Okay, hearing none. I will entertain a motion to approve all items in the consent agenda as presented. So, moved. Motion by Raquel. Second. Seconded by Rob. Cindy Peasley, let us know the roll call vote. Swisegood? No. Slyger? Yes. Meadows? Yes. Gilbert? Yes. Garrels? Yes. Arlandis? Yes. Gonzalez Thomas? Yes. The motion passes. Thank you very much. And two reports, FOIA reports, Tom. Um nothing [clears throat] extraordinarily out of the ordinary. We did have one denial of a FOIA request. Um but other than that, everything's been provided with the status. All right.
>> Yeah. So, um it sounds like specifically about THC use. Um for thank god I haven't found drugs beyond that. It's been marijuana and THC for the majority of my career. Um yeah, those programs that we have put in place, I decide we use PASS. Um in some cases, bright may be a situation where a student Yeah. So, so PASS is a program that I'll just give you a scenario. Student is caught vaping. We find out it's THC. Uh, it's an immediate emergency removal, which is in le in lie of a suspension. We call the parents in. We'll meet with them briefly. We'll send them home with a letter. Within 2 days, we're scheduling a meeting with our principal. our principal has the ability to go beyond even the 10 days that uh we're we're capable of suspending a student. Um typically we'll meet at that hearing we'll hear the students situation the parent is involved in that.
They are certainly part of teachers' regular instruction. The staff laptops, same question. I know that that You can postpone it a year, but they won't go on forever. Right. So just postponing this a year That would be the expense. And again studying the uh studying our needs. So every teacher needs one. What I mean by that, Mr. Scheiber, is the the needs for the functionality of those computers. Is there something that we can do to be more efficient with the with the cost that we have or the availability that we have? And what I told by our director of technology is that laptops right now cost of laptops have gone through through fiscal this fiscal year for us that um it could be the time to level set and next year maybe the cost will go down or maybe there's a different technology that we would want to use for teachers.
Any questions? Otherwise, Tony, treasurer. Travis, is the treasurer's report? Nothing out of the ordinary. We're coming to the close of the fiscal year very soon and we're on we're very close to what we expected in terms of budget. That's good. All right. And Tom, committee updates. Yeah. Um so, some of the committee updates were not able to get into the report because they've recently uh met. So, at the next meeting, you'll see some updates from there. Wrap wrap up kind of committee meetings that took place. Um I didn't know if any of the board members wanted to jump in just to give a preview as to what might have happened. I have an update. Um for the Batavia Foundation last week was a senior night where we celebrate a lot of our outstanding students and the scholarships are given out and the Batavia Foundation handed out thousands of dollars of scholarships, so I just wanted to go through those and and recognize the students that were awarded scholarships, so the for the Dr.
Um at that point uh myself if it's for me myself and uh chat will have a discussion we'll determine what outcome for this student based on what are all the variables that are in place. Obviously drugs in school it's a big one. We don't want it we want to eliminate it entirely if we could. Uh often times we have the placement at a program called PASS. We could go from 3 to 5 days at PASS. typically will take three days where it's in another district, but it's where we're a partner with them. So, the student shows up at school in the morning, we send them out to the the PASS program. They're at the PASS program for the entirety of the day. They're getting counseling that really centers around a lot of it centers around drug use. Um, when they come back, we'll have a we'll have a determination meeting of when they are re-entering the school.
Good. Um I wouldn't know switching if it hit me in the face, but when I feel like we know how fast they go and they break, you have a crisis. So we Was this a fair So he has one and and we still have one large capital. So he has one for the the large capital. So feel that will be all right with us. I mean What's left of staff budget? If the 20,000 goes, what's left? What's left of staff development? I believe it's 20 uh 28,000 left. Okay. And that should be cutting about half. We're not We're not cutting anything. We actually increased from last year. >> Okay. I see that. Thank you. Um What's the most of small capital? What's gone? Hopefully nothing's gone, but the trip grants or hopefully that with state of Connecticut and this happened during the budget cycle, the state of Connecticut gave us $84,000 this year for repair and replacement of small capital items.
