New Britain Board of Education - 11/8/21

001[Music] [Applause] the new britain board of education providing students with a high quality education i'd like to call this uh meeting to order and uh let's start with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all here mr nicholas mercier here dr violet here ms monica dawkins here mr anthony payne here mr joseph here miss annie parker here miss diana reyes here miss gayle sanders connolly here miss tina here okay now take a moment of meditation okay and kristen do we have anybody in the meet for public participation i don't see anybody okay [Music] all right um let's move into new business do you want to make a motion to do item

002b first or how do we um like to move that we go into executive session for item 2b discussion of a personal matter as we have the attorney here for that matter uh that would be with the board i believe miss manning superintendent sarah and um pardon me i forgot the attorney's name okay thank you yeah second okay all right all in favor all right okay okay i apologize for not speaking loudly enough we're going to be first since you're both you're in the person uh attorney murphy an attorney wesley so this is going into executive uh session to discuss item 2b with those two attorneys miss manning superintendent sarah and the board second all in favor all right okay so we are back in session motion to go back into executive session for a

003different matter of business to uh discuss ratification of local 871 uh the contract between the board of education local 871 the britain federation of teachers uh that'll be the full board mr kane miss manning uh superintendent sarah and attorney roy will be joining us remotely did we want mr foreign as well yeah and mr foreign okay you have a second second all in favor all right all right okay so we are back in session it is uh 8 02 7 00. 702 sorry i never said back that much when i grabbed it this morning all right so our next item is uh special recognition emotion oh yes right yes emotion two motion to approve the contract between local 871 the new britain federation of teachers and the consolidated school district of new brand board of

004education for the periods starting sorry i need to pull up the actual dates uh starting july 1st june 2022 and ending june 30th 2025 seconds okay we have a second in motion any discussion seeing none all in favor say aye aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions i love okay so nine to one motion carries our next item is uh recognition of two of our board members who uh this is their last meeting um don't smile behind them still trying to tell me what to do she's gonna check her after so uh nick and violet have been uh key players on this board as coach as chairs of committees and uh um violet uh has been on for four years and nick for eight years uh during that time he's also served as chair and

005i have to say i'll miss you for being there to correct me when i forget to do things on the agenda and uh providing guidance on uh parliamentary procedure um so it's really been a pleasure to serve with both of you um and have both of you in the leadership team of officers of the board and uh now i will uh go around anybody who would like to anybody else would like to say a few words you're welcome i'm guessing okay yeah so nick and i you've had some good ones we've had some good ones over the last six years but you know i appreciate your guidance a lot right um your leadership is just amazing i'm gonna miss you because you know i'm probably gonna text you over the next two years like you

006know can i really vote on this i really appreciate it like i appreciate you and i mean we've had our we definitely had our levels they've been good ones um violet same like i don't think we've ever had a battle but you know on hot topics or sensitive topics you've always been able to give me an honest opinion right gail you're you're you're wrong or you're right or this is probably how you should handle it i've always appreciated that with you and i'm going to miss you thank you let's go go ahead i'm taking my mouse um i i think i speak on behalf of cabinet uh nick you've been with me and we were here before i even even came on and violet you came on just a little bit after um i started

007my my 10-year superintendent and um i think as a superintendent this was it was it's a dream board right because it was truly one voice um you know it it wasn't political it has not been and i think as a superintendent i've appreciated that that we truly truly have put students first um from policy changes to um just the movement in five years uh and and i and you know we we had to recover from some tough fun tough days right um and i can't thank you enough to uh for building a foundation a very strong foundation for future generations for our current students our current teachers and future generations um and i think for for those remaining in the news that are coming on we need to honor that and know um what's best

008for for our children and you know it's i'll say it a hundred times we need to model right we can have we can have open disagreement that's fine if it's always in the name of children and agree to disagree at times but always keep our eyes focused so i can't thank you enough because you've really been in terms of teaching me and my cabinet um i think back to no subcommittees to subcommittees um right you know even today is an example of taking things off the agenda because it didn't go through a sub-committee but but this board built that structure and that's huge so thank you on behalf of cabinet [Music] no would just like to echo that um i learned so much from both of you and you're going to be your knowledge is

009going to be sorely missed i told her i was going to text her during a meeting let me break this up so just keeping it straight and honest it's been wonderful until we didn't agree as long as i can have my say and you say what you have to say i can go off here and i understand strong opinions because i can have strong opinions so speak the truth and uh i'm sorry also hopefully you got rid of my issue with dress code [Laughter] and i would just like to say as one of the newer members that i i certainly appreciated your guidance and your warmth and your willingness to share insight to kind of help guide me as a newbie and you will be missed thank you and i'll just echo pretty much everyone

010here and saying that i've only been on the board for a year but i truly learned a whole lot from both of you and i look forward to continuing to learn from you and carry the work you've done in the past two years forward thank you see as soon as the last election when i came on the board happened you know a whole weekend a few months later right as we were getting ready to delve into you know board retreats and you know team building and of course you know a lot of that everything just got pushed to the side because we have to pendant our hands but um eight years is a long time and uh the policies like the policy overhaul is nothing short of amazing so thank you for that work i

011mean that was like truly yeoman's work go back to the 70s take care of stuff yeah cleaning those up unfortunately unfortunately i wasn't you know on your committee for a while and so i can't speak to your work thank you for your service as well yes i think uh boards going forward will um benefit from your uh reinstitution or instituting subcommittees um that only a few of us have been were on the board when we used to meet until 10 o'clock and and then have the motion to extend the meeting past 10 o'clock and that was the norm for meetings so some of you don't know how lucky you are that nick pushed for that so all right anybody else wanna say anything yeah nick we'll let you talk let's go do an hour during

012the board report so um i just want to say that the past eight years have been a remarkable experience um i truly believe that public service holding elected office volunteering your time for a board of education for any organization is the one of the ways we can give back to our community um and when i got involved in politics i was very worried about some of the partisanship that tends to happen uh you know new britain has a bit of a reputation when it comes to politics i've heard it described as the beirut of politics right it's it's rough and you know through just happenstance we ended up at one point having a 5-5 board and i think that helped push us towards a more bipartisan place but i have valued the relationships that i've

013had with my fellow board members over the years those currently serving and those who have moved on to other things no longer serving we've had disagreements but i i still respect those people even the ones i've disagreed with on issues and we we can fight and we can fight hard on things that we we believe in that's what we should do but i don't think that this board especially in the past five six years has been partisan our our divisions on issues have been anything but with weird lines sometimes showing up and i think the board has generally kept what's in the best interests of students at heart and i hope and i pray that going forward the board continues to do that because this is not always the norm i work with teachers and

014know teachers from around the state from around the country some of the stories i hear of things that happen at boards of education like winter i will not speak to that but other places too other places too like there are deeply divisive politically motivated boards and we've taken on some really big challenges in my time on the board putting in committees and making the meetings more efficient i'm glad we were able to do that changing the way we do our policies so that we can actually find them i'm glad that we do that um but the board's also been willing in a bipartisan effort to take on challenging things going after the city for special education monday money that should have been coming to the board of ed all along that was not a partisan

015issue for the board republicans and democrats both said no we need to do what's right for our children putting out to bid a contract that had not gone out to bid for transportation in decades decades and you know through an audit and review we found out was costing the district millions of dollars it didn't need to that was not a political issue it definitely had political blowback and members of both parties felt pressure to cave and give a contract to someone who was not below bidder end of the day we had to stick to our guns we had to take that to court and the board republican and democrat together supported it because it was the right thing to do uh and if we keep that as our guide star doing the right thing to

016do for the district doing the right thing to do for children i think the board will continue to go far and i hope that this board continues to advocate for our students and i hope this board continues to advocate for more funding from the city i've advocated for that since before being on the board through three prior administrations it's not a political issue it's about what's right i will miss my time here i have learned so much from professional colleagues from the teachers the administrators fellow board members people who have opened my eyes perspectives and viewpoints i've never considered is maybe a better person is made me a better board member it's made me a better teacher and if we can continue to do that it'll make the city a better city thank you it

