know we're back on again for the fourth term so you know i mean you've been my running mate for you know how many years so i just have to say congratulations and i just want to say um happy thanksgiving to all and that you know may you share more good memories at the table with your family and that's all thank you mr abu drabble you're next thank you president smith uh first of all thank you to our wardrobe wilson middle school administration teaching staff for reinforcing positive behavior within the culture of woodrow wilson um it's great to see what our schools are doing um [Music] to help instill that proper behavior that many people lack open house night was phenomenal there are a lot of people who are walking the hallways and seeing who the robotics are the different clubs and some people some parents didn't know what we had in this district and i think that open house night was successful uh to principal hamda ms lusa lovich their staffs thank you kudos to you guys for doing a great job uh congrats to soccer volleyball across country you guys had an amazing season i was fortunate enough to watch about 95 percent of your games in matches and meets football everybody knows football is probably my favorite sport and our team is rocking it um it's unfortunate what happened to union but that's what happens we don't when you don't have a danny robert toesies as your superintendent and connected to open house night um i was invited that night to mechanical mustangs on a saturday morning that president smith and i went to and people don't understand what goes into robotics and mechanical mustangs and they it's phenomenal i mean it's not just academics but they are truly it's truly a sport and uh to monique thank you for coaching them you're an amazing asset to this district uh condolences to the um the family of miss mack and the school school love and family and also not to forget cheerleading in the band as well they've done a phenomenal job our turkey donation line i know a lot of people are inquiring about where to donate turkeys for thanksgiving i believe saint peter's haven takes donations it's a good asset that we have in our in our city congratulations to the winners for the election if i'm not mistaken i think mr paris is in the back congratulations to him as well he's hiding the back behind that mask so congratulations to all three i know i know so when i walked in i want to remind everybody i already bought my tickets but also to my colleagues on the board um just as a reminder to buy your tickets for the superintendent's fundraiser it's 15 a piece the contact on that is ms jen algieri she's done a phenomenal job with the foundation uh superstars foundation that he brought over for with him from linden again it feeds a good source which is scholarship for our students here in our district so they can move on and do bigger and better things so it's a reminder as well what am i thankful for honestly danny our teachers our family and the trusted people i've considered close friends and family for all the support and on that note on the with go bucks they're playing the giants monday night [Music] thank you uh next is miss bassford yes good evening congratulations to dorothy aldrin the 200 2021 passaic county volunteer member of the year she's a member of casa clifton against substance abuse she won the new jersey governor's council on alcohol and drug edition addiction it's a great honor for her for her grandparent group condolence to trina wanjenko's family class of 2012.
thank you mrs counts do i have a second thank you mr alexander all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed thank you motion passes 5z thank you thank you ladies for your work on this too can't wait to see it i absolutely appreciate it anytime you can get the kids out of the classroom it's great our next order of business is to authorize the 2022 tax anticipation warrants dr arkhanov thank you mr russell this evening i'm recommending that the board approve a resolution to borrow money from the indiana bond bank this is a standard procedure that we do about this time every year and for the calendar year of 2022 center grove will again participate in the indiana bond bank advanced funding program for assurance of temporary loans to anticipate to in anticipation of property tax revenues and since property taxes are normally distributed in june and december cash flow deficits are typically experienced in april may october november and so for that reason we usually borrow money from the indiana bond bank and this this year the operation fund would be four million four hundred and seventy five thousand five hundred and fifty two dollars this this amount would then be paid back when the property tax revenues are received if the 2022 tax revenues are delayed as they have been occasionally in the past we'll need to borrow additional amount in the middle of 2022 for comparisons in 2021 we borrowed four million one hundred and seventeen thousand eighty seven dollars at a rate at of point of zero point six three and expected to pay interest in um twenty of twenty three thousand 996 dollars and 52 cents for that year and so there's a resolution that's been prepared by bose mckinney and evans uh our bond council for the indiana bond bank the resolution sets the maximum amount that can be borrowed for each fund which is the total property tax levy for the year for the fund these documents are in the same form as we've used in prior years the complete set of the documents are rather lengthy and have been provided to the board members for your review the board action is needed at this time to approve the resolution and authorize the president and the secretary of the board to sign and execute these documents so bottom line one government agencies needing money before another one gives us money yeah it's that's been nice unfortunately the practice that you see and you can see here's been our our history on the bond bank borrowing it's just it's a time issue it is do i have a motion mr president i move that we approve the resolution authorizing tax anticipation awards and authorize the president and the secretary to sign the documents as needed enjoy a second second thank you mr james any other discussion none for me okay all those in favor say aye aye all those posed thank you the motion passes 5-0 thank you her last order of business this evening is the second reading of proposed policy revisions dr arthur thank you mr russell this evening i'm recommending the board approve the bylaws and the policy revisions that you looked over and had a first reading on at our last meeting those items are there we can if there's any additional questions or conversation from our last meeting we can have that but otherwise they're they're there for your review and approval