Board of Education Meeting November 17, 2022

001please make sure that your mics are turned on and that you speak clearly into your microphone just so everybody can hear us we've got some feedback that some of our meetings are not being heard well on YouTube foreign um 114 of 140 of our seniors this year roughly 81 percent of the class will be receiving notification that they are most likely to be eligible for automatic admission into Central Connecticut State University Southern Connecticut University Western Connecticut University Eastern Connecticut State University Mitchell College University of Bridgeport University of New Haven and University of St Joseph's this means that they will be able to fill out a short application form for no charge for automatic emission into those universities which is pretty impressive and exciting the first class that has this coming year West I bet you're

002going to be getting one of those letters very soon here and that's it for oh and I want to thank Petty Oscar Dr bediasga who sent me a lovely thank you note for participating in her her her professional development series for aspiring uh superintendents so that was lovely to receive that's it thank you Mr eggnog Mr Speaker a couple things wanted to piggyback on superintendent Butler's congratulations of our women's sports teams and to just give a shout out to our women's field hockey team that no matter what happens on Saturday you will return to Stonington winners regardless of what the final score looks like I think the performance in I believe sleet and snow conditions certainly solidified that status but wanted to give them a shout out and say you've made us really proud also

003want to go ahead and thank my fellow board member Dan Kelly for attending Cabe over the next couple of days thank you for doing the conference circuit and to superintendent Butler and her colleagues at eastcon presentation on Saturday correct correct so thank you to our two members for representing us at cave this weekend Mr Kelly you're welcome Sarah um outside of what Mrs Butler said about all the athletic accomplishments uh I will be at the play on Saturday night there's a special little uh person in that play AKA and my nephew who's performing so I'm looking forward to that um and I won't be able to go to the soccer game but I heard there's no uh snow scheduled on I'm not sure if we have a Full Slate of volunteers for the um concession

004stand Duty on Thursday we could always use more help at the concession stand as the Bears football team takes the field and beats up on the Bulldogs on Thursday morning Thanksgiving which we'll be hosting we're expecting a big crowd up here at the high school and then one of the uh meetings I attended was a welcome and school committee at Dean's Mill and it was good to sit down with them yesterday and work with some of the parents and some of the teachers and staff there on working on some things for uh Dean's Middle District that's it thank you no Mr Donahue yeah so tonight I had the pleasure of joining um principal DAW and the high school welcome schools committee and uh they're just very dedicated parents it was good to see the engagement

005with the schools and everything like that and I look forward to working with them in the future thank you do you have anything thank Mr I'm Mrs Butler and Mr Smith for coming in and talking to the student government members about the recent events about the pride flag issue so um all this in government members really appreciated like the clarity on that welcome thank you and I ask comments from citizen regarding items on the agenda foreign [Music] good evening so I'm hoping that some of this will be discussed as we get an update on the progress of the resolution that the board had passed I was made aware that there might have been a recent professional development for the faculty where they were instructed um on how to handle this and how to handle other

006things in schools and I was just wondering if parents could get an update on what was provided to them and how to handle this situation I know that some teachers decided to take this resolution and I know a student came home because the teacher had a pride flag originally now they put two Pride Flags in the room and I'm just wondering where we're going to be going with policies and how this stuff's going to be handled um I thought that that was you know a shove into some people's faces if they were uncomfortable with the flag in the classroom and it had no regard for all students opinions just particular ones so I'm just wondering where we stand with some of that I'm hoping that some of this will be addressed in that um I

007would just like to know where the administration is in dealing with these types of things and the instruction that's been provided to our faculty um and I just think that the political position provided by some board members recently in their handling of this and how they presented themselves is just a little concerning given the fact that you know representative of an entire community and here to protect an entire student body regardless of their political affiliations and I just think that I would ask that people take a note into that because there are some students who feel certain ways and might feel disregarded by some comments that were made thank you thank you Ashley yes go ahead please yes please Network is that working no no try that thank you it's my first time um I

008just wanted to thank the board I did attend the last meeting I thought was really productive and I wanted to thank you all for the resolution that you passed um uh I just wanted to say and reaffirm my gratitude that the resolution was passed and clarified I heard the students loud and clear and I heard the teachers loud and clear they spoke of the pride flag in particular in their own experiences as very much an inclusive item in the classroom and they were very and they felt very safe because of it so I heard the students and the teachers who spoke loudly and clearly so thank you for uh for protecting the right to have the pride flag in the classroom and that's it uh I'll leave the microphone on in case uh anybody else

009has to mess with the mute button [Music] thank you Jason all right next item on our agenda is The Benchmark assessment score by Mr Smith foreign good evening Mr chairman in the board it is my pleasure to also welcome High School principal Alicia dot in this presentation with me just to uh have the opportunity tonight to share some big picture wide-angle lens data and information with you in support of board goal number one which is Stonington Public Schools will continue to improve academic performance growth and experiences in math and Ela and a little technical help for all of us right my clicker won't click my okay so the first thing that we're going to look at again in a very with a very wide angle lens are some of our fall Benchmark assessment data uh

010a total for grades three through eight we have a program that we use called star 360 which gives students a small Benchmark assessment uh it's 20 to 30 questions usually takes under a half an hour to take and the data scientists are able to correlate this snapshot into a scale score that then is used to predict their ultimate performance on the state smarter balanced assessment which happens in May it places students based on this Benchmark as a predicted in the four levels of the SBA performance as either uh below standard approaching standard at standard and above in the metric that we always use with the State Testing is we combine the students who score at the level three and four and we call that at and above because those are the two levels so if

011we can move to the next so the total for grades three through eight uh with this fall Benchmark assessment is that it predicts that 54 uh percent of all of those students will score in those top two bands of the smarter balance it gives you some uh comparatives uh in this compared to the spring of 2022 uh it predicted that 52.9 percent would score in this band our actual a few months later in May in 2022 was 65 percent um one of the things that we found historically over time is that the predictive correlation for math is a little has a little more deviation than the predictive ability for the ELA but it's usually our results here in The Benchmark assessment usually under represents where we score in the actual assessment in May um so

012it's bottom line here is we're pretty much right on where we expect to be in math and then in our reading scores which are generally a little bit higher as in most Districts The Benchmark yielded a a predictive score of about 69 percent of our students in grades three through eight uh scoring in those two bands and again the same comparison our spring Benchmark uh in the past school year in Spring of 22 was at 74.4 percent and then the actual score on the test in May was a little lower 73.6 our spring score on this Benchmark assessment in 2021 was 69.9 so again for a fall Benchmark this puts us right where we should be and next just uh a total grade by grade uh from three to eight one of the things that

013the numbers that we're watching very closely is our eighth grade score this is the highest uh Benchmark fall Benchmark that we've had in eighth grade in a long time it's leading the Middle School because we typically have a mismatch in eighth grade in the past we have some students in eighth grade who are in a geometry class and some kids who are in the 8th grade math class which is a pre-algebra class and so when they take this state test in May the geometry kids are being tested on a curriculum that they skipped over to get to geometry and so the scores are always kind of a mixed message last year our eighth grade SBA score was uh only in the 40s so this is a very good sign because this year what we did

014programmatically is as part of our pandemic recovery every eighth grader is taking the full year of pre-algebra in eighth grade math and those students who excel in math were given the option of taking geometry as an elective class as an additional class every other day for the school full school year so those students will have the best of both worlds they'll have a full year of the pre-algebra before they go into algebra one as a freshman in high school and they'll still have our top students will still have the opportunity to take the geometry unit in middle school which will allow them for those top math students to get all the way to calculus without having to take two math courses in a single high school year uh so we're very we're very hopeful based

015on this number that that programmatic change will have a good result uh in math for our eighth grade students and then the next slide is the same uh breakdown grade by grade in Reading and now I'm going to ask Alicia to come up and talk about the high school since we don't really have a universal Benchmark assessment like we do in grades three through eight to talk about the high school thanks so as Tim said one of the reasons we utilize We compare D's and F's is because the last time I stood in front of you I compared our SATs and PSAT data from the previous year so this is a nice and of course that's only with certain grade levels so this is a nice slice to give you to see how our students

016are doing actually throughout the entire year so go ahead so taking a look this was the number of D's and F's our students acquired in the spring of 2022 quarter four so the total number of D's and F's in math last year at the end of the quarter was 83 and for ELA for English was 52. next so comparing that to this fall the quarter just ended the number of D's and F's for math was 69 and for English Ela was 49. so we dropped significantly which is a great news because usually you don't see such a an increase in achievement at the beginning of the year because at the end of the year you expect those numbers to be lower so again so looking at that Steve just keep the screen right there don't

017touch math last spring was 83 D's and F's and this year right now is 69 and last spring we had 52 and currently we have 49. one of the strategies I would attribute that to is we started RTI at the high school so myself Mr McDonald and Mrs Crowley our director of guidance we run a buy monthly every two weeks an RTI meeting with our guidance counselors and special ed teachers and we take on a caseload of students and we monitor their academics social emotional um achievements throughout the school and we put in strategies and goals and we meet on those goals with the students and Prime and Ashley as the year goes on we would invite some of the students to these meetings and we report on their progress so that's one of our