017has been my pleasure to serve you know i have absolutely learned about um you know procedures and definitely came in um not knowing how the board would be because um i think as nick said the board was not always as cohesive as it was and i know there were rumors floating around and i was thought to be this person that was going to come in and cause like chaos or whatever um and i obviously don't need to be on the board to cause any chaos that's what i'm trying to do so um you know that i think that very quickly we all found out got to know each other and found out that we were all here for the right reasons and so yeah it's been my pleasure to be able to have uh you

018know discussions when we disagree you know we know that this is a board we operate as a body together everyone has a voice you then have a vote and what happened happened that is what the board decided um as a body and um because of that we have been able to do so many things that as i as i always bug nancy and call her up and she knows this is the one thing that i constantly scold about is um so many things that don't even make it to the public eye right we're making constant progress and doing um good things for kids and that that has been a result of the collaboration of this body and you know not any single person um and i think it's you know it's awesome when we start

019to know um everybody here has a niche everybody here has right like a perspective that we're really tight about when you start seeing like when something comes to you know me to committee i'm going i understand the justification here now talk to me about the money because when you go to gail i already know she's going to ask you that's right let's do it or when gail will jump into something and say oh the policy but how about we change that she he to there right because we're doing that and when we all kind of started adopting each other's lenses for the better of the whole body so you know it's been my pleasure to advocate for all of new britain's kids including my treasures that are still in this district um and i'll miss

020it but i'm i'm glad to have had my time that's right um i'm gonna actually i'm gonna i'm gonna be brief kevin down's gonna be brief because you're just gonna can you just come up and just give a quick synopsis of this weekend and what the weekend brought as far as cameras goes camera goes kevin kane might now start walking up to talk just for a quick minute on the update on school construction projects go ahead sure so so this weekend we began the camera conversion over at the high school that was approved last month um well over 100 cameras were replaced and have been are up and running currently we hope to have the rest completed by the end of next week we did exteriors today but all critical cameras cameras are mostly used

021during our school days and have the most student activity were identified prior week and those when we made sure that those were included in the 100 that were done over the weekend i'm happy to say that the system has been up and running we had no issues today we've actually used it a couple of times for some questions on where people were in the building and everybody's happy about it i think the principal's comment was wow this is wonderful so i wish he was here but i'm sure he can pipe in at the moment and let us know but it was it's great it's a great system and actually i'm going to be talking later uh about another school that has completely failed uh that we need to do next so i'll speak to that

022and just a shout out to our crew for being in on over the weekend our security team they they came in they were they were onboarded over the weekend and they didn't we had security with us we had training that occurred we wanted to make sure that monday as soon as school started that every that the people that used the cameras that sat in front of them the most understood how to use them so we had to actually train in yesterday as well so we did a lot of the planning it was worked out great i also mean you're going to demo them yeah i know i i got a clip over the weekend it was pretty cold there um i just want to also and again you'll see it's long i gave you an

023update from each department but i just wanted to highlight and lift up a few things um i thought it would be time um and we'll do it again i think next month have it at finance because we have new board members coming on i'd like to keep them updated as far as the the closing out of the capital project so if you can give a brief overview and then remember as we recall back in september 2019 two years ago we discovered we had 13 school construction projects that are still open from years back thank you this lists these um part of superintendents reports there's a list of all the open projects out there that support this guy i'm not sure this design it doesn't work okay there's 14 projects on this list forget the last

024one so there's 13 projects we will originally are working with you'll see that 11 of those projects one looks like it's closed it's final i'm not so there should be a payment the other 10 are audit in progress which means you're sitting at the state and the state is auditing and so there's a holdback money five percent or whatever should we come back eventually there's two projects out there that um right now have blank so we're looking into that as to where those stand that's one is the admin building the other one is alternate behavior center when we brought construction advocacy in uh they worked with ray moore to close these projects they're they're alleging that these two projects were handled by ray i don't think we're over or not so they're actually contacting the

025state to see where they stand those two open projects was there anything filed with them if not we'll be working on those you'll see at the bottom smalley project that was for mr moore and newfield we're working on that project it was our understanding was closed it's not closed right now so what happens these are estimated payments so all these prices have estimated payments so something something's missing i'm not sure why but when it says estimate payments it means that the state probably made the um 95 of the dollar payment there's price of more paperwork that needs to be finalized and they need to go through an audit so there's really three projects out there that we're gonna have to look into and see where we stand but we're doing pretty well i mean you

026know a lot of 13 projects originally 11 are gone it looks like or at least in progress um two are open not sure what happened with those and smallie we're finding out it still needs to be closed and the money the dollar amount next to it is money checks that have been cut from the state and gone to the city yes and you're gonna see that so audit in progress usually there's dollar amounts that's still sitting here so if you all recall when i try to educate in this usually what happens in construction projects there's always a five percent hold back so if uh let's call it 10 million dollar project let's say it's 80 reimbursement and if everything's eligible the state always holds back five percent then when they go through the audit paperwork

027then they cut you the differential of five percent sometimes it's less because they find out things are ineligible or they find out things that they thought were knowledgeable and not knowledgeable so there's probably some extra dollars coming forward but we're not sure what and they go right to the city and can you talk just one minute to understanding um about the transportation update a little bit oh yes i'm sorry i don't have a problem oh i do would you add me speak to it yeah okay yeah um i'm flipping about but i just think it's important um we are still we still have a shortage on drivers so we do but i have to say uh both of our vendors both for student and specialty are are able to maintain the coverage of all scheduled

028routes um it's with people working late working double time so and and that's important to know uh just for future conversations that we're gonna have in in finance uh hopefully next month um you know a lot of it is uh you know people are stealing from one district to the next people are pretty desperate these days across the state um you know you saw on the current maybe two weeks ago one out of four teachers is resigning from the hartford public schools you know it's it's a it's a real issue across state so um i'm really grateful for both of the transportation companies they're working really hard um yeah so that's it um and again there's more there you can read up on it thanks kevin very much and i wanted mary ellen just to

029speak briefly about saturday it was the first time uh effort that we've ever had a recruitment fair so if you could just speak to that so while the cameras were being installed mary ellen was there with her team busy day on saturday so we had our first in-person recruitment fair since before the pandemic its design was with a pre-registration format with a bit of a speed dating twist if you will where there were many interviews that happened on site we're happy to report that there were 32 people that came through the door on in the three-hour event 27 are going to move forward as possible hires four certified staff 16 paras two teaching assistants four bsas and one lpn so we're we're going to replicate that format as well in the spring for a larger

030audience for our spring recruitment thank you yeah thank you and then mike if you're good i'm going to talk a little bit about the culture and climate because that's sometimes when we get feedback from families that's what i'm hearing from some of you and talking about cultural climate especially at our secondary school mike did you want to talk about it a little bit sure then i promised the rest of my room so i don't think it's any secret that we like everybody else have faced challenges um with the re-entering fully especially uh at our largest schools the two large middles in the high school i there's a brief summary in the superintendent's report kind of tier one has been all the schools instituting structures to to uh supervise students more closely the hallways or monitors

031students more closely in the hallways as that became an issue the middle schools have tightened up at times and then sought to kind of scale back after providing some instructions with students about expectations in schools remembering that really two-thirds of the students in each middle school are new to that school given the fact that the closure so the seventh graders and sixth graders are all new to both the middle school structure and a school that large additionally students who are kind of tier two have been identified through that process of tightening up in the halls to be in need of of more uh support have been identified we've been working with the administrative team the pupil services department to support those students and and and to be totally transparent there's a handful of students at

032each school who continue to struggle despite intervention and we're meeting um to to look individually at those students and and determine uh what more supports they can have we can provide for them either within the building or in some cases looking for um ways to educate them in settings that are more appropriate for their needs thanks mike and there is a page in there and and i won't go into it too much but we're on our third cycle it's called our community engagement team um which has been a real success right community it's something that we put together to make sure that we had all representative community agencies at the table when social workers are bringing a case of concern and it's held right here in this board room we have now from next door

