001defenseman out there [Music] um [Music] what's going on [Music] oh yeah probably [Music] what's up buddy how you making out [Music] yes [Music] call out i had to call them out today it was a national holiday senior skip day nationals you don't even have to just they just don't go i know i had to call them out i'm like i'm like part of the conspiracy every day [Laughter] i would like to call the stonington board of education a regular meeting to order at uh june 9th at 6 32 pm and i'll ask mr lowry to lead us in the pledge of for which it allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank [Music] um you we move to communications and recognitions i'd like to um ask kevin kevin had a
002comment or a request to ask yes thank you mr chair i'd like to make a motion to table um agenda item number 11 the approval of the board of education goals i second that motion is there any discussion can i ask why yeah of course um we we were just this is just came up we wanted to uh have a second look in a second review and i was going to um ask the board to hold a special meeting to review um the the you know the the items on the board goals next week hopefully i'll find a time that suits everybody and and give everybody the opportunity to have a second read kind of thing on the goals look at it as approving a uh curriculum so it's this is a you know we
003had our long meeting and discussed the goals but maybe a second read and opportunity to discuss them next week any other discussion all those in favor of tabling agenda item number 11 moving into a special meeting for next week please indicate by saying hi that was unanimous thank you um dr riley i'd like to start with you with communications recognition yes thank you quite a few things are going on obviously in june i would like to first congratulate our para educator of the year tori gimple from stonington middle school congratulations i'd also like to recognize our educator of the year holly saved the guidance counselor at stonington high school we had a discussion with our child guidance center that hopes to open in august in the building next to the police station we're all very
004excited about that we're able to attend i know most board members the national honor society induction and that was not done very well kyle congratulations to you and all the incoming and outgoing members of that group it's quite an impressive ceremony that you that you held thank you the stonington middle school principal was hired deanna viccoli the current assistant principal and of course that opens up the that position and the interviews will take place the week of june 21st i'd also like to recognize the new high school ap manny macdonald lots of changes very positive for the district and all of our new administrative positions congratulations to all of them i would also like to thank mark and alicia and margo for the academic awards ceremony on monday night um it was well done and
005i always liked that because you recognize um student achievement in every course and just to see the the amount of offerings that we have at stonington high school is really impressive um so congratulations and thank you to that i'd also like to thank the stonington police they initiated this high five friday high five fridays we've already taken place at the elementary schools and the middle school will be tomorrow where all the on duty officers and the chief and everyone else shows up and welcomes students to the to the schools it's really fun and uh certainly shows support of our police and they've done a great job for us and i'd like to thank them for that now most recently our outdoor boys track team our state champions and the girls tennis also state champions it's
006been the most successful year in the history of our high school sports so congratulations to everyone at the high school who was in the sports programs just a couple reminders the monday is the senior awards that's always a very special time and then graduation is on tuesday june 21st i know that elementary middle school also have a number of events and you have those on your calendar but those are our two senior events coming up so that's my report thank you thank you dr ryan go to mr kelly any recognition sir thank you i uh was more than pleased and happy to hear that miss gimple was the pair of the year and i had the honor and pleasure of working with her over the last year or so at the middle school and i
007can uh personally attest to her dedication to the students and helping out the classroom and uh she's just a great person and she's off sailing tonight otherwise she would have been here my son had the fortune of having miss saad as his guidance counselor for the last four years so when she was selected as the educator of the year for stoning tonight totally agreed with that and she's just been fantastic anytime that he's ever needed anything or his parents ever needed anything that she was very responsive and whether it was references for college or for job applications or anything else and and it just you know attest to the fact that we have some great staff here and one reason why we do what we do a couple recognitions and um salvator alessio and maeve
008oakes from the middle school received the connecticut association of scholars leader scholar scholar leader award um again two great students from the middle school our drama department won best classical music musical for once upon a mattress they want a halo for that which is uh not an easy thing to do it's quite a recognition um outside of the boys state trent track state champs um really impressed with uh ryan orr who won at the state open his i think it was the 800 um he didn't know he won until um he was in the first heat which was the lower seeds and his time was faster than the higher seeds that ran in the second heat so they had to go running over to him and tell him that he won um he just had
