Um I guess first I thank you for the kind words and for your support. I I appreciate your confidence. I I I am also not opposed to having someone look at anything we do. Um what I would say is that we currently have three uh financial audits, independent audits by um certified public accountant firms every year. One for the town audit which encompasses the entire town including the school department. one for um the end ofear report which is the data that we use that we provide to the department of ed that is is represented in per pupil spending and chapter 70 funding and um that's the source of that data and it is independently audited every year. Um we also are audited on our federal funding with um what's called the single audit uh every year. So financial audits already happening, >> right? >> It it it wouldn't make zero sense to do another financial audit because you're already paying for one.
That's not in my job description." You know, but just sort of make sure that all these bases are covered. I know, but when I look at the whole picture of it, and you know, you just put out to hire, right, a supervisor, and you've got 70 applications, and you know, ended up with a few people left if they went through the process. I don't think there's a lack of people out there that have the kind of um you know, will have the kind of requirements that we want. Like you said, this is a new building. So, I'm looking at it from it is a new building. I want everything to go smoothly Yes. this first year and not wait to see what we might need or what we don't need. Um I I I would put in an assistant principal possible you know, who has um special ed certification.
Um and then I was able to access that. Um but if we just click view text online, they always ask you send a thank you note, but we'll just go to our book. Um and we can go to whatever unit we want to take a look at. Um we can look at motion in two dimension. And we can look at vector addition, which is a tricky concept. It talks It gives you hints on how to do highlights. Uh so, you can highlight, you can do ask to do practice questions. Um it has key terms at each section. Um this is going through adding vectors using the graphical method, which and has a nice tips for success and really detailed uh guided practice. And then can have visualizations, so there's a a link to a video. Could you click that? Yeah. This Oh, okay. So, yeah.
Mrs. Bettini. recuse from 8. 16 number 209. I to the rest. Just clarification Mrs. Hassan, it's 8.16 that you're I'm sorry. It's 8.17 number 5 and 8.20. Okay, thank you. All right. Okay. Can I have a motion uh for finance from uh 10.1 to 10.12? I'll make the motion. I'll second that. No, I abstain. As Lou Russo and I abstain. Mr. Focarino. Recuse on 12.16 I'm sorry, 12.6 I and the rest. 10.6? 12.6. 1.1 We're we're on 10. We're on finance. Uh Thank you for that clarification. Recuse on 10.1 I and the rest. 10.1 I and the rest. >> [clears throat] >> Mr. Regio. Abstain 10.1, 10.2, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, I to the rest. 10.1 through 10.4 Okay. Mr. Diaz. I. Mr. Quiles. I. Mr. Taylor. I. Mr. Auto. I. Mr. Gaba. I. Mrs. Asan. I. Mrs. Patiri. I. And I work to finance.
My husband responded. Um there it involved a couple of other little girls and we really just got information like, "Oh, it's fine. There's no imminent threat." Um is that pretty much expected? Is that kind of all that parents of the um subject of the threat receive? >> Um it really So it's the investigation process is very like kept the same, but then depending on like what the different like avenues are, um you may get more or less information. Ultimately, we're always trying to stay within the guidelines of FURPA. And so, typically, I would say that like if it was a direct threat made to your student, you would then find out obviously more about it as opposed to like if your student heard a threat being made like at large. Um, you might just get the phone call or the email. Uh so that being said, you are asking about um what is more like procedural and so there are kind of like two parts to these policies and I apologize if you already know um there is like policy and they call them now regulations and so the policy is like the domain, the theory, the ideas behind it and then the um procedures are the regulations.
At the conclusion of the review, Empowered offered the following findings and recommendations. Number one, increase inclusive opportunities for students. Two, strengthening professional learning. Three, improving placement decision-making processes. Four, enhancing intervention and literacy supports. And five, improving staffing and scheduling systems to support collaboration and service delivery. Since receiving these recommendations, we have focused heavily on planning for implementation. Staff voice has been central to this work. We established a guiding coalition of teachers, related service providers, and administrators who helped shape action steps and timelines, professional learning priorities, and recommendations for our continuum of services. We also held listening sessions across all schools to better understand building specific needs. This led to our program expansion recommendations. So, beginning next school year, instructional level supports will be available across all elementary buildings and continue at both middle schools. Um and our previ- our specialized services, previously which were limited to a fewer sites, will expand to four of our elementary schools, continue at Chippewa, and eventually expand to Algonquin.