033we've got hra we've got all the necessary people at the table to support a family and a student who are struggling and so it runs very you'll see the procedure we put it there we do it every two weeks we're able to hear two cases per per session so we've had six successful um interventions helping families connect right with housing if they need that or whatever the services that they need that that's that's what we're doing um so that's one you know we're really proud of and i have to thank joe vavreck and jamirmont because they're the ones that have spearheaded this um you know there's there's a real need um you know covet or not quoted so we're addressing that um you can see also in your packet that we are in now in

034the second session of elevate which is our after school out of school time programming um and our numbers actually from the first session at 150 at the elementary has gone up close to 500 or 450 so we've tripled and again slower and steadier for a slow slower progress at the middle but but not too little six twelve not too bad to have close to 200 kids uh in grades six through 12 that are coming out either after school or on saturdays so we're pleased with those numbers we've worked really hard at you know i i can't thank the staff enough they are incredibly hard-working people and they they just deserve some time to be told how good they are right and and i think um we try to say it i would appreciate any of

035you just just just communicating to them um their efforts because it's tough work right now but we're getting there we're getting there slow and surely so any other questions if you read this at home you will shoot me an email shoot me an email but um i did have just one quick question if i could um i know that when mr form was just speaking to the um the culture and the climate yeah in the schools is what is being enforced at slave the same thing as what's being enforced at pulaski um i'm saying looking comparing apples to apples right because new britain high school is its own entity but like from one school to the next the two big medals yes i'm gonna say yes with a caveat right and so the resources they

036may be a little different depending on on the style of leadership and you know we we have a phrase that we used off we use often it's freedom within fences right these are the parameters um but every leader is individual just like every classroom teacher is going to put a little bit of a different spin to it which is okay it causes good conversation when the two admins get together compare right well what are you doing differently and what can i do um so yes with the caveat of you know um i will say um definitely uh pulaski start mac did you say pulaski started something slate thought that looks good we're going to try that too so it's kind of a pink and pink one did i get that yeah i mean both are

037dealing with with how much movement to allow students has as a core issue and they're in there they've collaborated you know it's not totally in sync as as things improve they they allow more movement so so it doesn't necessarily move last step but certainly they're collaborating and that's that that you know the way they're doing it um as the superintendent said there's some slight nuance difference but it's really around how much support students need during transitions we found from the beginning of the year unstructured time was not conducive to the needs of of all these students coming back new to the school so how to create structures during transition times they're doing similar things but not exactly the same and they're they're actually collaborating around what's what's worked so that they they've also learned from

038each other as part of that process so a quick question right now are they all like all the students are moving in the hallway from one class to the next in both of the schools right now um they're they're moving from one class to the next generally um i can't say it's a hundred percent the same but there but but both schools have have movement during the day as opposed to there were times when teachers were moving correct that slade that that has been phased out at slade um pulaski uh there there was times when they were not moving as well that has been phased out over the last couple weeks is from okay so right now at least they're able to get that interaction hey how you doing high five their friends and get

039to the next class the interactions limited they are moving they're moving in a supervised manner so so there are times when they're interacting cafeteria gym but but they are super supervised in both as they move but they're they are certainly moving they certainly can see their friends but but they need to they need to learn to get from point a to point b um without too much socialization so that's part of the learning process no i got that i was just concerned based on what was written on here i was just trying to see if they were leveling on the playing field as far as you know the same punishment for the other enemy can i just say i think it's important that it it wasn't presented as punishment it was presented as as as

040structure and learning how to how to live in an environment with 900 students and i i know both principals you know when they when they found a few teachers saying well you guys have to get better at this so we can let you move it's no it's our responsibility to teach you to live in this environment that's very different than the environment that two-thirds of you were in last time you were all together in school absolutely absolutely i appreciate that i just wanted to say something too you know i have grandkids in the school system and i have wanted slade who's in eighth grade and one at new bend high school who is in 10th grade this is her first year actually being in the high school and i've always said this about the high

041school it's like two schools in one because the experience that my granddaughter in 10th grade is having is different from the stuff that you're hearing on the news because she comes home every day and she has a positive attitude and when i asked her was there a fight today she'll say i don't know i didn't see a fight you know because she goes to her classes if she sees large clouds gathering she goes a different way and she's having a great experience and when we had to shut the school down for a day she was in tears about not being able to go to school and the one that slayed the other day was sick and i had to take her to the doctor she wanted to go back to school even though the doctor

042said you don't have to i can write you a note she goes nope i want to be back i want to take her to lunch she didn't want lunch because she wanted to be back at school so you could still get a good education in new britain and i think we as parents have to set the example for our kids they don't have to react to all that crap that's going on they need to go and learn and that's why i tell my grandkids they said grandma why are you always telling us what not to do we act like we don't know how to act we've learned we're not stupid so you know parents we've got to take some responsibility too the school cannot do it all if you want them to teach your children

043that's what the teachers are there for they're not there to take care of all the stuff you're not dealing with at home so no it's true well i challenge my kids every day to tell me something good about school yeah and that's um actually what their allowance is based on don't tell anybody but that's what i do um and so they actually have to come back with a good report from you know tell me something that you learned at school today and we just keep it engaging around our dinner table and it has i i started it just kind of as like a haha years ago with my kids um and it's turned into something that is just wonderful because i have three all at once at slade and so they all always have different

044perspectives but they have always had something positive to say so i can't well small small exception but either way they've always had something positive because i challenge them to be invested in what they're doing in their learning so see and i tried offering the lunch too and i got the no let me just go back to school too okay so excuse me uh just to touch on what miss parker said i i think it's important to also remember and this has come up time and time again how we are portrayed in the media is so much different than the reality of what's actually going on in our schools on a day-to-day basis and you know the media is going to portray what sells and social media is going to portray what gets clicks and what

045gets likes and what gets interaction right so a lot of what we see out there is very negative there's a lot of positive it doesn't mean it's all great doesn't mean there aren't things to work on but okay anything more in your committee report okay committee reports um finance finance you will see a lot on the consent agenda but i always like to call out um donations so we have a donation for 1400 um for the new transitional center they do it in their store is like an incentive that's from um jim and lisa dufour and then oh do i have the number right but it was donors choose from lego spikes in 2065. [Music] you'll see a lot on consent this we did a lot of work in the committee last last week two

046weeks ago okay um policy uh there are a number of things from policy speaking of cleaning up things and all of that so there's a couple that we're gonna strike mostly just combining and cleaning up existing policy there is one that the superintendent that we had reviewed very minor changes to it but the superintendents requested that we send it back to policy because they were having uh our attorneys look at the admin regs for it and want to make sure that stuff that should be in the regs aren't ending up in policy and vice versa so that's going to go back for another pass through committee okay curriculum curriculum did not meet they have a lot of updates um and reports coming up for the new board and personal and we have some new positions

047requests that we went over some revised revision and job destruction and so quite a few items okay and are there any board reports it's just quick so i know for i think boys soccer is playing the state tournament tomorrow or is it today is today today is volleyball today is volleyball and i did already hear that they did make their first they made it to the first round but they did lose unfortunately um football there and band it's their senior night friday night and homecoming and then um i did take part in the um diversity equity and inclusion on the fourth really looking forward to what's next because it was a great conversation on how to engage parents but not quite sure we got to that what's next and i'm looking forward to that part

048of it um i wasn't able to attend unfortunately um due to other child uh other child having uh something at the same time but my daughter um marching band just did an exhibition at the moment championships on wednesday he was rescheduled from the rain out on saturday but there were 38 bands from around new england um competing and britain didn't compete but they were since they were the host of veterans they did the exhibition um first thing on wednesday to kick off the the event um it was a pretty big deal and they i hear they got a good reception and played very well and um you know there's different style than everybody else so i think people get a kick out of seeing you know what they do and how they're different so i

049just want to give a shout out to the game appreciate their difference can i just give a shout out to slade i'm so i know mike three of mine go there but they have been doing a phenomenal job with communicating with us as parents um verdi's been messaging all parents really maybe he's just putting it on blast every two days giving us an update really just how they're doing just you know like hey this is we've got less kids that are causing interruptions but if you have any questions and here you go this will be going on it's just really celebrating some of the little things which is important um and i think sometimes when you just get down to i just want to be able to celebrate something all the time so i just