this time around this would be our second reading and these changes were to bring us in compliance to participate in meetings virtually correct particularly the first few are all in regards to having an electronic process outside of a public health emergency prior to having a public health emergency we we never had a policy for electronic meetings it wasn't something people did then covet hit people started doing electronic meetings people felt like you know hey we can do this regardless of a health emergency so now there's some policy tightens it up a little bit more than what you would do during a health emergency and this all follows indiana law that's correct these are all done and drafted through neola is a organization we use with probably about 15 attorneys that do nothing but write policies sounds very interesting yes any other discussion do i have a motion i move that we approve the bylaws policies as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second thank you mr daniels all those in favor say aye all those opposed notion passes 5-0 thank you the only deal no other business in december's meeting is cancelled cancelled okay there's no other business at this time our december meeting at this point has been cancelled unless we do need to have it do have it on the calendars and i think that makes meeting adjourned thank you all for coming this evening
and we have ex expended and encumbered 60 million 520 318 or 78.6 percent through the first four months of the fiscal year the vast majority of our encumbrances for payroll transportation and outplace tuition accounts have now been entered with only minor adjustments expected through december at this time there are no major budget variance concerns to report with that said the recent increases in fuel prices are expected to negatively impact our budget lines for transportation fuel and heat and energy but since these line items are relatively small the overall impact to the budget is manageable as reported previously we expect that there will be lingering uncertainty as to the extent of coven 19 pandemic related expenses especially for student and staff health safety and protective needs such as tent rentals intraday cleaning as well as the purchase of ppe and disaffecting supplies while these safety related expenses are not expected to negatively impact the operating budget if they become excessive they will reduce the funding that is available for learning loss and academic needs that we intend to allocate to the two available elementary and secondary school emergency relief esser grants that total one million three hundred three hundred thirty seven thousand seven hundred six dollars as detailed below esther grant thirty 439 thousand five hundred fifty nine dollars to be used by nine uh i guess that's september 2023 and the uh arp esser uh eight hundred eighty nine thousand one hundred forty seven dollars to be used by september in line with the above the relatively low infection rate at this time and the launch of booster vaccines for adults and vaccines for five to 11 year old children will hopefully ease the health and financial uncertainty and mark the beginning of the end of the pandemic we will continue to monitor and report on our budget including the status of esther grant's uh ester grant use as the 2021-2022 school year progresses and that ends the financial reports um i guess dr solon for me i didn't get a chance to look at the line items here but the the one concern that we had actually well not one one of many concerns that we had during our budget process last year was actually was fuel cost um thinking that you know it was going to go up in our in our light almost was was we thought was a little light but at the time you know that's what it was so um our how is that is that going to be um it says here it won't be a major impact but the price keeps going up and have we successfully we converted many of our schools from diesel or from oil uh if i recall yeah yes but we're um generically speaking more oil based heat but nevertheless you know nobody could predict where prices were going to go where the pandemic's going to go and it's still incredibly hard to do that but our entire budget line for heating oil natural gas propane you know gasoline diesel fuel amounts to about seven hundred thousand dollars so with a 10 increase we're looking at a 70 000 variance in the budget even 15 percent is just over a hundred thousand um so in that case i mean we'll continue to look at other areas that are you know under have come in under the projected budgeting amount could be outplacement substitutes who knows we'll continue to track that but what we do historically in our budget implementation is you talked about mr grippo we have only encumbered 60 of the 77 million and so anything that's kind of a variable purchase that we might be able to delay a bit in order to better get a sense of what the fuel will be particularly going into the winter months we're going to do that but like i said even with a 15 20 percent variance is a hundred and forty thousand dollars we can you know account for that in one way shape or form through our budget um it's not anything that has us really concerned but closely monitoring are there any are there any other questions too yeah so uh washington just passed the big bill trillion dollars do you happen to know were electric school buses in there i know they were talking about ev charging stations right i i do not know specific to electric school buses but i know that a substantial sum was committed to electric vehicle infrastructure but i don't know specific to electric school buses yet okay i'll try to find out yeah i'm sure you know and the other thing is i know that you know i heard the governor saying the other day that of the money that's committed to connecticut the state also has to match some of that funding and so you know i'm sure there'll be a legislative process to identify that but you know hopefully we are able to move toward electric busing and other you know green efforts for schools sure and i just want to say that so i i have a this energy transition that we are undertaking right now that will take decades it started a long time ago and will continue for a long time it to me it's not just about the energy transition um it also gets to public health i have asthma so this is for the public i have asthma and i have absolutely no doubt that that is in part because of emissions that happen across the country the power plants the coal plants out in ohio and the winds just blow across to the east the emissions from the buses um and they're cleaner than they used to be but they're still there and i don't my my hope my goal is to not have the kids inhaling those emissions even if they are cleaner it's still better to not