So, we'll get it this Friday. Okay, perfect. And then I will take a look at all of that. But otherwise, I think this this is great, right? As as a student, as a parent, as a board member, as a teacher myself, this is a very easy way to look at the data and to really interpret what we're collecting from our students. So, I I appreciate that format. Maybe it's the math people teacher in me, but I love >> Oh, yeah. No, I am Mr. Pivot Table. You want a pivot table? I got it. >> [laughter] >> Okay. It's a color-coded pivot table. People will pull up like, "Ryan Jordy obviously made this." It's like color-coded and they Well, and it cuz it leaves everything to the naked eye. We can we can see what it is that we're looking for and where trends are and how we can begin to then, as you said, interpret the attendance to go with it and look at GPA and and to really look at that overall students up.
That depends on the content or the the class. I I can't give an exact answer to that. A&R automation and robotics specifically needs to be replaced now, but with the others if we have textbooks can last 10 years and the the content is relevant, then I think it can last longer than the 6 years we've done previously, but depending on the standards if they change, there there are many different variables. Okay, Mr. Yates. It's a quick reminder to the board that this is the first year that we will be spending all of our curriculum materials purchased out of the education fund. It's so later on in this calendar year, there'll be an additional appropriation request because that portion was not budgeted way back in August, September as we built the education fund budget for this year. So the 154,000 will will part of that in know, additional appropriation for 2026.
Um, after receiving feedback of what some area schools are doing, everyone is doing everything. Um, but I'm of the opinion this is a serious matter. The state has created a law. Think of the last time the state created a law on a school policy matter. They've created all kinds of laws and all kinds of mandates, but they're saying, "We don't want cell phones in the schools." Um, and it is a huge distraction. I don't think you'd get a lot of Anybody to disagree with you. It's a distraction for all of us. Um, but in our kids, studies are proving it is really affecting their lives. So, we're taking it seriously. We're going to take it seriously, and with the help of our staff, we're going to implement this policy, and hopefully we will take care of a significant issue. And yes, it it you look at the policy itself and I'm using my own cell phone.
So, we'd love to see you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss 6.05, assistant superintendent, Mr. J. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Um, the directors always do such a great job of uh covering most things. So, I'll just try to fill in a few things that are left over here. Um, we are at the end of the year and we do want to thank all of our admins, teachers, staff for getting us here for sure. It's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding work. Um, I wanted to share with you the teachers of the years, employee of the years in those Those are amazing people. They really fill our buckets doing those interviews with them. But each and every one of them through the course of their interview just said how much they love their job and how much they love working for Crown Point schools, which I think is a great reflection on the community and the families that we get.
We may do a little bit of strategic characterization in some locations, but we're not going to do the full characterization until we're ready to mobilize for, you know, full construction. So, our this full characterization is going to be before the buildings come down or after the buildings come down? I think before. I mean, I I defer to McFail who would handle the full characterization. Uh but like no, likely it would have to happen part of it after because once the buildings are removed, we'll have access to the full surface area that of for fair testing. If you're doing it before, then why not do it now? Well, I I just we just explained that. It's a very, very expensive process. We don't know how this is going to end up with this commission. We hope favorably. We're working very hard to answer all your questions.
So um that's not a a goal that um you know needs to be achieved. it's already being achieved. [snorts] [clears throat] In terms of the study, the scope of the study is very unclear to me. I don't know I don't know what answers are necessary to satisfy certain people who who want are you know hoping that we do some study. There's been a lot of talk about the um police department undertaking a study currently and that's a very specific study relating to staffing levels and appropriate staffing levels. So that's being referenced as as a study um when when they talk about our potential study if a study on staffing levels were proposed. Sure, we could do it. Um, you know what the statistics are. You probably have it memorized. I present it so often with the, you know, in terms of our staffing level when you look at our staff, um, compared to the state averages in other districts.
>> No. No. No, I'm saying the person that comes in because this is a brand new concept, right, for Cheshire. Darcy was Darcy, right? I mean, everyone knew Darcy. It's preschool. everyone around the state knew that. Now you're having it attached to a building. Yeah. Right there is a little different for some people, right? To understand. So, I'm not saying that I know how many students there's going to be at the new school, and we want to make sure we have the principal and his assistant principal working as a team to get that off the ground. But then we also have this little island over here, right? Yeah. So, this person, I still don't agree with these things being in there like requirements, but I'd have no problem with that person going to an OEC meeting, right? Yeah. With someone. But I think that assistant Could hire for an assistant who has these things.