018new strategies we're employing this year at the high school next attendance Okay so we're going to spend another couple of minutes talking about some different factors of attendance it for the state of Connecticut they really look at two different metrics on attendance they look at average daily attendance and chronic absenteeism so we're going to talk about average daily attendance first and that's pretty straightforward every day you have X number of kids in school X number of kids who are absent for any reason in that's a percentage of the total population of your school and that running average is your average daily attendance go ahead Steve so you know not to be you know to disappoint the board uh in September I brought you bubbles I don't have bubbles for you but I borrowed from the

019old Wall Street movie instead of greed is good green is good so this is the state's uh interactive chart on average daily attendance so the darker green is the best and what you'll notice if you start here in Stonington and Drive West on 95 you have to get all the way to Madison before you hit the first dark green what that dark green signifies is the state's goal for all every district is average daily attendance of 95 percent so last year we were in that second band of lighter green we didn't quite make the dark green last year Stonington Public Schools average daily attendance was 93.2 percent which was up from 92.6 percent uh in 2021 and since the board always enjoys you know how we are doing regionally by comparison East Lyme Waterford North

020Stonington were slightly better than us where they broke the 94 percent uh line last year while Groton Ledyard Norwich New London Griswold were all 92 percent or below in a couple of those school districts were significantly below 92 percent average daily attendance so the other the flip side to that is you can still have 95 percent daily average attendance and still have a problem with chronic absenteeism with chronic absenteeism the state considers a student any student who's missed 10 percent of the school year to be chronically absent so by the time we get to June that's about 18 days of absences but they keep track of it right at the beginning of the school year so right now any student who's been absent five days since the beginning of the school year is chronically absent

021if hopefully by the time we get to the end of the school year if they keep that under 18 they will no longer be considered that but chronic absenteeism and one of the things that that drives uh all of us a little crazy with this is this state metric of chronic absenteeism are absences for any reason it includes all of the excused absences that parents give it concludes whether the kid's sick in covet it included some covet and quarantine numbers so it is the fact of either the kids in school or he's not regardless of the reason for chronic absenteeism metrics so the this has been a nationwide program uh not a program a problem uh through covid uh and in the last uh couple of years here even in Connecticut the state rate of

022chronic absenteeism doubled from 10.4 percent pre-covered to 24 last year uh nationally the average chronic absenteeism for high schools is over 20 percent uh and at the elementary and middle school level in the average nationally is between 12 and 14 percent so as a district Stonington pre-covered went from 9.2 percent chronic absenteeism last year to just over 16 percent uh if you go all the way back to 2015 uh that's Stonington Public Schools was at 8.7 in 2015. um so we're going to have Alicia talk for a few minutes about what our high school is doing our Middle School is also working on some of their own attendance things but again like the nation like the state the biggest concern for chronic absenteeism is at the high school level Alicia thank you so as Tim

023mentioned the state average is around 24 percent so uh looking at that number above which is the number I received this summer it didn't take this principle uh too long to dig deep to find out what my problem of practice was this year to work on so 27.6 percent is an alarming number so we immediately put in strategies thank you of tier one supports to start off immediately within the school year so one of the first things we did was reinstate the letter that we used to send years ago about loss of credit so essentially what that means is if a student is absent for eight times in a class in a quarter the student loses credit for that class we had hadn't used that in years so what that is is it's a warning

024letter that goes home to the families we bring a student into the office usually during an RTI meeting that I had talked about a few minutes ago go over the letter speak to the parents to let them know that they are in you know there is a fear that they're going to lose credit for that class so from there we then monitor that student through RTI meeting with those parents and the student one of the first things I did was send a notification out to families about the the chronic absenteeism and the concerns with that and what we can do and while I would love to take credit for this beautiful letter Jen Bausch found this wonderful letter called attendance matters and I and I'm going to show it to you in just a minute

025and I shared that out with families and it's a fascinating piece of information that informs you based on minutes and days how much time A child loses in their classroom compared to the grade that they're in those letters that I sent out to the families were created into posters and we're also using them um Tim could you play my Vanna thank you take the paper clips off and hold the poster up in front of our audience so this is just a little example of what this looks like so parents receive this you can walk around and show families and are bored thank you so so this was sent out to families in parent Square weeks ago but just to just I'm just going to point out so I'm not going to read the whole poster

026to you and bore you to death but for example if a student misses one day per week it's equivalent to finishing in grade 10 when they graduate if they miss three days a week it's equivalent to finishing fourth grade by the time they graduate and also not only is is it absenteeism but it's also tardies so if your child misses 10 minutes per day it's equivalent to finishing halfway through grade 12. if your child misses one hour a day it's equivalent to finishing halfway through grade nine so our guidance department has also created a wonderful bulletin board in the hallway that also has this information and we're going to in about two weeks Dia don't say anything just yet to the student body we're going to have a competition and every Monday we're going to

027announce which grade level has won the best attendance for the week prior so um so go ahead see if you can flip so that's what the letter looked like and you can flip to the next slide that we had sent out to families now go back two slides more thank you so I'm going to go back to the Sandwich Board in just a second one of the other incentives we did because our students are fantastic and a lot of them do come to school every day so what we decided to do was we have we're going to do this in about two weeks so we're going to go to every single classroom we are going to interrupt instruction and we're going to pull your student out of the class and embarrass them and tell them

028congratulations you've had perfect attendance or you've been here 99 of the school year and give them a little award from the high school to congratulate them on that now what do we do about our students who are losing credit for their class what we are going to do starting mid-December is on Saturdays we're going to offer a credit recovery program whereas our students who are in fear of losing credit for their class can come to school on a Saturday and work with a certified teacher for about two and a half hours and to in order to earn that credit back so that's another exciting thing we've never done before so we're excited to start that and one of our one of the things we do need to celebrate is starting in September we compared our

029rates of absenteeism from day one to the end of October and we're already down six percent which is a huge accomplishment and just to go back to do go to three slides ahead one two three so the last thing we wanted to do this year and again these are all tier one strategies we haven't hit tier two yet yes we do have a plan for tier two but we we're not going there yet um is these are examples of a sandwich board that we that um Mr Anderson is going is in the process of having made for us the front of the Sandwich Board is going to be the lovely sign on the left hand side that says welcome we're glad you're here everyday matters we love your child thank you for bringing them here

030on time and then at 7 31 we're going to flip that sandwich board over and it's going to say welcome we're still glad you're here however it's after 7 30 a.m instruction has begun please come to the office so we just want to encourage our families We Know It's tricky to get our kids here in the morning I feel your pain I struggle with that too getting my kids to school but we want everybody to know how important it is to get their kids here on time including our kiddos who walk to school and drive to school so those are just some examples of tier one implementations interventions that we're doing at the high school so any questions before we get to the questions I just want to add in support of goal number one

031we took a look uh typically our standard is for students who need some kind of academic intervention the RTI model we want to make sure that fewer than 20 percent of our students are receiving some additional interventions and pretty much across the board that's true so academically we feel pretty solid we do have some concerns behaviorally and for the board that will come up again as we look at Staffing going ahead next year with some of the additional mental health and student support services that we funded through Esser funds so behavioral interventions for RTI are up and office discipline referrals across the board at every level are up significantly this year versus last year at the secondary level middle and high school it's about a 54 percent increase in office discipline referrals from last year

032and at the elementary level it's four times the the referrals that they had at both elementary schools part of that we know is a reporting uh issue in that we at the middle and high school have been using a disciplined tracking program called Educators handbook for a number of years we instituted it at the elementary schools this year kind of anticipating this based on last year and so some of that inflation in that number is due to just better tracking and better accounting but the increase is very very real both schools are reporting a dramatic increase in having to deal with the student Behavior at the elementary level so that's the end of our look at student data in support of goal one for tonight and Alicia and I now that I'm free of my

033poster Duties are welcome to answer any questions you may have all right I'll go first um as far as the board goes is there anything that we can do to you know financially or policy wise that can help with any of these programs I know you talked about you know we'll be talking about it later on in the years as we get into the budget for next year but is there anything we can do now and such as I mean the only term I can think of is true an officer do we have something like that already in place do we so so unfortunately uh Mr Kelly uh truancy is a whole separate issue of attendance uh where a student uh chronically absent students are really kind of our problem and a process problem students

034students who are considered truant used to be kind of a legal response where we had truant officers in a truancy court that was part of the juvenile court in Waterford all of that has been dismantled so the state still counts students who are truant as any student who has four or more unexcused absences in any 30-day period uh and there's a total for the year we don't really have a lot of legal recourse with truancy and so that's why we're trying to work with positive reinforcement and better communication with parents on the chronically absent student population I'm sure as we continue uh superintendent Butler and I will be having conversation with the building principals to see what we can do to help this and as those things arise in the next couple of meetings I'm

