001[Music] [Applause] the new britain board of education providing students with a high quality education [Music] good evening today is monday june 6th and i'd like to call this meeting of the new burton board of education to order we can all rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america is to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all um if you could call the role here mr merrill gay here mr joseph listen here mr anthony kane with a seat yo miss monica dawkins mr anthony came to the head yeah mr matthew marina miss annie parker yeah miss diana is here miss tina santana we do have a quorum all right um i'd like to have a moment of meditation um
002especially for mr rivera who tragically passed away one of our teachers at delorean school and all of the students and the teachers at involved day thank you all right we will have public participation first up mr john board please state your name address good evening members of the board of education uh john boyd 37 time on terrace uh new britain connecticut uh it's that time of year again uh back in front of you for the yearly uh lgbtq plus uh boy bad resolution uh this year it was a great collaboration uh between uh president uh sanders conley uh joey listrow headed up and as well as input from tina santana you guys have the resolution in front of you the one key thing that i will highlight this year is that on behalf of us
003and the newbern delegation we were able to get the funding for the model inclusive curriculum through the legislature have the governor sign that that is highlighted in this year's in this year's resolution and obviously we look forward to your support and hopefully potential uh implementation of that curriculum after it comes out of the commissioner's office in 2023 with that i know we don't have room for any questions comments or concerns but obviously you guys have my contact information if there's anything so thanks so much and have a good one and once again uh thank you for your constant support of the year superintendent sarah um thank you paul canton zero 250 hillhurst avenue in new britain proud dad of an elementary school student and on the city council but more a dad today i'm pretty
004emotional obviously the events that happened not too long ago shook all of us up real bad that's not what they should have it's not the first time it happened it's happening way too much so i'm here to ask we put away two million dollars the city for the quarterback i believe we're getting used for ada ada is very important i get it it's needed but unless our schools are safe that won't mean a damn thing we've done a great job and alderman smedley works his butt off trying to secure our schools with what we have with cameras and so forth can always do better nobody should get into schools so i'm asking to redirect that two million dollars towards security whatever that may be i'm not a security expert okay uh whatever but we have
005to do better if we think it can't happen here we are mistaken we have locked doors and we have cameras locked doors with regular doors and regular glass that something could just break in um you know doors with alarms i don't know if we have those um fences people walking around prim whatever people we don't want to look like a prison on the outside i don't care i don't care what it looks like on the outside my concern is the same amount of kids that go to school in the morning come home at night that they could feel safe while they're in that building because they're not safe now if you think every time there's a lockdown or whatever happens in the school the kids aren't scared forget about it and they can't learn that
006well when they're scared i've heard many stories is anytime the pa clicks one kid jumped under the desk and it was just a regular announcement so we're not going to cure everything but you know we can do better if i think two million dollars again ada is very important but i think at this time we can't do nothing with the gun issue we can't do nothing with the mental health that's a long term that's they're going to debate that till until the cows come home but what we can do now is make our school buildings safe so we asked you and i'm going to do this again wednesday night at the council meeting so i thank you for your time and i'm sorry got a little emotion thank you um so thank you [Music] good
007evening um members of the board of education my name is johanna brown brownhart i'm resident of 75 green stream university i want to share with you information how my son was neglected by the new britain school district and how he had fully advocated for him kyle is third grade student at smith school he has iep for speech and language since first grade when he was he when he was in second grade we noticed he struggled with reading and writing also in the second grade he was punished by his teacher for not performing when our test his teacher took recess away from him multiple times kaio had to write letter to me to apologize i was planning to retain khan in the second grade but we were advised not to the support was promised by the
008prince paul for the next school year evaluation was requested for wilson reading program and he and this was documented in his iep yes wilson evaluation was completed in september 2021. kyle scored very appalling but services were never offered to him we hired private tutor to help kyle but he was still behind i requested ppt meeting in december 2021 to discuss my concerns and to request testing to be done the process was started but smith school didn't follow parents guidelines for special education in connecticut examples achievement achievement test was done but i never signed the consent after ppd meeting i was provided with copy of um i wasn't provided with copy of iep in five school days i received a copy one night after the meeting when i requested i requested full score records to be
009released to me took them almost two months instead of 10 school days also the files were incomplete multiple emails were missing with my concerns when we had poor communication kyle's third grade teacher to my understanding teachers are there to support students mrs salimini saw red flags but she never showed any concerns with us after all evaluations were completed and we had answers caillou has learning disability he has dyslexia he missed five months or services because of smith school staff didn't do their job finally he's getting appropriate services with compensatory hours i lost confidence in school smith staff and i'm requesting kyle to be transferred to a different school i requested villarreal i'm not getting the clean answer from mr foreign he states in his emails that's most likely how would you get a spot in
010diloredo also i was promised transferred to literature but the director of pupil services but now he states he never promised this to me this school year was very challenging challenging and put on my family in emotional distress because of smith school staff did not recognize child learning disability superintendent had multiple opportunities to reach out to me some emails were cc to her phone calls to her office she never responded to me we had one phone call conversation on march 28th for the first time she promised me she will follow up and she never did educational years should be to support our kids not punishing them for not doing well in school they should have a vision and plan to our kids not every parent know how to advocate for the kids and our kids deserve
011better and this town is ready for for better change thank you [Music] elder woman pastor good evening so i thought i would come tonight thank you for canceling caucus so that so many of us could be here because usually we can't come on mondays for these meetings because we have caucus um it's nancy's superintendent sarah's last meeting and i thought we would be remiss not to acknowledge the many years of service that she's given the city her advocacy of students of educators her advocacy for the city of new britain of bridging gaps of building relationships and it wasn't always perfect all the time and we didn't always agree but progress has been made our students are better for your leadership our staff is better for your leadership programs have been built and in spite of
012the last couple of years which were tumultuous for everyone in every industry municipalities i work in the financial district and i can promise you it was a tumultuous couple of years we don't we didn't know how to navigate a pandemic none of us did parents didn't employees didn't no one knew how to navigate that we all did the best we could um i i truly believe that i believe that we all did the best that we could um and so superintendent sarah i want to thank you and i'm sure there are many people that want to thank you for your many many years of service for your leadership over the last several years of the district i think that we are better for you i think that we have opportunities to grow because i always
013think that we have opportunities to grow gail will tell you i ask a million questions my peers will tell you i ask a million questions i think that we have opportunities to grow everywhere but i think you set the stage for that and um and we are we are grateful for all that you've done so thank you and i hope that you enjoy your retirement thank you very much does anybody ever agree with me no all right would anybody else like to address the board anybody else like to address the last call would anybody else like to address the board thank you very much health practitioner participation is now closed so item number two we have a resolution mr the stroke all right i'm happy to present this year's uh resolution declaring june 2022 as
014pride month pride month is a time to celebrate the lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer community while remembering the struggle and sacrifices made by the advocates and allies who worked and continue working to make a more inclusive society despite state law abandoning discrimination harassment and intimidation towards lgbtq plus people inequities including homelessness poverty mental health issues and substance abuse continue to persist among our youngest most vulnerable youth in 2021 legislation to require the state department of education to create a model curriculum inclusive of lgbtq plus and gender studies that will be available for use by school districts in 2023 was introduced as house bill 6619 with the starting advocacy coming from uber and pride it was eventually passed and signed by the governor embedded within the budget implementer bill senate bill 1202 by recognizing pride