have them around for any of us particularly the kids who are right there within a few feet of the of the exhaust pipes so that's it thank you thank you um i just had one last question um so it was about this time last year that the the school lunch program little problem kind of popped up i don't see anything like that here is it safe to say that um that problem has been solved and we we seem to be uh moving along nicely this year yeah great memory um i think what caught us last year is you know with the free and reduced and how that with free everybody was free um and we weren't really prepared nobody was to navigate that as a matter of fact i think we emerged uh in a much better position than most districts uh because we did notice it and make some changes and providing breakfast as well this year we are in a much much better place our biggest lunch issue is not necessarily finance access to food that you know our uh food services director is working really hard to like change menus all the time so i know eric is always focused on making sure we provide a nutritious meal breakfast and lunch but how do we you know also get access to food she's driven herself personally to go different places and collect food just to make sure we're able to provide that for our kids so i appreciate her her commitment there one last thing that i would mention on a different note is uh when you went when you started to talk about last year about this time and i started to think more about medical benefits and we hadn't gotten there yet yeah i i know i don't want to steal your thunder for january but um that's always a really really challenging path and so you know we have vin and i have begun uh conversations with arnett and jim and sean on this side of the street to try and devise a solution for budgeting that provides us greater stability um because if you recall we um intentionally as a community agreed to kind of underfund um the medical benefits account which is you know it's okay right now it's stable but in order to close the gap in our budget we're we're going to need a significant uh operational increase to do that and um you know just it seems uh like we're always in this position where we're chasing medical benefits so we are working um as requested by the board and council last year to advise a solution that might provide us greater stability moving forward so more to come on that too great true um since there's uh no action needs to be taken um i will move on to the medical benefits uh report as as referenced um for the for the month of october claims were um 998 677 dollars which um puts us overdrawn by um 168 874 leaving us with a uh net medical benefit reserve amount of 1.81 million dollars for according to this two-month reserve which i believe is uh lower lower than what we would normally like it's like three months i think something it's it's at the fringe yeah right there um so uh if i recall from the last meeting vin had mentioned that there was going to be a detailed review of the claims i don't know if had that occurred yet or yeah that's still in process and i would you would add here too that we will be receiving stop-loss reimbursement and uh more prescription rebates that you know will help buoy that 2.09 months a little bit higher to make us a little bit more comfortable like you said i think we're still kind of the fringe of being uncomfortable with that number and i know that as part of the budgeting process the council had said you know we can revisit that with them if it becomes an issue um but i think right now we're still okay uh but i as you mentioned i know um van and the team are going through that medical benefits claims and they'll be ready to share more information in our next meeting great are there any questions on medical benefit yeah so not a question but i just think it's important to always be pointing out that that million-five one-time contribution that went into this year's number is really the only thing keeping us at two months over or two months of reserve so um you know let's keep focused on that too because we didn't budget it that way we had to we had to get that infusion after the fact so thanks though thanks for the report adam tony i i you know we're it's interesting because we had talked during the budget process of budgeting 900 000 a month in claims um came in at 800 000 i think still marginally better than last year because we're hitting two three hundred thousand dollars in some months over the allotment i i guess the concern i have is if the gimmick that's being looked at for the reserve fund is to lock it down that's all well and good but it doesn't address the fluctuation in claims which is really the root cause so i i hope um yeah the analysis will show us something but um but i don't believe we're just it's just the board of ed's side that's facing slowness i know what town is exactly so i'm sure working together we'll figure it out so i appreciate that vincent team is starting to look for that be curious to see how the year goes but thanks for the report any other questions that concludes my report thank you thank you adam up next is mr gripple again on policy committee i think i'm sorry i bypassed tim personnel committee update sorry no disrespect yeah a personnel committee met on i think it was wednesday november 10th uh the meeting was basically held in executive session the topic was uh the superintendent's goals for this year we will i thought it was a good conversation i think that we all felt that way and we will be having following this meeting we'll be going i anticipate we'll be going into executive session to have a discussion of the superintendent's goals among the entire board of less faith who's not here tonight but that's it thank you thank you tim it's the grip off nexus policy it's been a long time mr chairman thank you um so uh on november 9th um the policy committee uh uh convened and we reviewed several policies um uh first up was uh policy uh 5131-9 student hazing and bullying um this will be brought up for a second reading let me just make sure we have a okay so uh so we moved this policy forward for uh a second reading um in this in this review of the second reading um our attorneys at is it bertram moses yeah um did a thorough review of the policy uh because the the first time that we saw it was sort of an amalgamation of different things from cave and i guess legislation was all kind of mashed together so they went through and i think we all agreed that the final form that came before us was probably the best version we had ever seen of of the the bullying policy was really well done it had great references and it was easy to understand by anyone who read it so we were quite pleased by it um i guess the the one of the i guess the major concern was was