035sure we'll be back here talking to the board about that I'm sure you already do but um did Human Services or the you know and I'm not looking to to for any child the student to get in trouble but the police police youth officer I'm sure those are resources you probably already use to a certain extent yes um and now for the um some of the is there a bus issue or student drop-off issue as far as kids that I know those that show up at uh 7 31 get a little Mark and if you get so many of them then they're they're uh scheduled for detention do some of them show up late I am kind of glad you asked that question so I will I will put it out here so to dismay

036any rumors um we did have the Stonington police do a study for an entire week at the light because that definitely has been a source of contention for years and they did a study and essentially what it boiled down to was if the pocket of time between 7 10 and 7 20 is the crunch time so if you are leaving your house and you're at that light between 7 10 and 720 you're going to be late so it didn't seem to make a difference if we changed the the light that's what they did that week they so they monitored it for a couple of days they changed the light let the traffic go and it didn't make a difference so a lot of parents had emailed me and asked you know there's an issue so

037I had contacted the police the police were on it immediately and he and titles and said we'll administer a study there for a week they did and I I communicated with parents who contacted me directly about that and just just to let them know that yes we did follow through the police did do a study but essentially it unfortunately is leaving the house earlier that it's just a crunch time we have unfortunately as much as we love having Dunkin Donuts right there that has been um a big source of contention with traffic so that's added to it as well so we have let the the light go a couple of times but it hasn't seemed to make a difference so I just want to put that put it out there that the police did a

038wonderful job cooperating and and did the study for us very quickly now with the light I mean it doesn't always necessarily have to be a light do they look at any of the um turning Lanes or kind of I mean that's obviously a long-term goal that's to go to the the state DOT but I'm sure if there was better Turner Lanes out there or a separate entrance does the entrance towards uh Davis standard an option or is that I think it's not an immediate option I like you said I think that's something with DOT you know the bus company we had changed it um I think two years ago the way the buses enter and leave and it didn't make a difference but in regards to completely changing um oh but in regards to completely

039changing that's a dot yeah Mr Kelly that entrance by Davis standard has come up in the past by Design that's an emergency access road and so we can't have any traffic on that because as we all know an emergency will happen at the most inconvenient time so if there's incoming traffic on that and there's a fire or some kind of emergency in the back of the building the First Responders need that access road to get back there foreign of a recent uh high school graduate me um you know if he didn't leave at a certain time he'd be late and then if he was late one more time he was going to get detention so instead of getting detention he chose or would like to have chosen the option of staying home and zooming or

040something like that so I know that was a it must be a battle in many households um if there's anything we as a board can do to help just let us know thanks for the update thank you thank you next item on our agenda is the report from superintendent schools Butler thank you I just wanted to give everyone an update on our fruit Tim and I we are still at our our community engagement effort under goal four of the Board of Education to try and use zoom as a modality to reach more families we had our third Zoom meeting on the 28th of October only five family members were joining us I have a sense that at least two of those families were new to the the uh The Forum and we will keep on

041trying to find a soft spot to reach more families but even if it's five families we haven't reached before that's that's a plus so uh I'll be working with farook to figure out a holiday uh Zoom for the community so stay tuned on that date we'll find we'll get that out to the families uh right after Thanksgiving um I also wanted to share with you a calendar that Alicia Stripling prepared for you this I think is going to be especially helpful as I know the budget season is still kind of new to a lot of the board members it just outlines the calendar and what is going to be happening as we tell the budget story a little bit differently this year and give you some ideas on you know when you're gonna you're gonna

042get your first preview of the Sip this evening we'll be looking for you to approve that at the December meeting gives you some ideas on when votes are going to be happening Alicia is going to present in January at your board meeting kind of the first iteration of the uh proposal of the budget and it will have the contractual obligations and special requests so we'll have the Bare Bones what we have to in incur with expenses as far as contracts and that will also include the the newly negotiated contract of the teachers that you know is going to have a big impact on our budget request it will also have our wish list and special requests at that the following meeting we will have our you know our real realistic proposal that we want you

043to consider for a vote for an approval at that time so it will give you a real insight into the process and the work and the time and the thought that goes into this it will look a little bit different than what you saw last year I think it will be more helpful to you and I think it will be much more transparent to our Board of Finance colleagues as we as we move forward with this process so I I wanted to have you see this you know it also has the holding place for all the budget discussion meetings I sense that as in past years with this with this particular process especially we won't need all of those meetings because I think it will be as Lynn young likes to say as clear as

044glass what we're asking of you so so there you go as we ruin your winter months with more and more meetings we thought that would be helpful for you to kind of get a sense of how we're going to navigate through this we will be adding those Board of Finance meetings and public hearing meeting dates as they become firm so thank you Alicia for doing that I think this is another piece of evidence of how the budget process will be a little bit easier to follow this year and less less abstract the third item I have for you is an update on the resolution dated October 25th entitled gender identity gender expression and sexual orientation I had four action items that I needed to follow up on as directed by the board in that uh

045that resolution I would like to I first of all though address a public comment that was made this evening about professional development that was not provided to teachers we had attorney Tom Mooney an attorney attorney Sierra come down from shipment and good and they worked with our administrative team on First Amendment rights specific to teacher situations and classroom situations we also invited SCA President Michael Freeman to that session so that he could hear exactly what the administrators were hearing I have a little bit more time on the resolution timeline to do some of these action items and some other related items I will be in communication with the Board of Ed about exactly which flag and what that looks like as in the next few days and at that time then we'll meet with the

046principals and talk about a thoughtful way to proceed on what will be in the classroom and remain in the classroom and what may have to be removed I've already had a conversation with Mr Freeman about that and we are going to move thoughtfully together on this so I just wanted to clear that up because it is a it's misinformation and I'm happy to clear that up for you under the action items as outlined in the resolution as evidenced by the agenda this evening the policy committee has met and is making recommendations for updates to several non-discrimination policies and also recommendations for the elimination of policies that will be made redundant upon approval of the new policies once these are approved companion administrative regulations will be posted alongside the new policies and so for the public

047and the parents the administrative regulations do it's nothing that the board approves it's something the administration develops and approves it is kind of our way of enforcing these particular policies so they'll include things like directions and forms if complaints need to be made by Personnel or by students and the nice thing about the proposed policies and the proposed and what will follow as administrative regs is they will be very parallel in format and process they are not that way right now so I just want to kind of clarify that the committee will also take a look at cross-reference policies at Future meetings and also existing policies specific to political displays or influencing classroom settings that maybe need in need of assessment and they may need to be revised or they may just be fine as

048as they particularly exist right now and I just want to remind the public that one of the major functions the primary functions of the Board of Ed is to develop and approve policy so they're doing that work now on Wednesday November 9th they met with the Union leadership from the following bargaining units the secretary's Union the para Educators Union the custodians Union and the administrators Union the leadership from the teachers union or the Sea and the nurses bargaining Unit were unavailable to meet the the units that I did meet with Will begin the Paris the nurses and the custodians and the secretary will all be entering into negotiations starting during the next school year at the end of the next school year with the administrator's contract in the following year the current contract for the

049nurses and para Educators already have non-discrimination language in them specific to gender identification so the meeting we had was just to discuss possible model language for the other bargaining units to consider as we move forward in the bargaining process we also offered model language that was developed by attorney grello that one of the board's attorneys we also offered the option if any of these bargain units want to enter into a memorandum of agreement to include model language around that gender identification and non-discrimination in the interim that they may do that the sca has taken advantage of that faruch signed the Moa tonight and Mr Freeman will sign it most likely tomorrow morning so it was a very positive uh positive meeting I did also follow up with the president of the Union of the nurses

050Union by phone again it's a rather point for her because the language is in their contract but I wanted her to have all the documents that the other union leaders had and let her know the process and offered you know to entertain any questions as we move forward um the resolution has been distributed to families I believe that also happened via parent Square on the 28th of October the staff has also been notified at the same time high school students were notified yesterday of it it's posted on all district and school websites translated versions are also found there as well as was asked through the resolution each school has the resolution posted in the main office staff rooms and where appropriate on school-wide community or Dei bulletin boards Stonington Middle School will use the advisory

051period next Monday to share a condensed and kind of age-appropriate version of the contents of the resolution and let the students know where they can find the full version online they will also have hard copies available if students are interested the same message and will be shared with the families of middle school children so they are familiar with what their children are going to hear during those advisory periods so that's where we are with that and as always students counselors remain available to discuss topics contained in the resolution the high school teachers were reminded to be sensitive to this during advisory periods and to reach out to students after the last board meeting as Dia mentioned Tim Smith Michael Freeman and I met with the student government Representatives I think in early November just to

052kind of discuss with them and share with them how the situation unfolded share with them the resolution attorney Moonies memorandum and answer any questions I will have meetings with each grade level of the student government in the future as I traditionally do anyways and if they have any questions they're welcome to either contact me through odia or reach out to me directly or Tim directly and we also have offered to to meet with the alliance for all acceptance for all groups if they so choose as they were probably impacted by this this decision so that's any questions on where we stand with the resolution we're pretty much on track I think under our timeline as as uh directed by you folks okay to have an update as I have promised in my my entry plan