015month we have reaffirmed our commitment to support other policies practices and curricula that honor and respect lgbtq plus students staff their families and all people in our community including a commitment to review and consider board policies specific to transgender and gender non-conforming students the consolidated school district of new brand commits to ensuring equitable access equal treatment and full inclusion of all people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity the new brain board of education designates june 2022 as pride month to inspire equity create alliances and celebrate diversity and i'd like to thank uber and pride and john board especially for bringing this resolution forward and all the work done in the community to support it thank you one of my favorite times of the year is staff recognition so we're going to have six people
016that we're gonna recognize tonight um three pair of educators and three teachers of the year have them come up all at once yeah absolutely this is like your final i know it's like you're going along i'll call them and i do believe that uh do we have all the principles here or we have i know like those here mr orton mrs butterfield uh is miss pelvic here all right so first the parent educator of the year for 2020 2022 so it's two years miss jessica maldonado no we're doing so we're doing last year and this year because we weren't able to come together last year got it so we're going to bring them in they thought they would get away with if they are not three three years it's been three years wow that's crazy
017okay uh miss monica rios lettuce vanessa you never know these days thank you congratulations we're going to get a group shot at the end so maybe yeah do you want to just stand up by the doorway there we'll have you all come up to our group and then victoria mascara not here and then for our teachers of the year so three so 2020 is francesco cardera cricaria we were giving you this award you were getting married have you been married like five years old and then miss sarah normandin [Applause] ms booker i didn't and then mr david hemi for 2022 congratulations you got the camera no that's okay uh amazing educators [Applause] good evening they asked me to say a few things tonight she said brief but i like to talk so many times so
018i first wanted to start by saying i worked with franco for four years and any conversation i've had with sarah i've been amazed by her um so it's such an honor to be recognized the same night as you two um and being told i'm in the same league as you so so i'm from missouri originally i moved here 11 or 12 years ago now i feel like i've been here forever um and my first apartment was 160 main third floor um right before they built the new police station two weeks after we moved in they started construction and that was how i woke up every morning so i've i've been in uh in new britain for um about you know 11 years taught in hartford came to hartford and i knew i was a good
019teacher um but what i'm excited about is new britain made me a great teacher um and i couldn't do it without um lori butterfield and alex ortiz um because they they have um not been afraid to let me um do the crazy things that might not be very conventional and they're like oh you do you and it always seems to work out and then they're always there to encourage me when i don't feel comfortable or confident enough in my own craft and letting me know how to get better um i think new britain is an amazing community i know our kids are probably the best in the world and to me this is an opportunity i want to take the next year with whatever this journey is to really put new britain on the map
020and it shocked me but connecticut has never had a state teacher of the year and it should have been frank or sarah definitely but i would love to be that first one just because it puts new britain at the table and i think a lot of the issues with our district are we're not at the table people aren't thinking about us and they need to watch out because we're awesome um and then i i just want to end it with um you guys already did a moment of silence for ish and i appreciate that i got to work with him really closely the last four years and he made a huge impact on me and i want to dedicate whatever my journey the rest of this year goes to to him and i was going
021to end with a moment of silence but you guys already did it and i just wanted to say one more time i love you bish so thank you a little shorter than i thought i just wanted to take a second and just say thank you um being recognized for this award has truly been my dream since i walked into convocation right before my first year of student teaching and it was a goal that i had set for myself and it was a goal i did not think i was capable of achieving especially um so so early in my career and i'm just so humbled and so incredibly thankful for all the opportunities i've been given and for the amazing leadership that i've had and for all of the amazing colleagues that i've had and above
022all just the most incredible students and families without them none of it would be possible so thank you so much [Music] i'm not much of a talker uh so i will just want to say thank you to you and the opportunity that you gave me with implementing steam i think it's an incredible program it allows myself our students to to have that hands-on minds on learning that is not necessarily in a textbook and it gives students and i've said this many a time it gives students who struggle to read struggle to write an opportunity to just build and express themselves in a way where they can explain it and do and be successful and have pride in what they're doing so i really want to thank you for implementing that program i know we started
023off with uh implementing it in our extreme program and one of the questions that you asked was how can we bring this to our classroom and you did it you really did it and i think it's an extremely useful program that we have in our curriculum and i think other schools and other districts should take a look at what you did for our our district because i really do think it's amazing and i want to thank mr foreign as well for everything that he's done for our district uh and and let's just continue to push for our students because i know that's what we need because no one else is doing it for them so i want to thank you all i want to thank andrea um if you need any tech help she will
024do it for you push the red button push the red button um but no i really do want to thank you as well um you much like you've mentioned about your your admins you allow me to be me you allow me to do what i can for our school and i don't just think about our students i actually think about the whole school if staff are struggling i try to help them out and that's just who i've been and i think that goes a long way and if we can keep on hiring teachers much like ourselves who continue to push for our staff and our students then we'll be we'll be moving in a great direction and i think we are ready so thank you i will entertain a motion to go into an executive
025section which will um or administrative appointed appointment with full board mary allen manning all right we are back in session i will entertain a motion to approve the appointment of mr nathan ziegler to the coordinator special ed secondary level move second all those in favor any against no okay any abstentions we're all here welcome aboard okay all right superintendent report super quick super quick my video your last one so i'll just drag it up for half an hour all right thank you jeff in advance planning to help us out i wanted to show you you have your stickers ready positivity and i'm hoping that person's just going to show you what's up on instagram and while while she's doing that i can always be a space teller oh we're gonna watch right now so they
026have a social media committee at the high school which consists of taje who is a graduate of new britain high but now works in our partnership office is that myra oh god that looks like myra sandra's on it uh as well as ryan langer and antoine billy and i'm missing one person i am yeah and a dolphin but it's about uh radiating positivity and just starting to you know change that image that um i can't remember who got up and spoke about that but it's true and now we really can't hear her see it but i just wanted you to see so follow them on instagram um and it's just to kind of you know put spirit in the high school and all around and i don't think we're going to see it so while
027i'm going to keep going through it before the meeting's over if it comes down we'll stop and watch okay oh i did want to recognize our um health academy at new britain high school who has they have received distinguished status which is the highest that's the highest recognition it's a significant accomplishment um for the staff for the kids just for the building in general so i thought we'd bring that up also carnegie mellon we had our high school students exploring computer sciences which is not my thing but it certainly is a lot of our kids thing um programming and computer science should be fun and engaging and that kind of skipped our generation so um anyway michelle perknell she's ninth grader was recognized for her creative task and received uh some swag awards um in
028a pin from the prestigious university uh and again right down below is social media team kicked off and uh nbhs radiate positivity campaign you can read through it i don't want to read everything uh congratulations to casper uh adamus faris ahmed and michelle perknell submission titled scan it pick it it's been chosen to be highlighted at the 2022 lieutenant governor's computing challenge which will take place tomorrow no wednesday wednesday um this was exciting too for us while we had two awards for the halo awards which are the tony awards basically um for high school students i think that right so we had four nominations we walked away with two for um uh one was dallas bastic who i've known since she was five years old uh wait where let me just get her first um
029oh there she is she won a halo for best costume design and execution uh and then the second halo went to senior miguel pagan he got for best actor in a supporting role and the nominations uh they didn't they didn't get the award but they were nominated ethan roy who was also a senior for best doctor in a leading role and andrea sims also best actress in a featured role um and they also received there was one other it was an overall for best picture or our best best musical best music uh okay and then the other thing go go down to the high school i mean you could just see the wall it's beautiful the way they've painted it and so but that was a student assistance center led by gino ayala um but