009a great race and josh mooney of course also a state champ and they'll be going on to new england's dr riley mentioned that the tennis team with our hall of fame coach george krauss leading them to a state title i attended the student government induction ceremony sunday was the high school pops which was uh just another great presentation of our choir and our band i was able to attend briefly the meet the new superintendent um reception at the fire department and it was nice to see some people show up down there and meet our new superintendent i attended the student achievement awards night a couple nights ago and i am looking forward to senior week if anyone has any money lying around and they would like to help out with the safe grad party we
010are still looking for funds in order to give our graduating seniors a um party to remember after uh they graduate on the 21st they'll be going to a place where they're going to have a lot of fun and due to various reasons um we're a little short so if uh we are accepting cash donations we are accepting venmo donations we are accepting uh prizes for um [Music] door prizes that the kids can win at the end of the night or in the morning i guess it'll be at five o'clock in the morning when we pull those door prizes out um we just landed a uh from the aquarium a um meet the penguin experience from them and that'll be a prize to give to one of our graduating seniors through a raffle um so there's
011a lot of exciting things that going on with the senior class so i'm looking forward to it thank you here's kel mr diehard yeah pretty much uh echo everything dan said uh big congratulations to the sports teams we're turning into title town here in stonington it's fantastic to see um congratulations to the recipients of the educator of the year and the pear educator of the year um and our new um administrators that are coming in deanna and manny congratulations to them i i also wanted to shout out um um the voice program here at school i saw some stuff on facebook where they're doing uh they were doing a program it was like adulting teaching them life skills and stuff like that i thought that was really cool and really interesting and cutting edge and
012i have massive respect for that and i look forward to seeing what they do in the future also massive respect to the um student government and everything they've done this year and thank you kyle for everything you've done all your hard work and i i just wanted you uh to know that we appreciate you very much thank you mr esposito thank you miss simmons um yeah i had another lovely interaction with the students at west vine we were celebrating the opening of the sensory garden and um that garden is so fabulous it it does excite every single sense um we were we read a book to all the classes and i had chosen secret garden which is a favorite book of mine and um is traditionally a girl's book um but i had the cla
013in the class four boys were the ones that were most responsive and they were the ones that shared their secret gardens one being on an amtrak train so i thought that was very cool and then as i got to leave i had one of these interacting students offered to carry my book which probably weighed about half an ounce but it was his gesture of caring and of um of manners and i just thought um there was a lot of good instruction happening at west vine in all different areas so it was a good a good interesting interaction thank you mr baker pardon me i have four things but i'm going to move through them detailed but succinctly uh first i would like to take this moment to recognize our women's lacrosse team for their hard
014work and commitment to a very successful season that they had it was a pleasure to watch their home match against waterford on what was a very cold late april day blustery wind terrible conditions um so i didn't mind being in the warmth of the concession stand sheltered from that and getting to to watch them play for the first time was was incredible what i saw in just that one instance which i think is indicative of the the larger spirit that this team has is commitment teamwork and excellence on display and i wanted to thank the coaching staff and also the players for how well they represent our town and our school district and also for their representation of women in sports i i applaud that team as well as our women's tennis team and our
015other women athletics as well three things i want to recognize people for individually for excellence i want to echo what chris said with um kyle it was a pleasure to attend the student government um recognition ceremony was my first ceremony and it was just it was very beautiful and it was very moving and just reminds the adults in the room about why we do what we do and so thank you for your planning and your organization and i wanted to say to you we've had a lot of meetings this year i think i don't know if anybody's kept a count but it would be interesting to see how many meetings we've had and you've been there every step of the way kyle managing being a graduating senior with college applications and academics and student leadership