053to kind of let you know where we are without a district Improvement plan um Tim and Alicia thank you for kind of covering all the uh the facets of goal one which covers our academic status right now and I'm going to pick up with where we are um just on students who as related to that goal one students that are actually receiving supplemental services that we call response to intervention we are pretty much right on target which is very strange if you look at our attendance and our discipline data we are really kind of right in that RTI pyramid with three out of our four schools about around 20 percent of the kids are receiving either tier two or tier three interventions West Pine Street School is a little bit higher but not significantly higher

054so there's a little bit of a disconnect between what we're seeing in discipline and what we're seeing in academic reformance so one is a little out of whack one is right on track so what as we as I tell you a little bit about our student engagement work we're going to be very curious to see what that data tells us are we on track or is that where we need to beef up our game to control that behavior by becoming more engaging in in the classroom so stay tuned for that we have actually begun the the classroom visits to capture both student engagement data as well as curriculum implementation data using the the eastcon tool I visited Stonington Middle School classrooms this week with Jen McCurdy Tim has been out and we have additional administrators

055going out tomorrow to visit classrooms most of our leadership team members will be engaged in the next couple of weeks in this work and then we will be looking at that data at our descent one of our December leadership meetings and and making some decisions about what that tells us does it mean that we need to do more professional development around this work of all the trauma sensitive practices or do we need to do some gentle reminders and some feedbacks at specific grade levels or specific schools so that's where we are with student engagement under goal two with Dei and SEL social emotional Wellness the saber screening instrument will be administered during December in grades 4 through 12 as part of a state mandate to administer a social emotional screener parents May opt their student

056out of this assessment but this is a nice self-assessment for us the teachers administer it it's nothing that this the students actually take it is actually an instrument that teachers fill out on the students and we we have a YouTube video that explains it by one of the developers of the instrument that their parents can view again if they have any questions about what that entails and what we're actually measuring it's the same instrument that we use at the secondary level last year and we're very lucky to have one of the the experts around that instrument as a parent and local resident as she has a West Vine Street School student under Dei diversity equity and inclusion work our Dei coroners continue to be featured in the newsletters and the abar team puts together has

057put together a calendar of events for families that publishes the various ways that nationally recognized Dei months will are happening in our schools one of the features that is getting positive feedback is our our district readers at the elementary school level they've been warmly received and widely viewed by the school Community it's this month's celebrity reader is our very own Alicia Stripling uh our our new business and Director of Finance and uh Personnel is of Cherokee ancestry and she has read and recorded we are grateful by Tracy storell in celebration of American Indian Alaskan native heritage month so look forward to seeing that posted on our Dei website and it's going to also be linked in the elementary school newsletters I also was forwarded an email from a West Vine Street School teacher today a

058from the assistant principal that she expressed what a nice feature that is to see staff members that don't necessarily work in her school and learn a little bit more about the diversity that exists among our staff so I thought that was very welcome and positive as far as board presentations we hope to have West fine Street Elementary School students will be sharing their African drumming skills at an upcoming meeting they weren't quite ready this month so we'll see if they're ready next month to perform for you we also will have an update on the witness Stone project from our 8th grade social studies students probably in uh in the winter the winter months and the curriculum submitted for review by teaching and learning is evaluated for diversity and text programming and student choice and voice

059as far as the the district Improvement plan goal around CT saids I'm sorry Allison's not here tonight she had a family situation take her away to take her away we have a goal around having all of the IEPs and 504s managed in this new system that has quite frankly been a complete disaster in its role out and so I just wanted you to know that we're plotting along we've actually Allison and I have reached out to the csde to express our frustration with the the lack of the the professional support that's been given in rolling this out but Allison and as her more and more of her time is being consumed by troubleshooting and professional development because this was not piloted correctly so we'll get there we're using the platform but I just want you

060to know that it is not smooth sailing in that particular goal right now for professional Outreach around Dei we have shared at several workshops and meeting meetings starting at the National Harbor at the ascd Leadership Summit Alicia and I presented our work around that at a national conference I shared the work at the embassy of Finland in Washington DC and again this upcoming weekend we'll be sharing it at the cape conference so you should be very proud that Stonington is getting the word out about the word that word work that we're doing around increasing student engagement by the use of trauma-sensitive practices also our future focused schools initiative that was featured today at teaching and learning will be part of a presentation at the national school boards Association conference programming this April so we're doing

061a lot of work we're getting a lot of good PR out there on our Dei work as far as family engagements you've heard from our welcoming schools teams Tim and I did not have the right link Alicia I'm sorry we missed it today we we had it on our calendar as a Google meet and it must have been a team's meeting and so we need to to do a better job at participating there so apologies to the high school team but we have had some really great meetings at the other three buildings in person and working around links to learning and partnering and having great conversations with parents they've been very positive experiences as far as safety we've had staff staff in all five buildings have had two training sessions alongside of the Stone Age

062Police Department the department has debriefed the district and building leaders on professional development opportunities that they have implemented on all practice drills and on the unfortunate swatting event that has recently been experienced by our schools our youth officers and other officers randomly check the schools and provide feedback to the district and the schools on any areas of improvement that they see the Stonington police department and Stonington Public Schools continue to collaborate to improve safety for students and staff the town is preparing a job description for school security officers and we're looking for ways that we can partner on funding for that this year and then in the future I also uh want to thank the school office youth officer she continues to not only to provide instruction in the Dare programming for our elementary school

063students but she also Partners in providing other safety instruction at all levels as far as communication we now have stipend positions to address uh in to support our updating our websites because that was one of the areas of that we identified as a need of improvement by our welcoming schools committees and we are looking for a universal area that we know that's a universal area of improvement for us and uh and it's it's made some strides already in keeping those websites fresh and updated so that it provides meaningful information for our families and then finally under Community engagement there is a laundry list of things that we are proud to say that we are doing to create a sense of Oneness in the community we have standing meetings with the police chief in the first

064select women and it's been enormously helpful not only in planning for the three budgets but also partnering among agencies and functioning as a true town and it little things uh you know the chief asked me to take a look at an invitation he was preparing for a promotion ceremony and you know just reaching out to help each other as true team members it's been a really um it's a it's an evolving relationship between the three agencies but it's moving in a very very positive direction I also participate in town department meetings on a monthly basis that something that Danielle our first select women has started we also have monthly I have monthly meetings with our town aboard liaison who's in the audience tonight that's been super helpful to me it's been have an informal way

065to have conversations that have resulted into other meetings that have been kind of exciting uh might not sound exciting to you that we've had meetings with the Solid Waste Department we're looking at piloting a composting project with the town with one of our schools to get a gauge on whether or not that could be a cost neutral or maybe even a cost savings process a way of eliminating waste in our schools pretty exciting to kind of again be partnering with things Como has been awesome they're helping us with a stem day for our Stonington Middle School folks and we're also in initial conversations with how their maker space can help provide SPS Stonington swag with our new logo on it which is nice because our children are are actually participating in that after school program

066and they'll be developing our Stonington swag for purchase and distribution as part of our welcoming schools work monthly meetings we have with our state legislators who are enormously helpful and strategizing legislation that is can be helpful to us in addressing our policy needs as well as taking feedback on what is not working for our schools Ocean City Chamber I encourage you to look forward to upcoming information on how our students are partnering with the starry light event that is happening in pocketuck in Westerly very very soon and you'll be able to see a lot of our Student Art displayed from all levels of our school students professional development Partnerships exist with ness we also are looking at a future co-teaching project that will be coming more information will be coming on to that to you

067on that very shortly it's a very future focused practice we're also working if we continue to work with Roswell public schools on the future focused schools projects we're in the early stages of beginning in-person conversations with staff next week on a volunteer basis so that they can learn more about how they might be engaged in that work I'd like to take thank Mr Smith who made a short video to remind the staff of what the message was at our convocation and kind of invite them to participate in these shop talks around future focused practices electric boat is collaborating with our elementary school stem teacher to introduce manufacturing careers to our students at those grade levels our hbi partnership for our high school students is persisting and at the national level again I'm partnering with the

068lead there to promote this program across the state and then finally I'm planning some podcasts to share uh are the Child and Family Counseling Center work that's happening right here in this building until they're ready to move into their permanent home in the pocket hook the shopping center across the street here and then also probably do some another podcast either on our future focused work or our work partnering with ness so there's a lot going on that's just kind of a an overview of where we are with our district Improvement plan and all of the goals that you folk set and to keep that work at the center of our our focus and our conversations so if you have any questions it's a lot and there's more but I just wanted to give you a

069snapshot of where we are the board members have any advantage of getting week by week updates on this but for the public it's also important for you to know all of the work that is underway and I will entertain any questions if there are any more of a comment than a question um you know you listen to Tim and uh Alicia and some of the challenges we are having with the chronic absenteeism and some of the scores and where we're going with that and you know that was like a little bit of the Lower Side of the spectrum I guess or the um and then presenting everything that you presented tonight has the other side of the spectrum and just shows that you know what our district is doing and can do and I just