030they did a unity festival and that's been ongoing um a lot of partners were involved with this this is after school the kids were working on this wall it's beautiful the artwork is gorgeous so drive by it's really kind of nice there we also supported the wear orange day which um that's it's new for me i didn't realize that was um but we gave a little bit of the history which is very sad that orange has become the defining color of the gun violence and so um in support of all of the violence with guns mass shootings individual shootings suicides we stood up and wear orange also a really nice shout out to jefferson elementary their string ensemble when they supported ukraine through the humane society they went and did a concert for the animals
031which was quite wonderful and a way of giving back uh and then we always i also wrote down there's some senior activities that are coming up don't forget graduation ceremony is thursday june 23 we know that we have to be there early to put our caps and gowns on this would be the last time i'm walking i know um and there's a rain delay just in case and that's that's what i had for tonight i went through it quickly enough a little over two minutes well thank you you're welcome but before i do that those fair board reports oh god i'm not even going to speech we can speak because like because we've been fighting for something we've been fighting for six years right well am i going to have fights it's been awesome who
032are making an appointment i don't know you scare me every time but no like in all honesty we are we appreciate you um i do wish like i had thought to bring like nick violet and like former that were on a little bit longer than than mr so i mean we wish you nothing but the best and i hope you just enjoy those kids and run around after the pigs and chickens i'm gonna keep running after them it's been uh it's been an amazing journey i will say that it's been really every day is a new learning experience um i i wouldn't i wouldn't change anything i don't think maybe the gray hair i've been changing yeah certainly a lot of learning um probably didn't uh make everyone happy all the time but i tried
033to make the best decisions given the context of where we're at so um thank you for the opportunity really i mean you took a chance right and it's been a great ride for six years i think we've done lots of great things for new bruns kids and i think that data presentation i know so let's get on yeah like we'll do board reports i apologize for that i just i thought that was perfect timing and i'm gonna christina while you're doing it i'm gonna have to shout out a couple of our principles because i just have to yeah so board read swords oh god where committee reports i apologize committee reports um finance finance we met last week and we lifted quite a few donations we also recruited purchase orders um some questionable um system
034areas of computers but we uh the program explained that very well in addition to more in-house computer work and camera purchases even over with the family um what one area that we did touch on which kind of sheldon and friends also here is that school safety is an area of concern of mine and the financial board member place committee members so we did ask mr smedley to prepare a presentation for the public on school safety i had to study school safety last year for the my own ib2 training and just looking at some of the things they were doing but also something to improve it but also areas that we can improve upon so um is to be a future he said he's going to promise us he would get it soon and it is
035something we are i do plan on addressing my time on board we're going to get that school safety improve as much as we can and it's not going to be cheap a lot of our buildings class money it's going to cost money in high school alone it's so the mayor and i've gone back and forth on it i've talked about some of the other schools we have it's not very cheap all right thank you one thing i do want to add is that you mentioned you've known my family can we wait till board reports then you could i know i'm sorry sorry i think he was going to give me a compliment i know he was all right he's going to take it back i know i know hillary think all right so personnel okay
036personnel um we had a few revisions or job descriptions and approved some new positions and that was pretty much it not much else curriculum not here policy policy we talked about school uniforms the fact that we suspended the uniform policy for a couple of years and decided to do a survey that we will be hearing about later on in the meeting all right um board reports mr kane okay as you said we had it before you've known my family for years my nieces my nephew my son um your parents parents they warned me but at the same time i got to see you firsthand both when i was on the school governance council for jefferson you and i worked hand-in-hand yeah i still quote the time that you and i sit down a little julia
037had a problem with a teacher i was human ready to pull him out that day and you sat down with me and we worked it out and i was very impressed i used that sometimes in my principle training too as an example but i guess i remember a conversation i had with joey my son he was six years old and i was trying to explain to him that i was going to be on the search uh committee interview process to for the superintendent of schools what status is i'm going to interview the person that's going to be nancy sierra's possible dad how could anybody be her boss talk to my kids or my grandkids but it's a testament you had you might talk about niece who's now a parent teacher at hartford my other niece
038who has just got hired as a school teacher in myrtle beach and you also helped me to my training with my teacher too so thank you you're very welcome thank you tony miss parker oh yes uh this week my friend who won't allow me to be retired got a group of retired teachers together and we did a donation of books to the boys and girls club in the ywca so nancy i'm going to put you on the list i knew it right i'll do it maybe i can retire no i'll bring you with me we'll do lunch okay okay one more thing i'm just going to put a plug in here so first of all thank you for all the people that came out to the retirement party it was a great time but i
039think the more important thing is um mike and mike's family and my family have started scholarships for uh students in new britain and anyone who would like to contribute to the scholarship fund can go on community foundation and read just read the descriptions for both of course i'll say probably mine is better i don't know but any anyone um it's it's just paying it forward right i feel like uh we have a lot of privilege and and we've got to share that so mike did you want to say anything he's still got enough two more board meetings you're going gonna save it i'll have more time to talk when you're gone i have laura's cell phone this way mike i've [Laughter] um just a couple of things i also was just really excited about the
040halo awards i was following that um i went to pulaski's concert the other day and these kids were so talented i i was really impressed with one of the teachers who created a garage band and these kids were going after school and there was one girl who went from playing the guitar to the drums to the violin and it's just it's just amazing these kids are so they were just so great i just have to throw that out there and i just i'm a personal very few words but i just want to thank nancy for everything that you've done and we're really gonna miss you i know i'm gonna miss you too but i'll be working on the preschool front somewhere else yeah yeah all right we'll get that thing going anybody um i'll share
041something quickly um i went to the family fun day at new britain transitional center last week i think it was and it was really nice to see so many parents come out with their kids and staff engaged with all sorts of activities that school was really lively that day and it was really it was really nice to see i wasn't able to make the uni fest at the high school but i do have high school kids in our after school program that were really happy that it happened and there was a lot of excitement around it so i hope that continues and then finally thank you to nancy i came back to new britain about 10 years ago with an idea to help out and do school gardens and i gave you the green light
042that was awesome um you were always there to support that that idea which has really grown over the years that's because of you it is amazing well you know what i mean just for our kids to put their hands in the dirt right and and have green around them that's everything i'll come back and help you too great i'm gonna bring my six grandkids up they'll hope to get that job for sure and nancy i just you know i remember uh walking through the airport going to the grade level reading con conference and you're saying what did i get myself once i didn't even know where i was going i'm like where where am i going what's this for you had explained and it was i just needed like a map because you realized that
043yeah that was our first introduction but it's been great ever since you know just a lot of uh and it's nice to know that there's still preschool representation after school representation here finance people who will drive the next superintendent of those crazy forwards we're the ideal people where the people that just say no because we don't have the money to do it right so thank you thank you so for me um was able to attend the oic gala gala gala i think it's gala she said gala i was i got confused tomato i know tomato tomato but we did get um recognized for like our partnership with them i thought that was actually super sweet um i do want to remind people that thursday is our meet and greet with dr gaspar at new britain
044high five to seven let's show them like what hard hitting is about and be right in his face it'll be good um right not hard but nancy i don't know who who am i going to call you're still calling i'm still going to probably call you i know we we'll probably meet up at uh our baros probably this happens that's like it's because they have right i see everybody you know we're all there we could just we'll meet out in the garden coming out in the garden they have live music i appreciate you like more than you probably know i know we don't always see eye to eye and it's usually behind closed doors so it's not on the floor but anytime you yell at me while i'm in the car but that's my job
