001All right, it is 6:32 p.m. and I'd like to call the Stonington Board of Education uh regular meeting to order, April 24th. And next item on our agenda is pledge of allegiance. And I'll ask uh Mr. Kelly to lead us. We pledge allegiance. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is communication recognition. I'll turn it over to our superintendent schools. Um, I first wanted to just recognize um some emails that I've received from uh Deans Mill parents. I'm looking at Jen over there. Um, kindergarten parents new to our district that um had expressed some concerns about the the meal program. Um, we've made some adjustments. Uh, Stephanie's been uh very accommodating and I have uh had some several phone calls with them and I have an additional upcoming meeting with three of the parents. So,
002we look forward to coming to some agreement and some uh forward motion on that. Um, as far as recognitions, I have quite a few tonight. First of all, I'd like to um address board priority number one, which is academics and um and recognize our our five uh merit scholars from uh Stonington High School, Norah Fanning, Sophie Hearn, U Micah, Mika, sorry, Corn Cornick, Finn Meadows, and Michelle Rodriguez. I'd also have two recognitions uh that address board priority three which is family engagement and community engagement. Um on Saturday uh Miss Dah's favorite uh activity that she'll be hosting is the uh the athletic hall of fame induct induction ceremony and we have uh six different recognitions that will be happening uh on Saturday afternoon. Uh Elizabeth Morrison, class of 2014, Zack Porer from class of 2014.
003Shelley Armstrong Ozane from the class of 1985. Homer Trip from the class of 1939. Mike Crowley, it just says SHS contributor. And then the entire 2001 cross country championship team will be recognized as the latest inductees. That's always a fun event. Um it's nicely catered and uh Alicia does a beautiful job as a hostess. I also want to thank and recognize um Anne Feay Sullivan, the West Vine Street assistant principal, and Bethany Wagner, our human resources manager. Earlier this month, they represented our our district um at the Safe Futures Tree of Hope event where they helped um alongside 10 different Stonington employees, including the first select woman, to put together um a mural for Safe Futures new facility. Each of them painted a tile that will be part of um a 500 t tile um
004total mural that will be in the foyer of the center that helps victims of abuse access immediate uh life-saving services at their new location in Waterford. So, thank you so much for representing us. And then, um finally, I'd like to thank our food service director, Stephanie Dies. She took time out over her vacation um to tour the Stonington kelp farm uh ocean farm. uh and they are a partner with us on the hash Connecticut for for Connecticut's kids grants program um that we are participating in and it supports local consumption of local kelp and so look forward more information about local kelp coming to our school cafeterias and uh very soon we'll be keeping our smoothies smooth with some local kelp. So that's it for this this month. Thank you Chris. Good. Yeah, I'd be
005remiss. Um, I was uh reading emails that we've gotten plenty of today concerning the proposed cuts to the budget. Um, I just wanted to recognize the fact that I all the board members received an email from Alyssa Chikoria, John Swenon, Ryan and Gina Williams, uh, Elizabeth Hughes, Mr. Hillby, former music teacher in this building. Deb Teresi, Markeel Riggs, Diane Marajano, Larry Sheay, Ray Jones, Elizabeth or E. Mercer, Aaron and Matt Mercer, Heidi Zap Frier, Emily Mcclanahan, Lori Jones, Andrew Kahinsky, Cormarmac Ali, Diana Nasser, Lois Lewis, Ayavino, Jennifer Crowley, Fe Cory, Tom Foley, Harriet Stin, and um just so they know that we received their emails, we've read their emails and we value their input and we may or may not get to respond to all of them individually but um all the information that they
006provide us is uh very important and uh I don't know between those emails and when I was picking out my shirt tonight I was looking for the address shirt in the closet and I ended up finding this Stonington shirt that has music stuff on the back. Um, so I will be up here advocating always to maintain our music program in our school and I hope our our budget reflects that. So, um that and I've been able to attend a few uh events at the high school with the weather turning nice finally and the fields being uh used for baseball and all sorts of other sports. So, um that's all I have for communications. Thank you, sir. Just to echo Dan's um comments, numerous emails from families and community members about the music cuts. I haven't
007been able to read most of them because I came from my regular job here, but I will read them tonight. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And uh we'll we'll be discussing um you know the the budget uh from the superintendent and the director of finance uh shortly but um there'll be no action taken on that tonight. This is just a review process but we appreciate the input. Um, next item on our agenda is uh board presentation and we'll start with the solar incentive program with Alan SS and uh go I'm just going to do a quick introduction and because I'm not sure if everybody was here the first time Alan was on site. So Allan is from commercial S solar works. He is a company who we have uh partnered with to bring solar to
008Stonington schools. Um, we're at the point now where Allan's come up with some designs and he's going to obviously make a presentation to the board tonight. Um, just to review the the proposed solar installation and also are looking for our commitment to move forward with the NRES program um, which is a commitment to Eversource to let us build a solar installation within X amount of time at the schools. Does that make sense? Okay, it does. Thank you, Al. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, um I was here I think already twice. This may be the third time. Not sure. Maybe the twi the second time. I'm not sure. But in any event, when I was here last time went over in terms of an overview of the program and some conceptual designs uh on each
009of the school properties. The goal tonight is to go over a short list of those and a proposed path forward. So hopefully this works. There we go. We're good. Okay. So, as a review, um I won't bore everyone with every bullet point, but as Steve alluded to, ultimately what we're talking about is uh participating in what is referred to as the NRES program in the state of Connecticut, which is the non-residential renewable energy solutions program. Within the NRES program starting this year, can really everyone can focus on the gray box. That's really what matters here is within the ENRES program. Starting in February 2025, there was a new carveout for public school participation. Historically, schools were competing against shopping centers and anywhere else commercial solar made sense. But due to legislature mandates, there was a
010carveout within the ENRES program specifically for public school participation. And in addition to that, uh, schools don't really compete with one another. You're really competing on a are you prepared to submit standpoint and not necessarily on price. So as long as the application is complete and succinct, there is a rolling application process and first thing gets awarded and so on and so on until the annual allocation is fulfilled. Uh and that's really what we're talking about here tonight. Um so just to highlight uh and we had talked about this last time as well the path that is under consideration is going through the DAS OCGNR the office of school construction grant and review process and what that ultimately means is as you can see in the top right hand corner it's a direct ownership type
011of project meaning that the town of St uh Stonington VOE put the funds together go through a process of securing a grant through DAS OCGNR uh through the state reimbursement process top left top right is uh also going through and you'll notice in the bottom of that blue uh rectangle in red that at the moment this uh program is available to not forprofits and municipalities ities and board of educations which is essentially another form of reimbursement for the project cost. Um it is prospectively at risk like many things are at the moment due to reconciliation at the federal level. Um I don't have any other insight other than that at the moment. Uh but those two are primary cost offsets to this model being an owned project as well as participating in the NRES school
012program which allows the ability for the project to participate uh in what is referred to as net metering. Meaning when a project produces electricity and it produces more than what is needed, there's an opportunity to essentially bank that benefit and use it later. Uh and then lastly in the yellow rectangle is a cost offset going the other way which if it goes this route, the board of education would be the bearer of cost to maintain that project. So, we would encourage you, not being us, to secure a contractor that would review the project, monitor the project, perform uh preventive maintenance for that project, and then also go out and correct any issues that may happen through the course of ownership. So, in summary, the ownership model there is a the the way that it typically
013works is raise the money do the project, finish the project, be reimbursed through the state, be reimbursed through the federal government, utilize the project for what it's intended to offset electricity on site, and then in each of those subsequent years, there is some outlay of cost to have a contractor maintain that project on your behalf. So with all that said, here's a a condensed overview. So what we reviewed were the project inputs. So the electricity cost obviously varies by school usage profile usage cost. Uh we entered a conservative estimate of 3% per year as an annual increase of electricity. And then again as I mentioned in the prior slide there uh are reimbursements that come back at 32.14% which is the reimbursement rate for Stonington through DAS as well as a 30% direct pay which
014is the federal government reimbursement as well. Um and then again future monitoring and equipment replacement as needed. And then to the right just highlighting that the risk factors associated with this model mean paying 100% of the project cost upfront uh as well as any relative project development risk whether that be utility interconnection or any other associated project related costs as well as those ongoing maintenance and any replacement costs. Lastly being the direct pay which is that federal government uh reimbursement program. So with all of that uh we narrowed the list to two schools. School number one is Deans Mill and school number one or number two rather is West Vine. And just to highlight uh both of them have the same if not very similar what we call effective utility rates which are which is
015essentially what the school is paying as a price per kilowatt hour. Uh and then what we found was an opportunity on the parcel to create a conceptual design that would offset 100% of that usage profile based on the historical usage that we were able to collect. So to the left is a conceptual design. Those blue squares or rectangles represent where the solar would or could go and to the right is a roll up or financial perform which highlights the you know what the benefits look like over the course of 20 years. So first row obviously is the year. Second row would be or column rather would be the effective rate which is the starting off rate at year one plus a 3% annual increase per year over the 20 years. The kilowatt hours produced from
016that conceptual design. A slight degradation because the components start to degrade every year. So you'll notice that the energy production goes down each year over the 20 years as well as a conservative uh assessment if you will or estimate of maintenance cost relative to the project. And then the benefit which is essentially the savings which is effective rate times kilowatt hours minus maintenance. So, scrolling all the way down, uh, roughly $200,000 to maintain the system and roughly $2.3 million in electricity savings over 20 years. Secondly is West Vine. Uh, same proforma table on the right. I won't bore you with the math again, but essentially slightly larger system, so slightly larger maintenance costs. We can round that up to say $250,000 over the course of 20 years and about $2.6 million in annualized benefits over
017the course of 20 years. Here is a you know rollup of both of those projects. Um just to walk you through left to right we have each school we have the 100% offset scenario. the cost worth mentioning. DAS would like to see what we would refer to as like an MSRP number. So that number is a very high cost estimate because DAS really wants you to go to them once with a cost and not go to them again if the costs go up. So think of this as you know what would be the absolute top or highest amount. And then the reimbursement is simply 30% plus 32.14%. So 62.14% in reimbursement. And then the financial benefit as mentioned prior minus the maintenance costs equal the net amount in terms of the associated next steps. Our
018recommendation. So the gray box there would be to secure the school incentive or the school um ENRES uh allocation and to the right of that is a not to exceed of $25,000 per school and the reason being is there are third-party costs associated with securing this uh the NRES program. Uh in addition worth noting the first bullet point that securing this NRES about 8,000 or so depending on the final size of the project is reimburseable to the school upon completion. This is what's referred to as a performance assurance per the program which basically creates skin in the game for Stonington to you know basically put money up to Eversource to say we intend to do this project and when that project is complete Eversource returns that that money. So first step being secure the incentive
019or secure the NRES and then separately you'll see the the below are other paths for projects but the bottom path is what we're talking about tonight which is the DAS path forward aka direct ownership here for questions. I have one. Even though we met, I'm over here. Even though we met this morning, I have a question. Um, so regardless of whether we go direct ownership or PBA, the first step is NRA. Yeah. Right. So no matter what, we can't no matter what the board eventually decides on, no matter what, this is the first step of it. Exactly. So think of securing the NRES is getting buying the vehicle and then eventually as more discussions happen there's a fork in the road where you can make a decision by you I mean everyone the decision of