Stephanie Pace Marshall Scholarship, Isabel Witt was our winner. For the Michael Boniface Scholarship, it was Tamani Mitchell was the winner. For the Molly May Vance Scholarship, Miss Mallon Weiss was the recipient. There were three winners of the William Freiburger Scholarship, so it was Casey Hubert, Nia Schofe and Mia Tarmichael. For the Thomas Schmidt Scholarship, Shaylie Rogers was the recipient of that award. For the Bulldog Legacy Award, the winner was Stephen Banos. And there were two winners of the Matthew Nana Scholarship, Wynn Tian and Dylan Wells. So, good job. Congratulations to all those recipients. RAC met yesterday. Uh we continued the discussion about getting possibly getting back on the school lunch program or the national school lunch program at the high school. Um but again, that's something that's for the future. Not this coming school year. Uh and the I I don't want to steal Josh's thunder cuz he's going to be presenting information about Miles My School Books.
When they do, they'll meet with myself, Miss Gillis, or Miss Keys. When they meet with us, we'll put them on a contract. We'll uh determine what maybe their passes, how many passes they get. We'll uh in the past, we've done things as extreme as checking them each day if we have to. Um but we'll also we'll we'll administer drug tests if we have to. Those have been things we've done in the past. We do get repeat occurrences. when we do those are something that we have a a stiffer punishment. If we have to expel the student from school for the year then that's what happens. Um we we don't have many because of that. The second consequence it is a it is something like the numbers are so far up from when you know like I said 20 years ago when I began this role and I'm suspending a kid out and the kid gets pulled out in handcuffs.
And next year they'll be giving us the the same amount. So hopefully not. All right. Last uh to Emma's comments about central office. It may be needed to compare with other persons. It seems to me we need to manage this person with the other community. I think you're all just over the grass. If we put a two in front of the 52,000, you don't have to answer what we've got. From 252,000 Yes, yes, 52,000. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? You put a two two in front of it. You don't have to answer that, but I don't see what we don't need. Well, tell me if you're looking at a a central office type of thing with 252,000 above the central office, I would encourage the board not to do that. That's not to say you shouldn't look at central office, but if we're looking at 252,000 for um central office, um I'm not sure how that would be done.
>> [laughter] >> And um What was the other thing? Oh. >> Oh, the lunch. >> participation. >> Next week, so. I'm going to stick with that. Building the excitement. I get it. >> Yes. Yes. Okay, thank you very much. All right. Um actually other action items, approval of inquiry journey journeys, Brad? Sure. So, inquiry journeys is um a social studies curriculum that um CAC is recommending for approval. Um this is something that we've used for the past 2 years within the district in different scales of field tests. So, this team is recommending this move forward. One of the biggest things with social studies is it's about inquiry, right? It's less about dates and names and facts and more about inquiry. This is one that aligns with our our state standards. Um and this is kind of a a good place for the elementary to kind of move forward with dipping their toe into inquiry and moving kids forward in social studies.
It's different now. We have a lot of students using this stuff inside and outside of school. Unfortunately, we're doing I feel like a very good job compared to other districts. We have some resources. The 15 people in our office help to minimize that. Security's checking bathrooms. We're following up on vape detection. When we do, again, the big the big picture here is if a student is caught the second time, there's some cases they're they're being tutored at home, they're being outplaced in a different program. Um, those are the things that we've used. Uh, but we do very rarely if they're, you know, depending on the circumstance, if it was a second offense, we will hear them, but then again, we don't have a lot of the repeat offenses because of that. Um as far as the um are we doing any kind of motivation speakers from professionals on that um you know substance uh uh you know expertise right to talk kind of talk to the whole students and tell them about consequences about using this stuff or even people who have graduated or already own the different fields to come in and talk to the students.
Um it it was mentioned in the previous district that Mrs. Robinson was at. Um she had the same staff over her in in Granby. Uh If the board is looking for $200,000 more, I I remind you that it Just a number I threw out for discussion. Yeah, no, I'm just saying. I remind you the board financed it $375,000. I don't know, that's why I'm sharing this. I don't know how it works that you say tonight the board of finance is $375,000. You're concerned that it may not pass. And people have been talking about the board of ed and that you want to do another $200,000 based upon discussions that we had tonight. I don't know how that would work um because they last night they thought they voted on something to bring to the voters, so there would have to be possibly a a special meeting to change what they would bring um to the voters but like we're open I just dropped 375,000 because that's what I was asked to do.