016and extracurriculars and heaven forbid maybe wanting to have a little bit of a social life that doesn't take place in this room specifically you know um is really important and you were there to help us talk about mask mandates covid policies budget um everything you really helped make our jobs here a little easier and and a little more well informed about what's going on and that's just that's a lot of time and energy and commitment that you didn't have to give to us but you chose to give that to us and i am so grateful for being able to spend these last seven months learning from learning through watching you lead so thank you for that um i look forward to dia patel joining us next year to pass the baton to continue the great
017work of having a student voice and student representation on this board so dia it was a pleasure to meet her about a week or so ago and we'll be we'll be seeing much more of her in this room for this the next year to come dr riley thank you for all your commitment to education because it's been a long and storied career that you've had and it is um very impactful and appreciative that it ends here in our town in stonington and your leadership and your navigation and your patience and thoughtfulness and onboarding for new members to the group um as again we were still working through covid and mass policies and and lots of issues so i've learned so much and being able to watch you uh help facilitate these meetings with our chair
018and we we will miss you but we are so excited for what the future holds for you and as any educator i think we all get excited and thinking about you know when we reach the top of our everest and retirement is is there is a really big important deal and just thank you for that finally last thing um if i'm stalking social media appropriately i believe our chairperson farook rajab has won another award is that true i believe an everest award was earned earlier this week and i think that's an award for leadership if i'm again stalking social media correctly and i couldn't think of a person more deserving of an award in leadership especially named after thinking about climbing mount everest because like kyle and dr riley you have navigated four of us
019through this onboarding process through a lot of meetings special meetings and and extra work and i just i'm so appreciative of of your leadership so thank you kudos to you and with that that's that's all i have i try to keep my social media secret but i feel um thank you mr ignore uh very well said sarah um and everybody else ditto to everything that's been said here but i would like to extend an additional congratulations to all of our soon to be graduates good luck after graduation whatever you have coming next to college internships work whatever you got good luck and congratulations kyle yes i'd like to recognize our incoming student government executive board president dia patel first vice president at alums second vice president martha bellet treasurer sergio guillovera reporting secretary olivia fuller
020uh corresponding secretary will fike and parliamentarian understall they've put a lot of working as juniors this year in their junior project and all of our student government events and i'm sure they will all do great things in their new roles thank you well i it's it's hard i don't know what to say after this uh but i'll i'll start by uh thanking kyle uh for his commitment and and um i i wouldn't be able to um say like and you know repeat i don't want to repeat what everybody else said but we appreciate you we thank you and uh as a i just want to present you with this card as a token of appreciation on behalf of the stonington board of education we appreciate you carl um i want to recognize our um stonington
021uh high school band for marching in the memorial day parade they provided us with great music because i was on a different group marching in front of them with my fellow member miss baker but they were fantastic and really made that 1.6 mile walk such a pleasure yeah easy um i i want to appreciate you know uh shout out to west vine street school and their sensory garden uh it was a hot day thank you for ordering a very hard day for us but those uh those those children were a joy to watch um and do their singing and do their poetry and do everything they did for the opening of the sensei garden uh great team and and it was a joyful event and thank you um gary congratulations on your retirement again we
022appreciate you thank you thank you for everything you did for us uh mr freeze thank you for everything you did for us and congratulations a on retirement and um you know i'll be remiss if i don't thank my fellow board members it's you know kind of like technically it's the end of the school year june meeting so thank you for your service to the student into our town you've worked very hard and and i appreciate you um you know we do this for our kids so i want to thank the kids for their hard work for this year and their dedication and they're all graduating and we appreciate them um and they wouldn't be there without our staff so a shout out to stonington public school staff for their hard work we appreciate you we
023thank you we appreciate and thank our parents who are committed to showing up to our board meetings and they matter and um you know i i want to say a a special thank you to the parents who participate and and come and show up uh it's it's a it's hard work to raise children keep doing what you do and uh i left you intentionally dr riley to the end because i i am i you know i look up to you there are many people that uh pass on uh in our lives uh that are giants and uh in their behavior and in the way they conduct themselves and i want to thank you for that i am appreciative forever grateful and i congratulate you on your retirement thank you sir moving on to comments from