of course the the changing of the definition of bullying um that came down from legislation um which seems to conflict with itself a little bit um because um it doesn't before it was uh was it pervasive and i forget what was it repeated it used to be uh yeah used to be repeated repeated and pervasive or whatever oh yes repeated acts of of bullying um but at their uh the new definition has that you could have one single act if it's significant enough could also be considered bullying um so we are a little bit um we're trying to figure out what exactly what that meant so i guess as we come along we'll have to the administration will have to figure that out um and i think really the the second part uh if i recall was whether or not um people uh i think was it administration and and it looks like seemed like any employee of us of the school and potentially even parents could also be included uh as perpetrators in this bullying policy it's not entirely clear if that's true the way it was the way that the final form was written it wasn't entirely clear and it wasn't entirely clear in the original legislation or the um policy that came from cave either so i guess that will also be another issue that we'll have to keep an eye on as we go forward but other than that we unanimously uh uh voted to move it forward to a second reading um and then uh for um uh lastly as a third reading of the uh policy uh 41 18.11 42 18.11 nondiscrimination um uh here uh dr solon explained there are no changes this policy since the first reading um revisions are required due to changes in statute the following language that is being added is race and quotes is inclusive of ethnic traits historically associated with race including but not limited to hair texture protective and protected protective hair styles protective hairstyles and quote includes but it's not limited to wigs head wraps and hair styles such as individual braids cornrows locks twists bantu knots afros and afro puffs um and so i have a motion to be considered um this being blocked here here we go uh motion uh that the cheshire board of education give a third and final reading to policy 18.11 slash 4218.119 nondiscrimination and direct the superintendent to put said policy into immediate effect i have a second tim um is there discussion on the motion seeing none um all in favor it is unanimous to those present um thank you uh and that concludes my report mr chairman uh thank you adam and thank you policy team for helping get this one done uh just on the on the bullying policy we didn't get a chance to i just want to mention something about it yeah please um yeah so with regard to the the change that you're talking about adam moving it from you know multiple repeated offensive to a single offense that is really concerning to me um i get it it's the law um but just in the interest of you know sometimes kids can do stupid things not understand the consequences of them and not i don't really want them to have that mark on their record in perpetuity when it was a one-off thing that they they were spoken to and they and they took the lesson heart um so i just confirmed with the superintendent you can clarify if i get anything wrong here but let's just say a kid does something it's stupid it's not the right thing to do if the kid basically has a good record following that i mean let's say you're in elementary school they do something wrong by the time they get to elementary school or you know they finish up a dot if they did something there you could get it wiped from the record is it i mean is that sure i think is a base response to that answer i would start with the fact that connecticut has a records retention protocol that we follow with respect to discipline generically you know there is a latitude within statute for the superintendent to review and expunge records at different uh transitions in a student's education so you know as part of that review i won't say that it happens with regularity um it's probably more the exception than the rule but there is the possibility to expunge a student's record um like i said at different points okay yeah it's just and we use good judgment you know obviously and would require um like you stated that uh we would need to see that there this was a learning experience tremendous growth had been made um but it's like i said it's more the exception than the role thank you thank you tim up next is school modernization update mr martelly i'm going to have uh dr solon give the update tonight thank you mr martelly um the uh process has been kind of moving in a lot of different directions here so the first component that we're really exploring is darcy school and so dan hansen who was referred to us through collier's has been working with the darcy staff to identify the programmatic needs there because if you recall the uh two elementary school plan incorporated darcy moving to highland and at a review that was done several weeks ago there was a real question about capacity there and programming and we obviously want to measure twice twice and cut once and not realize we've got a major problem in the middle of this so dan has he toured the darcy school with principal kim desert uh myself and mr massiana he toured highland with principal jeffrey and mr maciana and i did that several weeks ago he uh has pretty much finalized his review of the programming at highland he will be meeting with highlands staff representatives tomorrow to finalize that mr jeffrey concurrently has been reviewing upon redistricting to accommodate the two new elementary schools what sort of space will we have at highland and he's identified classroom we're trying to put classrooms together to accommodate darcy and what would that look like so our plan is the timeline is that by mid-december we will have a really clear picture about whether or not darcy's programming would overlay into highland and if it doesn't we will also have at that time recommendations of are we talking about it it's really impossible if that's the case we would be looking at do we need to add darcy or other programming we could make a recommendation into the north end school at castro tunnel property is it really close and we need minor renovation to make this uh happen then we we could talk about that but the bottom line is mid-december we should have a real good sense of what where darcy stands in highland and whether or not it would work there which will in turn allow us to do ed specs for the two other buildings um norton and the castro town on north end elementary school along those lines gncb has been contracted to do the soil boring process to confirm that we can do construction in those two sites they will be at the casertano property on the 23rd of november and on the 24th that afternoon they'll be at norton with