050want to send a shout out to you know to maisie and his team and i'm sorry to verdi amazing his team and just being able to oh my god say thank you a thousand one times number one number two is i too was on that phone call for uh the community conversation and identified just some areas that we could do better next time but don't worry about it i put them on there my comments but i just want to say thank you for that because uh it's not often where you say hey let's just tackle this um among the hispanic community which is kind of funny because we were discussing everything and only two people were signed like spanish speaking for themselves or saying what they were saying but wilde is always she's really good

051about that where she'll say something and then say in spanish for the people in the room that don't understand her um and that was wonderful so i was looking for ways that we could get to a next step um and one thing that i have had i've said from the beginning was orlando ruiz um at lincoln who does a phenomenal job connecting with our hispanic community and our hispanic youth um if there's any way that we can put him together with a wild up be able to have some sort of a program for parents bridge that with i'm just saying it's my own two cents when you're looking at the strengths and the weaknesses how can we actually challenge ourselves as parents let's put a program together almost like a plti or a parent seat

052for parents and be a parent leadership training institute or parent seeking excellence in education um something that's going to give you a couple different modules not just you know maybe we can get together and eat ethnic food i don't know but something that is going to bring us to that next steps as a community as we're in person as we're you know just getting together and sharing so i thought that was a wonderful wonderful opportunity to get the conversation going i will give all the compliments back to the staff thank you okay thank you i just wanted to provide an update with the wellness committee we met a few weeks ago we meet again next week um since the halal menu came about we received 291 requests from parents to receive halal food and that

053actually is going to start this week so jeff and wisdom's been doing a really excellent job reading those requests a few more updates based off the school meal survey that we had last year um we began providing different types of food for school meals whitsons is now serving boar's head salads we are offered pinto beans um jamaican beef patties that were made right in hartford as well as plantains in the school meals i do want to recognize that woodson's is facing a lot of supply chain issues so they're working really hard to make sure our kids are well fed with very limited options that's available out there hopefully that will improve in the next few months but uh they're definitely working hard over there just one a couple other board reports i just want to

054recognize everyone that attended lights on after school i know it was in the superintendent's report but that was a really great event with over 300 children that came out to want to help park all the providers were there and the kids had a great great day and recognizing what after school programs really mean is important um just as a provider i know that a lot of the children that attend after school is one of the reasons they go to school in the first place i've had lots of families and children say like they go to school so they can stay after school i don't want that to be the most big factor for them to go to school but if it gets them there then that's all the better and then one more shout out

055to gaffney elementary school for their strides and attendance in the month of october the class with dust attendants was able to dress miss fazio as a mummy as well as tiggy the tiger and i only know this because i'm really good friends with tiggy so i just want to say for the the school lunches my granddaughter lost food and she came home the other day when she texted me from school drama they had barbecue chicken and cornbread and that cornbread was moist and their chicken alfredo she already likes it from chili's but somehow another they did something with within the high school that she really loved um i just want to say that speaking of mr ruiz mr ruiz miss paulie had a trunk or treat at lincoln that was fantastic it was a really

056good event well attended nice straightforward done outside lots of fun i also had the great pleasure of sending my son to his very first middle school dance at house [Music] which made me feel old but he had he had a fantastic time um and the kids like the kids as they were coming out just being able to be back in the schools again and doing some of those functions and having those opportunities you know it's a good thing it's a good thing my nephew also came back from that house dance with good reports he was sleeping over that night so i i got to hear all about it yeah um one more band shout out the the k-nets were able to perform in a music video with a french social media star basically um so

057that was pretty cool because they'll be they'll be uh posted all around the world that's amazing i know it's pretty cool we better buy pink drumsticks for all of our players okay any other board reports let's move on to consent again does anybody want to remove anything from the consent agenda well it's the majority of its mind okay going once going twice all right agenda is passed let's move to new business so make a motion to approve the 250 john downey drive that's fine so yeah make a motion to approve the 250 john downey drive lease second okay i see him coming to the podium so i know he's gonna because i know we talked about it in committee and i think people want to kind of hear what your plan is right for this

058space so as i came to the board last month before we spoke about the need for space in the district um there are two properties we're looking at one of those is one for production this is 250. this is regarding space within the district currently our buildings are maxed out when you look around even in this building look what's in our basement you look around what keeps coming in through the doors we do have storage over at smalley where we've covered we're definitely tasked with making sure that we have enough custodial and ppe those suppliers that are needed for day-to-day operations but there are those items that we just cannot store all the time we when you look at when we have containers so there's furniture there's curriculum where there's books and there's things that

059we have to keep uh there's summer programs where we need to be able to use them during the summer school but we have to keep them dry we have to keep them safe we have to keep them somewhere as easily accessible so we know what we have in the district when you start breaking items up around the schools we forget how many we have and where we are before he just doesn't dare yet so what this property is is both an office space as well as a warehouse the main goal is to find an existing warehouse space if you look at the exhibit which has the actual drawing of the plan exhibit a i'm sorry there are there are six thousand square feet that includes an office space which is in this building we are

060maxed out for office space uh we have hired a lot of people and i think we experienced that over the spring and summer on people that we've brought on board we now have to put them here when they're in the administrative offices operationally by department doesn't need to work out of gates we are on the road most of the time we are on the field a lot of times so for us we can move to a space like this and actually manage the inventory so there's both short-term and long-term inventory there's that inventory in this warehouse that we put aside and maybe look at once in a while maybe use annually then there'll be inventory that keeps coming in and out as projects occur so one of two one of these locations i think we

061spoke about this last time we did the presentation was one of those 2000 square feet it is a separate it is walled off it has its own entrance that can be used for high-value storage that can be for storage items that uh maybe a vendor's using and they need like this weekend we had cameras that we needed to be stored they can be given access to that area they can work out of there and keep the board of that and our inventory is separate so it gives us two working spaces but it gives us a little under 8 000 square feet to work with for storage which is exactly what we need at the moment so you can take a look at these exhibit a so ultimately the thought is to sign this lease and

062move as clean up as many of the closets the warehouse space the basements in our schools as we can to free up for other usage so that we can get more supplies and keep more supplies on hand or if need be a lot of the closets that are currently being utilized that if we need them for some sort of alternative space whether it be for learning or just for office space they can utilize for that there are many rooms in the schools that can be used for staff for various reasons that currently aren't being used just because there's large items being stored here that don't need to be in the school we can move them back before them quick question do you have like an inventory system that you're planning on like instituting to say

063like this is all our paper this is how much paper we have this is all our glue sticks this is ultimately that's where i'd like to go and i'd actually like to go with some sort of coding system rather than go with an asset disposal form i actually brought that up about a week and a half ago so not only with the uh with the assets that come in the inventory that comes in but also what do we do with that inventory when it's expired no longer usable right but we have to get rid of it and if someone were to ask what happened with those tables that were bought 15 years ago we would say on this day and that's usually a bar coded inventory that's something we would look at we put a

064code tab specific for csdmd and when it comes in it gets coded and tagged and there's software outside it does it and then when it gets discarded it gets attacked as well ultimately that's where i'd love to go but right now we just don't have that centralization and this would offer us that path of centralization so i really think that's an important step for us getting aware especially with cost controls and knowing what we have for tables you look at the containers the containers the exact the direct result of the fact that we did not have this kind of storage available to us so we just need to bring in containers and those containers are nice they're not environmentally controlled and they're not really sighted when you see them around our school so i would

065love to get a lot of the items in the containers out of there and put in here just what was it 10-year lease options because this is long term and yeah you really you we want to get in there we want to negotiate the longer you negotiate at least the better off you came down um but ultimately we want to know where our inventory is going and to be moving it around so many years uh you know every five years it's just not peaceful so the thought process okay just clarifying question of the square footage the floor area is eight thousand businesses at the florida building is 27.50 so you see that there is another building actually it's owner-occupied building so that 20 is actually the rest of the remaining the 33 percent when you