024citizens regarding items on this agenda yes sir just make sure that mike is on state your name and your address please for the record can you hear me yes sir my name is matthew ornery i'm president of the italian american defense league i traveled 45 minutes to be here and i planned on speaking on diversity equity and inclusion which was on the agenda are you resident of the town sir so my question no no i'm sorry are you a resident of the town my question to the board is what is your brand sort of diversity equity sir and inclusion only residents of the town are to address the board sir if you're not resident of the town please have a seat according to open meeting law i should have the opportunity for public comment so
025is your brand of diversity grouping italian-american history and culture and saying it is a white supremacist history and culture is that stonington's view on diversity to accuse italians of that is your brand of equity taking something away from one group and giving it to another is your brand of inclusion including diverse perspectives about history you know there was an action made last august which replaced columbus day with indigenous people's day the italian american defense league and all the major organizations believe that indigenous people's day should be celebrated and honored but the brand of diversity equity and inclusion that you enacted last august was actually the opposite of what diversity equity and inclusion should be teaching diverse perspectives about history and including all groups you know i have um a book here called how to be
026an anti-racist by ibram kendi he is um a prophet in the anti-racist movement because anti-racism it's not just being against racism being for all people like the italian-american defense league is being an anti-racist is actually being racist against other groups so let me read this to you the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination are you teaching the children of stonington that it's okay to discriminate against one group to lift others up chair russia and members of the board because that's exactly what your vote last august did and if that's your brand of equity diversity and inclusion that's not a brand that that the people of stonington should sign up for um last meeting ashley toole
027asked you to reconsider eliminating columbus day all of the major italian american organizations are together on this the native american guardians association supports us because we believe in lifting up all people and not picking winners and losers like you did last august i would like you to amend the agenda again just like you showed it was possible with a two-thirds majority vote i'd like you to add the school calendar to the agenda so we can fix the mistake that the board made in august tonight thank you um any other comments from citizens regarding items on this agenda please [Music] hi ashley tulle um i first just wanted to kind of reiterate some of the things that are going around the room tonight coming to the board meetings and seeing some of the high school sports
028teams over this past year it's amazing to see the accomplishments they've made and the amount of work that our students have put into their athletics as you know with two kids in elementary school already starting you know their sports career seeing the senior video for the soccer boys with pictures of their team in their sharks uniforms at the same age that my son's at right now and saying like that's when they started as a team together we showed it to my son we're like look at this like they were right here where you were and now they're state champions so the list just keeps growing this year um so obviously we have you know some very talented i'm sure seniors that'll be leaving um our sports programs but definitely congratulations to all of them it
029is so great to see that happening here in town um i also wanted to thank the swinton police department and the board and the schools for doing the high five fridays i think it was really great as a parent to see something like a program like that started up i think it's really great for our students to know that they're safe in their schools to see the police officers there and engaging them and it's really creating a great relationship for our students and the police departments another thing that and you guys had pushed it off but i know you guys are going to be um going over it but the board of education goes when i saw that on there it was a little confusing um it was i didn't know if it was more
030of like these were expectations goals for the individual board members goals for the administration and the schools and the staff i was kind of i didn't really understand um what this sheet was and i wasn't sure like was there you know i was looking for like a second page like how are these things accomplished how are they measured um it just kind of seemed like an overall broad statement so i was going to kind of come and just ask for like a little bit more clarification but it seems like you guys are going to be tabling that um anyways um so that's kind of covered but i just when you guys do that just like a little bit more like they're really great statements and really great expectations but how do we ensure they're met