045right that's part of my job no but i appreciate the real i i appreciate you saying what it is um i'd much rather have that than the behind the back stuff right absolutely and that's you know what i mean that's that's who i am that's how i oh how i always have been always will be it's not always well received but you know so thank you you'll still be on speed dial oh god that works all right so next facilities project update nbhs 80a can you hear me okay um can we turn this one up a little bit or are you just like that sick that you can't be taking everybody down all right go ahead guys okay yep okay great um as mentioned during our last meeting um we were going to invite new
046field constructions today to give us an update and be here to [Music] provide any answers to any questions regarding their newly revised gmp we want to go through it uh briefly with you all uh to point out a couple of things that are very important the first portion that you see here are the four big packages here and the good news is that the initial proposed budget was higher than the big proposals we received as you can see going down there it's a total gmp of 3.18 the initial budget proposal was i'm sorry the proposed budget was 4.3 if you scroll up kristen if you don't mind you can go to the beginning thank you um if you go down to the form here you go before actually yes right there one thing i want
047to mention here is the hazmat monitoring and removals there's a credit there's a dollar amount there for two hundred thousand dollars the initial rfp based on the cap analysis had us carry 150 000 for hazmat and we only spent approximately 50 000 so we'll receive a credit uh but one thing to know is that the acm removal is needed and could cost upwards of 100 000 in removal there are several everything's broken down here uh the other thing that i wanted to bring up is the contingency if you scroll down a little bit here under gold squirrel right there uh could be yeah there we go we've included 85 000 roughly three percent of the work that worked there for uh the contingency db contingency and the owner contingency is roughly 5 for the project
048um so so we're seeking for a motion to approve amendment to the contract at 3.1 again which is a smaller cost uh it's probably we're pretty much saving about a million dollars approximately in the project i'm hoping you could all hear me okay yes okay okay yeah my regrets for not being there not not being able to be there today i'm not failing very well thank you are there are there any questions uh based on what you have for the draft no i will save my questions for mr kane when he presents i'm sorry no sorry i said i will save my questions for mr kane when he presents to us okay okay thank you again again um brian is here with newfield so if there are any specific questions to any of the line
049items uh he's happy to assist with any uh i'm gonna pass it on to medley now for the smith playground project thank you thank you rebecca um the smith school playground uh update as you uh may be aware the mayor afforded uh smith school uh 150 000 under cdgb uh for their playground and um i went out to bid uh for the design and uh build of said playground and uh creative recreation uh was the bid winner through the cdgb bid process and we just signed the contract and we will be purchasing all the equipment there is a 20 to 25 week lead time on playground equipment right now so playground installation and construction will start um in the fall unfortunately for smith and miss velvee while she's thrilled she is aware of the the
050time frame um but they are very happy at smith to acquire the new playground it will go adjacent to the lower parking lot and it will cut into that grass area there a little bit and it will have a combined poured rubber surface with a wood composite because of the size of the playground we have to have some real ground available there as well and it is completely ada accessible there's a handicap brand from ground level so wheelchair-based students can participate in all the same activities that an able-bodied student would be able to on the playground so that's the update on smith playground all right what we've all been waiting for and to hear a data review i'm going to tell you it's a hard act to follow teacher of the year of the year
051and all the good you know this is good it's good stuff um so hello everybody um i'm christina denier talent officer for the district and i just wanted to give you a quick balcony view of the data for end of year um i'm going to go through this pretty quickly i know you've had it ahead of time but um i would be more than happy to sit down with any of you and go deeper into any of the data or answer any questions you may have about the data so if you take a look at the i-ready literacy data some highlights um we had seven elementary schools decreased their tier three by 20 or more um the average overall tier one growth across elementary schools was about 19 and the average overall decrease in tier
052three across the elementary schools was about we had four schools um hit or excuse me five schools hit 20 growth in tier one and over 20 percent decrease in tier three and those schools are uh bolded and italicized some other highlights from the data we had a 24 decrease in tier 3 for l students from fall to spring we also had a decrease of 15 in tier 3 for special education students our hispanic and latino subgroup had an 18 decrease in tier 3 and we also had a 19 uh decrease i broke it out male and female students as well for our male students and 18 for our female students um the decrease is almost about 20 for both in in the subgroups for male and female if you look at the kindergarten literacy data
053sixty percent of our kindergarten students are in tier one uh 23 of those 60 are at or above grade level and 37 percent are early on grade level for tier one in literacy i ready also affords us the um data for students who make their annual typical growth which is based on a median and they also give us the information on students that made their stretch growth typical growth is what students make in a typical year um lara and amy and i can try and explain how it's calculated i even made a little cheat sheet for you if you if you want the cheat sheet i can pass that out but it's not um it's based on a median and if you take a look at i believe it's the fourth page in um it
054tells you how the school's fared for annual typical growth and stretch typical growth is usually a year or a little bit more stretch growth is where we want our students to be because we're closing the gap faster so we had five schools that exceeded their annual typical growth gaffney house homes pulaski and smalley elementary school we also had quite a few schools that hit over 50 percent for their stretch growth so we're we're moving in the right direction so what that means is not only are students meeting the one year that they would typically meet they're going beyond the one year and some of them are even going into stretch which is is what basically what we want to see the other thing is too keep in mind the uh tiers are split out into
055three so you have or actually five you can even disaggregate into five and you have to think of those tiers as ladders so a child can start at the beginning of a yellow tear and end at the end of a yellow tear and that could be their stretch growth so you have to keep in mind they're moving within tears the best scenarios they move from one tier to another and that's what we saw a lot of this year is that kids were not only moving well within their tier but they were moving out of a tier three into a tier two and out of tier two into tier one so that's where we wanna be um can i just jump yes quickly put some narrative to it sure you could breathe for a second and
056so when we think about well how what and you know it's not just one thing right we know that student when we when we get student data we start to see successes i mean it's multiple things happening simultaneously it really is one is we we have a viable k-12 curricula that teachers have as their their fences right need to work within this fence here we understood that our we we have to change how we're currently teaching we have to do something different those coaches and the building principles have moved very far this year with supporting teachers and making changes we're not there yet and this is a really unfun part of education because we all want the brass ring now it doesn't happen that way so now we have a solid curriculum in place we
057have defenses in place we have the materials we have coaches who are supporting teachers while they're planning and principles going in to give feedback all of those are ingredients for success right and true success not success that's oh look at that one and we you know we we did well here our job really i was reading something from w.e du bois this weekend you know who was 20th century and saying that it isn't a million not millionaires that make up a nation but it's where we invest in public education right we do the investment and it's not flashy it's not sexy it's not quick it's painful and slow to change adult practice and adult minds so i i will say though our sixth year and beyond it's been more like then that we've been working
058on putting these structures in place and now we will start to see the results that all all the hard work all of us have put in anyway done no i agree i think um one of the things that our admins have been doing and they're really taking a a deep dive into data but it's not just looking at progress it's looking at what is the impact of the instruction having on student outcomes it's looking at just pulling apart the data disaggregating the data oh these kids need more support in this these kids need more support in that so they're really looking at the data from a lens of how can we meet students where we they are and then differentiate for a whole group small group even one-to-one so it's been a lot of discussions
059this year with administrators which are then turn-keying into coaches which are then turn came to teachers so it's it's been exciting to to watch and literally i would like to call it pulaski i'm just going to have to i mean let's let's catch them while they're doing the right stuff right um do you want to just talk a little bit about why 129 what does that even mean or is that going to get you into that no i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna do the best i can to explain it so um the irony growth model is it offers two components of growth measures there's typical growth and there's stretch growth for every student in grades k-8 their typical growth is set on their benchmark when they take that benchmark assessment in the fall that