066see our breakout um that is the remainder of the owner the owner has uh because my only concern is typical past behavior right the next two years we're kind of in a decent financial situation right any time we've had to cut money where does it come from facilities right so that's my only concern of a of a ten year not that it's a lot of money and i think once we actually it will probably save us money when you know what we have for inventory but right so you if you if you pay that down with a plan of true asset inventory control right i really think there is savings there and i think understanding where we are and being able to buy in bulk so if we do even have the storage you know

067when you buy larger certain items which just talk about that there's certain times a year to buy certain uh custodial or ppe items and knowing that we have that ability to buy a book and to negotiate better pricing other than a few cases at a time and our schools to be honest do not say i'm going to give you a pallet of black bags with two thousand black bags for the year they just don't have the ability right now and that's what i'd like to do and they store it they can't find they can't figure out where they left it so they got to go order more okay any other questions on this yeah i just say that i was looking at the 10-year release as well and questioning that but i also like calculated

068out it 2.4 per year which honestly is a pretty good rate in terms of like that's right near consumer price index that's pretty low so being able to get that and you know we never know what the market is going to do i can't see the district conceivably being able to fund and build a storage facility or the city to be able to build a permanent storage facility in that 10-year period but at least it'll give us 10 years knowing that maybe four or five years from now we start thinking about what is the end goal right and having the options in the lease for that extension also helps because then if at the end of five ten years we know that we want to pursue having our own you know gail you'll still be

069on the board then one of the things i've learned is stability when dealing with the public sector board of ads is you really want to know the stability you want to know what your costs are long term and you hate to see these giant fluctuations and you have to renegotiate it so that was part of the whole process as well you have trouble just cut the other salary yeah just cut myself over again okay are you done with this any further questions all right we need to vote okay all in favor say aye all right motion carries let's move on to it make a motion to approve purchase order bid waiver and contract equity between consolidated school district of new britain and new york security solutions for replacement of civilian surveillance cameras at lincoln elementary

070school in the amount of fifty nine thousand three hundred dollars and sixty four cents second okay we have a second in motion kevin thank you so while we were in the past month discussing the high school we had a failure of the lincoln school camera system we got it cool to replace the just the server alone um with for 30 thousand dollars and that would be to maintain the existing system which you know we've had other issues with both the agent of the cameras as well as retention link so this proposal is to convert lincoln over next unless he was not on the list next thing if we were going to go to school by school and discuss needs size wise square footage based but uh at this time i would like to ask that

071that link can be in the school where you can convert next both because of the urgency how many cameras is this one sorry sorry i was just and this is the same company this is the same company that we for this is the same company that's currently there [Applause] [Music] is that i was just going to say is that 28 cameras that's it uh [Music] makes sense it's a smaller building also if anybody has any questions um i'm here the disembodied voice yes that is so that was for that's for 28 cameras correct yeah so it is it's a direct swap so those are all existing cameras with existing cabling uh all all quite old legacy cameras that are going to be replaced for a modern unit okay and these would have the storage of

072the 30-day so these are the newer cameras yes sir and this is for a three-year license same as the high school correct yep three-year license and one-year physical coverage in terms of on-site service and the as far as the install since we need the camera system over there yeah this will be fairly quickly turn around yes correct these are we're required to have cameras correct yeah technically okay i know it's a safety issue yes that's why okay any discussion of this i just have one more question is that inside and outside those canvas it's all existing it's just light change like for like those are the existing number of cameras currently at that building um as we go through if we do find one or two we call blind spots spots that weren't uh once

073we're up and running uh we can we can just add those okay further questions okay we have a second motion all in favor say aye motion carries let's move on to mc oh approve purchase oh make a motion to approve a purchase order and bid waiver for emergency lighting repairs the amount of 126 731.96 we have a second okay we have a second go ahead so as this is a large number i just want to reiterate you look at lighting services original float when they do their annual inspections for it this was written up this is the quote um in their quick summary they said during our recent inspection and testing emergency light equipment we found many defective ballasts batteries and entire units inoperable many of these fire code required repairs were written up in

074years past as well so this is a cumulative of a deferred maintenance item we had a colorado smith school last week it came to light at the same time as this work you know the effects were going on and the quote was being built it really came to light that the building went dark and the emergency lights are not working and this is this is a truly a light safety issue this is emergency lighting exit lighting making sure that uh should the power go off in the building people can exit the building safely no trip hazards and if there's a fire issue as well so this is our as you can see they have the dis state contract so to rfp we're not going to get better than the state contract we go off the

075contract so the request is to take this amount and get all of the schools up to speed up to code for life goes back to my past comment of where do we take money from facilities and here we are okay sorry was more comment than just for a point of information and i'm gonna harp on this a little bit because it's my last meeting and um technically this wouldn't require a bid waiver because it is a state contract and we are allowed to substitute in things that are on the state contract bid it would be a purchase order approval because of the size of it a lot of times i know that things get put on the agenda as bid waiver and or purchase order just to cover our bases because it is a little

076bit tricky to understand what the difference is um you know it's the same thing for a lot of things with professional development or consultants which technically are something you are not obligated to bid therefore don't need a bid waiver but the state contract list does exist for us to be able to substitute in the place of bids especially for common uh equipment and other things so even though it says it on our agenda technically this really only needs to be a purchase order approval oh i gotcha i'll get off my soapbox you text me next next meeting when it's on there and thank you i'll give you a list yeah good thank you for that any further comments questions all in favor say aye aye any opposed tina any extensions okay move on to next

077time okay the policy committee moves to approve revised policy 6162.3 citywide group testing program which i believe is also actually being renamed in the new policy a district-wide student assessment policy second okay is there a discussion on this item uh just really generally the purpose of this is this policy as you can see originally dates from well before no child left behind [Music] and before mandatory state testing was a thing so that is that is why this policy probably originally existed um the policy committee in reviewing it thought that it would be good to articulate the reasons that we feel testing is appropriate and doing sort of district-wide testing is appropriate and what it should be used for um and just outlining it in there it's it's very similar to the old policy it's just

078cleaning it up slightly and we just wanted to leave it on the books in case in some weird alternative universe in the future state testing magically went away which i don't see happening but we can help but you know it'd be nice to have something in there that would give us some guidance in that eventuality okay any further discussion on this item all in favor say aye aye aye opposed any extensions promotion carries policy committee moves to strike a board policy three 4118.231 four two one eight point two three one staff smoking drinking and drug use on school premises second okay i will explain we are not actually making it no we're not making it so that people can smoke drink and do drugs on school premises this is actually what we noticed is there

079was redundancy between this policy um and another one they actually even had the same number my guess is in when we tried to consolidate and narrow down policies that this was just something that there were two previous policies for whatever reason so we looked through with shipment and goodwin they looked at the two of them they sort of kept what you know is the most important pieces what we are legislatively required and they recommended striking this one and moving all the relevant information into one policy which is our next item of business any discussion on this item all in favor say aye aye and the opposed motion carries okay uh for the policy committee moves to approve revised policy four one one eight point two three one and four two one eight point two three

080one drug drug-free workplace second there's a redline version of this but it is heavily redlined and blue lined with things that have been moved around for those of looking at the pdf the blue is new language the green is relocated language and the red is struck through language um there is a clean version afterwards that may be the best thing to look at and that starts on page 243 of the board packet um but this up this included several updates including the fact that uh the legalization of marijuana the uh prevalence of e-cigarettes and electronic nicotine delivery systems vaping etc and all of that so it was working to just bring it up to code with a lot of the newer state legislation and expectations just to piggyback off like cannabis is legal maybe we

081need to make like some announcement during sporting events that maybe it is legal but it's still not legal in the stands because it's still smoking okay any further discussion on this item all in favor say aye aye are you opposed she carries motion to approve a uh the policy committee moves to approve uh revive poli revised policy six two zero zero adult education second okay exactly what is this uh so the two changes are under there was a change in state law that adult education is for those who are 17 years or older so that was one change that was brought to our attention and then the other change to the policy is changing the word in the final paragraph from shall to may because there are certain things that we are required to put