031um you know like family engagement um you know we did the welcoming schools committees i think that went really well i've heard really positive feedback from all the different schools um on how that was run and where that's going to go and i really look forward to the feedback coming back on those um but how does this goal get achieved what are some things that are planned or how do we measure that this is met um so i just kind of it's like there was goals but i was looking for like a little bit more flesh out of what exactly that meant um and that is all i had planned for tonight but you know i just did want to say i know that matthew um you know just talked about that and i just
032know that it's something that i just maybe thought that after the last one just that there should be some more community talk about you know i've just heard um you know i know some parents are upset by it and not that you know that there's indigenous people's day just that we treated it was a trade-off one for the other and i just didn't know and i know some other school districts have done it where it's a joint day and i just i'm not sure if stonington or if you guys have looked at other options but i just wanted that to kind of be considered and that's why i had brought it up at the last meeting as well so thank you all for everything and good luck to kyle and the other seniors it is
033such an exciting time in life i you know i sometimes wish you'd go back and relive that senior year it was so so great and i hope everybody has a great summer thank you ashley any other comments from citizens item five on our agenda is consent agenda um anybody would like to see any item removed or i'd like to ask for a motion to approve consent that genre items a through e second second any discussion just real quick what is can you just clarify item d dr riley yeah you would need to pull that item for discussion and approve the other items first [Music] um so that's the way that okay may you amend your motion [Music] teacher evaluation flexibility waiver he'd like it to be removed from the approval so we can discuss it
034are you drawing your second okay sure so item doesn't [Music] thank you so there's a motion is there a second thank you all in favor please indicate by saying hi hi that was your nose thank you um let's discuss item d i asked dr riley to explain it that's other duties assigned by the superintendent [Laughter] the the veteran board members will remember at the beginning of the school year that we came before you um after the professional development and evaluation committee um approved their uh intent or their their uh wish to have the flexibility for the evaluation system that the state department of education offered this past school year which really opened up opened up the opportunities first for teachers not to necessarily have to use just quantitative data for their evaluation but they could
035also use quantitative data and and have goals around scl items or family engagement items and so it got away because of the pandemic from just the traditional rigid observations and uh and kind of academic measurements kevin and so they have again extended that opportunity this year for the teachers and the administrators to have that looser uh set of evaluation standards uh it has to go to the the professional development that what we call the pdac committee for their approval it was approved by them may 22nd and then it needs to be approved by the board i will give you a little bit more context in that under construction right now is a new teacher evaluation and an administrator evaluation system that will be rolled out next year for implementation in the following year so it
036makes sense to kind of continue on having the looser structure rather than going back to a more quote unquote traditional rigid structure especially in light of our emphasis on social emotional learning thank you you're welcome any other discussion item on itemd [Music] flexibility is there a second second kevin uh all of us in favor please indicate by saying hi hi hi those are adams we have item six on our agenda first read for the curriculum on marine ecology surviving the outdoors food and nutrition one from foundations and forensic science item seven on our agenda is the second read and approval of the vocational math and entrepreneurship is there a motion to approve vocational math and entrepreneurship oh actually sorry do this but on item six um i'd like to make a motion on item six
037to wave the second read of those four curriculums i apologize uh there's a motion to wave a second read on items item six a through d is there a second i'll second that the second from mr donahoe any discussion on why mr ignell is asking for a waiver or yeah that's generally why i came up there's a lot of curriculums going i'm just keeping me uh keeping the flow going here yeah and i had the chance to read through all of them and it was fantastic so it is absolutely yeah right i wouldn't have made that motion without unanimous approval at our teaching and learning committee there's a first there's second and any other discussion uh please those in favor of approving the curriculum on our item six marine ecology is providing the outdoors food
038nutrition foundations and forensic science please indicate by saying aye hi that was unanimous and uh we motioned on item seven so item eight on our agenda is the report of superintendents yes under the covet update that's an item that we have on there every agenda there's nothing major to to report i did have some questions about there was going to be a retirement recession a couple weeks ago and we didn't cancel that because at that point our covet was up way up and so we actually there were some people that were going to be at that event who ended up testing positive that following weekend so it was a good thing i didn't want to go out of here being known for the uh the spreader event so i know i know i know um