070think that whatever else that we can do to obviously support your efforts and and doing all this stuff we as a board I'm sure um would would be 100 behind that it's it's a great challenge you didn't have your water bottle there tonight to take a sip I almost brought you mine but um it's just you know I was sitting up here earlier and I was just like man you know what are we going to do about this and what are we going to do about that and I know you know you guys are on it but you know what is our role as a board to support that and do that um and then obviously we're going to be coming into uh budget season and we're going to have the the tough tough decisions

071to make as far as the budget goes but um the second half of your report or the the after you know was was reaffirming that we're up here for a reason and you guys are doing what you're doing for a reason and and you know if we can just get you know I sit up here wondering what can we do to get these families engaged what can we do to get these students engaged and it's like you know we can't teach them if they don't show up obviously you know and you know I was thinking of uh one of our special uh staff members at the middle school that you know I think on Friday she she runs out to sift and if the students show up for like five days in a row so

072she'll promise them it's their the carrot at the end of the stick she'll promise him a nice cookie from Siff and I'm like can I get one she's like no Dan wait till Christmas um but it's those things and that's money out of her pocket you know so whether you know financially speaking you know we know teachers do take a lot out of their pockets and do that but I know we do have this Donuts in education fund and we do have the ptos um so just thank you you're welcome and I just want to remind everybody that you know it's our first year getting back to really being in the classrooms and and collecting data and so we will have that leverage to adjust practices and move resources around based on what we're seeing

073on needs so but the best thing you can do is is to be thankful to your teaching staff and your in your your whole staff I think that's the we appreciate them more than every and then anything so thank you foreign next item on our agenda is consent agenda vote is required for this item so if anybody would like to move any of those items of the consent agenda if not I'm asking for a motion I had one that I was asking about which is was in the no vote can we talk about that policies for first grade November oh okay great so there is a motion on the floor by Mr Kelly is there second the second all those in favor of proving the consent agenda please indicate by saying aye aye that was

074unanimous thank you um next item on our agenda is the subcommittee reports we'll start with Mr Agnello from teaching and learning thank you if you'll remember our last meeting uh last month I reported that we didn't have any curricula that subcommittee meeting last month to approve which is why you see no curricula to approve today um but at today's committee meeting we did do I have two things to report first we got a a brief presentation on the future Focus schools initiative which superintendent Butler mentioned a couple times in her update my explanation of it won't do it justice but it's essentially professional development teams that are inclusive of multiple levels of Educators and administrators within the district with the goal of moving the district's education into the future so I think it it does

075a really good job of taking advantage of the expertise and creativity of the professionals that we have in our district to drive some ideas on how to move our District's education forward also today we reviewed one curriculum uh the family consumer science child development course and as part of an extremely real applicable and robust curricula it has to be one of the most Hands-On courses that we offer and that students in this course must spend a minimum of 48 hours with quote the world's most advanced infant simulator which is a super fancy computerized baby doll uh the teaching and learning committee experienced one of these dolls firsthand during our meeting today and you'll all have that curriculum available to you for first read at our board meeting next month so it was a eventful committee

076meeting today that's all for now thank you thank you Mr mcnell Mr Donahue yes so we got an update from Peter on uh the boilers that got fixed uh so well while we're waiting Parts uh those boilers are are safe and ready to go right now uh we got an overall estimate on replacing all the boilers in the future um around and that came around 800 Grand or 800 000 rather sorry um and then uh after that we talked about the Esser fund update which we got from Alicia which we're going to work on in the upcoming budget uh we're finding out what we're doing with positions that are currently funded by Esser funds and how to mitigate once we lose yet uh the Esser fund money uh once that goes away in 2024 and

077then we have a report on the Sip funds which um Peter and Chris are going to go over with us tonight so that's all we had in the subcommittee meeting for tonight thank you Mr Donahue Mr Kelly we have a second read or a first read for several of the policies that are listed on the agenda we the policy committee met on November 3rd and we'll continue to meet to get through all these policies and did you have a question on one of them Heidi I did but dude I asked but now sure okay so what oh God okay um so this was on the no vote um agenda it was five one four five points P I don't what does why is p in front of it just policy okay five one four five

078point five a and in my question was about the place that qualifies for Title IX conduct concerned and it's in the second paragraph it said for conduct to violate Title IX the conduct must have occurred in an education program or activity of the board and um I I remember a couple years ago that a hostile environment could occurred because [Music] um their I felt there when we knew they were sexual harassment occurred with a was a sharing of intimate photos um that we're just supposed to be between two but then it ended up all over social media it was it was shared in confidence and then it ended up all over social media and it caused a very hostile environment of learning my point being Dewey can we add something there about I I don't

079know if you put cyber bullying or cyber harassment I know the Bible is concerning bullying um they talk about Cyberbully as as being acknowledged as the possibility of a transgression of one of the bylaws but it's very specific here that the conduct has to occur in the education program activity in the board what if it is outside that and could be in it's five one four five dash dot point five it's a first read so it may I suggest that we take all your notes and send them to the committee so they can revise the as based there's a lot of notes there I will also tell you Heidi that that's a that's a shipment and Goodwin model policy and it's a mandated policy so when we change wording we have to go back to

080the lawyers and spend money so let us do our let us do we can take a look at the cyber bullying policy there's other policies that may address your concern May cover it correct but the only place I could find this cyber bullying was in the um the transgender and it wasn't it didn't seem like it applied to transgender and transgender and gender non-conforming youth okay so if you send us your question like specific questions because I think that whole point of the interference in the like in the in the educational programming even if it happens outside of the school I think your concern is it happens outside of the school day it doesn't matter because if it's if it's there's a spillover to affect the learning environment which which is what typically happens right

081that triggers it triggers it right right right so it's called and what covers that which by long covers that the one you're talking about is going to cover that because it's the same language as it's going to happen it's going to spill over during the school day yeah and there's one what what you're looking at is that there's parallel policies one for personnel and one for students yeah I'm looking at students yep yep yeah students and then the final question I had was um on this second page uh p5145.5 B it says that the administration show also this is not working the administration show also periodically provide training to all board employees on the topic of sex discrimination and sexual harassment under Title IX in Connecticut Law so on but not limited to when reports

082of sex discrimination had we had this training and perhaps I missed it yes we have and we've have had um staff trained probably more than is required both at the administrative level and at the um at the staff level okay so it's not the board no it's it's awesome when they say the the policy language when you hear the board it can be often confusing because by the board they really mean me directing the the staff making sure making sure that it's happening and you'll see that language over and over again and I know that bothers you I think sometimes when you feel like it's your personal you know it's the boards as the entity's responsibility it really is is kind of legal ease to refer to the administration thank you but if you could

083um get your notes and questions on the 5145.5 we can it's just it's a first read and it'll come back to the board and but it doesn't sound that anything can be done well no something can always be okay yeah okay and we'll be meeting again shortly and we'll bring it back to the um as a policy committee we'll be meeting and then we can um bring it back to the full board for it's the second read so um do you need a motion for the I know well you don't need a one for I for no vote required and then tonight we have a second read of one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven policies that we had the first read-on last month and we need to vote on that

084I will move that uh move that uh motion motion to approve policies and and under uh policy subcommittee C two there's there's a motion there's a second just a comment that um we did the first read of this last month and if people go online and pull up the agenda there's hyperlinks for all these policies um that you could read and then they will all be hyperlinked on the website once these policies are approved tonight any other discussion on the motion all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye anyone against any abstention motion passes and then under uh part three of this uh policy subcommittee there are four policies that um are to be admitted upon their second read which is uh the ones that are listed here and those are either superseded

085by new policies and updated some of the policies were a few years old so we have new ones some were not mandated by the state and the policy committee decided to we didn't need more than we needed and then we do have uh further clarification on some policies from uh was it shipment and Goodman so that's there's various reasons why there's four policies that are going to be emitted upon the second read which will be next month um so that's the report from the policy committee thank you any questions from Mr Kelly thank you Mr Kelly next item on our agenda is the Sip review and I'll turn it over to Peter you who's who's taking it start with Peter okay so historically the Sip has been presented on in November with the opportunity to

086review it and come back to December's meeting for approval I would like to highlight a couple things if you open up your first page to the large spreadsheet which looks like this here Excuse me yes um for those that are watching at home or those in the audience and again this is um one of our full first time going through a lot of the I mean last year we did this and you know it was our first meeting and it's like here's the Sip report prove it they're like what could you do a little uh introduction of it like you know what it is and oh sure sure processes Etc yeah please so so the capital improvement process is uh these are projects that are in excess of ten thousand dollars which the Board of