082in our adult education program and offer esl adult basic education high school completion and uh you know a couple other programs the united states citizenship program etc but anything else that we want to offer above and beyond that is optional the way the previous with the word shall there made it seem like we were obligated to offer more than that and unfortunately that may not always be the situation we're in so putting it as may just allows the board if they needed to make changes the programming we offer at adulthood that we could do so any comments or questions on this my recollection was 30 or so odd years ago when i moved here that there was a catalog that came out of various you could take a bike repair class with cliff parker or

083uh you know basket weaving and photography and stuff and the second one and that all sort of went out the window when the cost of printing the catalogs got no no there's another story behind that okay it had to do with personnel so okay so my understanding was that there was a that those uh classes that had uh charged to them did that just cover the cost of the classes or actually and the teachers because they made whatever that 30 to 50 or 34 or whatever they made that amount of money per hour yeah did it produce any sort of profit for the adult ed program no but it paid it paid for itself paid for itself and there were grants you know but for that part of it those were it sustained itself but

084you know if you didn't get enough students then you couldn't run your class and then part of it had to do with when we got new administration because doctor over in it for years and then we got a new administrator and and secretary and the work the old secretary left and she was the one that put that thing together by ourselves and the other person wasn't willing to work that hard so it went by the wayside i say we wasn't like that i think it was so much my parents take those classes yeah right it was just opportunity have that option to go meet some people that didn't know and share common interest and i sort of wondered you know i heard a rumor that it was about the cost of the printing but but

085it wasn't the cost of the printing it was the putting it all together yeah it required a lot of work and the person that was the secretary was just a really hard worker and believed in it and so she made it happen the other person that took her place like didn't have the skill it but it strikes me that you know you could now do you don't have to call the cost of printing and mailing you know that could all be done virtually yeah you know yeah i mean if it could work and you know we lost all our vendors because then they just start not doing things that need to be done and people didn't yeah so anyway that's an interesting idea um but yeah we should change it to shell rather i mean

086for to me rather than shall um so any further conversation on this topic all in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed she carries policy committee moves to approve revised policy 5131.00 which is the student discipline code second okay second in motion discussion uh this had not been updated in in a while over uh close to nine years um and it's mostly just updating the language to make it more reflective of the transition the district has made towards a focus on you know growing students restore you know growing students ability to you know deal with conflict conflict resolution skills and less on putting a moralistic bend on the language so like replacing good student behavior with appropriate behavior in school things like that and just trying to make it more aligned with the

087district mission division just a quick comment maybe so the school school discipline school discipline code right isn't there technically like i don't know if there's a code of ethics that go along with school but like there's a student handbook that says these are things you cannot do and if you violate these things these are things that you're going to get suspended for but we're actually removing that from the policies that wasn't actually in the policy part of the statement that was more in the administrative regulations and that would still be there the admissi like that wasn't if you look that's not actually in the policy students whose conduct violates the school district rules and regulations shall be subject to appropriate discipline by school authorities in a manner which reflects consideration of both ford's comp commitment

088to maintaining safe and early schools disrupts the educational process so you're just saying at any point if it's unable to meet the expectations required to meet safe and positive climate they may be subject to progressive discipline which again is more in line with what we actually do there are certain things that um where there are like there are other policies on school weapons um drug use on campus things like that where there are state mandated yeah um but this is more about general classroom uh like general conduct and i guess we should take it as a step of progress that we no longer need to say that corporal punishment is uh well i think we left that oh no we left that we actually talked about possibly striking that but we figured we would leave

089it in jessie is not allowed as part of this it's on the bottom of the new oh okay sorry next page that's why it's all by itself there we did put it at the end because we thought felt it was a no duh yeah okay what do you know but yeah okay any further discussion i know this is nick's final meeting but i would almost motion um table this for a second read i second that okay yeah just my postpone technically post poem per second post phone okay so we need to vote on first pony yes uh we have a motion to postpone this do you need a second on that or not a second you second okay all in favor of postponing this to the next meeting okay oh any closed two names okay

090three three sorry three notes no three it's four right okay let's see the nays again today one two three oh i thought tony were you an are you none of them so the motion to postpone carries and uh we are going to skip item i uh motion to refer item i back to committee okay second all in favor all right okay uh policy committee moves to approve new policy 6300 remote learning second here we have a second motion uh this is a very short policy um that allows the district um basically so it allows the district to offer remote learning in a short list of reasons that have been approved by the state um the policies also worded uh to reflect the fact that the state has been constantly updating and shifting the guidelines on

091this so it allows the district to develop procedures to enact the policy pursuit to seek guidance and to change it to change their guidelines as that guidance changes because the state may change it from one month to the next um so we know that eventually the state is planning on allowing high school students to have a remote learning option and that they're looking at other possibilities for uh remote learning so this also creates sort of a placeholder holder space in our policy for when that stuff sort of starts to come out okay any discussion on this item [Music] k through n back to person ultimately for further discussion second discussion on that no i think that's a good one this was at the request of administration because just because of a kerfuffle with how we

092how we've typically moved things through the committee review process these didn't get committee review but the administration felt they could wait until they had full a chance for the committee to review them okay all in favor of bring this back to personnel say aye aye aye opposed any extensions motion carries okay oh motion to approve retention bonus for full-time employees that work through covet 19 revised second kevin you want to talk about this yes um you talk about this in finance and personnel it's a slight revision from that committee we um many school districts out the country are doing things for their um employees that work through corporate last year this was really mirrored after um what was it was it raleigh no durham durham north carolina and after after the fact i went through

093durham stuff i actually went to um the publications and all that and i found out really the thousand dollar was an after tax thousand dollars initially we thought it was a thousand dollars but was reading a publication it was important to make sure all their employees received approximately a thousand dollars after tax so what i did here is it equates about 14.50 per employee and if we look at our employees in our school districts um if you look at their single and so forth most of them have uh with the retirement their social security or medicare um either mers or trb their their cost is somewhere in the 25 to 35 37 percent range so in reality what i'm proposing here is the 1450 the lower paid employees will be taking home a little greater

094amount because of course their tax implications are a lot less and really the lower paid employees the tax implication with retirement and so forth it's probably somewhere about 25 percent i can i can give you the numbers if you look at on the federal tax guide for lower employees they're paying about 12 federal taxes another five percent for state taxes for the emerge contributions at six and a half percent and for medicare it's 1.45 so that comes up to 24.95 percent or 25 the higher paid employees um which many of them are in trb or not trb they're paying a federal tax of somewhere in the 20 22 range um medicare is 1.45 trb people are paying eight and a quarter and the state tax is five and a half percent so that comes out

095to about 37 a quarter percent so i really backed into the number if you can see down below at the 1450 at 25 percent the after tax payment that one employee the lower paid employees are receiving approximate thousand eighty seven dollars where the higher paid employees will see probably close to nine thirteen so if you average them out it's a thousand dollars so that's where i thought it was fair just to make it um you know equitable everybody gets 14.50 but of course the person that pays less in taxes he or she the lower paid employees will be having more in their pocket so that's what i'm proposing um you know we're trying to reward the employees that were here for the past year plus we've hired a lot of new employees this year no

096they would not be eligible for it's for the people that worked with us for last year who continue working for this year and the payment will be made somewhere um i think in april right before the april vacation so it'll be a march mid-march late march early april payment people taking a spring break yes so there was a change i found that changed later on that's what i'm recommending you know revising what i gave you earlier well it could pay out two sets like um durham north carolina did it did qualify for the um sr2 or arp or what we call it we're probably going to recommend doing that we we may have money left in our local budget i'm not i'm not going to you know say we do not so it can be

097paid out either or we'll probably try to put an esser we we have found out this year um with our essa funds we do have you know one of the things we'll find out this year i think the superintendent will let you know that you know we've we've hired a lot of people but people are jumping ship we from one one job to another and we found out in the district it's just not teachers it's a combination um so we're trying to you know give our employees that are sticking out with us something it's not something that you know it's just it's a gratitude so um so we do have we do have surplus in our operating budget i'm going through right now um so i think either or we'll try to put it in

098the arc but we may pull it back to local at the end of the day because you have to remember too with the our funding sr2 funding if we don't use this year we can use it next year okay any further discussion on this item i think this is great i mean i think it's a conversation happening actually even in other sectors as employers i are hiring struggling to hire and they're giving hiring bonuses um in school districts it's happening i know i see it starting to happen here and people who have stuck it out and been loyal are like you know where's my bonus right for all the extra especially the extra time that went into transitioning from in person to online um and kind of all those un unmeasured hours um it's it's