060sets their typical and stretched growth for some students um their typical and stretch are within points other students that's a little further apart so it's different for every single child the benchmark shows how much growth is typical how much growth is stretched so once that benchmark is taken it establishes that for the teacher and the child it puts all students on a path towards proficiency what they need to get there what you have to understand is typical growth is an average annual growth for student at their grade and their baseline placement and it's based on a median and i can give you all a little cheat sheet but this was shown to us today and this is how they establish median growth they take all the kids they literally line them all up and whoever
061smack dab in the middle that sets the median for that grade that school the district and that's how the median's determined um so when you see numbers like 110 150 100 129 it means those those schools not only met their typical growth they exceeded the typical growth for that school year and it's hard for teachers i mean they're the adults it's hard for any of us so let's face it change is hard it won't ask you to change practice it causes growing pains and you might hear teachers upset or building admins upset or whoever right but but if we're using data to drive what we're doing and we're seeing positive results then we're not saying we're perfect but we see we are seeing good movements so in math this year even you know with our
062new curriculum we had nine elementary schools saw a decrease of 20 or more in tier three we had an average overall tier one growth across the elementary schools of 17 percent an average decrease in tier 3 across all elementary schools for 30 out of the nine schools that saw a 20 or more decrease in tier 3 six of them saw 30 or more so yeah they're cl the tier three close is incredible um in addition to we saw a decrease in tier three of 30 percent for english language learners and a 24 decrease for our hispanic and latino students and for our male and female students we saw they tied 24 decrease in tier 3. um [Music] we have 80 uh 38 of our kids kindergartners um at tier one and as we moved to
063typical and stretch growth again we saw some really good gains in typical growth some schools exceeding their typical growth i just again want to shout out gaffney house pulaski as well as smith in math for their typical uh growth gains i'm going to hand it over to sandra who's going to talk a little bit about attendance thank you um i'm not sure if everyone had an opportunity to see this report but i'll explain what the report is very briefly um and then i just had a thought earlier today about how i think i want to change the report and i'll explain why what we do is we do a 10-day analysis uh for this this year at the 10-day mark the 20-day mark the 30-day mark and we compare it to last year and the
064report you have in front of you is the 150 day mark i believe 150 but we're actually now at the 160. so i can give you more data with 160 mark where the data just came in we look at total students total chronic and we compare this time to last year but as as good as this report could be i want to throw out some caveats last year you're in a different world different environment partially hybrid able to wake up go to school no no issues of getting ready transportation so when you do that comparison i want to make sure even though it looks like we're hiring chronic absenteeism we're back to almost where we were in an environment like 2018-19 pre-covet so moving forward i'd like to share a 1819 analysis to the current
065year similar to what we do at the state the state loses our benchmark of 1819. even still i can give some shoutouts about chronic absenteeism and two years ago before coven we used to celebrate three areas the school with the best or the lowest chronic absenteeism the unicorn school that did the best work and then the school that acknowledged had the best change in their work so at the 160 mark i want to give a shout out from this year to last year chamberlain had the biggest change in the percentage points it's a really tight close so shout out to them put in percentage points for the um for the school with the lowest chronic absenteeism it's really tight between holmes and gaffney like 20.21 20.22 kind of a mode so they both deserve a
066shout out so that's a shout out to them and then our lincoln uh for our unicorns um we call them smaller learning environments houzz is obviously phenomenal with a six percent in the six percent range but our lincoln scs is our unicorn that has the best attendance as well so to give a shout out to them as well [Applause] um so we can um so you know we we do look at our attendance at a 10-day mark we try and get to the root cause we identify our subgroups and report that to the state and we are still very much engaged with the state and their talk tuesdays and their home visiting protocol and all the other mandates that go along with it but they too know and they do give shout outs to our
067principals here as well that you're doing everything you possibly can be doing you're focusing on attendance and you're putting in all your strategies but sometimes it just doesn't come out with the the numbers you want but we also don't report right at this point in time our attendance on our middle of the year reporting we have a middle of the year meeting an end of the year meeting we don't really talk about attendance we talk about all the strategies and the greatness that's happening with our students that are coming to school [Music] kindergarten sixth grade ninth grade transition years absolutely has the highest rate for each of their grades like so absolutely so that trend is not just new brand it's across the nation they'll talk about those transition years for a variety of reasons
068it could be we and we have been focusing on kindergarten sixth grade and ninth grade when the fsls came in the focus for and and trying to follow them through excluding the last two years because we were trying to get everybody engaged in the environment and coming to school but those transition years have been up consistently our focus areas and it's a variety of reasons that either um for variety reasons i i can get to the root cause of some of them but there's from the nervousness of going to a from a smaller school to a bigger school it could be not sure what you know what it's going to look like it could be getting to school it could be you know we we try and focus with our families and work with our
069families in a pre-k five grade because it's the families versus the students they may have their own obstacles so we try and get to the root cause of what the obstacles are of having the students wake up on time and get to school or getting them to school in the middle school we start advocating we start working with the students to start advocating for themselves and giving them the responsibility and then when you get to the high school the conversations are straightly with with the students as they as they build their own adulting environment but it is still a struggle and it is across that it is across the board since uh at least since i've been engaged with the attendance probably those have always been the the years that we have to focus on
070it right yes even this year now we're full in kovitz with us so right it's at the 160 days if you if you're absent 16 days you're considered chronically absent to get off of that list you maybe could make it but you cannot miss one day it's one so at the 10 day mark we can identify the honeymoon period we call it from september to end of october but if you have covet or your family member has coveted this year be misful um our second favorite time of the year superintendents budget requests get a timer let me quick oh that was out loud sorry we're done um i'm just gonna give a really quick presentation tonight uh very quick you know the transmittal letter really captures the whole budget you know the combined budget but
071you really think about what you're really adopting tonight is not the whole budget really adopting not the general fund budget you know the grants are you're adopting the general fund budget the local budget tonight so you know for illustration purpose let me provide you everything um but sometimes grants do change and all that but really as a board you're adopting the general fund budget that's what the city is actually for dying to the board of education a budget 125.7 so that's really what you're adopting tonight but i can answer some of your questions i know um tony can probably answer some questions of grant questions i know senator sanford can ask answer questions but tonight it's really just a general fund budget is that what you're really about so yes are you were you planning
072on going through this presentation i'm not i'm not going through no i'm not i'm not going through a pres um a transmittal letter i mean mr kane said last time you already showed me transmitted letter you showed me the slides in the transmittal level so don't waste my time showing me slides all i really want to capture tonight is yeah it's really the captioning wow yeah okay i understand i mean you know he said like write the letter i don't want to see it again and that sounds fine um yeah but if you want to go over the slides the other slides that's fine too you know so when you think about the general fund budget what i'm just going to show tonight the changes that happen from january to june now some of the
073changes may look a little drastic i'll explain why so next slide kristen well really the next slide this slide is just zero um i'm going to show you a summary comparison by category which you've seen before in your budget book staffing changes and material financial changes next slide so this is just a category when we look at the category budget the salaries it's fringes and insurances purchase services and us et cetera you're gonna see the salaries have decreased by 1.5 million dollars it's not that we lost anybody it's just that we had we moved people around between um different locations i'm going to tell you why next slide this is really a staffing changes fte between the general fund budget the local budget from january yeah i do have a question about when you shift
074to grants are these are grants that are unrelated to extraordinary these are alliance and i'm going to explore mine okay so one thing too when you when you when we look at uh positions when we approve positions last year we approved positions and sometimes with the grants alliance and title one you have to move new positions in because the they don't allow you to take an existing position so in this case we actually moved 12 positions that were in this year's budget over to the alliance so it's not like we lost anything um at the same time we actually moved positions from their lines um you know possibly back to general funding other locations so it's really not a loss of positions if you think about the budget that you had in front of you