020we'd rather go third party ownership or we'd rather go direct ownership you pick that path and if you were were under the guise of securing as direct ownership but if you wanted to go the path of third party ownership transfer the NRES. Whoever the third party owner would be, they would receive that NRES and they would ultimately own the project. So what the board would be committing to at this juncture would just be to move it forward, not ultimately what it looks like in the end. So exactly. And once we get that NRA appro uh approval, how long is that good for? It's a threeyear. So secure in this year 2025 you have three years to complete that project. Three years like to the month of depending on when the agreement is created by Eversource
021it would be three years from that date. Okay. Why two schools? Sorry. Why two schools? Why not? Uh it seemed more pragmatic to have a conversation about a path forward being DAS ownership and limiting it to the schools that actually made sense to do that with the others. There may be potential, but it seemed like it would be too much to try to explain all of that here and the different paths and what that looks like and securing NRES for all of them. I'm I'm happy to bore everyone here and probably run the risk of overexlaining, but it just made sense, I thought, to only talk to the two. So, you can add absolutely later on. It's per school and NRES would be associated to every meter andor parcel under consideration. And we, you know,
022one of the one of the times you came down here, you also um had a proposal on one location supplying, you know, net metering the all the district. Is that out? No, it's not out. So that would be more of like a virtual net metering project. And again at risk of losing the audience I didn't want to talk through seven you know five different options but yes that option is absolutely available and um and in a virtual net mirroring option uh we're able to include all schools right and expand and would that project cost us less because we're doing one site I I recognizing that panels cost and all that but having one location you can actually do both you can do Dean's Mill and West Vine and still do virtual net metering and realize
023benefits from two different project paths. So you could take uh sorry I'm not trying to take all the hard questions but but if you take Dean Mill and expand on it because of the uh land access there can we can we virtual net meter Deans Mill? I I don't remember the school in particular that was under consideration. I just remember someone Was it Deansville? Yes. Where it was more in the back and there was a board member that lived near it if I remember. No, that's West Y. West. Okay. Uh Deans Mill were somewhat limited. There's not much more that can go there. It's that other school that would probably be more in consideration for a virtual net metering project because it would be able to have so much more capacity and so much more
024production. Um I'm not good in math that good in math but like looking at your numbers that you just went through the slides. It's about eight years uh ROI. Is that accurate with uh probably yeah I would say that that's probably on average we've done we're close to somewhere around 20 of these types of projects across the state and I would say it really depends per meter per effective rate per cost if it's on the roof if it's on the ground etc but I would say that's probably in range and uh 20 years or 25 years is still the estimated lifespan of those panels. So, they've gone up. Typically, the warranties are 25 to 30 years now, but they're there estimates that it could go as far out as 35 years. And uh will those
025panels be uh you know, is there manufacturer in this side of the the pond that does Yeah. Yeah. That's quite a bit of what's actually been happening is a lot more onshoring of module manufacturing here in light of actually the the program that we tal or that I mentioned here that 30% also incentivized offshore manufacturers to onshore manufacturing for modules and other components. So yes, sure. Thank you. Any questions question? I thought Steve was going to jump in. Looks like he was getting antsy over there. Um he was like on on Jeopardy ready to push the button. And um thank you Steve for bringing this forward. I believe it was initially his idea. I'm not sure if uh giving credit to the right person. Um now is this a I mean from what you presented
026is it a no-brainer um financially and what are the risk of uh financial risk of committing when we do commit down the line if we do commit. And then um you know I mean what are the are we going to lose money in the in the at a high risk factor and if something came down from the federal government that says uh solar panels are bad oil is good um would we uh be in trouble? All all great questions. So I would say number one as highlighted there is absolutely a risk for what is called the direct pay or elective pay through the IRS as mentioned earlier securing the NRES is really the vehicle to get started and in the event that that happens and it gets repealed later this year then the project shifts
027and it goes to a third party ownership model and you're protected and you really you haven't lost anything because ultimately what we would recommend is any costs that you have out now we would support in going out to a competitive bid process and just include any of the costs associated to that point into the RFP so that you get recouped that money. So that would be one way to you know find yourself whole again. Number two is um there's um so so that's one. Number two, sorry I lost my train of thought. Um number two is DAS they're not going to I mean they'll change their reimbursement rate but it likely won't go too far up or down. Uh and then the other I just remember what it was. The other is uh one of
028the requirements is submitting an interconnection application upfront as part of the NRES application. So one of the perspective risk factors is the utility comes back and they say it's going to cost throwing out a number $10 million to do the upgrades. Well, at that point you're not too far into the project where you're saying to yourself, my gosh, we're so far in. Should we consider that instead you're in early enough that you'll have that in front of you, you'll have that information and you can make a decision at that point. Is that hopefully I just would be anxious and and you know one reason why I don't have solar on my house is just you know the cost versus the return I guess and I just would have to you know acting on on the
029board for the school system is you know I don't want I want to make sure that we're not cost potentially costing the board and the school system money and and uh you I mean, the it looks great from that. The returns look great and it looks like a no-brainer. So, um I guess I'd be, you know, anxious to move forward. Thank you. Okay. I I don't even know who my questions are for, so I'm just going to ask them. And I don't know if it's Steve, Alicia, Marian, um or I'm sure you can help, too. But I am a newborn baby when it comes to solar panels. Um, so, uh, Alicia, can you refresh my memory? What we've done so far with this project has been zero dollars, right? Correct. Okay. What we're voting on
030tonight, if I'm understanding slide, of course, the numbers are gone. It's after the next step slide. Um, it's uh securing school NRES is not to exceed 25,000 per school. We're doing two schools, so that's 50K max. 8,000 is returned. Is that total or per school? Uh, per school. Okay. So, is this the maximum cost of what we're voting on tonight is 32,000? Well, the 8,000 would only come back if we went forward with the project. So, that's like the the safety net for the is it Eversource? So, that's the safety net for Eversource to know that we have intention of potentially moving it forward. If I may just also add every every dollar that is spent on the project that goes through if it went through DAS and went through the ownership process, it is
031reimbursed at that 62.14%. So even what is considered here tonight is also reimburseable through the state. Okay. with the estimates that you have per school on there. Um maybe you know the answer to this. Uh the costs um is the unknowns of like the department of ed and any reimbursements and programs there um factored into those costs at all or like what might be the impact of that? Do we do you have any idea? No. Uh, I mean, DAS is 32.14% of the 62.14%. So, it's like a construction grant almost. It's It's that same. It's totally separate, right? But it it it works in in a similar way as construction grants. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it's that that same reimbursement rate that comes back to us. So, that I think is a is a
032safe reimbursement number. It's the 30% federal that we should be nervous about. That's IRS. That's IRS. The 32.14% is the same reimbursement you get if you put air conditioning in a building. And Steve, you're obviously a little more versed about this than I am, but nonsolar, any sort of capital improvements that go through the state, solar is exactly the same reimbursement. Can it? So the the that direct pay that Allan keeps bringing up is um payment to us. It's a non we don't pay taxes. It's a direct pay from the the government or the IRS to the the installer of the system. So if that falls off the question Alan had brought it up in the presentation that at that minute we stop and that and we say well it's not worth owning it because
033that loss of say $300,000 or $400,000 lowers our payback to such a long time that we're not interested. it in the other side of it. You've still got the business version where if it's a company or a commercial company who may opt to jump to a PPA, they've still got the realization of of writing that off. They've got losses. They've got like the long they they've got commercial ways to to incentivize that program that we don't have because we are not a taxpaying company. So that that at that point we would consider like this is not the right move because of the loss of funding from direct pay. We'll go to a PPA where they can claim what is it? What is it? What am I looking for? It's not they're looking for the they
034can write the losses off on the system over the years that they have it and they get tax incentives based on that. It's got nothing to do with direct pay. Does that make sense? Yeah, I got you. And before we were so lucky to have you here, Steve, uh, in Stunnington, did you have a system like this at your previous professional life? 100%. Yes. And I installed it. And Allan was actually the person who um worked with is and he was phenomenal in that. And that's the reason he's standing there. Okay. Cuz it did not go good. I'll be honest. not financially just working with the vendors and how they tried to descale what our projected system was and and there is another side to this when we move forward. We'll go out to bid
035to get a vendor installed and that's part of Allen's job as well. He also monitors the company, does the make sure the vendor sticks to the original plan. what's installed is what was speced and there's no deviations in that plan because it that part was it took a while. So yeah. Um it just there's not many no-brainers uh that we do with um so this one seems like a no-brainer. So I'm just trying to find like anything I don't know and I mean as much and the other thing you brought up the question the only other reason we we kept it at two schools at this point the high school's land limited I mean there's not a lot of land so we're replacing the the roof in approximately 2 years. The consideration is we might
036end up doing roof solar or roof half solar. So that one is coming down the pike. Um and then uh um right now just between what's going on at both middle schools, we're just holding on that until we move forward. We have decision on that. And uh I I'm I'm a big fan of buying solar like purchasing the system not buying another not a third party because of that life expectancy of those panels and it keeps improving you know you hit that your ROI year and and even if you lose the 30% IRS so the ROI is 12 years 13 years then after that it's free money right so you know I am very supportive of buying the system you There is no risk. Uh there's zero risk really even if you if you say
037tomorrow like we changed our mind and you can go out and you can sell it and companies will buy it. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. I would say to highlight to low light the biggest risk factor is the direct pay. Won't sugar cook that. Yeah. Even if you cut the benefit, proposed benefit over 20 years in half. And even if you doubled the maintenance cost over 20 years, that's still about a million dollars over 20 years. Uh which is about 50k a year. Maybe this is a bad time for this joke, but like that's a music teacher. Um so like again, seems like a no-brainer. So I Okay, I think I think I'm good. At the other point, if we actually manage to consume you produce all the power in that we're consuming at the buildings electrically,
038we would be a carbon neutral building for both buildings, which is another thought on what we've all been talking about is the environment and actually producing our own power on site. So, and just on that, um, as I mentioned earlier, we've supported dozen, well over a dozen of these. And what we've also included as part of the process is that the contractor install a kiosk TV in a sort of more main uh lobby if you will that highlights all the associated production. what it means from an environmental standpoint as well as uh several of the contractors have historically have and we would expect the same offered to bring students up educate them on the process the installation what it all means what it all does so there is also that ancillary benefit as well Kevin
039just to clarify the one I've done in the past was a PPA it wasn't a purchase just to make that Now I'll go. So I see we're it's it's it's a three-year timeline is what you predict. All things it's three years that the NRES or the Eversource Eversource allows three years from the start of securing the NRES to it needing to be completed. And where do we Steve fall in that or or where would where would our our our our budget slash spending start finish timeline fall within that confidence? I I I think for us is once we make this commitment it would be the support for the funding would be the biggest hurdle to moving forward. So once we get a commitment to moving forward, I would say duty complications in the last set