099almost not a bonus but a kind of you know the yeah back pay for um something that probably should have been acknowledged so yeah i think that's major and not only as an acknowledgement but just a fair thing to do right um job-wise and an incentive to stick around if we've got one in four people potentially leaving at least in districts that look like ours um it's it's a good way to incentivize people to stick around okay i agree thank you any further discussion on this all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions okay motion carries thank you thank you thank you motion to refer item p uh back to personnel committee second same reasoning as before okay you have a second any discussion on this item all in favor of moving this

100back to are you personnel extensions okay mission carries nmq operations approved purchase order bid waiver and contract between newfound board of education and connecticut association of boards of education inc paid for strategic communication services sixty thousand dollars this was revised since committee second mr kanata is online matt do you want to speak to this yeah absolutely good evening everyone this is this is for through kate who had reached out to us afterwards sorry i was gonna talk so after everything that was going on in the beginning of school year and wanted to offer more resources to us to really just spread the positive of what's going on it was mentioned earlier tonight that there is there's a lot of good happening in the school district that far outweighs what the media and social media want

101to report and this was their way of offering you know additional resources several people a company and saying it you know partnered with them and through other media platforms through social media through traditional media through radio work with them and we can push out the the good that you're doing within the school district so really this is about that this is to really highlight everything that we're doing and we already um you know just were to be tasked we already have a robust plan in place to aggressively hit the ground over the next several months to just plug the airways and every media platform possible but it was everything he did that was going on okay more discussion on this i definitely think it's much needed this year next year maybe when things calm down

102maybe not but i'm all about like horn and cheering on for our positives about two years might be a little much i'm still kind of for it okay yep um it sounds like it would be a good uh start to laying a foundation um to doing this strategically going forward um and i'll share you know with some of the work i do with other districts one thing i actually noticed was a board of education having a communications committee and they do meet like the other committees um and strategize and put out a newsletter and so there are communications people from the district and all the different departments reporting things that happened and this board committee actually leads the work of sharing the information out to the community and that's a very good way to make

103it long-term sustainable but this is cave and you know training and whatever from them yeah this may be something you want to tie into i don't know how this is set up but um yeah so that then it's a start but it's always looking at sustainability right like you don't want to depend on consultants forever i've always argued against that um in every way but if you don't know how to kind of start up you can use that help and then the point is to build capacity and be able to do it but nobody reads the new like did not have translators i thought matt [Music] yes i i just want to say like like we've said multiple times this evening there's a lot that good that of good that goes on here um you

104know there's a lot of amazing things we have our high school academies our you know our sports are you know arts there's the amount of you know uh why am i blanking on terms ap courses we offer right right there there's a ton of what we have i constantly am hearing how professional and dedicated our stage group at the high school is when outside organizations come in like there's a lot of great things that we've been doing as a district for a long time and you know the the magnet schools and some of the other organizations they put money into messaging and marketing right and partially out of necessity but it also means that they get a brand out there and we've tried to do a lot more and i think honestly i think uh

105math cannot matt and um powell have done amazing work over the last several years of creating some really good campaigns and messaging that have really started to bring that forward so i hope that if the board does approve this that matt and the others are working really closely with these consultants and picking up a lot of the tips and tricks and again to what dr sim said building that sustainability though okay any further thoughts on this okay all in favor say aye aye any pose any abstentions the motion carries item r approved purchase order bid waiver and contract between consolidated school district of new britain and torch for coaching monitoring license in the amount of 32 thousand dollars [Music] sure um so this is this is time sensitive i have chris baden hop our school

106readiness liaison on this is for school readiness dollar chris good evening everybody um sure so over the summer the office of early childhood gave an administrative grant or excuse me gave administrative funds they called them supplemental admin funds to each liaison for added responsibilities over the last year similar to what you guys were just talking about um and they were very specific in how you could use these funds um it had to be specific for the liaison youth in building up equitable markets or excuse me monitoring and working around those supports or professional development for the liaison specifically and so in talking with the superintendent and with amy anderson and others one of the things that we've been wanting to do to build up quality around coaching and monitoring is this online platform uh through

107torch and so um the funds were difficult to come by originally but with this with these funds we're looking to order licenses for all 40 of our school readiness classrooms with the addition of 10 extra slots one for myself and nine others for different consultants and coaches that are within different projects within school readiness that are all working with our 40 classrooms and so it made sense to do this not only for this year but because we have to use these funds within this fiscal year it made sense to put um to go down further the next five years so that we would have these to sustain this project as opposed to enjoying them for this year and then not having them right so um these are one-time stipend funds that are coming at least

108at the moment and so we want to take advantage of these funds um we've already got the dollars and so it's just how we use them and it was approved by oec and our school readiness council okay i understand like why we have to use the funds but what i guess i don't understand what torch is like what is it for sure so it's got a lot of facets to it um but it's it's like a host kind of platform and so um myself our coaches our consultants are using the same forms across the project it's communication back and forth with the teachers it has real time um video so if i'm taking a video of a teacher and then we're going to review afterwards there's end time comments and uh captions and things like

109that that we can do so you're not searching a whole video or the feedback but you're time stamping it so that they can look right at that feedback and go back and forth because honestly um you know i'm a coach at heart even though that's not what i get to do too often but one of the biggest drawbacks is that time is is difficult to come by especially with the staffing crisis and so um being able to sit and talk with teachers at the times that they can get out of classes is tough and so this allows us to give good feedback in time for videos and things like that within this capability of the program to have a good communication back forth when they're able to view it whether it's that time or later

110on or different things it's always in this um chris could i just also point out too this is our our uh preschools across new britain right it's not just our board of bed preschools so this is networking this is all of them it's hra it's yw it's oliver yeah right and we also are enhancing through the science center as part of our consultants our executive function our uh social emotional parent model uh consultants so there's a lot of different people that are joining together in one area so it's a resource for the teachers too to go to one stop to find the resources and connections for all of these things so that's what a lot what we're paying for the licenses too okay great thank you discussion on this item nope okay all in favor

111say aye aye aye are you opposed any extensions you're abstaining yes you're working always i worked at this okay let's move on to the next uh motion to refer items s and t back to the finance committee for review second [Music] all in favor of moving those back to committee all right any opposed motion carries okay and then you approve purchase order vid waiver contract between mr in education and consolidated school district of new britain in the amount of 30 thousand dollars this is the funding sources commissioner's network second yes second okay so we have a second in motion any further discussion so is this like coaching of leaders or this is this is again the next three items i just want to coach with we bypass committee because they are time sensitive it's commissioner's

112dollar by the time we get the contract from them committee is already met then we'd have to wait another month and a half and one of our struggles has been historically spending down the dollars we get in the allotted time we have because of the lapse in time with contracts going over to council being reviewed etc and so yes this is a continuation actually this is the second year um that this uh firm has come in to coach actually miss robles and her team at pulaski mike did i get that all right yeah that's right thank you some of you might remember uh mr santiago as the principal at smalling many years ago yes [Music] okay any discussion on this item all in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries item the approved bid

113waiver and contract between capital region education council correct and britain public schools for instructional support 12 600 funding source is commissioners network sector committee a little explanation on this one mike my memory has failed me now yeah similarly this is this is a commissioner network contract it's a continuation of uh i believe in that yeah [Music] um okay further discussion on this all in favor say aye aye opposed to the extensions and motion carries bmw approved purchase order and bigwigger for emotionally interactive student development program for slave middle school 83 500. uh school improvement grant and commissioner's network yeah yeah second already you're up todd i love all right so i will break it up there good evening everybody uh this is a continuation we piloted the program uh working last year with laurie stereo

114in regards to the student development program at slave within a number of classes we had great uh feedback from our students and our families regarding that so we want to expand it this year to uh 240 students throughout the entire year uh students will complete the baseline assessment for personality assessments that identify the types of voters they are staff will do the same the reason why we have the students and staff doing this is to continue to foster stronger relationships between teachers and students additionally we have school counselors are trained in the assessment delivery and analysis to deliver it on a yearly basis to come just to create a program of sustainability um we're looking up to agree up to 300 students to participate in uh six-week courses that will cover the following topics of