the machinery to do that unfortunately as much as we wanted to try and expedite that this is expedited in the world that we're living in right now and they will try and get those results as quickly as possible upon completion of those tasks so really that next step is once we identify how and if uh darcy fits into highland we can you know really go gangbusters on ed specs for the other two buildings and move forward a couple other uh one other real point and note uh you've probably heard the name casa diamantis in their conversations over the years who's the head of oscgr at the state he was the person we met with last year he has resigned from his post so there's a new leadership hasn't been necessarily put in place yet but upon chuck warrington from collier's his recommendation i'll be drafting a letter on behalf of the schools to send to michelle dixon who's uh the interim in charge asking to meet with her um so we can just you know kind of update them on where we are on our project and what's going on and make sure that we're on that radar so that's the update on school modernization uh quick question the [Music] the ed specs for birth to three and also for alternative high school right because they colliers needs that to help us determine fit location but also ensure that the costs are captured right so are we gonna also have uh confirmation on the low and high cost or phase one of that plan in december yeah so pecking order right now is really that darcy to highland thing and then getting the two elementary schools specked out in there will be a review of the educational programming at the alternative school plus space review for our board of ed education offices those are all things we're trying to accomplish as quickly as possible but the the two elementary schools chuck and john have kind of prioritized that uh so that we can get that in the in the process for reimbursement thank you so what i'm hearing here suggests that the um two elementary school plan is basically the only one that's going to be investigated really thoroughly and presented to the public um you don't have to say it's fine um and i since this is my last board meeting i feel that i must um reiterate my concern about the way that this process has unfolded and the fact that the community that the [Music] the plan that became designated as the quote-unquote preferred plan sort of took a lot on a life of its own and the six to eight middle school possibility has been shoved aside and in my view and with all disrespect to everyone who sits on this board you know it has become a politicized thing and not by the board um but by others and i am i think it is a disservice to the community to just ramrod this thing through as if there is no other alternative and not even give the community the chance to weigh in on um in the same way that you're giving all of this information all the attention to the two elementary schools that same effort should be devoted to to the six state middle school and you know i respect the work that the school modernization committee has done truly i do because the board did that very same uh work and it took months and months for the board to do the same work uh a few years ago and we came up with a plan that was about the same amount of money and no one on the town council at that point would allow this you know any sort of proposal to go to the public i i cannot i i find it just so disheartening that there is no one that's that is saying okay the 68 middle school has some real um benefits the two elementary schools i still have not heard a single thing that is compelling about creating the two new middle elementary schools since we could deal with the enrollment issues by doing a six through eight middle school and you know uh building a new chapman and so i just feel like i have to say this my last opportunity although maybe i'll show up and speak as a member of the public about this but i would urge my fellow board members to take a look at this again and really with fresh eyes and from a fresh perspective and without the political overtones that have like sort of driven this now the school modernization committee did what it did the board had previously done what it did let's let the community figure out that between the two options which one makes more sense but i believe truly in my heart that for the kids of cheshire the six state middle school is going to benefit the students in a much more fundamental way than the two elementary schools and i'm i the end that's all i have to say thank you for giving me the opportunity catherine i was waiting for you to try me at some point i was going to say something earlier well so the good news is i i expect sometime in december we'll have a planning committee meeting but a board of ed because uh the other aspect of this is which you know folks don't like because reality is also financial so until uh we actually know what the town council feels is a palatable appetite for finances if we can fund the full phase one andy's main piece of information it'll be up to the planning committee to move forward a recommendation to the full board of ed for a final vote uh last i checked consensus still seems to favor scenario six anything is possible so i would say to all the other board members that are staying on and new ones coming there's an opportunity to make your case in december and beyond so stay tuned but uh for sure i could tell you uh i received no confirmation from town council that they're going to look at anything else and based on the consensus of the board recognize anything else but let's see what happens anything can happen at this point uh that being said i would hope that uh because of your work on both plans catherine uh you stick around because if we think a little longer term when something will go to referendum um i just had this conversation someone the other day is and you know again steps to get there but there is a timeline to meet for the board to put something from council officially they have to discuss in public put the referendum and as a period but there's also committee work that has to happen both on the board uh and ultimately if it's the public building commission down the road there has to be a user committee involved and we're going to need folks to help with that so i i would hope maybe down the road you can still stick very close whether it be a member of public or not but um so i would say stay tuned see what happens okay hey you wait this long was a few more weeks i'm just joking thank you katherine anyone else andrew anything else you want to add yeah yes so i would just add just a wee bit more because catherine you stated that very very nicely thank you um that i'm not sure why we are waiting for or something from the town council um is there not