039the uh hvac update this was presented to our finance and facilities committee earlier uh peter shared that we will be the board will be receiving further engineering and budget estimates in september or early october and we also have asked the engineering company to be able to break that project into segments uh at least three segments so you'll be able to consider your rp 1.4 art money and the 500 000 sip money and maybe do a third or two thirds or a half you'll have those options to talk about um prior to the next budget so that'll be that'll be something that'll be really important for this board to take a look at in october and november prior to uh to the budget and i've asked chris to give us a brief update you know we
040don't have a grant writer in this district we count on individuals that have a particular interest to to write for certain grants that meet our our curriculum and academic needs and chris the other day in our cabinet meeting went on and on about these amazing things that he's doing and i just had to have him share that with the board and the community because it's really impressive so chris it's up to you yeah don't go back and look at my english scores if you read any of these grant narratives but we've been very busy this year um so in part of the sip funding we had applied for some of that was cut we were lucky to get some grants awarded to help offset some of those costs as well so i'll go through we
041have seven grants that we were awarded this year uh totaling 524 thousand dollars so i'll go through each of these and then i'll pause at the end if you have any additional questions about these grants the peg pedia grant was awarded to us for 24 000 that is the public educational and governmental programming and educational technology investment account our government institutions love their acronyms that's part of the pure agency and that grant was to install an interactive projector screen at west vine so the original project proposal was for traditional laser projectors and audio in the gymnasiums at the elementary schools taking a step back that was part of the original project scope but due to the the size and scope of the building project that was cut so what we've been using in the meantime
042is sort of a portable setup with a screen projector similar to what we see here not ideal for those new elementary schools in a cyber security conference i attended in nashville they did a demonstration about some of the grants they had applied for and one of these was called the lou playground lu and you can look it up and take a look at a youtube video very cool interactive experience uh projects on the wall the students can actually throw dodge balls and interact with it it's sort of a gamification system uh you know you turn off the lights it does like disco it's got full audio so really cool setup and actually less cost than the enterprise grade laser projector we were looking at so it includes that laser projection it includes a sensor it
043includes that room audio so very exciting we're planning on moving forward this summer with west vine and we're seeking additional funding to do dean's mill in the very near future as well the next grant we were awarded was for four thousand dollars and that was the connecticut school security grant that grant is going to be to offset additional cameras throughout the district for blind spots for additional uh area coverage in parking lots again all those cameras tied back to the police department and all of our first responders so we did receive some sip funding to do this building as well so we're getting complete upgraded security cameras here as well as additional blind spot coverage throughout the district our largest grant was the department of justice we applied for a cops grant which is the
044community oriented policing services that was for 214 dollars so that was a match grant we received to replace the aging pa systems at somington middle school and stonington high school uh those systems are 17 and 21 years old respectively so they are well aged out so what this grant was going to allow us to do is not only upgrade those pa systems but also allow for intercoms in the classroom emergency alerting district-wide visibility into those classrooms in the event of an emergency and again tie back with first responders and give them visibility as well the next grant we received was for 125.000 five years so 25 000 a year as an in-kind grant which just means they pay that money directly to this vendor so this is a cyber security grant to bring on a
045third-party service oculus it's the company we're looking to partner with they provide 24x7 managed sock services or security operations center so they're monitoring those endpoints they're scanning for vulnerabilities they're assisting with patching so when i'm asleep at midnight and i don't answer that phone there's somebody taking action in the case of a breach or immediate remediation required the next grant we received part of the usac funding uh which we get with e-rate as well as the emergency connectivity fund so the ecf we received 112 000 grant um that was to offset uh chromebook purchases which we were able to purchase with sip funds so we're taking that money and we're actually using some of that funding as our match for that pa system grant so this large over 300 000 project for the two school