075in january i think there was 1806 position between local grants et cetera essex today is 1803 so we had a change a net net reduction of three so this was really a change in the budget material financial changes reduction of 1.5 million dollars teacher retirement savings so every year in january or december we really don't know who's going to retire in the school district so we don't really come up with a number we always realize that we've been retirements and this is at the actual retirement this is if um kevin king retires a teacher i'm making a hundred thousand dollars we're replacing my position with a sixty thousand dollar teacher it gives you enough savings of forty thousand dollars at the same time when you look at this there's also a savings on the grant
076side so we do have people who are kevin kane's in the alliance grant kevin kane retires we're reducing the savings of 40 000 so it's really a combination of both this is just on the teacher retirements in the general fund budget you saw here we shifted 12 positions over to um originally we thought they're going to be in general fund but back in january february we actually started looking at our alliance grants and started saying well we have a we have a a surplus of funds out there and now we have to make sure we can identify people we can move over so we identified 12 people it was really our new positions this year brand new positions in the current year we we moved though to three bridges supervisors the one in britain high
077school well i think was slayed and this this another one that's combination for schools we move those three people those are high level employees we we actually increase our custodian staff by six people this year so we took those six people which originally were thought to be in local we moved those two alliance we also have a new position academics manager this year that position initially was showing up in local it's a new position so we have the authority to move that over to alliance and then we also moved over to um i would say clerical staff positions over so that's where you get the 12 people out there now for instance insurance is when we look at the budget this is local again it's a hundred and eleven thousand dollar increase um we had
078a really surprise this year um which is probably the most shocking surprise i've had since i've been here we've had you know the um our consultant comes up with increases in december january and usually we're within a percentage of two the proposal that you had in january had an increase in health insurance at three percent actually the premiums came in in may at the 11 percent which was kind of a shock and so that was very high so you're seeing there that that increase in premiums um really caused a kind of like uh on both sides it increased our budget by 1.3 million dollars we had a couple reductions out there which we reduced it by and we actually had to basically reduce our contribution for these um health insurance account by 100 892 000
079it's the adjustment so that had to be reduced um and then there was other decreasing other net change for 119 000 that has to do with burs and medicare next page [Music] next slide is people services um as the year one i actually more more students were actually for whatever reason discipline reasons we had to move the kids out um and there was in the january budget we had a much lower dollar amount out there and usually in the january budget we had a pretty good indicator but things started happening so we actually had an increase of 925 when we look at people service it's really two things they do other services like with with the um with the magnet schools and that's for like decreasing other services but also outside tuition they're both the
080same in a way one is we we paid them for the services they offer and the other thing we pay them for the outside tuition that they offer so what you see here is you see a decrease in other services but we're seeing an increase in our placements that wasn't expected and that's we had a net increase of ninety thousand dollars magnet scope tuition was another thing that we've never seen before um usually we try to budget the actual uh we always see a student at two and we see a a minor increase but we don't really know what the increase is so usually i'll budge you the actual um so we actually got a read a letter from the correct magnet schools and which was you know with the state and all that saying
081basically we're raising our tuition next year between 18 and 20 percent um so that's something that you know you look at if if we actually didn't change the budget next year we would be short let's say 800 000 and that was unexpected so did you just say they increased their tuition and they have a right to i mean that's that unfortunately um they do have that right that's why we always try to advocate yeah no i mean it's it's it's you know i think you know i'm not saying it's been a good thing because i think we've kept the outside tuition with correct you know some steady steady growth but low growth but this is huge i mean i think when i first got here you know nine right now it was like four thousand
082right well i think it's close to i wanna say it's five there's two thousand there's an elementary middle school and then the highest the high school is that secondary school is highest you know i'm gonna i i can get you numbers but i want to say it was like you know high fours mid fives no now it's gonna be mid to high fives higher six you know so and that's what it is when you think about it you have a 20 increase in a five thousand dollar tuition right now it's six thousand dollars so i think i've seen increase about eight nine hundred dollars per student so if we're assuming the same amount of students that's it's just the math we're not we're not looking at it and saying oh geez we think we're going
083to send 10 more kids out there of course that would be a higher increase we're just basically saying we know we expect at minimums this is just what we have already that's out of time yeah and then it was it's unexpected now you know things could change and the other changes which is their minor just just little accounts and so forth twenty six thousand dollars here's the next slide you know one thing for for new board members um and some of the you know old board members just you know just talk a little excess special education grant over the last few years we've received that back i think people have to know that it's not always dollar for dollar um the state recently got something from the state talked about that you know the port
084districts like like alliance districts we're going to try to give you 75 75 cents on the dollar back so what i do on that what i did on the next page i'm actually giving you an example excess cost this is really a five-year history in excess cost so if you look at 2122 that's what we received this year 3 million 502 and for next year's budget sometimes we do like sometimes we do like a weighted average or a median but really this is the medium the 3 million 502 so that's what's in the budget next year if you take a student that costs you a hundred thousand dollars you always use whatever your per people expenditure is from the prior year so i know last year we our cost was fifteen thousand three thirty one
085so if you do the math four and a half times that it'd be sixty eight thousand nine hundred if we paid a hundred thousand dollars per student we might be two hundred thousand dollars for that matter but we paid a hundred thousand dollars at a 70 reimbursement that means the district gets back 21-7 uh we do know uh mr spalding's reminding me today and i actually saw the the communication and talked about alliance districts they're going to do their best to make this at least 75 cents on the dollar the other districts will start at 70 and depending where you are you ratchet up um so that's what that's where you know right now that's how the budget is built for next year uh chris the next slide is so the next slide is just
086really just showing what's in the budget for next year um for excess cost if you go down to the um contra expenditure so the the revenue itself that you get from excess cost comes back to the board of education and it goes against your expenditure so if i spend ten dollars and i get back three dollars my expenditure is going to reflect from seven dollars so it's called a contra expenditure it's like a revenue but we don't have revenue for board of education so it goes against your expenditure so next year we have we're we're estimating that we're gonna get 3.5 million dollars we look at our budget and we know that you know based on our best guess or our best actuals as of today and we use the same thing you know we're
087gonna for republican state it's gonna be 1 million 388 we know that contra expenditure is going to be 369 and we know our budget is 1 million 19. every year these numbers switch out so this year it's been a tougher year but i would have to say in other years i'm not as tough because things happen this year other years you might see one account going up higher another time going down it's the same thing when i look at the outside services that people service users that number has actually gone up and this year has actually gone down but the outside tuition has gone up but they're all the same it has to do with students that you're sending out and um that's really i sometimes third-party billing just like you know and i mean
088kristen go to that that was tina santana sent a text um to myself and i believe or an email to myself and yourself it's really her question design and third-party building what happens to the revenue you know and when you look at a third-party billing it's really a special revenue fund so if you if you look at funds for like the city the city of britain general fund or any special revenue fund you collect the revenue and you have the expense you have a fund balance so what you're seeing here in in third party billing we're just basically showing what we think the expenditure is the revenue that comes in goes against their fund we don't receive dollar-free dollars so i don't want anybody believing that you know um we spend a million dollars and
089we get a million dollars that's not the case here we have a fun balance out there we spend a million dollars or her more and we get half a million dollars back and when i look at the budget when i look at the expenditures during the year if i see wiggle rooms i will move dollars back to the local budget to keep that fund home i have to keep it hard if you don't get that fun hole you can actually be written up by the owner so we it is a whole fun but um it's not it doesn't reimburse you a dollar for a dollar you get 25 cents on a dollar 50 cents a dollar 75 cents on a dollar it fluctuates and that that's really it's just on the general fund budget i