087Education deems necessary and important to complete the Sip process is in uh we we review the set process in-house goes to the board of education for approval after we review it such as we're doing today then goes to the town for their approval a Cuts adjustments are made from there and then it's voted on as part of the budget um heading back to the Excel spreadsheet I I'd like you to take a look the most important things that we're going to review today are the yellow column which is superintendent proposed CIP 2023-2024. this is what we're proposing tonight the column to the left was last year's adopted CIP the one thing I'd like to have you guys take note of is that you'll see in in the uh really bright yellow column several zeros and

088one and a one the zeros which line up with previous projects means that those projects have been completed we do include it in this year's sip as part of a showing that the Project's gotten done so we're zeroing the line item out so you'll see that in your narratives are there any questions so far a dollar placement such as a district school furniture replacement is a is a placeholder that means that we are in the process and we'd like to start the process we want to get a placeholder for it and then if you look out to the right of it you'll see two years later the money starts to roll in for the request for that furniture the first six items I I I'm getting ahead of myself here number seven you'll see that

089there's nothing there that's PCB air monitoring for the elementary schools the town has historically paid for that we include that in the CIP as a reminder that they're covering that cost this is part of the pcbs that were discovered at both West fine and Dean's Mill we had to do testing for three years and we are now currently in the process of petitioning the dep so that we can stop because we've passed every single test that we've done I'm going to turn the mic over to Christopher Wilson the director of technology and he's going to review the first six items as they directly relate to him thank you Peter I'm going to do an overview of each item I'll pause after each if you guys have any questions just let me know as you'll see

090with each of the project request forms when you turn after the color copied Excel sheet there you'll see the request forms that includes the itemized breakdown that we're doing over the next 10 years and following each of those will be quotes and backups for those as well so the first project we have for the Department of technology is the security system and cameras uh just as a reminder we received funding for this building which were in the process of upgrading security cameras here and we'll be adding additional cameras throughout the district where needed so this request for forty thousand dollars is to begin building a fund to support the eventual refresh so a couple of these projects I'll talk about today are building a fund towards a refresh for projects we've implemented recently any questions

091about that you may note the one of the quotes in here does have redacted information that's just camera models and company names for security purposes the next project is the phone system again we recently upgraded that last year so this is building that fund to the tune of Thirteen thousand dollars per year over the next seven years in preparation for that refresh as well any questions on that next we have our Chromebook one-to-one initiative again we are a one-to-one district at the metal and high school for Chromebooks and then we have classroom issued Chromebooks throughout the elementary schools the goal here is keeping as close to level funding as possible you'll notice a trend here where we're trying to keep a flat budget for the board of Finance so again we've got a hundred twenty

092seven thousand dollars requested coming up this includes the Chromebooks the administrative licenses to manage said Chromebooks as well as the go Guardian licenses which is what we use to provide both filtering on these devices while students have them at home as well as interactivity with the teachers in the classroom so that includes those licenses as well any questions on the Chromebook initiative yep Mr Kelly only because I had a first-hand experience with it I know the goguardian so what is the um price for a go Guardians uh subscription per per is it 400 we have 475 that we paid six dollars and 25 cents each for correct um and we actually multiply that by two this is half of that District licensing so rather than bake in all of one school or the others since

093we use this across the middle and high school and some of the higher grade levels at the elementary what I do is I sort of spread that out over that sip request each year so you'll see two lines on that quote from trifera you'll see one line for administrators and one for teachers administrators is the filtering component to make sure we're sipa compliant and the administrator the teachers portion is that interactivity component that the teachers use in the classroom the so we have 475 subscriptions to go Guardian is that what they're saying or we have this is a just under half of the refresh so it's a little little over double that so my concern is uh about 13 months ago as a para and Paris we're told that we couldn't afford the district could

094not afford additional go Guardian uh subscriptions because of the expense and so it's like 12.50 or is that I it's just it was a valuable tool that um both during covid and post covet uh the go Guardian which is I'm not sure if everyone's familiar with it it's a means for the staff to I don't know maybe you can explain it better than I can yeah from the teacher perspective just a high level overview of what goguardian does it lets the teachers see all of these student screens they can take control of those devices they can redirect students to a specific website uh if little Timmy is getting distracted and on a YouTube perhaps they can redirect and then they can also lock all their screens and print a message something like eyes up to

095redirect focus in the classroom so my concern at the time was there were some of the Paris concerns was that there was not enough go Guardian subscriptions and the pairs did not have um access to them is that still the case do we know and if so is that something that we can is that still a tool that they would want to use I can't imagine them not because you know there's one teacher with 20 kids and that teacher is in front of the classroom or in front of the monitor teaching the class and the kids are following along but you know like you said little Timmy I don't want to stick a particular kid out um but little Timmy's off on YouTube world and the para is there whether it's a classroom pair with

096one or two students or more is there as well and you know is kind of can't redirect to me because they don't have access to go Guardian yeah so to two answers to that question one is we do currently have additional Chromebooks now assigned to the Paris so this licensing well yes you can use it alone typically you need a Chromebook assigned with it so the cost was both a chrome book paired with the management license of a said Chromebook as well as the goguardian license so the the cost expands upwards from there we could if if we had it set up this way allow them to bring a personal device in but we don't use District issued software on personal devices so even if we purchased you know the tune of thirteen dollars here

097for this license we don't have the means to provide them a district issued device to install that software on so that's where the the contention came I can say however at the middle school most of the Paras have access if not all the high school we do have a dedicated rack now as well repairers can check out Chromebooks it depends on their assignment that day we don't just issue 100 Chromebooks to all 100 peras in the district because many don't need them for day to day so we have made those available in the last year today I'll know that I will double check with the building administrators to make sure they know any other questions on the Chromebook initiative okay moving along the next project is our computer systems infrastructure project this is a large

098project that essentially supports the backbone of the district so this is everything from our cabling infrastructure our core switching and routing all the way out to wireless access points Etc so this year in our proposal you'll see a few different quotes in here um the first one this Wally quote here is for the refresh of um the core networking equipment as well as wireless access points uh for Dean's middle school again we're doing these on a staggered refresh going into year four uh and with the 11 month lead time on these devices we'll be replacing them at their end of life expected end of life uh so that Wally quote you see there the WCA that is for the switching and wireless access point equipment and then the next three quotes you'll see after that

099from def Services Group these are to purchase outright our fiber optic lease So currently we lease our fiber optic connections between our schools back to the high school so this is not an improvement what this does is allow us to own said fiber optic cable uh rather than lease it it's about 12 to 13 000 a year per lease that we pay so it only takes a few years as we can do the math out to pay for itself so this is a cost saving measure that we're looking to implement this was proposed to the board of Finance last year but again due to budget restrictions was cut because it's not Mission critical it's just a cost savings over time all of the fiber optic cable we purchase has a 30-year rating at the minimum

100so that's a full warranty so we get a lot of use out of that and um a large cost savings as well are there any other questions on that so you're not running a new fiber optic you're buying what you have in the ground no we would purchase our own fiber optic cable and perform an aerial installation for the poles okay which would save us a bunch over time what you're saying yeah each school is a slightly different lease amount but it averages out to that 12 000 so if you kind of do the math out you're looking at about eight years until you start saving that money but again it's a 30-year warrantied cable we would easily get 35 40 plus years one concern the board of Finance had expressed last year when I

101presented this was is the technology going to become obsolete because a 30-year cable is great until you know like apple changing their their ports it's no good and I could assure you that this technology fiber optic will surpass that 30-year Mark and carry speeds much much greater than the district will likely Ever Need any other questions on that project yes the the quotes are two years old is that something that we're comfortable with yeah and these were uh estimates provided so these are higher quotes so I did not increase these um the fiber optic cabling has not gone up tremendously uh labor has gone up a little bit but fortunately for this specific project uh it's not compute technology it's giant spools of cable and then it's really labor and permits and fees we're paying

102for so not a huge increase this would go to bid as with all of these projects but this goes through USAC because it's e-rate eligible so we are an e-rate funded District so we would get a 50 discount on all of these so when you add up these quotes it's obviously much greater than the amount I'm asking for that's taking into account that 50 discount handsome that's a good I was going to bring that I was going to bring that up Dan that's a good question because uh we we've notoriously when we go in this early uh the quotes never seem to hold if we ask for a hard quote so if we've gotten a quote from the years past We'll add up an estimated amount for inflation and cost of living and everything else

103that goes along with it there are a couple quotes in here that are absolute and I've gotten well I'll talk about that when I get to a couple of mine but for the most part again they're they're going to be they're going to go to bid and they're give us a a pretty good idea of a ballpark of where we should be asking for our CIP money any other questions on that project okay moving on we have the staff computers project again we are one to one with Mac airs for our teaching faculty uh so this is again level funding we requested 50 000 last year we're requesting an additional sixty thousand dollars this year uh to perform the first half of the district refresh um and then over the next two years we would

104keep adding to that and finish out that refresh uh one school at a time so this originally we did the entire District in one shot we got zero percent financing terms through Apple so this way we're trying to spread out and stagger that refresh trying to get to that school by school modality so the code is 108. are you using the 50 and the 60 is that the math correct yeah so we received the 50 last year sitting in the account for this project this would be the 110 to make it up when we refresh what do we do with the expiring MacBooks do they go off to MacBook heaven or do they um yeah because they go to MacBook cabinet no they we ended up trading them in to help offset some of the