046upgrades is going to be a net zero cost to the district so we've been able to use some of those funds that we had already expended in pre-approved sip purchases to offset we received approval at the last board of finance meeting to do this as well and then the leftover funds from that are being transferred over to uh the existing av sip account which will be purchasing the upgraded shs auditorium so we're breaking that out into two phases but as you recall that was also cut from our sip proposal so we had a 120 plus thousand dollar request from the board of finance for our av systems that was cut to a dollar so we're trying to build that back up find alternative means to help offset that did apply for a third round of
047funding with ecf as well we have not received that funding commitment decision letter yet uh but that will be for thirty thousand dollars for uh ipads at the elementary school for our k1 students and lastly our e-rate program we apply for this every year we are pre-allocated five years of funding based on our free and reduced lunch numbers so essentially what that grants us is a 50 discount on both our isp service uh which in our case is cen as well as all of our networking equipment uh so that was about 75 000 we received again that comes out of our sip purchase and we anticipate that funding which we had already received that funding commitment decision letter when we had our sip approval so again we're just saving the money uh saving the town
048money on that so for this year alone it's 524 000 awarded and down the road it'll total six hundred twenty four thousand in addition to any other grants i can get to in the near future any questions uh one quick one first of all that's awesome um but secondly how does this compare with previous years it sounds like a lot but it's a lot for this year so e-rate we apply for every year um we we previously applied for and received peg pedia funding three years ago and that did all of the projectors at the middle in high school i should say help offset the total cost of that project um so i would be happy to prepare an entire list it's pages long of grants that my predecessor as well as myself have applied
049for to help offset the large cost of technology great work thank you any other questions [Music] yeah quickly um a lot of it was like a foreign language but the bottom line was that um you're doing 525 000 for this year and 624 000 overall so thank you very much on the one there that picked my interest a little bit was uh the cyber security or is that going to help with uh like romantic attack yes so what these managed services offer uh is this sock i mentioned soc which is a security operations center what that is it's eyes on keyboards 24x7 365. so we deploy agents to all of our endpoints that's workstations servers network switches wi-fi access points any piece of technology that can receive this agent is reporting back at all times
050that's using a log ingestion tool to take all of that data which no human could sit and process and read all that but it takes it it looks for key flags it provides that information to a high level technical technical engineer that technical engineer then takes that decides if i need to get a phone call or not depending on the time of day if it's midnight on a sunday they know that they take action and what we can do is we pre-purchase a bucket of hours that they just bill us against so we sort of have a full support team when we're not in and thank you for that answer um in relation to the ransomware attack that we had in the fall in some of these grants for communications will any of them enhance
051the communications at the middle school um i know when the ransom where attack happened that we were had like minimum communications with the outside world due to the voice over internet in the weak cell phone signal in the area did any of these rectify that problem these will not but we have addressed that so what we've done is we've actually set up a 4g lte backup for the district and using uh quality of service or qos tagging we actually prioritize uh the phone system which which runs voip i promise that's the last acronym i'll stop so so it takes that voip that that phone service and says okay if the network goes down we're going to switch that over to 4g and just like a sell signal it allows them to still call out and
052dial out yeah any other questions thank you chris you know i'm going to miss a lot of things in this district but listening to chris talk is going to be one of the top ones the soqs and the prx then it's just amazing but thank you so much chris you did such a great job i wanted to board in the community to hear about that that concludes my report thank you item nine on our agenda is uh 2022-2023 budget update and uh i'll move it to chris yep um i'm gonna go over the reductions that uh we approved unanimously in the finance committee um one of the reductions the first one was a night custodian at 79 809 dollars we can cover this at this current time with part-time and subs also there are three