115discovering personality strengths learning the leadership styles looking forward to career planning understanding goals career planning public speaking time management financial literacy etiquette skills mentors and time and time management public speaking so uh what we're looking to do is really align with the pog of the district to continue to further strengthen our students and prepare for their high school uh high school spirit and career to uh college career readiness piece okay do you have any questions i know i said a lot there questions okay not seen any questions uh all in favor say aye aye are you opposed and extensions the motion carries thank you okay all right thank you guys have a good evening thank you uh motion to add an item to the agenda we have a purchase order bid waiver in the amount

116of 178 870 um and this is for uh boilers at poke john paul second okay we have a seconded motion kevin i want to explain right okay so um all in favor of adding this item to the agenda say hi hi any opposed approve the purchase order and bid waiver of uh boilers in the amount of one thousand one hundred and seventy eight thousand eight hundred and seventy thous uh eight hundred seventy dollars second okay we got a second in motion now thank you i just received this last week last friday so i apologize for how late it is but this is a very important item it is a large numbered item but currently at pope john paul there are two boiler rooms uh boilers there's three boilers for the entire school they're all original

117to the building one boiler room which feeds out the building has two boilers so it has a redundancy but there is another boiler room that only has one boiler currently in it that boiler uh all three boilers are anticipated they do need replacement uh long term when you're looking to replace them and have a discussion past the winter but they do need constant maintenance boiler supply is almost supply chains currently in the world we have never seen anything like this before if i we cannot get boilers right now we have a boiler project where we've replaced the boilers at the schools over the summer we do have boilers in the schools the boilers have singles but the other uh we're playing the redundancy the secondary boilers from schools has been delayed until january uh because

118of the steel and the iron basically there's no material that people can get for these there is a big risk to chamberlain chamberlain in that single boiler room uh it already has two plates that have issues due to the feed units we are making we will get through we've been getting through i can't guarantee we're going to make it through the coldest parts of the month of the year my job is to bring risk and let people know what the risk is that there's a very significant risk during the normal year i would say you can think about it you can go a couple more months and see where we're at we don't have that luxury i don't want to be alarmist but we've been looking for a replacement boiler since the start of school

119if you're looking for something put in there should that boiler fail and it just came last week where it would secure boiling water is this where um alderweireld called in was it last meeting and talked about the boilers at pope john paul right so the boys were in lockout prior to us getting there they were in lockout because i don't know who worked on the boilers but uh it was it was a duct and exhaust problem the way they had changed the duct it was actually venting back into the boiler room so i'm not 100 sure i wasn't there we didn't own the building or at least building at the time but there's probably a cl issue but people were smelling combustion and that's what a lockout we repaired that those boilers are good but

120we did an inspection and they're these are old steam boilers very hard to find companies that still work in old steam and water systems um most of them are air systems in the newer buildings right so this company was able to secure a boiler uh actually we would need tonight what i'm asking is that we buy the boiler we bring the boiler whether it be store down in the boiler room in the where there's one there's two rooms in the single boil oil room we'll call it or we can store it at their facility for media but it would be ready to go should in january we lose that boiler or we lose one of the other boilers and the other one can't pick up it is a insurance policy over time it will be

121it will be put in no doubt because we are there for a couple more years uh plus there are other uh renovations right behind it so it does make good sense long term again knowing that this building will be heated properly but this would be an insurance policy there is abatement that needs to be done that's how all these boilers are not only just in the room and the wraps but also the boiler itself is an abatement issue so when that boiler gets ripped down it will be technically an abatement there is a new boiler feed unit that needs to go in there are new burners that will need to go in so part of this proposal this proposal is actually for two boilers the 178 870 there was a secondary packet which had the

122project summary that you have that that was a 27 27 page document which goes through what the actual project is um yeah it's 35 days on this day but the that this is the proposal so what you see is a summary sheet of cost but the proposal here actually defines the work that will be done and in that if you look there's a section for two boilers we cannot secure two at the time but we can secure one today uh it's actually on hold right now at smith boiler um so if we approve tonight we can purchase the boiler again here uh long term if you don't need the boiler january we make it through the boilers are fine next summer we will look at installing putting portfolios in and getting that room having redundancy

123in that area should that boiler fail though there is really that currently there is no supplemental eating that's going to heat that building so we will lose loose operation of the building don't we just want to do it we don't want to just do it it's like why wait for it you don't want to do that in the middle of winter you know you don't want to risk it the boilers have been there since the start since the building in the 60s um they're working you know you don't fix what's not broken tomorrow but you do plan later on to fix it trouble or whatever yeah i know i'd love to have done it but uh we will do it we'll do it next summer and we will that's what this proposal for so though

124you see the 178 is the two boilers for their feed unit and the burners will be put in so when this improved to the existing boiler we can put the burner on into the existing boiler we can change the boiler feed unit we can also put what's the heat what's called the heat timer on there and what that does is that makes sure that the outside basically make sure for the outside ear and from our thermostat on the outside and make sure that when the outside air hits a certain point that the boiler will turn on so we don't deal with cold buildings and cracked plates it's a very rudimentary system but it's a system that doesn't currently exist and we won't be walking into uh cold buildings in the morning if that boiler needs

125to come on earlier to moderate the temperature in the building as well based on the outside air the outside air turns nicer during the day and it will shut itself off so all those components are part of this project so they will be put into the existing boiler and then if that should that exist before these plates crack or fail we'll have another one to put in so we'll do piecemeal work as much as we can um the work needs to be done when the building is empty right so even if it's emergency we have to call up school to do it or you do it over a week correct so for an abatement no one under the age of 18 can be in the building at the time so right if we came to

126that that's why none of this work would be done uh putting the burners on is not an abatement putting in the heat timer the boiler feed but those aren't a bigger issue it's actually when the boiler gets brought down the insulation that's on the boiler is it's asbestos so that would need to be not having to bring in [Music] that's why it's a summer planned project normally but you never know um in the cold days of january when that's calling that boiler is working you know 80 of the day it's best to have this on hand and at the very most you would lose a couple days of school if you had to do an emergency move to the emergency room as well first is you're in the middle of january and you can't even

127find a boiler at all in the country and trust me we are we we he has connections and he has asked everywhere uh around the country and he's the last of the last spoilers that's really it's not good okay any questions discussion all right all in favor say aye aye are you opposed i just need more information you can ask for the information no i'm asking an email that's good so i got it no it's fine go ahead in all honesty the time to ask the questions are pre-vote because once it's voted on it's voted on i got you okay okay motion carries and we have a couple of items for you an item for information sharing uh that's just so we recently passed a updated policy on the exemptions for in from instruction for

128school activities and along with that the administration had gone through and updated the administrative procedure for that policy i think it's worth the board looking over again we really i think did a good job of addressing both the legitimate concerns many you know that some of our families have about wanting you know wanting to have uh you know some say in some of the things that are you know taught and that they learn in school but it also put it so that it actually becomes a conversation between the school district and the parents so i i think the way the pop the form was put together just accomplishes what the policy we passed envisioned okay and anybody have any other items as allowed by law i actually um i should have asked them when is

129the screen and stay policy going to be discussed so i'm glad you asked that so tomorrow morning i have a dph call 8 o'clock me jackie mary ellen mike we all sit on the call every the only uh guidance we've gotten so far is from the press release that's it so you know and i know i know a couple of districts have acted on the press release and i'm like see i've seen things change from a press release to practice in a day so tomorrow morning we should have information our hope last week when we first heard about it was to pull in our our arts teachers our music our pe teachers for this wednesday and start talking to them a little bit about it it's it's pretty um restricted right on who gets to

130uh uh i'm going to forever say this day i've worked on them screaming today at this point we got just one more change but uh i'll know more tomorrow morning and then i'll let you know okay okay i we're anticipating that's what they're going to talk about in the morning i agree the press [Music] losing pressure motion to adjourn you