040and it was a ground mount system. It took about 2 years. It should have been done in a year, but it took about 2 years start to finish um for to install that system. Yeah. One big but it was a lot bigger. It was actually almost the same size as these combined. So it was about 3 acres. just interject because it's DAS there's a lot of back and forth with DAS where they want to review the plans and they want to approve it and improve the they call it project manual but the RFP to go out so even though that should have taken two years I would conservatively say closer to a year and a half maybe two if going the DAS route the total project amount that we would have to commit to before
041the reimbursement. Is that all due upfront? It is. I was thinking there's bonds where you can pull the money down later so that you're not paying any interest on it. But doesn't Eversource pay their portion directly to the not for this type of arrangement? What's their turnaround time to pay you back the 32? Uh, so DAS being DAS, it's kind of a wild card, but I would say months upon completion. Both the direct pay IRS and DAS are reimburseable, if you will, upon completion. So, um, we're helping Straford right now. They've done five of these, uh, types of scenarios. We're helping them submit and secure through the IRS and it's taken, you know, weeks slash months just to get through the application process. And the your your fee is that in the project, middle project,
042advance in the project and also reimburseable as well, but it's is it in advance of the project? No. No. No. as it progresses. If it progresses then Okay. So, you're really just voting on 6,000 $16,000, right? So, uh would you like to make a motion? when would we need to I mean write the check the $16,000 when you apply I assume to I took to Eversource. Uh so what we would do is so part of this is we would have to bring in a third party engineer to because part of the application requires a an interconnection application which requires a third party stamp. So what we showed today is conceptual. So we would have to work with them, look at some of the site parameters, narrow that down to what could actually what would happen
043and then that starts to determine what the ultimate price is, which is why it's not to exceed. It would be this fiscal year and I'm confident in that happening. I have no concerns. Thank you. That was my real question. So, I'd like to propose a resolution to engage CSW Energy LLC to apply to the Eversource School Solar Incentive Program and to submit an interconnection application as uh contemplated by the letter of intent approved by the Stonington Board of Education January 9th, 2025 and entered into by Stoning Public Schools and CSW Energy LLC and Cle Sustainability Advisors LLC. On that same date, the Stonington Board of Education hereby moves to authorize the superintendent of schools and or the director of operations facility CSSW for the purpose of assisting Stonington public schools and the Stonington Board of
044Education in the following clean energy initiatives. securing one securing state clean energy incentive from Eversource for school-based solar projects under the non-residential renewable energy solutions NRES school program for potential solar projects at Stonington public schools locations to be determined by the superintendent director of operational facilities and two submitting on behalf of Stonington public schools ston board of education interconnection applications to Eversource for the solar projects at Stonington public schools location is to be determined by the superintendent director of operational facilities. The cost of this engagement between Stonington public schools and CSW shall not exceed $25,000 per solar project inclusive of the performance assurance fees due to ever source to skew the NRES school program incentives. uh the development of professional engineering stamped interconnection design sets structural engineer audits if necessary and the application fee due
045to ever source associated with the interconnection applications. Sorry for the longest resolution ever. It's not I've read long. If you're free tonight we've got a few of them. Uh is there a second to that? Second. All right. Um any discussion? All those in favor please indicate by saying I. I. I. Anyone against? And any abstension? All right. That was unanimous for the record. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your time. Thank you all. Next item on our agenda is a budget presentation summary by our superintendent school and Alicia Supreme, director of financing. the main event main event. So, first of all, I'd like to thank all of the staff members and the family members who have um supported us at the board of finance meetings over the last several weeks. Your presence really helped um helped at
046least boost us um and give us confidence that we have your backing. Um it wasn't the result that we were hoping for, but uh it certainly could have been worse as well. Um, so I'd like to remind everybody here that this body is not responsible for the $750,000 cut um to the budget. Uh, threequarters of a million dollars is a lot. Um, the good news is this is just our current thinking. This is not up for a board vote right now. We really wanted to work with the principles and get their thinking around um you know what they envision as an opportunity to not only use this challenge but to be to to minimize the impact to our staff but also to maybe take advantage of doing some creative thinking and move forward uh in
047a future focused manner. Um so that's that's that is what kind of um I wanted to frame our presentation with that. The good news is with this plan, no employee is going to lose their job. People may be moved around. There may be some new positions and new opportunities, but nobody is going to be getting laid off. And again, that was one of our major concerns um moving forward. Alicia and I are going to go rather informally back and forth through these slides. Our we have a quite a few administrators here tonight who are going to speak to some of the talking points that we know are of great concern to the public. um from their lens uh and from their view not only through certain programming but through the holistic pro programming as we
048look at it from a K through 12 offering. So thank you administrators for spending the evening with us. Just to be clear, is this on? Just to be clear because there is an item on the agenda later for non-renewals. And I just want to make sure everybody understands, we do a non-renewal for a certified teacher even if we told them at the beginning this is a temporary position because they're filling in for somebody who's out for the year from maternity or that type of thing. So, we still follow the same protocols regardless. So the first slide is just to kind of refresh your memory on where we were with the presentations and we know that there was a little bit of flux in there because we had that insurance increase. Um but basically we came
049forward with a an an ask of you know 6.4 6% would just give us taking everything what we have in place right now and moving it forward to next year. Um and then we presented a 6.82 82 with the minimal request, the improvement requests that the principles asked for. And again, it was really, you saw that list, it was not a heavy lift or a big ask on their part. Um, we came forward with landing on that 6.6% increase with the the budget that became the board of education's budget that was presented to the board of finance that was drastically reduced down to that 4.94%. And so that tells you that when you look at what we have now and you look at those numbers of percent increases, something has to go. And that's it's
050usually people unfortunately. Um and what we've looked at in this particular model is reducing positions, but because of uh retirements and resignations. Uh we luckily don't have to lay anybody off. So we're going to go through what the the kind of highlevel thinking is at this point. You're going to notice that as we go through these slides, we're not necessarily mentioning grade levels or specific buildings, and that's because some of these positions that are going to be created um would be open to a K a person with a K through six certification. Um and so that we we expect that there the vacancies that we have um are not the only ones that might develop as this process unfolds should you give the nod to this plan as we move forward. This will make more
051sense once we kind of go through the talking points. So when overall what we're reducing is 4.6 positions. Okay? So not people but positions that are not impacting folks right now. Um the net the net reduction is a 4.2 and that's because we're granting in this plan Mr. uh Parkinson's request to take a part-time reading teacher and make that a full-time position at the middle school. So again, we're those those are the total positions, teaching positions that are being um eliminated. That includes in addition to the teaching positions, we're looking at eliminating a half half-time uh custodial position here at district office, reducing that those hours um from like 2 to 6:00. So, central office will now close at 6:00. Any any outside organization that wants to use the facility after that will have to
052pay as part of the usage fees um for custodial services should they want to do that as part of the the rental fees. We're also taking a look at um or the the principles actually did all the work here. They shuffled the priorities within their buildings in order to ensure that their improvement requests were maintained at least at some level if it not at a full level. Um for example, you know, Jeff wanted that that teaching position. What he came to the table with were some other things. Alicia wanted her uh marketing video. Um she scraped up some other, you know, field trip money and things like that to make that happen. Uh so it was really about about the principles coming to the table and looking at the money that they had in hand
053to repri pre rep prioritize things. We also are contemplating eliminating the magnet school transportation bus. That would save us over $70,000. We have very very few families. I think it's two families uh Steve that are taking advantage of that in inconsistently. Um, and remember that Learn does have a hub in town, so it won't be as convenient for those families who want to take advantage of the magnet school uh offerings, but um they're not left out completely in the cold. And it if it can help our kids that are in our schools, I think that's a an an easy decision to make. We had um a decrease in the addition of a co-op athletic um request. Uh Mr. Marone wanted an additional $2,000 and so we just eliminated his uh increased request, but there is
054still a line item I think that has $2,000 in it. Something like that. I just want to be clear at the athletic committee we talked about there's the swim co-op has a $2,000 budget. Um but there's there's other requests and the the numbers of enrollment for these different um sports increases and decreases every year. So, we decided to put an extra 2,000 into that line and to call it co-op instead of swim. Um, and so it's it went from two to four and now it's back to two. And it makes more sense because those co-ops are very fluid. We see kids interest in different sports switch rather quickly and in in dramatic swings. And so now that we educated ourselves through the athletic committee this year on teams of one and two co-op teams and
055cooperative teams and uh we have a better handle on the configuration of uh of where that where that funding should be and what we should label it as in the in the budget itself. And then the final one that I know everybody is um concerned about is the restructuring of music options at the middle school. I mean at the elementary school, I'm sorry. um and we're going to address how we want to um move forward with that and you will hear adnauseium from the principles on the music program at the elementary school. So, let's go through school by school and Alicia feel free to chime in. I know you're kind of shy about doing that. So, I just wanted to invite you at any chance that you wanted to add um to to the the
056rationale here, feel free to. So, Alicia came to the table with um feeling pretty confident that she can eliminate a part-time mathematics position at the the high school. Remember that we're we're decreasing the enrollment at the high school by about 50 students next year. Keep that in mind. Um a reduction of $10,000 of her $20,000 because FRU gave her an extra 10. It's back to the original amount. Um but we we have some connections so we believe we can we can help her if she needs a little bit more um out of this year's money probably. Uh she also reduced field trip transportation by six over $6,000 uh supplies and equipment by two and then again that's where the the co-op funding line was 4,000 that's reduced by two. So that's what Miss Daw brought
057to the table to help us out. So thank you Alicia. Do you want to add anything? So just for those listening at home, they couldn't hear uh the Alicia wants to reassure everybody that the 6 FTE math reduction will not damage class sizes. The class sizes will still remain under 20. I just got a question. So, what what's 6 mean? What what why is it a point6? So, we have some teachers who work um so it's it's one FTE is a full and somebody who works less than a full-time load is a 6 or a point 4 or because I've seen.5s in the in the past. It's the first time I saw 6. Got it. It's just the amount of classes that they take on. Right. Okay. And this is someone Is it someone retiring
058that you're not bringing back on or or how does how does it uh full-time? Got it. Okay. Makes sense. But but someone else is retiring. There's movement somewhere else. Yes. There's going to be, that's why we're trying to be pretty gen general, Chris, about this because there's going to be a lot of movement depending on who wants to go where. I mean, we have requests already for people who want to move from one building to the other, one level to another. And then on top of that, when we have vacancies that naturally occur, people want to go there. And then when we have new positions that are going to be pretty interesting, well, who knows how many applicants we're going to get and people of interest there. So, it's a it's going to be a