090know you have a lot in front of you tonight i'm here to answer questions or is it unrelated to the budget related yeah ada yes yeah so no i heard all the comments tonight um i see you know um you know i do understand i mean we how do i put this i mean i do think i do think um the cameras are a big deal okay um we are actually working on an order from the state of connecticut um on the 88 stuff that should have been done you know 15 years ago and so we're out of compliance right and i know um you know i'm aware i know uh superintendent series or wherever so we're aware that you know we made a commitment they know we're going forward with it um so yeah
091i guess my real question is so it was originally three point four right or four point four four point three four point four yeah yeah i think right so that was 3.1 yeah and we were planning on requesting the total amount from our savings yeah well the cities the city said it's like two million dollars right and i think the board and everybody made the commitment that we would we would find the other 2.4 million dollars from right more likely it's going to come it's not going to come from your self-insurance fund but it's going to come from a transfer from health insurance down to improvements for that 2.4 million dollars so the city we actually made the decision to hit the city's 2 million dollars first and then next year we would hit the
092whatever is needed um you know so i don't have an answer for you tonight i mean i i do understand what the aldermen is saying i understand the urgency because i was thinking like maybe the difference like maybe we only have five hundred thousand well like in the city so that way when the safety committee comes back maybe it's well i think yeah i do think yeah i mean i i agree with you so i look at that four point three or four i think it was 4.4 originally but you know 4 million 359 so let's say 4.1 3.1 you know i i do agree the city set aside 2 million dollars i think the board made the commitment to spend the other 2.4 million dollars we're seeing you know 3.1 or change so you
093know do i think we can reduce the city's um eight um two million dollars to a million dollars or something that looks a bit like that a little lower yeah i think you can you can easily reduce it by a million because i don't know at the end of the day is something going to happen with this ada stuff that you know there's a change order that you know i wouldn't recommend doing it until like like until the 88 projects are done because that's the committee we are out of compliance 100 yeah but if we're now a little bit lower maybe we can leave that money there yeah no so yeah you're right so we are out of compliance and i think we all know like you would be out of compliance um we've been
094out of compliance for years um you know it it came to our attention that you know then it became about an issue with um doing new school construction um new school construction projects weren't supposed to go forward if you were ada but right we've been out you know state knew this for 20 years uh but now it's it's an issue that we're out of compliance um yeah yeah so i mean it's just a lot after you know ultimate zero brought it up and then they did the presentation and it's only three point one instead of four points so you're right i don't know how you um you know right tonight they didn't ask you for you know the i don't think they asked for approval to go forward to 3.1 but eventually you know so
095that's a good point right because it was a presentation but then i thought i heard rebecca say i don't know if it's an agenda it's not on the agenda as a voting you would you as a board at the moment it was just a presentation but i thought i heard her i thought she had an expectation that we were voting on something tonight we yeah we're going for a motion to approve the amendment to the contract with the new dollar amount all right so i don't believe i see it on the agenda or in the packet but is that the blue that's not the new contract that's just the the gps yeah the the initial 4.3 was the proposed budget and once the data started the fittings started happening and the defined scope was created
096then the downer amount decreased to 3.1 so when we awarded the contract in midfield we provided a contract that stayed at 4.3 so we're just looking to amend the contract at this point okay so i think we'll have to add something at the end of the is there my question back to rebecca is there an actual contract out there right i know that you know you may have somebody said coming back and saying it's 4.3 or 3.1 but i think the board needs an actual contract um to award something to you know mr kane over there um whatever you know 3.1 that's pretty cool um but yeah that's you yeah i think that for you because gmp is just an exhibit it's not the actual contract it could be a contract yeah you need to
097act on a contract there is a notification of award that was awarded to newfield for the project so that's you know pretty much they said the approval would be awarding the contract to new field construction was provided during the newport board of education meeting held on monday the 18th april 18th so if there is there is a notification of award right so we have the contract that we voted on for the 4.3 but we you want us to revoke on the amendment of 3.1 but it's not we don't have the contract in our pocket so is is new field still there no no okay well i can definitely i can definitely do a little work there research and get back to you shouldn't be a showstopper right because the contract work the contract is signed
098if it's less than what it i think will pay but that just stops the question of it yeah i mean you you really want to see amended contract yeah there's a lot of stuff for safety that we're going to need and it's great we have potential money coming in from the savings from this eda but we need to start looking soon of what we could get [Music] where if you be a child that needs something and we're not getting it that's a very serious situation right i know they're both much different than the and i don't want to sound like because i'm probably the most emotional person on this board because i'm insensitive right our schools are safe so i was being very say that i'm looking at yeah that's nothing right now you know
099and again and i i totally know where people are coming from i have that same sense of fear and you it's just it's horrible what's happening yeah we are safe and and it wouldn't hurt to have someone come in look at our buildings but start there right i mean that doesn't cost or does its minimal cost to look at well we're we think we're okay i know we've invested quite heavily with alice training with stop the bleed kits with panic buttons with just different things so maybe part of it is um you know holding different forums small group to just say we are safe here's how we're safe but also looking at someone come in and take take a look an objective look right i would say that should be the next first step that
100we do right right um i don't know smelly do you have anything that you want to add to that no other than um continued funding is always important for instance stop the bleed kits need to be replaced as you have three to five years materials expiration dates so i'm continually looking for other ways and new objectives as well i mean there's 100 new ideas out there for technology to continually increase the safety but our schools are safe we've made a lot of investment in policy alice and technologies and aiding the new security i mean the camera is everything new and that that is a part of that safety piece too right making sure all of that operation a lot of the safety issues are gonna be addressed to the ada amount i don't know about
101that but i think the safety concerns have been like addressed through alderman's family alderwoman costa who made like visits to the school to say no these things really don't happen right to to the extent that it's been pumped up to be so but my request was could we possibly after you do your analysis leave that money there well yeah if you can if you can't then i totally get it because no you're not budget you're correct i mean um you know i you don't have to give me yeah i don't have an answer but you know two dollars can be probably reduced and the summer is and here we are we are always undefined city doesn't give us any money but we're supposed to take money from aba which is out of clients we make
102the schools safer what is the city doing to make the school distinct why should it be just the school system that has to pay for this they're sending the most to all of us not just the borders i don't because of this there are other ways to make the schools safe in the city needs to take some responsibility for it and stop dropping everything in our lab well that's just that i think we're getting the ada done first and we've talked about having a safety committee and i think this could be one of the first tasks for safety committee is to do an audit look over and see what areas we need right our immediate fixes and which ones could be wishlist fixes and which ones could be it'd be great if you could do
103this but if you don't you can't you can't right now we don't know yeah i was gonna say um rebecca yes can you all hear me okay yeah i do want to say that there are many things we could be doing right now without spending money to improve upon our emergency crisis plans you know our equipment our hardware that we've installed are our wall panel buttons under desk buttons um and you know kind of collaborating with emergency management homeland security and first responders to really meet and all be on the same page there are still there's still a lot of work that we could be doing uh on the ground right now to improve upon our systems although we are safe but to just continue that work and make sure that everybody across the district
104is on the same page from when we are having drills uh shooter drills all of the evacuation drills that we need to be having so that's an investment that we can do right now without having to spend money right and connecticut does have one of the strictest school construction rules for safety and i know a lot of our reconstruction project chamberlain and smalling that were done with that in mind so right exactly so i appreciate it thank you thank you for like i probably was probably a can of worms i should have just talked thank you for keeping this meeting going in my last video hey you know what keep it lively right so i do apologize for that somebody's got gotta do it tina's not here that's true i do have a lot of