105cost so we have a responsible Green Recycling Company who does help us provide vendor credit for those older devices is an older expired MacBook better than a older expired Chromebook I'm just yes is that something that we could uh see if the no see if the pairs were interested in using those because I know the the Chromebooks have limitations to them that the MacBooks do when whenever as if I convert it into substitute teacher mode I always had access to a Chromebook and I'm like whoa this is so much better than nothing yeah I'll say this with the the Mac airs um after that five-year Mark and the daily use that they get they do start degrading uh the OS updates that apple is pushing out um the the full revs on an annual basis

106at this point are quickly making the older versions Obsolete and while you as a consumer don't necessarily have to keep up with that from a security practice we do so you quickly see degradation when you're nearing that five year mark so while you know the consumer side may say yes you can stretch and get eight years out of this laptop that's likely because they're staying versions or revs behind on some of the those updates which tend to slow down the device and render it obsolete same with the Chromebooks after five years Google stops releasing security patches for them all together so we don't we don't keep those around for for obvious reasons I notice it's uh it starts to crease in in 2026. what's what what is the the ask for it start Stop to

107Start decreasing so over the 10-year projection we're hoping and this is this is a guess right we're going out this far right now we're facing a large cost associated with the adapters so Apple has once again changed the ports on these devices rendering all of our existing Mini DisplayPort adapters obsolete so now we have to purchase uh to the tune of around sixteen thousand dollars in new adapters we're hoping that they stay on this protocol so that as we move down the road we can start reducing that and reuse adapters and then purchase those in smaller quantities got it any other questions on the staff laptops moving on we have the audio video systems so this is a hybrid approach here where in part uh beginning to build a fund for the eventual replacement of

108projectors district-wide as well as the interactive flat panels or smart boards we have at the elementary schools tough to think but we're already going into year four with these boards so we're starting to plan ahead towards that this also includes funding you'll see the quote package included for the projector for both The Commons and the auditorium at the high school both of which are in desperate need of replacement the the auditorium projector has already died we've got a makeshift rolling cart and two by fours in a projector propped up for now so we're hoping to get funding to get that accomplished as well any questions on the AV project uh the smart boards are the quotes not included on these we're actually in the middle of looking at some alternative options and hoping to save

109on costs for those um but those the building project cost was just about five hundred thousand dollars for those boards well that was for both new schools correct any other questions on the AV before we move on to Peter all right thank you thank you my items aren't as fun um I'm gonna we're gonna go past the PCB air monitoring for elementary students go to the kitchen equipment I'm going to go through the ones I'm going to go through each one just to explain exactly what's going on right now in the the kitchen equipment upgrade that we got last year has been completed we're expecting delivery on all three dishwashers to be installed over Christmas break so there's replacements for Dean's Mill West Vine and the 20 year old Hobart machine at Stonington Middle School

110will have all brand new dishwashers any questions on that excitement they are very excited yes um the upgrade at the BMS in in Stonington Middle School are the BMS for those that don't know what a BMS is a BMS is the building management system that's what if you see me during the meeting and I have my laptop open here because we're in night mode I'm monitoring the system and playing around with it so that we can stay comfortable otherwise it gets down to about 60 degrees in this room so the building management system needed a desperate upgrading in both Stonington middle school and district office I have now have it they've both been completed we are completely done with all the schools were upgraded I have all four or all five buildings on my computer

111right now and I can control the heat from anywhere that is complete maintenance truck this is a new one that we've put in yes I'm sorry yeah yeah it's all done zero maintenance uh the replacement struts we have we have had a fleet of Maintenance trucks which are extremely old they're they're they're they're costing us more than they're worth to keep on the road so we need to replace two of these trucks right now now I have a bid in the back here and you'll see it's for 45 500 I've put in for a hundred and two because the volatility of the of the auto market is not dependable so we're trying to make sure that we have enough money to buy the two that we need right now uh just last week we broke

112one of the trucks and when I mean broke it's it's broken in half the frame is gone the axle is gone and we've gone down to what we had a fleet of four trucks for plowing we have two right now that's two two trucks for plowing going into the winter season so we're we're in in need we're gonna do the best we can to get it covered with us in the town working side by side together but we are in desperate need of some new uh work trucks Peter what are the ages of those trucks what year so the one that just broke was a 2008 that was the newest one that we had um we I'm sorry that was the newest one of the old ones the other one that went to the scrap

113yard this summer was 2000 and the one that we still have on the road is a 1999 GMC so you'll be if you get the new trucks you'll be able to maintain them for a long period of time yes we have a maintenance program that will stretch them out the trucks should be there was a plan to get a rollover of every five years of getting a new truck that never occurred and what ended up happening is now we're having a a large number of vehicles bought at one time so we can keep the trucks anywhere if with proper maintenance 10 to 15 years yeah on the um sheet the project course costs you 102 for this year but then you're not looking for anything to until 30 31 right we have a we have

114another truck right now it's a 2017 and we were able to and we had our other truck that we put purchased on CIP 14 months ago came in so we have two trucks right now that are operable one's a 2022 and another one's a 2017. what we just broke was a 2008 and the 1999 the 2000 truck went to the scrap yard that was the one that just came in replaced do we go to the board of Finance would they prefer that we put 10 000 every year sort of five years to get to the 51 or do we we we certainly can split that out and and go that route yes as a savings account right District number 12 District school furniture replacement if you see I've got a one dollar Mark there at

115this point we're in good shape but we're we need to start uh putting a savings account aside so I wanted to get a placeholder there nothing next year the year after ten thousand the year after that nothing the year after that ten thousand and so on so that we can start rolling out some of the furniture that's gone by the wayside at the schools we're we're okay now and we've used up most of the furniture that we've taken as a result of the consolidation of the two schools so we're we're in pretty good shape but I just want to have that be a a placeholder so that we can start the conversations you miss the the custodials oh I'm sorry a number 11. um those are stripper machines the stripper machines are handheld smaller units

116which they can go into the hallways and Corners so that we can clean up and do waxing in between the seasons where we don't have to normally strip all that down all the wax on the VCT which is the vinyl vinyl tile we can go in and highlight it it cuts down man hours tremendously because normally when we do any stripping it's a chemical action we have to go through three usually three four process to get the wax off then we go through it's a whole cleaning process and then we have to apply three coats on with these strippers they're great for the mid-year cleanup and you can simply go over one area quickly and throw a coat of wax on it and the floor just comes right back it really is a man-hour saver

117we've had a couple of them and it's now it's time to get one for each School so if you had a couple of them and now you're getting four dollars uh there's yes we have we have two uh one free there's five buildings wherever the vinyl floors are we have a small one here for the upstairs where we have vinyl flooring there's uh we currently have one at the high school which is a larger one and we'd like to get three more for Dean's Mill West fine and Stonington middle school but the code is for four oh that's a Doodle Bug um that's a uh that's that's us that's the cornering unit that's what goes into the corners oh the district school furniture replacement one other question yes um I should bite my tongue but

118I'm not um have you ever looked at Contracting out for the waxing and the stripping of the floors is that like a labor-intensive energy violation of the Union well that's why I said that's why bite my tongue you would know better all right can we throw it at negotiations maybe they don't want to do it anymore the the minivans for a special ed replacement uh last year we we we're we have a we've purchased a van we have a zero line item and then if you look we carry it out in the next few years to replace the remaining Vans those are our vans that we have parked out here that are used for special lead any questions on that the High School rooftop unit rebuild in gym AC we've finished all the rebuilding of

119the rooftops we've rebuilt 14 of those that's all done we've zeroed that out as a placeholder and we're we're complete at the high school at this point the high school generator upgrade is is in process this year they've they've given do you want to go back to the we did you just fly over a gym upgrade or you didn't get there we're out there we're on number 15. High School rooftop unit rebuilding Jim AC res good news sorry spoiler alert so the high school generator upgrade is for the new panels that are going to be installed at the school that was given to us last year that's in process right now so that we can properly distribute power in the high school without having to worry about freezing the building if we ever have a

120catastrophic power failure in an ice storm at this point the buildings uh at this point the buildings boilers will run the circulator pumps will run but the air handlers won't so we want to make sure that we can run some of the air handlers around the building and it's and it's it's going to be a more efficient uh distribution of power the high school gym upgrade number 16. last year we were given thirty five thousand dollars to do the gym floor which is complete if I if you haven't seen the gym floor I really encourage you to see it it came out amazing the proposal for this year is 21 500 and that's for the we're growing from what's called a roll-up canvas divider to an accordion canvas or an accordion divider to separate out