So, no, what I was thinking Some of them are literally a video of somebody talking. >> And you see Yeah, no, what I was thinking about is um motion, just as an example, where you could visualize it. Where you would not be able to visualize it in a Yeah. textbook. Yeah. Yeah, so um certainly in a different unit, you know, there's But it does have presence at the building thinking classrooms conference of summer. There's lots of other ways besides the textbook. She's got to measure motion. We've got sensors, we've got readouts, we've got cars, we've got all sorts of things that work. So Yeah, plenty plenty of plenty of things in addition to the text. Yeah, and and that is another key point. It's that this text is a supplement to what we do in the classroom. So for visualizing things like motion, there's nothing better than not going to the textbook and not going to a video, but doing it yourself and experiencing it yourself and working together to make meaning out of that and understanding it.
Okay. What? The education, okay. Um can I have a motion uh for the uh yeah for edu- under the education 12. I and the rest. I got to say the numbers okay first. >> 12.1 to 12.4 Motion was made by Mr. a motion on the floor by Mr. Hassan. Mr. Hassan. Second by I'll be there. I was the second. I was the one who made the motion. Got it. Who made the You made the motion and I second the situation. Correct. Okay, Mr. Fulcarino. I'm going to try again. 12.6 I'm recusing and I am the rest. Mr. Redzio. I. Mr. Diaz. I. Mr. Kieles. I. Mr. Taylor. I. Mr. Otto. I. Mr. Gabba. I. Mrs. Hassan. I. Mrs. Petrie. I. So moved. I didn't I didn't hear the second. Wait one second. What is that? 12.6. Oh, no. Wait. That's constant. I'm sorry. I yeah I I needed to abstain in um um 12.2 number three.
Those are kind of like the rules. So it kind of tells us this is what the district or the governing board expects of the schools to ensure that they do. And then outside of policy are like those little by little steps. So how many kids will you interview? At what point do you call the police? Those technically won't be in the policy. Those are like more granular outside in the work of like the employees that are doing it. Does that make sense? Okay. Um but yeah, these for sure will give you our like general broad And sorry, one last thing. Um, what happens behind the scenes that parents aren't usually familiar with is we also have kind of like a threat staircase almost. And so there might fall along there. So you might see like a student made a threat, but what you would not be made aware of is that it qualified for like a threat assessment and then like the level of threat assessment and then as we move forward like who is determining like the level of risk and whatnot.
So, these changes are designed to reduce unnecessary transitions and increase access to supports and services closer to home. In addition, all schools participated in a student-centered scheduling process this winter um to prioritize uh student needs and staff collaboration time, and we also continued our partnership with Educating Outside the Lines um to design disability awareness activities for our schools. Family engagement also continues to be critical throughout our process. Once programming decisions were finalized for next year and shared in December, our teams personally contacted every family who may have had the option to have their child return to their home school or closer to a closer school within their feeder pattern. Approximately half of those families chose to do so. We also hosted two virtual hot town halls and multiple focus groups where we could share updates and receive feedback from families. In partnership with our special education parent advisory council or CPAC, we continue providing parent education opportunities.
>> was very kind of you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Sorry, I caught you. No, that's okay. Hey, I need a LITTLE SWEAT, RIGHT? >> [laughter] >> ALL RIGHT. NEXT ONE, statement of work for next year. I presented this last week or last [clears throat] meeting time with the report. As I shared with the board, we did send out follow-up survey to staff to see their overall support for the statement of work. It is the end of the year and people are a little crunched. so 82 responses little greater than 12% of the staff responded. But in there, you can see the great majority can strongly support it or support it with reservations. Uh about 9.8 10% said that they cannot support it. As you read through the comments though, the comments for strongly support it, support it with reservations, or cannot support it are all similar in what their concerns are across those that responded.
And this is the first full year that parents will not be paying for textbooks. Didn't pay them last year, but we skipped a year of adoption, so we didn't adopt last year, and so we had a year off, uh and now, uh starting with C4. Uh really essentially because we know we're front-loading what's coming later, which are large, expensive adoptions of language arts and math that will be uh they'll be shocking numbers for everybody as we try to approach a conservative adoption here, um and replacing all of those things that need to be so that we can make sure when the time comes for language arts and math that we we can uh afford to move forward with it. Thank you, Dr. Phillips. Uh board members are all involved in committee work outside of board meetings. Uh school board member reports is an opportunity to for each board member to share a little bit about what their committees have been working on.
Um you know, that second offense is going to be a one full day of ACS and then parents pick up the phone again. Hopefully at at some point the parents are going to say, "What are you doing? Why are you continuing to get in trouble with this thing?" And then the third is going to be an out of school suspension. Fourth, hopefully we don't get to that point. Hopefully at that point we've said, "Okay, this we're taking this seriously. We'll give you that one mistake. We'll give you that one place, time where we're working on What do we do with our entering kids? What do we do with the kids who come in late? What do we do with the kids who come in early? Do we have all of that figured out yet? No. But we have a pretty good ideas of what we're going to do.