059dynamic spring and summer no matter what. Got it. Makes sense. The next slide will um Mr. Parkinson uh we took a look at instead of eliminating an entire team of teachers um is going to take a look at getting um two core T area teachers core meaning uh a science, mathematics, social studies or uh science teacher um reducing those positions. Also reducing an art teacher. We do again have a vacancy at one of our elementary schools. So again, we're not getting rid of an art teacher, the art teacher will just move um to a different building. Um and then some printing and binding and equipment money as well, just to kind of everybody, you can see when we get down to printing and equipment, any any dollar helps the cause. And again, those two core
060area teacher positions that are getting eliminated. Remember, I'm I'm coming to the point of we are going to be creating some new positions. So hold on to that thought. And we'll go down to our elementarymentaries. Oh, Jeff, I'm sorry. Did you want to add anything, [Music] Jeff? There's going to be an increase in classes. Those would occur in the location where we adjusted the teaching. So that's relying on movement. So for example, we were lo says at a level science class sizes. However, with this opens up in our limited space support spaces, which means less of the reliance on the team teaching model right now, which would have like a class, for example, that had two and a half teachers and 24 students, that's no longer a necessity. So, we'll have a bit of a
061trade-off there in terms of class sizes. So in actuality of all the class sizes would change very now that can be a little misleading though because teacher to student ratio will change that would increase to that that's fluid because we don't really know what specific position. So um you know in terms of the impact on class sizes I think it's just been a little and we'll take it down to the elementary schools. We had a resignation um our instrumental music teacher um resigned and so you're going to see at both elementary schools a reduction of a half of a full-time music teacher. Um but stay tuned because we have a plan for that. So don't panic. Um and then a a slight reduction at Deans Mill for field trip transportation. um some assumptions of savings
062because of these retirements that are happening are obviously people who have been with us for a very long time and are are at the top of the payment scale. Um so that's an assumption that we're making. Um and again at West Vine you see the the mirror of the music reduction and then an a reduction in enrichment offerings at West Fine Street School. So what we're thinking is of um of supplementing that instrumental loss in the school day with a program after school which would be accompanied by um late bus transport ta late bus transportation so that it would eliminate the barrier for students who want to take instrumental classes um they would have transportation um provided to them as we have late buses that will just cycle back um from the secondary schools. So,
063we're thinking it would look something like this that um there'd be an instrumental program after school Monday, Tuesday at Deans Mill. So, that would give the teacher, whoever that teacher may be, um whether it's one of our teachers or um somebody from an outside organization. Um gives them some flexibility on whether they wanted to have all of the children for two days or half of the instruments one day, half of the instruments another day. So, two days at Deans Mill right in a row and then two days at West Fine Street. So, a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday programming. What that would also do is because we don't have all of our children who are in the the fourth and fifth grade who are taking instrumental, they're not all taking general music and instrumental. So, this
064would give actually children more music than they have now. They would all have general music. And then those who are interested in instrumental would be having that instruction after school. Um, and again, transportation provided should it be necessary for certain families. Next slide. These are some other considerations. Again, the savings due to eliminating that magnet school bus that sometimes goes all the way across the bus uh the bridge to New London only to find that nobody's going to be on it in the afternoon. Um that's a that's a huge savings there. Um again, the halftime custodian we talked about, there's a savings there. repairs, supplies, rentals, and heating fuel kind of round out the facilities budget reductions. Thank you, Steve. Next slide. More retirement assumptions um from special education uh added teaching savings, repairs, field
065trip, transportation reductions, supplies, retirement assumptions again um helping us round out to that 750 that we need. The second retirement assumption, I'll just say because I just double looked at it. One is special services and one is special ed. Thought I duplicated it, but I didn't. And then um benefits, do you want to talk to the position benefits there, Alicia, in the administration? So that 4.2 reduction in FTE also comes with a savings in insurance. The number is an estimate. There's no way to because we're self-insured. There's no way to give a exact number, but um that's based on an annual cost. We had originally budgeted um to replace all the yonder pouches at the middle school and we just cut that in half um hoping that the some of them will be able to
066be uh resurrected, reserved, and not destroyed by the end of the year and recycled. Uh and then um Mr. Smith agreed to kind of kick the the can down on a series of textbooks that we can we can hold off on at least for a little while. So that's that's what's rounding us out here. Um the other the other positions that we're talking about, I don't know if we have a slide on that or not. Yep. Here we go. We wanted to take an opportunity to think about like are there are there silver linings to this challenge that we have. Um and we we wanted to basically have a goal of of creating offerings that are better aligned with your priorities. you told me at the beginning of the school year that future focus that
067built that board priority number two was where you wanted us to put our energy. So we took a look the principles and myself the cabinet um evaluating schedules, class sizes, trends um and we believe that we're going to be making some adjustments that not only meet the students needs but meet their interest and the numbers in how they enroll and what they sign up for are going to tell the story. Next slide. Um, we want to maximize the focus on core competencies by maintaining and increasing some options in the arts. We want to expand the STEM content at the elementary and middle school levels. And I want to tell you something I forgot to share earlier in my my recognitions is that um Rachel Limberacus, our outstanding STEM teacher at the elementary school, has been
068identified by um a professor at University of Rhode Island who has a grant in collaboration with the University of Connecticut. um and she's been identified as one of two teachers to be a teacher in residence um at the University of Rhode Island basically doing work developing uh modules around STEM activities for K12 students to roll out um in partnership with electric boat and it's all centered around STEM practices and uh lessons for children that will link them into manufacturing careers that are aligned with the needs of the military specifically the Navy. the the EB will I mean the grant that she is going to be participating in will pay her full salary, her full benefits for the entire year. It will be no cost to the district. Our cost will be a long-term sub for
069that position. It's also going to open up her job for one year. She'll come back to us after that year. So, she'll not only be developing lessons in STEM, she will also be delivering professional development to Rhode Island and Connecticut teachers. Um, and it's a big congratulations and a big honor for her to be recognized um to to def fill that um role. And she was a little nervous, but um I think she was more nervous because Alicia, Tim, and I went over to surprise her because she didn't know that her name was given to me. Uh, and you see the three of us coming and nobody really likes to see that in their classroom. Uh, but it was a it's a great opportunity. And what that means is we want to have a full-time
070STEM teacher at each of the elementary schools. uh the library program will flip-flop as it is right now. But we believe that in order to have an alignment from kindergarten through 12, that makes sense um where the the money is and the the the technology is that that makes a lot of sense. And then to complement that with a STEM teacher at the middle school. So those core area quote unquote positions at the middle school um two of them are being eliminated but two of them are actually not it would be four eliminations. We're actually reconfiguring some of those openings to to create a STEM uh position at the middle school and also another encore position at the middle school for those electives that will align to the high school's career clusters and uh techn
071u career pathways that will be unveiled to you in the fall but with Mr. Bruce. So, two STEM teachers, okay? One is going to be on special assignment, but there will be two openings for STEM teachers at the elementary schools if this is agreeable to you. one at the middle school as well and then a special I guess we would call it a special assignment in a way encore teacher to be determined based on uh certification and interest but we really be looking at again somebody to handle digital literacy um AI and those kinds of topics that it will be high interest and align to the career clusters at the high school. So, it's going to give some teachers some interesting opportunities for professional growth and stretching their wings if any of those assignments are
072agreeable to them and create some other vacancies. Uh, and we believe it makes sense. It's not just cutting positions for cutting positions. It's a plan that aligns with your priorities. Any questions? we have everybody loaded with their numbers about music enrollment and um trends are ready to go and answer any of your questions um that or concerns that you might have about our proposal. And again, it's a discussion point. We know you don't have to vote on it, but um the principles are at the ready and is Mrs. Iv who's been around for a while. Yeah, I so I'll start I'll kick it off. Um the that uh the afterchool uh stuff with the music sounds great. Um, I just wanted to see check the data and everything because it seems like we've gotten a
073lot of outcry of support for the music program. Um, and you know, people are very invested in it. I don't know if you know, in the next couple years, it's going to start to build and build it even more. So, um, you know, if we could just verify that everything the data that we have is is correct because from what I'm seeing from the emails and I and your program sounds great. I don't know uh a lot about the details of it. And when you were telling me about it earlier, it sounds great. And then I come in here and I see I check my emails and there's like 90 emails from people that are uh I mean that's an exaggeration, but people that are concerned about the program. I just want to make sure
074that we have all the information. Um and we're not shortch changing the kids with this music program. So why don't we turn it over to the principles? I'm going to look to Miss Daw to kick us off and we'll go in a reverse order from or top to bottom. I guess we'll go from high school to middle school to the elementaryaries and talk a little bit about what you're seeing and what your rationale is um for supporting this. We would love you. We She's lowering the mic for you as we speak. Take over. Okay. I can you hear me? Just checking. Uh so I would be remiss uh not to take this opportunity and um do a shout out to Rich Manning. uh he took on a position this year at the high school as
075a 0.8 and not only did that involve teaching new levels um at the high school, but it also involved significant amount of afterchool activities such as parades such as every single football game, um concerts, field trips. uh and I know I don't think he's here uh but he truly has done an amazing job and we were thrilled to have him um at the high school. But the flip side, we are also thrilled to get Katrina back fulltime uh at the high school next year and we are very hopeful that having her back full-time next year will build uh the interest and some of the electives that um that typically aren't filled right away. and some electives that haven't run in many many years. Uh she took the initiative uh about two years ago to become
076a certified uh ECE uh teacher and we have a wonderful class that uh we would love to run. So we're hoping with her return that's going to build the interest back up um with our program. So, uh, we are excited and I am very hopeful that our interests will build up and our class sizes will increase at the high school. Thank you. Alicia, could you tell a little bit about the scheduling challenges that you've had um and and why you support this particular model for music and the in the model for the other positions having the elementary? Well, right. Exactly. And what you're seeing as far as enrollment in music at the high school? Yeah, our enrollment at the high school and most of our electives um they usually fill last. Um we have a
077lot of electives at the high school that tend to fill first. Um and then what we do is at the end of the course selection that we end up putting students into electives um that are usually typically low low enrollment. Um we have electives that we would prefer to run um with Katrina returning. Um the model that is being proposed at the elementary level, we're hoping is to also increase the um interest and continue building that um at the high school. Can you talk a little bit about class sizes in music at the high school? Our class sizes are typically under 10. Yes. And those are the the classes that we continue to run. I feel like I'm leading the witness, but No, that's okay. No, I just want No, I wanted I wanted to
078want the board to get a flavor for the others that we run at the high school are typically full. They're usually 20 to 23 students per class. A lot of the electives at the in the music department are usually 12 and under. Um we ran a particular class that had an enrollment of five this year. So, and can you talk a little bit about the the the way that band is is scheduled and why it's scheduled that way? And this past year, well, not no just in in the past, just generally because of the configuration. How many sections you have to have and how many people you have in the band? Oh, we have we have band, we have honors band. We run it um basically um we combine two to three classes per section.