something that we should that we should could be doing um sort of in advance of that what do you think from planning is there anything planning can do in the meantime well until we have though so we have the information in mid december for uh to test fit to the school sites i don't know what else we could really meet to talk about so we're planning on having a planning committee being at the hall on december 16th the superintendent i spoke about earlier today i'm just wondering if you know if we're going to ask the town council to do any kind of putting together information or numbers on the sixth great middle school option we should discuss that as a board before we go to them with that and if we want to survey the public still create a survey we still have time to do that but if we wait until january february we're not going to have we're not that's not going to be an option at that point um so i'm just you know i feel like we're twiddling our thumbs waiting for the town council to act and and they're not even looking at the alternative option we've gotten a lot of feedback on that sixth grade middle school and i don't think it's sufficient to just tell people we hear you we're waiting to see what the town council does i i feel like there's action that we could take be more proactive about um putting together our information based on us being a board of education and what educationally those two projects look like for us absolutely and there is certainly opportunity for planning committee to do that which is where this resides right now so if the planning committee wants to request more information to town council it can meet and decide that for sure so i would work that avenue and i think i sent out an email second was last week before detailing what the steps are in protocol so i know andrew is reachable so please work through andrew in preparation for that meeting let's see what we can discuss yes mr grippa um the only thing that sounded like really changed was leadership at oscgr is that the correct acronym um so a lot of times when someone leaves a position like that it's either they retired or for some other philosophical reason sometimes so i was just wondering if you've had any notion as to whether or not there's a philosophical change at that uh office and whether or not we will receive a response from your letter before our uh planning meeting on december 16th and i guess the kind of piggyback on on what ann said it seems like all the testing and ed specs and all that that those final results will really kind of tell us if whatever plan we're looking at is real and doable anyway because it may not be the soil might be bad and then you know we you know we don't know if we strike out at castertono yeah we're in trouble regardless of what we're trying to do so um i it's a great question i think it's a fair question about shift in philosophy that's part of the rationale for meeting and just go talk to them face to face and and see where where things lie at that point and the challenging thing is with an interim head will it be different you know a month two months three months later with a different person or might you know this be the same person so who knows but um you know we definitely need to try and go and solicit some feedback and share our you know where we are in our process and um see see where it stands but hopefully we can do that asap and hopefully before the 16th of december i'll make myself available before that time you know whether or not they can is you know not my court but we'll try good question adam i appreciate that and i and jeff i appreciate that um that you want to keep us on their radar i think that's that's the important thing so thanks thank you up next is we don't have any understanding committees to report on in your packets there are meeting minutes from the last three meetings i believe pull this up we have meeting minutes from october 21st 25th and november 4th before we uh get into it with someone like to make a motion on approving the media minutes tim question to approve the meeting minutes so the the motion is moved that the board education approved the meeting minutes for meetings on october 21st 25th 4th is there a second and seconds any updates or changes to the to the minutes since there are none the motion is moved at the board of education approve the minutes from meetings held on october 21st 25th and november 4th uh all those in favor it is fault i'm sorry i'm going to abstain because i i actually had some questions about one of them and now it's too late for me for me to say anything so i'll abstain no if you can can we pull one of them out well is there any changes to the minute well maybe i mean if it's substantive i mean you can make it you can make it suggest it and offer an amendment true i don't want to do that publicly right now so the motion is move the board of education approve the minutes from meetings held on october 21st 25th and november 4th all those in favor raise your hands is one two three four in favor any against any abstentions can be abstaining or no i voted against it just because of what anne said i could have missed something i i don't know i'm i'm not that concerned about it okay well the motion passes uh the votes are noted thank you up next is correspondence secretary helen do we have any correspondence this evening so we do not mr chair thank you and that's probably the last time i'm going to that it's my last report up next is superintendent's report dr sullin thank you mr chair i try and uh pet this up and make it the the most exciting part of the meeting although i don't think we're going to get there tonight after our presentations anyway kovid really quickly um i'm disappointed to report that this week has probably been the toughest week we've had all year long right now we have excuse me 48 students quarantined and a number of positives the high being six at highland but every school has a positive student except for darcy that's much different than anything we've seen so far this year i want to remind people to please take precautions over the holidays and and be you know smart hopefully get outside as much as you can wear masks where you can't uh relative to last year however to put this in perspective i went back and looked at the data from november 20 november 18 we had uh students quarantined it at chs and hummingston another 22.142 at highland at this time last year so those totals 284 last year compared to 48 this year we'll take it that's a really a testament to our mitigation strategies including vaccination i want to thank chespercott and doolittle for facilitating our vaccination clinic for five to 11 year olds we've so far vaccinated 535 students in that age range we have another 200 slots available on excuse me net 200 slots available we have another 200 appointments that are scheduled on saturday there are still spots available there though um so by that point just at that one clinic site we will exceed uh or eclipse 50 percent of our 5 to 11 population in the cheshire public schools so i appreciate maura and her team at just for cop making that possible point of comparison at this point um 12 to 17 year olds that live in cheshire this is not exclusively the cheshire public school system but just live in cheshire of our population vaccinated 79 percent of the 18 to 24 population is vaccinated in cheshire 25 to 44 years of age 76 45 to 64.