Any questions? Okay, hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve inquiry journey as the anchor resource for elementary social studies. So moved. Motion by Danielle. Second. Second by Katie. Cindy, please lead us in a roll call vote. Arlott You? Yes. Eros? Yes. Gonzales Thomas? Yes. Susicki? Yes. Sager? Yes. Kilburg? Yes. Matos? Yes. Motion passes. Item 11.2, approval of language studio for the 2026-2027 school year. Yep, this is another kind of support system. So, we engaged our ESL teachers at the elementary level in looking at how we're going to deliver services next year, how we can best support our EL students. Um with Amplify coming in, there's a a product that Amplify has called Language Studio. Uh a couple of our ESL teachers tried this out with their students, found it to be very successful, um and they're looking forward to implementing this next year with our ESL students.
So student can kind somehow reach um somehow can relate to them to themsel and see well if I do this then I can become that. I think a lot of that will help a lot of the students identify themselves with with professionals and and try to see try to somehow work towards that goal of becoming >> again different whether it's a teacher >> throughout my career I've seen multiple uh speakers that have addressed these to students to the entire student body um again something that we could plan to do more often if it's effective but we are doing it on an individual case by case basis Uh we do obviously have um different strategies that we use throughout the year to talk to the entire student population during our assemblies uh to bring somebody in. We sometimes absorb that cost because it is pretty expensive but it's worth it in a lot of cases.
But if we generate more of a list that's up to the board to do. >> Can I I want to respond to Joe because I agree with you Joe but I don't know where those cuts could be made. What I was getting at before is I think it's a discussion that we need to have. I think the public is looking for us to defend that and that's where we need to have a discussion. You did I mean the four positions are But I think it is looking looking at those roles and what they do and if we were to lose one, what would that look like for everybody else working? How much extra would it would that be for Like I think we need to look at that and be transparent about that. I think that's what the public is really asking for. What is everybody doing and what are we paying?
Any questions? Was this offered as an option when we were originally looking at Amplify C&A? It was. It was like there, like you could kind of opt into that, but we were so focused on that core curriculum piece that we waited till after we were within the field test to kind of start looking at what are we going to do with some of these other support services that we need. Good question. It's There's a lot of products that they offer. It's very overwhelming when you kind of get into this, and then you got to be very careful about what you choose, so we're not overloading our system with a lot of new things and making sure the teams themselves are invested in that implementation. And at first our our ESL staff was like, "I don't know about that. I kind of like what I'm doing." Um but after they got into it, we had a a call with them a couple weeks ago, and they were like, "Yep, we're on board.
Usually we do it in smaller patterns and a lot of it I mean you might look to different departments like wellness I know they do a lot of focus on that. Um there are a lot of guest speakers that they'll bring in for different aspects. All of our students are required to take wellness. It's part of the curriculum that they deal with that they address these behaviors. So yes, absolutely we do. And uh I you know we we only have 180 days of school every year. I sometimes wish we had more. Sometimes I wish we had less but but uh having as much as we could it's it's important to utilize those that time very very efficiently. And uh I again I've heard a bunch of them. We'll always if you have any in mind just forward that to us and we'll look into it.
I mean Mrs. Robinson will certainly answer those questions tonight because she's intimately working with each of those four individuals who serve uh Bishop um can speak about the role uh of one of the central office staff members that works directly with him and then I I know you know what Mrs. Nardi um does. Can I add to that to really quick because I think I want to make sure that we're educating the public as well as ourselves because if someone asked me how many administrators how many are part of your organizational chart of central staff administrators, who's defined as what, I couldn't honestly answer that question. So It's in the budget. Okay. So I'd like to Okay and I can look at that but I I think the defining of like central staff versus admin because the verbage that was used mostly was administration. It wasn't central staff.
This is going to be really great for our students." And I actually see this as a benefit for students beyond um English learners because there's so much vocabulary work, background building, that this could be potentially used in the future with other students that need that level of support. Any other questions?
It's it that's a great avenue to take. I especially like the former students. Uh every once in a while like we'll have somebody speak to the group uh who was a former student who struggled and has found their way and it's it's therapeutic not only for our students but also for them. >> Yeah. And and a couple of things like to Bill's point, we only have the kids in 180 days. We want them in their classes learning. Um when we do have situations where there's a consequence to students, we use outside referrals to agencies that may be involved with mentors in our community too. So we do have a lot of community partners when we do refer uh as well. We try to want to use our resources for that time that's outside of school as well because we do want our students in their CTE and academic classes um to to their best fullest potential because we have so much limited time to get them uh through their academic [clears throat] requirements, get them ready for co-op, get them ready for careers um and we don't want to uh kind of detract from that uh as well.