079So while on paper it looks like I have 23 students in a class, it's really a mixture of band and honors band. So it's a combination of three classes that run per cycle. So instead of it being honors band with 10 students, band with 16 students, it it's a larger number because we combine all those classes in one section. Does that make sense? Thanks, Alicia. You're welcome, Mr. Parkinson. They have all the data, too. If you have any questions about enrollment trends or anything, feel free to ask. I got to squat down. I'm a little taller than Alicia. Um, so, uh, in terms of in the middle school, and I'm going to give you a little, I guess, an overall picture for our programming. Um, I do think we have we've had a little bit
080of fluctuation in terms of our personnel this year. Um, Beth Brmley has been there the whole year. That's not my fluctuation. She does a fantastic job um with our coral program. Um, our students perform well. Some of you may have seen the concerts we have. Um, and they are connected as well to our drama program that's coming up very soon, too. A lot of them participate in both. Um, band. We had um Larry Sheay resigned earlier in the year in the fall. So, we've had a long-term sub in there, Sylvia Gopala Karishan. Apologies if I mispronounced that. Um and uh she's also done a great job. She was on a one-term position. Um Alicia sung the praises of Rich Manning. He will be mine next year um at the middle school. So he's taking over
081the the band next year. Um in terms of enrollment data, um just to give you a little picture of our model, so in grades six and seven, the students are required to take either band or chorus if they have a choice. So all students, my entire student body in six and seven are enrolled in band and chorus. So that's and again, so that's not a student choice necessarily. Um but they they are um eighth grade is where they begin to have a choice but it's a very small subset of our population to go to general music at that point. Um then it appears from the numbers those numbers train after 8th grade going into ninth generally. Um so again mine's in terms of interest I think the kids within the classes are interested and they're
082doing a great job and I think the teachers are doing a great job. Um but in terms of whether it be students interested in it that's a hard thing to assess with our numbers because again it's it's a requirement in grade six and seven. So I have gotten some parent contact about the opportunity in grade seven to not take band or chorus. Not a huge amount but but more than a handful at this point that we appear to be next year we'll be offering a very similar model for chorus and band in terms of what students will be taking in grade six. I don't know any. How about you beat it? Do you have a breakout band versus chorus? Sure. Um so just if we take this year as a snapshot um currently band we
083have 128 students. So that's 41 in 6th, 59 in 7th and 28 in eighth. Um chorus however we have 77 in sixth, 78 in seventh and 64 in eighth which is a total of 219. So our coral participation is is significantly higher than than band. Thank you. Why we stop mandating at in eighth grade? Um that's a good question. I I do think at at any point right we do want to um allow students the opportunity to have choice in terms of what their pathway is. Now, where that correct choice where where that age comes in, right, is we could we could debate that, right? Is that when they go from eth to 9th? Is that when they go from seventh to eth? Um, I I do intend as we move forward and with our
084positional changes within our building, I couldn't commit myself to one way or another. My long-term plan would be to offer a lot more choice involved in our survey decisions. You know, maybe not for our youngest population, I think our sixth graders, but as they move older into seventh and eighth grade, just choice. We we want to expose them to everything, but then also start to expose them to the opportunity to choose a path that they love, which which may be music, it may be art, it may be PE, it may be some STEM, some sort of other, you know, whatever that happens to be. I think we have a recovering middle school principal that would like to chime in on a historical um feature of the music program. the uh to to answer chairman Rajab's
085question um historically we always offered a choice in seventh and eighth grade it was band and chorus was mandatory that choice was mandatory it was a binary choice either or in grades five and six in seventh and eighth grade we offered a general music class instead of a performing ensemble class yearover every year. Generally, it was fairly low enrollment. And at both middle schools, we got to the point where we had so few students choosing the general music option in seventh and eighth grade. I stopped running it because it was only four or five kids and we found something else for them to do in that block of time that was more helpful for them than a general music class. So it the mandatory part historically was only 56. 78 was always a choice. Uh
086there was always a third choice that was I guess Darwined out uh through natural selection. Uh kids just stopped asking for it. We stopped running running it. So that's that's the history on so it's there hasn't been a change in mandating se eighth grade or seventh grade bander chorus it's just a change in the times in the opposite direction and I I was not trying to uh you know say that there was a change because I recognized it from having my kids in in school and uh but I I I just I just wonder if we carry that forward into 8th grade will that improve improve connectivity to music and will that improve enrollment in high school or you don't see a relevancy there in terms of pure numbers I would say that's not an
087impact for for example of our 110 eighth graders nine of them are taking general music this year so it's a it's a very it's a very small amount of the population as it is so um it seems like the drop off comes from 8 to nine um you know there's very few that choose it in eight historically Historically, there was always a significant drop off from 8th to 9th grade uh for a wide variety of reasons. Um and the other issue with the music numbers is I think folks need to recalibrate based on our current total enrollment. um the band numbers were what the band numbers were and they're less now but we have significantly less total students at the high school as well. So, thanks Jeff. Does the dynamic duo want to come up
088together? Miss McCertie and Mr. I'll start. All right. So I think you know where we see right now is the reduction in music looks like it's happening at the elementary school and it is because we have a resignation. Um is this even on? Okay. All right. Um but what I would like to point out is that with a re repurposing of the position to an afterchool program, the students at the elementary school will still get the same amount of band that they were getting now. And in fact, they'd actually get more music. Just like Mrs. Butler said they'll be getting band and access to general music. So while there's a reduction, the kids at the elementary school will get this exact same amount who want to participate of band, but they're also going to get
089general music where at Deans Mill they don't have access to that right now. And at Westbine they do every now and then. Um, I was just going to say, you know, kind of what Damian said, obviously, you know, cuts are never easy. Um, one of the things that elementaryaries are really trying to build foundational skills for students and really giving them lots of exposure to opportunities. So, obviously, any opportunity is a great opportunity. One of the challenges has been is um also like Damian was saying, just based on enrollment and number of course sections, for example, our students are choosing whether they want general music or band. um moving it to after school would allow them to get general music. And just as a reminder, I know we've done lots of presentations over the years.
090Our general music program at the elementary is very robust, probably more robust than a lot of elementary music programs. Our um elementary music teachers are fantastic. Our students are reading music. They're learning how to perform. They have opportunities to perform. They are doing instrumental. They're playing lots of different or instruments. They are doing ukuleles. They're doing world drumming. So students are in general music. It isn't really a chorus. They're singing. They're getting exposure to all of that. They're learning all of that. So, they would be in a really good place to start to learn an instrument whether they choose to do that after school as an option or even in middle school. Um, one of the things we're seeing now is, you know, shiny and new. So, in fourth grade, we had a lot of
091students that want to try it. We see those numbers shrink pretty significantly after fourth grade. I think parents aren't always understanding exactly what they're signing up for. Students aren't. In the elementary school, your specials are during the school day. There aren't homework. There aren't expectations. A lot of our students are still learning the foundational reading skills. So they're still learning to read and now they're trying to learn to read music which can be challenging for those students who haven't met that. So um there are definitely challenges at the elementary level. Again, you know, we want to support opportunities for all students. But I think by providing, you know, our robust general music section and then providing that opportunity for students after school, especially um if we're able to do the late bus situation, allows any
092student that's interested to be able to continue to do that. Um, and then hopefully, you know, what what something that I worry about sometimes at elementary school is students do it and maybe they're not really doing it for the right reason, picking music, and then they're kind of getting a bad taste in their mouth and they're quitting band, let's say, whereas, you know, done in a little bit more of a mindful way where they're having that exposure to it, might get more excited about it and then continue on. We're seeing the numbers drop off pretty significantly from fourth grade fifth grade at Deans Mill. And then if you're looking at the students who combined at West Fine and Deans Mill and fifth grade go to sixth grade, they drop off even further. Um, and so
093whether that's leveling the playing field, I'm not really sure, and making it more of that equal 50 split or not, but um, it is definitely a change and we do get quite a bit of families who struggle with making that decision and oftentimes um, asking throughout the year to make a switch and we really try to honor that. It's a commitment and it's also we don't want kids bouncing back and forth. It's really disruptive to the other program. So um, but that is definitely a challenge for both fourth grade and even fifth grade when they choose to pick it again. Um Mike has done an outstanding job this year picking up where Rich Manning left off and providing a robust in instrumental things, but there's just still a lot of those challenges at the elementary
094level. So uh for the afterchool program, how's that going to be run? Is that going to be split between few teachers or uh one teacher's head in it? I you might have said it earlier. I don't we're not there yet. There's a lot of ways we could do there's at least three that I can think of, but I don't want to say them because then it will become gospel. Um but it could be a person internally. It could be and you know somebody from United Theater they would be very interested you know we've reached out to them. It really that would be a conversation with the music teachers first once you folks said yeah it sounds like a a plan that is is viable once the budget's approved you know we don't again we don't
095have a budget we got to get through next Tuesday and then we'll have a conversation with you folks again about you know which direction do you want to go in um and then that would be once we have a budget we would reach out to the music teachers first see what their thoughts are and then um if they're not interested in doing plan A B or B that I'm thinking of then we go for C. Got it. I have to ask my numbers question though because I did it last time. Just band numbers at at the schools. I know fifth grade Deans Mill from a trumpet mom. I think we have I think we have printouts of these for you so you don't have to write them down. Katie. Yeah. So, just to kind of
096give an a snapshot, currently in grade four, I have 49 students in band and 33 students in fifth grade band. But I do want to share last year that same cohort of fifth graders, they started at 56 students in band and they dropped to 33. We lost 23 students who decided it was not the right fit. If you look combined as well, um we're looking at last year's fifth grade class. So last year combined at WestVine and Deansville, we had 54 students who left fifth grade taking band. And then it looks like sixth grade enrollment in band is about 41 right now. So we're we lost some more students as well. So I don't know. So, I don't know if it's just, you know, they tried it, it wasn't for them, if they weren't ready
097for it developmentally, you know, obviously we don't have a crystal ball, but um we do see that kind of decline piece. Yeah. Similar at West Fine. So, we have 20 in fourth grade, 17 um in fifth grade for a total of 37. Uh that's down from last year, 30 at fourth grade, and 23 at fifth grade. We had 53 total last year. We have 37 now. Do we have any money in our budget for this after school program? Yes, there's money in added teaching for it. And uh the transportation wouldn't cost anything else because we already have late buses that could accommodate. And how much is uh allocated per I know we don't know the cost because we're trying to farm it out to United Theater or something or something else. We haven't we haven't
098gotten that far yet, Dan. Again, once we have a budget and a plan, then we'll talk about what who's going to do what, who wants to do what. There's other shifts um in stipen positions that are going to free up money in added teaching. And this is obviously going to be a voluntary uh after school program for students who might have other activities going on and not be able to attend. Um I'm not convinced that this is the answer to um the proposal to to slash the music department at the elementary school. And um I can't support it as of now with no with no numbers and nothing definitive. We also have the option or the advantage of um the afterchool program at West Fine Street School that many of the children can actually just
099go from their music lesson right to their after school program as well. Um and again this is this is what we are thinking Dan. We don't want to cut we don't want to lay people off. This is this is our best thinking and we believe this is in the best interest of the of the kids. So I I understand your thoughts and again we don't have to vote. You don't have to vote tonight, but this is um proposed budget is uh the the proposed savings by um slash in the elementary school music program is how much? 96. What was the numbers on that? 40 86. Was it 43 per school or something? 47 per school or I think it's 47175 at each school. I'm sorry. I I did just want to add too that you
100know I do understand that kids do have a lot of after school. Um my understanding is that if they chose or did after school of course they do have the option in fifth grade they can only there's another entry point for them to start and choosing after school you know the choice is always a hard choice. You know, I'm just I was thinking about that and I figured that might be brought up and I'm just trying to think of my own kids experience who do jazz band after school. They do lacrosse. They do the school track. I found that the teams have been very accommodating to her. So, she can do all those things. Sometimes she misses a practice, sometimes she doesn't. So, choices are there and and I think that they can be they