she was an inspiration especially with her work in diversity and inclusion she was um an asset to the school and also an asset to the community in which she worked and grew what a loss to all of us as as human beings i have 10 483 reasons to be thankful and the staff as well but i want to talk to the community tonight i'm thankful for everybody in this room i am blown away by the 4 000 individuals who believed i still have three more years left in me um thank you for your support and faith you have proved that actions speak louder than words every election that i have run gets tougher and tougher each time you are the re you are you are my reason why your children are my reason why the teachers and the staff are my reason why the why i put my family through the ups and downs of being a commissioner but they understand my why my why is my passion for an equitable education for all and i will continue to keep my light shining even if it's not seen by others i want to congratulate commissioner danny who ran a campaign hard especially during the early election my family now has new inside jokes with you an everlasting image of you running through the parking lot of the clifton public library alan parrish welcome to the board look forward to working with you i look forward to ha to have your experience and vision on this board as well to those who didn't get it this time don't give up elections happen every year stay involved but most importantly stay informed to be the best you can be is by be staying informed for everyone who voted continue to stay active to our community so many people came to the polls that didn't know there was a board of education election which was very hurtful and troubling to me the dr drop walk was huge being active isn't just when election season happening it's being active and involved happens every day each day thank you again but i'm thankful for everybody in this room um whatever you do next week on thanksgiving say the prayer that you need to say to whatever god you believe in and what your grace is we have a saying in my house i can't say it here but um i'm grateful for everyone be safe be well and thank you 4549 of you i am grateful for all of you as well thank you thank you um ms beltran oh so i walked in at the perfect time with dr danny talking our doctor not whatever you know what i mean dr obertosi talking about staffing crisis so unfortunately i was late tonight because my supermarket which normally has 50 employees we're down to 27.
79 percent and the 65 percent or 65 age and up is 100 vaccinated so um just some information there to share with you uh another little neat thing uh tomorrow at 11 o'clock we have horses from rivendale farm in durham uh they're coming to dodd for as part of a therapeutic activity with our life skills program and uh it's really an exciting day we've they've been working with our school system for the past five years and it'll be really a special treat for our students to be able to engage with horses uh on the dodd property kind of a unique thing there um i wanted to touch really quickly on our this next item we're required to review our district profile and performance report each year and the most recent year that was published recently is 1920 the 1920 school year if you recall that's the year in march can recall if not forget that we um were impacted so dramatically by covid um what i did was take a look back at 1617 to see if there were any substantial differences worth noting right now you know as of the 1920 school year we we had 4 199 students at that time we've rebounded back since then closer to 4 300 students now at that time in 1617 our enrollment was 4 358 so kind of illustrating that we troughed out and we're rebounding back as the various enrollment studies have indicated some interesting points of note our suspension and expulsion numbers were significantly lower of course several months of pandemic but that's always a positive sign in in my mind the full-time educator equivalent at that time we had 274 uh full-time teachers and instructors now 268.
um with 27 same as dr robertosi i still have to fill all my obligations to those 27 as well as the entire community we don't have the option like the school doesn't have the option of just closing down you have to learn to function with less people and with a holiday coming next week it's becoming harder and harder every day and it's hard on my employees the same as it's hard on the employees that we have here in the school district and i apologize for being late and i hope that this is hopefully the you know the end of the staffing crisis and maybe by december meeting i'll be able to be 100 punctually on time i have the plans every morning of being here on time and then by the time the afternoon comes around we've lost another employee and you know we have to be able to check out the families that are coming to my supermarket to buy food um and on a happier note i'd like to say good luck to our football team when i was in high school my football team won state championship all four years so i'd really like to go back to the stadium to be there um i hope we can all go i hope i'm not inviting myself i'm just saying that it would be nice if we were invited also i'd like to say that everyone have a nice thanksgiving be kind to the people that are working in the supermarkets every supermarket is short staffed when you go out on black friday there's going to be less people it's going to take a long time to check out there might not be all the sales that there normally are so just be patient with everybody you see out there everyone is working really hard right now um congrats to judy basford um dr danny i'm in allen paris i look forward to working with you guys on my last year here on the board thank you thank you mr kanova it's green yeah you want to do that hello oh there we go uh congratulations to all of our appointees tonight congratulations to our board of ed winners looking forward to working with all of you again um i was glad to see that there was nine people running so that shows that there is people in this this town who care and want to run a position that's non-paid position uh to