105concerns about the budget which um which i brought up a couple months ago but i've talked with mccain i talked with dr gasper and my friend decided that you know approve the budget as presented but we're going to sit down in the summer time as he starts getting data and starts looking over things as an eye for next year's budget right and that is absolutely like that's part of our job but to make recommendations not tell them where to cut postage that's going to be there until the day you die all right so i'm going to buy you a book of stamps i know the audience isn't any other for mr kane with a k thank you appreciate it all right consent agenda anybody would like to pull anything off the consent agenda wait one's
106going twice nothing seriously anybody all right so under new business don't vote on consent correct nope okay i will entertain a motion to approve the superintendent's budget request for 2022 2023 fiscal year to make a statement i will make a motion second next year don't count i was going to say perhaps any discussion i do have one point that i would like to make and i know that i went in front of um council and i want to say it again to ms parker like this year we did not request money from the city we kept it flat and we all i think we know why we had 72 million in national funds but i think we proved tonight a little bit that we see results with the supports we have in place so we're
107going to need to find the money after esser runs out so that is one of my concerns is that we count on esser would come to all these brands some of these grants are temporary but we needed to do that right but you and you see how it worked so our request i think going forward to the state to whoever will listen to the city that here's the numbers these supports work so that's my yeah because they use those numbers to not give money so right to say we our scores stink but this is the this is what happens when we have the supports in place so that was all that was my two cents anybody else have any discussion all right all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries
108your last budget i'm getting sadder by the minute okay oh i don't think i show that item b um review school uniform survey results for 2022 2 2023 are they in our packet no i've been pulling them because they're still coming in right now oh the results are just okay the numbers are about in terms of participating out of fairness to that so um after the call we had about 100 before the call went out um and then after the call we got about another 200 so now we're we are approaching 394 at this point that's it when did we send this out we sent it out uh the call went i think thursday i'm going to say no maybe on wednesday it definitely went later in the week so i do have the results
109for that right now i don't know if you want to see them yet based on those numbers if you want to keep pushing them out now this is only remember you only wanted to survey your k through eight so that meant pk to grade seven specifically we really didn't want to get input from an eighth grader they're going so yeah it's it's still quite low i mean you should be about 4 000. yeah i did see some comments before oh i've seen a lot of comments right like i got robert so in terms of um the results as i mentioned 394 it's largely split there's two ways to look at these results because there's a response per student um as well as you know a parent at that point could respond because they're responding for
110three that's a singular person responding so i can actually show it in two different ways basically so what i'm showing you right now is the 394 per kid um you know one to one per student um and as you see that's the results are are looking at a slight yes with 219 to the nose at 175. let me see if i can maybe stuff that a little bit here for you still gotta go like this is what we took the heat for last year right not listening to the survey results but the survey last year i think was split down the middle was it no no was it was hired and then they re sent out the survey and break it down to three questions but if you added the two results together they were
111they were split like if somebody says yes they want it but they want to be able to modify that's a yes you want uniform right in my head at least this survey is very cut and dry right yes or no so there's no middle ground or trying to right to figure in between how they voted for it in terms of their calendar i do have it broken out by school and by uh grade level if you wanted to see it in any other way then you had mentioned like a parent with multiple so because in my head you're voting three times correct so i can this is showing it with that say three vote for the parent um and with a little adjustment on my pivot table let me just instead of showing the count
112a let's show the count unique on response and now it goes down to 280 responses as individuals um and yes it's still slightly beating now but in both cases they're all slight you know it's not resounding i thought that's not a good it's not a good sample it's tough um we can certainly keep pushing the you know it was kind of not sure how quick you wanted to act i know you timing is everything as well um but if you want us to keep sending out for those that we haven't collected a response for yet because we did like say get a few hundred and that one call uh right away if we can keep doing that uh for a certain amount of time that you want me to be aware so because um like
113it's a relatively new board we have a new superintendent coming up we will have a july meeting and i know like moms i know older women pasta i don't know about anybody other moms like it's july [Applause] so it's july because last time we didn't meet till august at least you're going to be before the sales so yeah you know i'm out of the loop and in the tax break yeah july the tax week yeah july 1. so it's looking like july 11th yeah right so do we keep the survey i think we keep the surgery until you have less than 10 percent that respond yeah so yeah probably yeah yeah and we can keep the calls up and keep pushing out for those that haven't uh cast already so that way people are also
114not getting a call if they've already done it because i find that very annoying so with the year closing down there's activities right they're like hustle bustling through a lot of things maybe when things settle and they've got a little time they can focus on taking that survey i'm optimistic i'm always an optimist so i'm thinking that maybe that'll help with the numbers too okay so july july is fair yeah right please i will i'll put it in my speech all right i'm going to put it in my speech okay so how does anybody else feel about that leaving the survey open until july 11th or before our next yeah so oh because it is reviewed oh that's the results of bro because i don't know why we're blue and white but anyway blue and
115white blue and white house they just decided on whatever it was just weird i was what is the easier that trying to think about what the stores carry what's easiest for the parents tonight okay i remember some talk about there was never enough weeks for white sharks oh my gosh oh my god yeah my son was red or red or white taco beard all right thank you all right so uh um item c entertain a motion to approve purchase order a bid waiver for abatement of asbestos containing materials at slade middle school well nothing all right um discussion wasn't that one you had a question absolutely i was able to get connected with an agent who i spoke with on friday with the insurance company and i sent him over all the project details um
116it looks like the remediation and replacement of the gym floor would be covered under this project and those are numbers that we have not included in the work uh or the proposal that we've submitted to you for 120 and 137 that's separate and that will cost up to about 200 000 they also did mention that the mold and asbestos regarding that there are quite a few limits or sub limits when it comes to that but they believe that the mold will be covered up to about a hundred thousand a hundred thousand dollar limit um asbestos is typically included but there may be some coverages if asbestos is damaged they are going to move forward with submitting the claim they were doing that today and the carrier is going to have to review the coverages and
117get more details to us on the damages in order to make a final determination of coverages but again we're looking at core remediation and restoration for the two separate proposals that we submitted about 250 seven 000 and if they deduct a hundred thousand for that that we're still looking at 157 not inclusive of the gym project the january floor that we're going to have to lay out so those are that's the update that i have from the insurance carrier and i should have more information but by wednesday as to the final final commitment the coverages so thank you for the direction to contact the city um because it depends for us yeah that's good thank you for um following through with that yeah of course so just a quick point of information clarification the item
118c for 137 includes a pavement of all asbestos in all areas we've been discussing the four classrooms you know thailand one of the classrooms the under the gym floor and the damaged gym floor the only thing that's not on here as ms gonzalez stated is the price of a new replacement floor for leisure right and that's the pos that's what's possibly covered up to a hundred thousand okay what's covered up to a hundred thousand is the asbestos and mold removal okay i got you not the gym floor replacement floor it also kind of washed the abatement process out okay hey all right so any questions for mr smedley so right now we're approving the abatement and okay and the remediation and restoration of the floor so okay we've got yeah that's like yeah okay okay
119all right question so basically we approve the two items total 257 with the hope winning 100 000 at all yeah okay either way we gotta get them done yeah i was just gonna say either way it has to happen right like whether we pay for or it gets paid for my insurance but at least we know that there's a possibility of an insurance reimbursement any other questions no all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed extension motion carries item d i will entertain a motion to approve a purchase order bid waiver for remediation and restoration work at slate middle school one second all right any questions we kind of covered it under both all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed extensions motion carries now are we i think no we
120don't because we don't have the contract okay i'll entertain a motion to return oh you're gonna cry now