101can be made. The other the other component Dan just consider is folks have a lot of daycare issues. So for some families this would be another 40 50 whatever whatever the configuration is going to be another um could be help for many families on any given day So we have a lot of participation. We look Enrollment number. the presentation on the PowerPoint on the budget. Was that the final number 750,000? Is that what um the proposed cuts were from all that? Were there other um Oh, stay stay. Get him out of the hot seat. You're trying to get him over. Yeah. Uh, were there other obviously there must have been other um items or other parts of the budget that were brought up um to potentially get to that 750 number and somehow we landed
102on the uh music department, elementary music department as the um the fall person, fall department for uh part of the budget. Can we have access to the other items that were presented or do we have other ideas if if the board voted to uh not go along with the after school music program and and go with the uh elementary school program music program remain in status quo? what other items, what other parts of the budget or parts of the school system would be affected as as proposed. We'd have to go back to the table. Um, we call it principal poker, Dan. They sit there at at the first meeting and nobody wants to say that they're going to cough up anything cuz nobody wants to lose anything from their building. But we we literally there's
103no like record of like option one, option two, or option three. Louie literally came to the table um talked about like what what natural attritions are happening what savings we can capture just by not interfering with anything and then people start to say well I really value this I really want that so that's why again to me it's important not to reduce staff to do to do it in this in this fashion so we don't have like door number one door number two door number three printed or anything like that how this would work is you folks, next time we get together, we we're'll either going to be having a conversation about this again or we're going to have a worse conversation, right? Because you we we're hoping that it will be around this figure
104and not something that's more drastic. Um so at that juncture when you vote, you'll say, "No, Maryanne, I want you to go back. I I want the you know, you can I like this, this, and this, but I want you to reconsider this or come up with this amount of money." Um you know, reconfigure, find find another place to take it from. So that's how that would work. Dan, I just want to be respectful of the two principles time and and and to to the point before we start debating a second question, I I just have a couple questions on the music in particular if you don't mind me just uh chiming in and is so is that teacher in place today or not? Is there a teacher in that position? And what are the
105programs we're running today in in elementary like in terms of music? Share with me. So he starts out at West Vine and he teaches a fourth grade band and a fifth grade band and then he travels to Deansville and he teaches a fourth grade band and a fifth grade band. And is that mandatory? Is the participation in band mandatory? So participation in band you really can't make participation in band mandatory unless the board wants to pay for all the instruments. So obviously families have to financially pay for you have some instruments that they can utilize. Um but it has always been voluntary. So general music is part of our special area rotation that is and the reason for that is because it provides students access to chorus reading instrumental. It kind of encompasses all of
106it. It was one of the reasons we didn't move to a band or chorus. We wanted to be able to provide that foundational music skills so that if students decided after elementary school to re-enter into band and or to pick chorus that they would have some foundational skills. our our two MLAs our two music teachers have worked really hard to create that opportunity so that when they're leaving whether they choose a band that they'll be sufficiently prepared and they've had opportunities to do that. So the general music is an offering. It's an opt excuse me instrumental is just is offering or optional. So parent students get information about general music at at Deans um and they get information about instrumental music and parents select which one their child would do. they then purchase an instrument
107or rent an instrument if that's what they're think or they request um an instrument from the district if they have financial need for us to provide one. So that would be a change from what it used to be right because fifth grade used to be you have to choose one now it is not so right. So that's a different Right. Right. But right now they they are picking that. So like our fifth graders, 15 and male are not taking general music and instrumental. I mean they can't take both. It's the opposite. So it's one or the other. I'm sorry. I thought I misunderstood your question. So they they're picking one or the other. So my fifth graders, if you're a trombone player, you never see Emily McMin in a general music class. You don't you're
108not doing ukulele. You're not doing world drumming. You're not doing any of the coral singing. You're just learning your instrument. Does that make sense? Sorry. I think I misunderstood. Okay. Yeah. And to be transparent, at Westbine's a little different. They they at Westbine if they choose band they also do get general music on a fork but not all the time. So it's a kind of a complicated schedule but not that complicated. So um on Mondays there's a band uh trumpets go and whatever special is on Monday they don't go to that special they go to band but four days later they won't get that special. So it kind of rotates through. So the the difference to students uh with moving or creating this after school program then is all students would take general music and
109students who choose band instead of taking it during the school day would then choose to take it after school. That's the difference. Is there anything else that we can do so that kids can be more interested in taking like you said instrument? I know I' I've sort of thought about this and one of the things that we talked about is that at the elementary school they get banned one day a week and many of our students only play their instrument that one day that they're at band in the school. They don't bring it home and they don't practice at home. It's just what it is. It's prior to what um Dan was talking about. They have other things going on outside of school. So our wonder is if they go if they started at the
110middle school where they get banned every other day, they're going to have more practice on those instruments and they're going to be more successful at that time. Now Mike does a really nice job with our students. He has high expectations. He he works them, but again they're playing the instrument one day a week. And so unless you're going to give band and have them opportunity to play more than once a week, it's hard for them like like like Jen was saying, you know, like if they're if they've just sort of tried it out and they're not feeling that success, then they drop it. And then we see that in the numbers. They they drop from fourth to fifth to sixth and it looks like they drop from sixth from eighth to 9th as well. That
111wasn't a great answer to you. What can you do? It's a good answer. It's It's really I'm just trying to brainstorm how we kind of brainstormed that same thing and that's what you were saying like it's hard to you know the way the elementary schedule works in terms of like it being a class like you know the way the schedule works where it's like every other day part of their rotation piece. I mean, and and it's, you know, you don't want to also give them the opportunity to music while preventing them the other opportunities, right? So, like, I guess you could say, okay, well, you're not going to have art and you're not going to have STEM, but you can have music four days a week, but they're they're eight years old. I mean, they
112could be not know that they want to be an engineer someday. We're not providing them STEM. So, I really look at as elementary school an opportunity for them to have access and provide all of that. So, something would have to give, right? And so, they only have one art, two, they only have PE you really can't touch because of state mandates and things like that. So there's always it's just that fine balancing act of we want to provide exposure. We want to excite students. We want to give them those opportunities yet um also it's like if you wanted to do it more they need to learn how to read, they need to be in the classroom for reading and math. They need to go to art. We want to do art things or else you
113know those families that are passionate about art are going to be up here saying now my child has no art. So, it's just a really tricky at the elementary level with trying to provide opportunities for all kids. It's kind of a balancing act. I don't think it's at the elementary level that the I think it's the high school that has to come up with, you know, drumming class like they they also, you know, when the middle school started the encourse, they added guitar and piano and things like that that were new courses at the high school, right? That were nice shiny electives. And I think it's it's really taking a look at what the high school can offer whether it's you know musical technical engineering kind of things or it's a drumming circle to make
114it more attractive because there's so much competition at the high school level. You've got amazing electives that the kids can choose from and it's not it's not our music. It's not the music teachers out there nowadays have such strong interest. Farooq, part of your question was what can we do to to bolster it? That's where this came from was a conversation with the leadership team of how can we make these numbers kind of rebound and the afterchool program was born of that conversation from the elementary principles and and is that part of it feedback from our music teachers or we have not at at this point for the charge was to the administrators to come up with the 750. We have had numerous conversations with the music teachers in the past. Um, and again, it's
115their job to advocate for their program and they always want more teachers. Who wouldn't? Um, and so the conversation will happen once we have a plan and what what the model is going to be on on who will do what if they are even interested. Right. No, I hear you. It's just that I think we're interested in knowing what that model is going to look like if we're going to vote on it between now and next month. We don't we're not going to vote on something that is after we vote on it, we'll figure out the model. At least that's my my perception. Okay. Well, we'll again that's the cart before the horse and we don't have a budget, right? Yeah, we look at I I personally look at it differently. I think it's I
116would want to know what that model is going to look like before I vote. Yeah. Well, we can have that decision for you next time. We know what the model is going to look like. We just want to know who you want the teachers. We don't know who would fulfill the role. No, no, no. I'm not suggesting I want to know who the teacher is. I want to know what the model looks like. Like is it three kids? you know that that there's this offering that's going to be from this hour to that hour. How is it going to look like? Are you saying you want to know what time if for the after school program what time would it start? What time would it end? What time would the bus get there? What are
117we teaching? What are we offering? Not right. So we're going to offer something for those kids. What is it? So it would be two we're envisioning and again the teach whoever the teacher is will have some flexibility in how they want to group the kids. They want might want to have one day with just one set of instruments or they might want to have all the kids like right now the instrumental teacher has all of the instruments together I think. Right. No. No. Okay. Explain explain the difference then or do will this flexibility be the same after school? So it probably be more similar to how it is at Dean Mill. So what we did this year because last year the poor rich had you know fourth graders with 15 and 18 kids and he
118might have had you know one flute one trombone and it was all of the instruments. Um what we did this year is we regrouped our students. So students in elementary typically if you're in you know Mr. Whipple's class, you go to your specials with Mr. Whipple. We re balance them. It's not a perfect scenario, but in um for example, it might just be trumpets and baritone. Um or it might just be it might be that day. So that is limited. So it's not perfect where it's just instrumental in one instrument, but it's I think the most day one day we might have two or three instruments the most. Um and actually on some of those occasions my general music teacher assists with that just because she doesn't we were able to consolidate the number of
119kids based on general music for a couple sections. Um but it's not perfect but it's better than having seven instruments and usually two or three instruments. So the the benefit of an afterchool program is you're not pulling kids out from another discipline because that tells that teacher your discipline isn't as important as somebody else's. So that's that's why I like the afterchool model. And again, there would be flexibility. If they wanted to have all of their children together on one Tuesday or whatever, they could do that. Um, so I guess we just want to know what more specifics you want to know for because I don't want to come back and have the board not have what they need to make a decision. I think I think it's important for everybody to send their feedback
120to the superintendent school as board members asking those specific questions you're looking for so we can take a better educated um you know vote next board meeting on the on the budget cuts. So I think it's important that you send all those questions whatever you're wanting to know so you can come here and be able to vote on something and we'll get those answers to you. I don't I don't want to get to May and then it's not May and then it's like June. No, I understand. No, we want the we want the budget approved as soon as possible because we want to post those positions if Okay. to start moving people around. Yes, sir. On this topic, um would we entertain a special meeting? So, you know, we spent a lot of time talking
121about this tonight to have a special meeting just to focus on this and to get provided with, you know, obviously happening after next Tuesday. Um, but being able to to um invite the public that's concerned and and for them to hear what um is being presented as an option. Um, so that was one part and then the second part is is It would probably cause a little constrnation, but uh if the vote if the budget did not pass on Tuesday does not mean that the citizens are voting to cut the budget further, you can vote no on Tuesday and with the intent that it goes back to the board of finance for an increase. And if there's enough of an effort put forward by people outside of this room for a no vote and not
122a yes vote that I know it's it's it's it's you know the devil's in the details but um if the budget did not pass on Tuesday and there was enough large enough uh outcry from citizens that the Board of Finance would be asked to increase the budget and it's not some people so many people are under the impression that if the budget does not vote pass on Tuesday that the board of finance is only option is to cut the budget further. That is not law. That is not uh mandatory. If the budget did not pass on Tuesday, the board of finance would get it again and they could vote to increase the budget. So, and then send it back for uh another vote. So, um I am not advocating for or against the passage of
123the of the budget on Tuesday because that is not our role and it's not allowed. I personally will be voting no on the budget on Tuesday and would hope others um would take a look and vote one way or the obviously vote one way or the other. But I guess the important thing is for them to get out and vote. Yeah, it can go the other way. Uh, right. So your budget can be cut further. Uh, so you know, who knows? Um, regardless, any any other comments, questions? Yes. I mean, I I think I I totally trust our administrators and and what they play when they play their poker hand. Um, because they they lead their staffs, our children. they know firsthand what goes on in their buildings. Um, but maybe a a quick chat