improve our board and improve our our district and i'm glad to see that and i hope to see that in years to come i really want to see people involved in this town this the student representative mentioned long lines for food i did hear that as well from my daughters but not because there's long lines for food because they want to go to their favorite subject which is recess and it takes longer to get to recess um so there is longer lines i told them just to be patient you know there is a covered restrictions and people have to uh have long enough space and time between it just that it is what it is for now um december 1st basketball game i am looking forward to it uh danny i want to know are we allowed to play too with board members is that something we're allowed to do no that would be cool um there was a player want to see you there bring the family there there was a player that came to school three we had an assembly and the students loved it they were so engaged it was amazing and and i am bringing my family there so we'll be there anyway um but i do want to say happy thanksgiving to everyone use caution if using a fryer and frying your turkey make sure it's dry and not frozen um i've heard horror stories uh but the things i'm thankful for i'm thankful for the parents being involved i'm thankful for the teachers administration for caring for our children and nurturing them i'm thankful for the kids in our district who are working hard under these these uncertain times and difficult times and for our board for putting in the time to make this in this role to make this place better and i'm looking for forward also to tomorrow's games so go mustangs thank you thank you vice president casper okay on my second to my last meeting i'd like to first congratulate all of our winners nine people was tough and i'd like to congratulate the three winners this year mr paris congratulations i welcome you in january bassford dr danny good luck it was a great pleasure working with you the past four years um there are some of you that i've been working with a little shorter so um miss beltran mr kanova thank you so much for your continued service mr daley mr smith it's been a pleasure mr abdrabbo you won't miss mr abu drabo it's been great working with you as well i know and as always i'd like to re thank our retirees for their hard work and dedication to our district i'd also like to thank all of the donations that have come into our district it's always a pleasure to see that all the donations that come in to make our district a better place for our students and lastly i'd like to thank administration and and um my fellow colleagues here as you know i had lost my brother about two weeks ago so um i'm like i would like to take this opportunity to thank all the heartfelt condolences from the public as well as my board member my fellow board members and our staff has really meant a lot to me and it makes me feel better to have worked with all of you so i'd like to thank all of you on that one have a great evening everybody and happy thanksgiving thank you i am most thankful for this district to my colleagues i work with to the public and to our staff we have probably the best teachers not only in the state but in the country we have dedicated employees that when they're asked to do something they do it i cannot emphasize how important that is just look at our meeting here tonight we had to switch the meeting to the media center here it did not work out at cella b so the staff here had to regroup put this room together sound system and all that from the technology end everyone did a phenomenal job and i believe it's a tremendous uh setup here but this can't be done unless your you have staff that are dedicated to doing these things and i know many times we don't say thank you enough and i tell myself each day that when i go out and see our staff to see our teachers that i make sure i thank them i thank them for the job that they're doing i thank them on behalf of the district and i thank them on behalf of the students and that leadership starts at the top and while we sit here and say we are so thankful for dr robertosi and we are but he has a tremendous staff under him and this board dedicated to giving him that staff and now we have a district that is running so smoothly so i have to thank all of them as well this can't happen without everyone's dedication and support and to the public the public has always been supportive we asked the public last year to go out and approve a 168 million dollar referendum and they did it so we say thank you to the public and i know that this board will not let you down we will be starting on that referendum actually things have started in the motion especially tonight we approved our construction managers eight people full time will be dedicated and on site here throughout the entire project and many others in the background but eight of the employees from this company will be on site full-time dedicated only to clifton so all in all i thank all of you i thank my commissioners for the great job that you're doing i congratulate miss basford dr danny and mr paris for being elected to this board we look forward to working with you and i thank mr casper for his dedication his devotion to this district he truly worked very hard while he was a commissioner and i know that he'll continue to do great things in your life and we wish you all the best and we thank you for all that you did for this board i i wish and hope that all of you are blessed with good health and happiness this thanksgiving last thanksgiving was terrible this one not so good but we hope we're in the right direction we hope people are getting vaccinated we hope that in some point we'll all be together not so spread apart not worrying about how we're going to get the next teacher or the next driver to buy drive the bus some towns have parents driving the school bus we're not quite there yet so this town has much to be thankful for and i hope the citizens of this town are thankful of the job this board is doing because it's been a very difficult and challenging year and i commend my commissioners for the job they did on all their committees and keeping up with everything throughout this pandemic nothing has stopped but has worked harder and i thank our security team mr constantino mr fieldhouse and his entire staff everyone has worked so very hard so i'm grateful and thankful to each one of you and we look forward to moving on in the right direction so this thanksgiving i wish all of you to be safe to be happy and healthy god bless all of you that's all i have we'll move on new business anyone for new business no we have nothing for executive session tonight so motion to adjourn removed mr casper said goodbye mr abu drabo meeting adjourned thank you you