121this is where we would separate the sections between the auxiliary gym and the main gym during basketball games and there's also another divider that you may not ever see if you go to an event there which divides the main gym in half these these dividers have seen their day they're ripped they're torn they need to be replaced the next year out is for twenty thousand three hundred and fifty and that's to replace all the pads at either end zone of the basketball court those are torn some are falling off it just it's it's gone through its life cycle any questions on that yes are these generic pads that you're putting up like the solid color blue ones or whatever yeah the canvas colored foam pads yeah is there any need or desire to put up

122some colorful ones or some uh ones with uh the Stonington bear Den logos on it or anything like that that maybe uh if it was an added cost that the boosters could uh that doesn't yeah that Brian Barone's going to make the call on that okay Tom it's there's a suggestion okay [Laughter] number 17 the library flooring and repair last year they gave us a placeholder of a dollar for that this year we're asking for 39 750 to replace the carpet in the library if you have been in that library now the carpet was original was part of the building project so it's we're at 18 years of life on that carpet the carpet was a rolled out carpet which is a large sheet product what ends up happening over time is as we clean

123it and wash it and scrub it those products end up shrinking my my suggestion is to go to a tile based project and we can then as things wear out and we can replace individual tiles as opposed to entire sections of carpet the current carpet at the library has several large rips and tears in it right now it's being covered up with duct tape and it's it's just time to go the carpet has gone past its usable life by eight years any questions on the carpet number 18 the high school roof repair and replacement part of that project is is uh we're in the early stages of that right now for repair the roof has taken a fair share of foot traffic on it as a result of the rooftop units that were in constant

124repair over the years so those sections of the roof have delaminated specifically above the commons area that's being addressed this year the other parts of this is part of a savings account to replace the flat sections of the roof as you can tell the the roof from the road you can see stainless steel that's a generational roof 50 plus years but we do have still flat roofs in the back above the gym above the commons area and above the admin area where we have two different types of roof we have an EPDM sheet product on some sections of the roof and we have a bit mod which is an asphalt rolled granular covered roof both of those are coming to the end of life very shortly so we need to get a savings account to

125start replacing those so the 250 is savings not the savings yeah Middle School AC upgrade that is uh we currently have a 500 000 in that account requesting 10 million five hundred thousand dollars for a total of 11 million dollars to do it in a complete upgrade for the entire HVAC system which includes all new rooftops 11 new 11 new units ductwork wiring compressors roof structure reinforcement and I think that pretty much covers it it's the only thing we're basically keeping are the boilers the rooftop units have come to end of life the unit it was it was suggested and I agree that there was no sense trying to modify a 24 year old rooftop unit it's better to replace it um so this is where we stand at that project at this point right

126now any questions on that and that's not a fixed cost right that's an that's a engineering estimate at the completion of the engineering project so that's within a 10 margin so no there it's not an exact figure we would have to go for a professional estimator separate from the engineer to get a hard fast figure important thing to know is that that figure would be accurate for today only and they would give you probably a six-month guarantee on the price after that it's going to change and what would that cost an engineering study I don't have the hard figure my guess is that we're going to be between eight and fifteen thousand dollars to get a an estimate any other questions on that middle school science room upgrade has been completed that gets zeroed out

127that's ten thousand dollars that was purchased for science tables that if you recall that was as a result of us moving classrooms around that were not normally ready for Science and now they are and finally the last one number 21 if you recall we had a parking lot water issue at Stonington Middle School in the side parking lot there was an underground water intrusion which was basically an underground stream that would percolate up and during the winter it caused a tremendous amount of trouble with the parking lot specifically for freezing and and safety we solved that water problem but as a result of that the entire parking lot has crumbled so we've been we've been patchworking it with Coatings and sealants and that it's it's beyond it's it needs to be completely ground up removed

128and resurfaced with do it new asphalt that this price that I have for 131 700 includes the entire side parking lot the dumpster pad that's crumbled the back lot and the emergency access points around the building from the side lot around back to the other side of the building that also includes the line striping as well the next year if you see I've added Monies to save up for the next four five years to that would be used to complete the front lawn the front lot never had the water damage as a result of the underground Stream So that lock can we can we can make that lot stretch out another five years I can just add testimony to the side lot where I don't know how many people got hurt over there I mean

129seriously hurt because when the water was leaking in the parking lot and it iced over I had broken bones or ankles or something like that it was on more than one staff member um does any of this include the parking uh enlargement the back the back parking lot I asked them to stripe out for parking for the uh for the cafeteria staff so it would add actually at this point that one that job right off the bat would add 10 10 parking spots the front lot we have to we'll have to address that one when the time comes for it was that part of the um any of the upgrades from previously that we asked for a larger park or I guess it was during the consolidation it was brought up we never upgraded the

130parking over there I know you did but wasn't that brought up during the consolidation of the middle schools yes um that got kicked to the curb or never funded or what have you didn't get funded are there studies that um or was there a study done at the time that showed what we would need to I mean it's already like preliminary plans of what would be done over the front staff lot you'd have to get an engineered study to see the staff level at this point we're 100 capacity uh there's a hundred parking spots and there's 100 staff members there I know and and often they park on the grass yeah and uh and God forbid uh you have a presentation in the auditorium or the gym of a basketball game or a play um

131or on back to school nights or whatever just you know it makes for a challenge so um if going forward with this I'd like to see something more than just a resurface and if there could I know obviously add additional costs but um there's a need to expand that parking lot if possible okay I also before our next meeting I'd like to get an aerial uh kind of like a Google they can just show us show what's going to be done sure what's going to be done and just shoot it out to all of them too so there's there's still a drainage issue there it's still no it's going to fix that no we fixed that that's already been fixed it's just been got damaged from it being so much it was 20 years please

132yeah so 20 years of water percolating up through the asphalt got it the hydrostatic pressure was unbelievable just for an added comment was I forgot who it was I think she might be the current vice principal there that she parked her car in that side Lot and she got out and then the car started sliding and instead of getting the heck out of the way she tried to stop it from sliding I'm like get away from that car it's like you're not going to be stopping the car so um yeah it's definitely it was an issue and thankfully it's resolved any questions on the capital Improvement plan so take take it home study it uh ask questions send questions to Marianne please and hopefully this process helps better you know like Clarity and hopefully you'll

133be uh have all your questions answered before our next meeting where you need to approve it so we can present it to the board of Finance question again the process was so new to us last year yes sir um do we next month do modifications to it if if board members so desire um such as subtracting or deleting or anything that would correct so correct and um will it be like a historical presentation maybe of what we've presented to the bof before and you know maybe over the five years and and uh you know I mean we can send you the last uh so column that the one that uh Peter was trying to cover was the last approved sip uh so that gives you one year and if you asking we can send you

134the last four other years you mean something like that just I mean sure last year we what do we request you know did we request 3 million last year or 5 million last year and they gave us 1.5 yeah it's it's right there isn't that no that's just what was approved to 1.5 million oh God yeah but that that's what was adopted yeah that wasn't what was asked for so we can we can probably pull for the record for the last uh four years if you don't mind and then we'll send you a total of five right that's the ask if that's I mean I've never done this before maybe at least it would have you know you know the second time going through this and if we've gotten any uh feedback or direction from

135the board of finance of uh what they're I know we don't like it when they give us Direction like that of what they're looking for but yeah our job is to present what the needs are for the schools and the kids and their job to tell us we don't have the money so I I would I would like always and then this is on you know you know I always like to present the need the actual need and we need to tell them what is needed from our perspective because we understand the schools and we understand the needs for the kids and the staff and it's their duty to say we do you know that food distribution duty is responsible for the money cash right so let them tell us they don't have the money

136uh other questions on sip next item on our agenda is the monthly reports any questions on the monthly reports all right um next item we have two two more items comments and then we're gonna go in an executive session so comments from uh board members I'm all set I I have a comment yes ma'am um we've hit a year mark of working together as a board which is kind of washing over me right now um so I wanted to take this moment uh to provide an opportunity as I'm gathered with my fellow board members um but also the community at large to personally affirm my commitment to the duties of the board to our bylaws to the scope of our mission I think it's important for me to be able to to share that with

137you all that um I take my duty and my role very seriously and as we hit this one year mark wanting to be able to publicly affirm that and and commit that to to you all to operate Within the bounds of our bylaws and that I look forward to our board moving into year two and the work that we will continue to be collectively doing together so thank you chairman for your leadership over the last year leading four of us to this place that we are right now and I I look forward to how I can continue to learn and grow and do better through your leadership any other codes all right um the uh Heidi yeah all right I ask a motion to move into an executive closed session to discuss personal matters discussing

138regarding health related extended leave requests and I asked to include in that motion the invitation to our superintendent of schools Alicia and Tim as well makes the party bigger second second all those in favor hi hi that was unanimous we're back Mr Kelly um the extended medical leave for two staff members second all in favor of suspending the agenda to add an item to approve extended leave aye all right motions and passes his emotion on the floor is there second second any discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor of please indicate by saying aye aye that was unanimous thank you Craig um all right so motion passes next item on our agenda is the German motion to adjourn the meeting motion to adjourn second all those in favor please indicator by saying

139aye aye that was enough