124with the music teachers. They may have some creative thoughts, too. But I know you had those last year, too, as well. Well, three of the emails were from former teachers, I believe. Hi. And in fairness, Dan, just for to the teachers, they didn't know what our they only saw the slides. So, anything else? Next item on our agenda is comments from citizens regarding items on the agenda. Individual comments will be limited to three minutes per person, 20 minutes per topic and we always welcome um citizens of Stonington and employees of the Stonington public. Well, I happen to be both. Um, so I'll just write my name down. Um, I'm pretty sure almost everyone in this room knows who I am, but um, I'm Emily McClennah. I live at 110 Apprentice Williams Road. Um, there aren't
125too many situations that make me feel nervous, but this one does a little bit. Um, I guess that's a testament to the respect I have for the people in this room, the board of ed, superintendent's office, of course, my past administrators, my present administrators. Um, but I'm really talking to you today as a parent of a fourth grader at West Vine Street School. Um, and not in my capacity as an employee of the district. Um, I know that you're all tasked with difficult decisions and I know that tonight you're not voting on this decision, but I figured it was worth it to come and share my thoughts as a parent. Um, as a resident, I do my best to stay informed and when I read the agenda uh that was put out yesterday, I think
126I felt concerned about the cut to the music program. Um, that's currently, as you know, our elementary band role. And I don't actually, as a parent, disagree with having instrumental lessons be moved after school. I think there are many challenges in the scheduling model for kids and I do support um what our building administrators are saying about those challenges. So, what I don't understand is why Stonington would consider eliminating another full-time music position. If you just go back one year, we lost a full-time music position at the middle school last year. Even though we have a teacher resigning, eliminating this position or not refilling it means a 25% reduction to the music staff in Stonington public schools. That's a massive hit. Um, and I just can't ignore that as a parent of a child who
127happens to be pretty musical. So, I'm curious why that position can't be repurposed somewhere else in the district to create more opportunities for students perhaps at the secondary level. I I wish that music was on the list of one of the subjects we were creating another position for. Um, but I guess that's my comment for the board as a parent. Uh, two positions is a lot and it does impact what we're able to offer the students in Stonington public schools. I'm proud to brag about my daughter. She is very musical. She just starred in our school musical as Dory and Finding Nemo. She plays the bass clarinet. She loves music. She lives for it. Um, she's also thriving in her classroom thanks to her incredible teachers, Shauna Major and Trisha Dilap. Um, she's a great
128kid, but she will suffer from these decisions. I do worry that beyond elementary school what her opportunities will be to grow and explore as a musician. I am deeply dedicated to the families and students in Stonington, including my own child. I want to see our schools support the arts as a vital part of a well-rounded education. I could cite countless studies and reports that would that are proven data driven to support the benefits of music education and its positive impact on student achievement. I won't waste your time doing that here. I'm sure you're aware that that information exists. I just hope that we can reconsider the cut and repurpose that position somewhere else where it can benefit all the students in Stonington Public Schools. I appreciate your time and appreciate all of your ongoing commitments
129to Stony Public Schools and the students that we serve. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is David Allesio. I am currently a junior at Sergeant High School and I have been in the music program for seven years now. So, I just want to talk about it from my perspective and all the benefits from it. Uh, I just want to start off saying that the elementary position is the most important role of music getting this fundamental understanding of music in the beginning is the best part and most challenging part. So by getting rid of these first two years in elementary school and leaving it just to after school like you said there's there's kids that just do other after school activities so they're too busy to so there will be a greater downfall in the
130participation in music if we move to after school instead of having a class from my experience the elementary school getting that understanding of music from the beginning um prevents that from being later years in the middle school So instead of having learning learning instruments in fourth and fifth grade, it's now going to be moved to sixth and seventh grade. And those years are just like learning something new from the beginning. And these concerts are not going to be as impressive and it starts affecting a whole world road down the road. And I just want to say that sorry I don't know I don't have a I don't have a script with me tonight. I originally had one but didn't work out. So, that's why I said the talent. These kids um are impressive in my
131eyes. There's many kids who like these they would have never had this much experience if they never started in elementary school. Uh to name one, Alex Hatch. He's the most impressive tener sax player I've ever heard of in my life. If he never had that experience to play in elementary school, he might not have that level of of not being able to have a professional Sorry. I hope this made sense. Said it better in my head. It made a lot of sense. Yeah. Thank you. It's my first speech ever. [Applause] Thank you for your time. Thank you. So, since people are switching hats, I'm going to switch my hat. I'm Tim Smith, resident of Stonington, 7 Fernando Drive, and I'm speaking solely as a resident, and I'm super uncomfortable doing this, going from there to
132here. But I'm super compelled to do it because I want to challenge Mr. Kelly on his statements tonight because I think that they're objectively false. I cannot and I I haven't I'm not a generational resident of the town of Stonington. Uh I haven't gotten my official Stonington guy card uh for residency yet because it's only been like 15 years. I know it's much longer requirement. I have never ever heard of any time in which the Stonington Board of Finance interpreted a no vote as to let's spend more money. I know I have heard directly from chairmans of the board of finance in the past clearly articulating that a no vote on the budget is their mandate to cut at least another million dollars from the budget. So unless you have Chairman O'Brien on record as
133saying he will entertain increases as a response to a no vote, I think it is reckless and absolutely unconscionable to suggest that we vote no in hopes of an increase. The only time that the board of finance has ever entertained this is during public comment in the public hearing. And there was one time that I recall that in their d deliberations after the public hearing, they restored some money to the board of education budget. There has never been a time when a no vote has resulted in additional money. I know we had discussions in years past of adding language to the ballot of saying vote no because I want to spend more or vote no because I want to spend less. That never went anywhere. I just am super concerned about any conversation uh with
134a negative vote on the budget as a vehicle to express the wish to increase the budget. That ship has sailed unfortunately and now we have to do the best that we can as a resident and thank you all. Thanks. Thank you. Hi, my name is Audrey Winston. I live at 107 Elm Street. I am a new resident in Stonington or a returning resident of Stonington after a long time. My fellow friend here with somebody that was unprepared but moved to come here knowing that there was a chance of of cuts to the music budget in our school system. Um, I have two children that are one in middle school, one in the high school. they're past the point of being affected by this. But I also have two adult children, one who went to Berkeley
135and Boston Conservatory to study music and the other one who is um a military officer in the army who always studied music because it was a an important part of their education in the school district that we had moved from. I just urge the board to please research as has been noted all of the re that has gone into the importance of music education in the development of child's brain in their so in their their social skills and um as part of being a human being the importance that it holds culturally and historically and continues to hold in driving culture and um making us a part of the environment that we're in. I think all children deserve um exposure and experience to this important subject and that it shouldn't be relegated to a side topic
136that is um only for those who can afford or have access to it. So, I I understand you're under serious budget constraints and that there's a lot of a lot um of wheels that you all have going, but please consider the importance of music in the education of all the children when you make your decisions on how to um deal with the unfortunate budget cuts that you're facing. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is uh report from superintendent schools. Thanks for um the first item I just wanted to briefly mention is that um speaking of budget stresses uh there's an outstanding balance in our food service uh line from unpaid lunches of $30,000. Uh the food service director is going to be sending out some reminders to parents tomorrow to pay up
137their un un uh un I guess uh expend over expenditures on their the the line items that their their children are spending on breakfast or lunches. um we will be sending another letter out, another reminder, and then um on June 1st, our our our council will be sending out a letter that we will be moving to a collection agency if these um these funds are not given back to the district by um the end of the school year. We just, you know, comes out of the the general budget. It's a lot of money. U we keep we keep hearing about cutting here, cutting there, what we want, what we value. we need um to work with our principles. Obviously, for families that are in distress and have difficult circumstances, we don't want to add to
138those at all. But for the people who can pay and just aren't paying, we need them to to step up and um and fill those fill those voids for us. So, I just wanted to warn the the folks tonight that that will be happening. um we have avoided going to collection agencies and having lawyer letters go out um up until this point but with limited success and again with the financial hardships that we're we're looking at right now we feel like we have to be a little bit more aggressive. So that was just an FYI for the board and for those listening at home. Uh I did share with you Rachel Liberacus' exciting uh news about her um URI Yukon opportunity. um we will let you know when that's all buttoned up and certainly invite
139her back um throughout the year so that she can update teaching and learning about what's going on um with her professional learning but also what she's bringing back to the district. Um very exciting news. Next week, uh, we're going to have our, uh, our team, our, uh, educational specifications team visit Bean Middle School up in Middletown to get some real time feedback and ideas on what we like about their school design to inform our the my development actually of the educational specifications. Um, and we we to had a great takeaways from Graten Middle School. And I I expect we'll have even more um takeaways from this middle school, good and bad, to inform our our hopeful hopefully our building committee that will be formed over the summer. Um, Eastcon curriculum feedback. We we told you
140that we asked for an audit of our ELA middle school curriculum. We did get the the um feedback from our consultant Gary Peterson. Uh the middle school teachers have absolutely adored working him with him all year. Uh and he given us some very specific feedback that will not only help us strengthen our ELA curriculum in the future but also um all of our curriculum K through 12. Um and again uh with some very specific ideas of in infusing the NEAS standards into them which will certainly appeal to our visiting team when they come out in the near future at the high school. We've got many inquiries mostly from um board of finance members, some board of ed members on when the remaining useful uh life studies it will be in for your perusal. It has
141been promised to us tomorrow. We'll take a look at it internally um you know over the next few days, next week and then um we'll meet with the engineer just to have any of our questions answered, but we'll certainly turn that report over to you as well and then eventually post it online and go from there. Uh we had a very interesting um uh meeting with the Stonington Police Force. um not the entire force for our all hazards team and um the members from the Stonington Police Department that uh participate on that and our cabinet members that participate on that um this past week and Captain Schneider actually coordinated um a presentation for both the public schools and the private schools around um an offering that he believes will be really really imperative to improve
142uh response time uh for emergencies for first responders and it's a mapping uh software and service offered by the critical critical response group out of New Jersey. It um produc basically that we would be interested in buying to enhance public safety across the town by giving first responders accurate and straightforward mapping resources. So basically uh this the the product uses uh accurate for floor floor plans. We have some that are included in our all hazards report now, but these would be digitalized um with correct uh highresolution images that would be available in the police officers cars in the f in the fire um responders cars, EMTs and such. So it's a it's a gritted overlay um that would be very very helpful for them identifying where the emergency is happening and and and decrease the
143response time to get to the right place. the um law enforcement officers are interested not only in getting this in across our school systems public and private in town but across nonprofits and they are in the works of actually giving the same presentation to the Mystic Aquarium, the Mystic Seaport. It would be about $23,000 um to get the initial work done um in all five buildings and then a maintenance an annual maintenance fee to keep those u maps and uh labeling of classrooms and such current. it would be about $2,000 per year for all of in total for all five buildings. So, we're taking a serious look at that. Um, it was a very extremely impressive presentation. Uh, and we want to thank Captain Schneider for taking the lead on that. I think it will
144um not only enhance our all hazards report that we file um annually as mandated but also um give us some peace of mind that our our first responders are getting the information that they need uh as quickly as they as they can. Um let's see what else. Oh, finally I thought I'd make you hungry with a teaser on the Buffalo Wild Wings. I hope some of you read the the agenda and got a little chuckle about that. Um it's actually some great news of a grant that is coming through an employee of Buffalo Wild Wings, but it's really from um one of our parents who works uh John Lucier and is an employee of Inspire Brands, which is the umbrella company of Buffalo Wild Wings. But I thought I'd get your attention. uh a $23,000
145grant and it's going to be used um to support our unified um uh programs across the district and also give um some of our transition program students some um out of district opportunities as well. Uh they are the mission of the Inspire Foundation is to posit positively impact youth in in communities across the country through national and local partnerships. They support nonprofits like Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Boys and Girls Club of America. and we're just so happy um to further to be recognized as somebody as a district that is committed to um inclusiveness and and and to partner with them to further our our common interest in continuing the mission of inclusiveness in our schools. That's it for this month. Any questions? Are you hungry? Oh, I am hungry. Um, but great brands
146with this Inspire and they're really, you know, Dunkin Donuts is an Inspire brand. They have a lot of big brands. Thank you to Inspire. Um, next item on our agenda is consent agenda. So, I'm asking for a vote to approve consent agenda. Is there a second? Second. Any questions? I have a question. What's the Can we share with us some details on the idea grant? So, um that's our annual IDEIDA grant. We are um we're given a projected amount for that grant. Um I would say that uh the vast majority of it, probably 95% of it goes into salaries for special education teachers, behavior technicians, BCBA. Um there's a preschool section. And so part part of our preschool teacher is paid out of that grant as well. So not many changes to it. It also
147includes the proportionate share for students with individual service plans at Pinepoint School in St. Michael who are allocated a certain amount of funding for tutoring services that we provide to students in those two schools. I think I'd say 99% of his salary. So that's one of those tough things as salaries goes up. IDEIDA does less but there's some for supplies and technology but that will get adjusted when the final grant comes in in the in um in September. Another interesting piece is that um with the new database system we have CT saids they are still trying to navigate what we call our October one count um which helps to identify all of the students identified in the state as eligible for special education on October 1st. and um they still don't have that number figured
148out from October 1st of 2024. Um so I there's another email saying your amount will be adjusted again probably in August when they finalize our October one count from 2020. Thank you CT sets. All those in favor of approving consent agenda items A through B, please indicate by saying I. I. I. That was unanimous for the record. Next item on our agenda is approval of requests to the board selectment to establish K through2 building committee. Any comments on that? I'm just uh we as you know we have a a small committee that is is studying the the kind of vision of a future middle school um wherever that may be at whatever location. Um, part of that is working with this the first selectman to actually move forward and form a building committee, a K12
149building committee that will look at the needs of the district. We know there's a lot of building going on in town. We know that there's going to be different stresses happening in the future and we want to make sure that they have the vision of what we see we need we want in a in a future middle school. They may also have to consider a future needs of what's going to be at the high school. So, we're going to put some of that together for them as well because I don't know what that site or vision might be. Will it be at the the high school site combat, you know, in addition to that school, will it be at another site or an existing site? So, in order to do that and to keep this
150this moving so that we're not just looking at short-term solutions to the middle school, we're looking at long-term solutions. We will need to have that um request made to the board of selectments. So, I'm asking for you to charge me with that and vote on that. I'm looking for a motion to Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please indicate by saying I. I. I. That was unanimous for the record. Thank you. Um, next item on our agenda is I I move to um the contract for the following employees. Uh, Bethany Conrad at Sonington High School, Sylvia Gokula Krishnan. at Stonington Middle School and Julia Stman, Stonington Middle School and Ashley Baxley at Stonington Middle School not to be renewed for the following year upon its expiration at the
151end of the 2024 2025 school year and that the superintendent of schools is directed to advise such persons in writing of this action. I'd am looking for a second to that motion. Wait, can you what was that? Can you say that again? So these are uh these are annually non-renews that we vote on. So these are teachers that have typically one year u contract and uh they if the we send the non-renewal at this time of the year and if the superintendent um in the district feels that there's an opening or some other opening they get invited back to apply for those openings. Got it. It sounded like one of them was my relative so I don't think I can vote on it. Can you say those names again? Sure. Or is it the Julie
152Stone? Yeah. Yeah. So, I got to abstain from that. Sure. Absolutely. I'm looking for a second on that motion. Second. All right. There's a second. Any further discussion? Those uh who are in favor, please indicate by saying I. I. Uh those against? Any abstensions? Abstension. Yeah. The eyes have it. Thank you. Uh next item on our agenda is approval of to participate favor and you will read uh approval to participate in the healthy food option of HFS. So I'm going to read that motion just thanks. Thank you. Um the so uh the vote is pursuant to CGS section 10-215F the Stonington Public Schools Board of Education certifies that all food items offered for sale to students in the schools under its jurisdiction and not exempted from the Connecticut Nutrition Standards published by the Connecticut State
153Department of Education will comply with the Connecticut Nutrition Standards. During the period of July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2026, the certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimburseable meals at all times and from all sources, including but not limited to school stores, vending machines, school cafeterias, conary programs, and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or non-school organizations and groups. Um, that's the motion. Is there a second to opt in? Second. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor, please indicate saying I. I. I. That was unanimous for the record. Uh the second motion is uh to um is to allow for exceptions and that's the Stonington Public Schools Board of Education will allow the sale to students of food items that do
154not meet the Connecticut nutrition standards and beverages not listed in section um 10-221Q of the Connecticut General Statutes uh provided that the following conditions are met. One, the sale in is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or or on the weekend. Two, the sale is at the location of the event. And three, the food and beverage items are not sold from a vending machine or school store. An event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity. For example, soccer games, school plays, and intercolastic debates are events, but soccer practices, play rehearsals, and debate team meetings are not. The regular school day is the period from midnight before the to 30 minutes after the end of the school official school
155day. Location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as the food and beverage sits. Is there a second to that? All those in favor please indicate saying I I I have it out of water. Okay. Thank you. Uh next item on our uh agenda is subcommittee reports and we'll start with uh Kevin teaching and learning. Yeah, keep it quick. Um so there's a couple of curriculum on the agenda for you for first read, no vote required. That includes math um for kindergarten, first and second grade as well as geometry. Um, and there's three, yep, three, uh, curricula on the agenda. Four, uh, second, read and vote required. Uh, that includes ELA for kindergarten, first, and second grade. I move I move to approve those. Second. There's a motion and
156there's a second. All those in favor, please see indicate saying I. I. I. Eyes have it. Um, in the next is finance and facility sub. Yeah. Yeah. So, we went over a lot of it tonight uh with the budget update um and the uh adjusted budget discussion. We also went over the full the fuel tank that needs to be removed here. Uh I believe you said it's going to be in SIPS in the following years coming up to take care. Yeah, we added it back in. We tried to see if we could extend it by 10 years, but there was a well within the radius required for that exemption. So, it now has to be removed and replaced. Yep. Thank you. And uh then we got an update on the portables. Uh we're looking into
157possible uh different um variations of how to do it. Uh the most efficient way to do it. Uh we had an update on the middle school which is like the the the the useful life study that we're going to get tomorrow. Um also an update on the solar panels which we all heard at the beginning and voted on today. Oh, and safety as well that which Maryanne touched on about uh she met with the police departments about different ways, different markers of where what areas of the school there are that we're going to be putting in to make it easier access and to figure out easier access for the police department to figure out where stuff is here. Thank you. Um next is policy subcommittee. Mr. Kelly. Um, policy subcommittee met this past Monday and
158our superintendent has us working, working, working. Um, we're earning our salary being on this committee of uh,0 an hour. Um, so we have a lot of policies. I guess a general overview would be that we are cleaning up our policy uh manual, making it uh sensible and usable for the superintendent and the administration as well as for anybody that would um like to look into it. We're getting rid of uh policies that are redundant, outdated, not necessary, have been superseded um by new policies and by new laws. Um there's a lot on here. And uh for those of you that are interested um if you're still watching this meeting at home that all these policies are hyperl on the agenda and you can access the policies through through the agenda. We're not getting rid of
159any policies that are mandated by law. We are getting rid of policies that are not mandated by law. We are getting policies um what was the one drug and alcohol test and the bus drivers that does not pertain to us anymore. It's the bus company's responsibility under state and federal law. Um situations like that. There are duplicate policies. There's policies that have been passed after these original policies were uh passed previously. Um so uh policies for first read no vote required are under section one on on C1 on the uh agenda policies lettered A B C D and E. Policy two for first read is um the climate school policy P5132 that would be effective uh this coming July 1st once we have the second read again no vote required policies for repeal for the
160first read and no vote required are is under section C number three and it goes from letter A to letter double E. Um, so, uh, again, cleaning up. If anyone has any questions, feel free to reach out to, uh, one of my, uh, committee members, Kevin Agnello. He'd be more than happy to answer any questions you have or myself or the superintendent. Um, and continuing on, policies for repeal for first reading, no vote required will be uh, P5131.9, bullying prevention and intervention. um effective July 1st. And then finally under section five, we have policies A through S um policies for repeal for the second readin. So we had the first read in last month um with a vote being required. So I move um for the repeal of letters A through S on section five.
161Second. There's a first and second. All those in favor of repealing those policies, please indicate by saying I. I. I. And after all the repealing, we now have a approval of a second read on P5125 student records. I so move. Um there's a motion on the floor and a second. All those in favor, please indicate by saying I. I. I. That was unanimous. And under section seven on the agenda, policies 1000 and 2000 series for first reading for alphabetizing and new number assignments. No vote required. And there is policies A through V. Yes, A through V on that page. And again, this is just putting things in order, making sense of it. Um, previously, um, policies were divvied up amongst, uh, administrators and what have you, and policy numbers were assigned half-hazardly, I guess, would
162be a word to describe it. And now with our uh law firm and their policy assistance and um and with our superintendent really focusing on this um it's uh going to get cleaned up and um it's overdue and we're getting there. I hope so. Um no vote required on on section seven. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is welcoming school layers on report. Any reports from any school leazison? Yeah, I did uh the high school today. It was a good active meeting. Um explain to them a little bit, took some questions about the budget. Um they were talking about collecting uh climate surveys um and uh just general information about the school and uh it's always a good crew, very active uh welcoming school. We do it virtually. Great. Uh, next item of our
163agenda is learn board layers on report. Any report? I was on an airplane so I missed Thursday's meeting but the minutes I think should be up by the end of this week she said. So I will report out if anything critical that I missed. Thank you. Thanks. Um, next item on our agenda are monthly reports A through C. Any questions for our student government uh global or enrollment? Can we ask for a verbal report from the student government representative or you can ask? Thank you. Um we don't really have much to report this month. We're planning our spring event right now, which is later than it usually is. We usually do it in the beginning of this month, but we're trying really hard to plan a boys field hockey game kind of like powderpuff because
164a lot of people have for the past few years, at least as long as I've been there, have wanted to do something like that. So, we're trying to figure out all the logistics for that. But, we did get it approved and it's on the calendar for Friday, May 2nd. So, we have signups this week and practices for that starting during school next week. Um, and other than that, we're starting to plan wellness week and that we should have more updates on that next month. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is board comments and items for future agendas. any I just want to reiterate and um make sure it's on the record for uh the minutes that um I would ask the chairman to call a special meeting of the board of ed for um
165post referendum Tuesday and pre-regular board meeting of May if we could do a um special meeting to focus on the budget outcome and specifically the elementary school or the schoolwide um musical program. Question about it, sir. Yeah. So, uh given the fact that we've had a lot of momentum with like the HBI program here at the school, I wanted to see uh if we could get if we could start looking into uh giving kids credits for EMT or firefighting. Um it's another, you know, other positions that are important. and uh you know getting certified with and you can get a job right out of school and I know that other schools in the area do it. Um I think it'd be great if uh we could do it here as well. Um you know there's
166uh low low volunteer turnouts these days and that could be helpful for the volunteer programs in in town such as the fire districts and the and the EMTs. you know, they do a very good job. And if we could work together to both um train children that want to do that or high school students that want to do that in the future and give them high school credits, it could really uh you know, bring a lot of happiness into the schools and um set up a good purpose and future for them um and add on to that HBI program. I know it' probably be separate from the HBI, but I think it's worth looking into. I know different schools in the area do it. I believe East Lime does it or something to that effect.
167And I think that'd be a good thing for us to look into. Of course, town budget has allocations still for tax credit taxes, I believe. So, yeah. Thank you. Um, next item on our agenda. Sarah's not here, so I'll turn it over to Katie. Motion to adjurnn. Second. All those are pleasing to hear saying I I have it.