053positions with people retiring with a lot of time in so we can hire um entry at a at a lower rate for the for the new people replacing these positions and that's the retiring storington middle school music teacher will be able to save twenty six thousand two hundred and forty dollars um the retiring shs science teacher will be able to save 26 240 retiring social worker will be able to save two hundred again 26 dollars um we reduce the maintenance repair um and we're gonna save nine thousand two hundred and thirty eight dollars on that um shs administrator we're gonna hire an assistant instead of an associate we'll be saving thirteen thousand two hundred one dollars from that and then um two vacant positions that are not needed uh that aren't coming back are both
054point fours uh the fte uh shs uh chemistry we're gonna save 2 800 or 28 000 628 from that and uh ft shs ela 223 from that vacant position and then um we're gonna freeze the hiring on the hr director for uh half a year uh at 153 000. which will save us seventy six thousand five hundred yeah that's the column on the right yup and then that total amount reduced would be 308 167 000. any question on chairman donahue's report so i'd like to ask for a motion to approve the recommended reduction amount of 308 167 which will put our proposed approved budget in line to the budget that was approved by town vote as well as the board of finance so moved second please second all those in favor please indicate saying hi
055hi i had a question yes sir that i didn't get to before the motion was made um do we have a better idea now with our end of fiscal year i'll i'll get to that yeah so thank you for approving the uh 2022-2023 uh uh budget can i can i just ask with regard to that if there have been any responses to the um search for the elementary school music teacher if there have been any response or responses i don't know i'll get that back to you i appreciate that thank you the open the the music elementary the addition of elementary music teacher i think ms simmons is asking if we had any applicants i assume i i understand that uh mr manning from the middle school is that that's that's correct so that makes
056two positions at the middle school of open correct that opened vacant positions mr jennings from the middle schools taking the elementary position he wanted to do that he just wanted to do that for a while so that's fulfilled lovely so we're advertising them getting stuck in that music but it's a great it's a it's a great yeah it's a good thing um [Music] so so to your point uh mr kelly so you know we we discussed in our uh finance committee meeting um the ending balance uh currently we're looking at about um 99 000 left but that's that's an estimate number but we also are faced with a one of our boilers at the high school is needs of repair uh for the amount of a hundred and four thousand dollars uh so we're about
057to to your question on the ending balance when we're not uh very clear on the exact amount uh at this moment but as of now it doesn't look like we will have any um but if we do have an ending balance and you know the boiler doesn't get repaired or doesn't get the bill doesn't get cut in this this year this uh fiscal year what would you like to see happen with the ending balance i guess is the question we can you know either put the money back into the town if it's a thousand or if it's a hundred thousand or we can put it towards the healthcare reserve or you know or we can cut the po for the boiler in june the boiler in high school needs to be repaired because it's a
058shelter in place also so we we must fix that boiler um it's a matter of being cut today or it's cut in july it's the only difference is if it's cut in july we don't have the money to fund it did i answer your question or you didn't yet [Music] what the board uh sees fit you know it's our fiscal responsibility and we need to know what we want what we should do with it with the money um we really need to fix that boiler at the high school there's no question and and peter can can give a much better reasoning to why it must be fixed but it's 104 thousand dollars repair and according to gary you will have 99 dollars which makes us five thousand dollars short money well if it's not repaired
059then this the students can't what are the consequences peter so the boilers are [Music] um [Music] just to kind of summarize we need we will fix the boiler i mean that that has to happen the issue is the estimate today is basically we're we're even but there are encumbrances there are purchase orders that may come back with less you know there will be some kind of ending balance it sounds like it's going to be minimal but it could you know you we could get a bill or or uh you know we still have a payroll coming up we don't know the number of substitutes that we're going to have between now and next week i mean there are some unknowns so the real question is if there is or there will we never overspend so
060if it's a thousand dollars or if it's fifty thousand 000 ending balance what would the board like to do with those funds there will be something a dollar or 50 that there will be some kind of ending balance and the the two options are to let it let it ride out and then it would go whatever balance it is would go back to the town and last year it was what was a gear 50 90 000 the year before is 300 and something thousand so we have returned funds to the town um over the past and i think it was 400 something a few years ago i mean it's been significant but we need to know do you want to do that or do you want gary to take whatever it is and put it
061in the health reserve because the health reserve is still unknown we have a recent estimate from our broker that the health care the medical cost for our insurance plan is going to go up from what we have so there's an unknown there and my suggestion would be to take whatever balance there is put it in your health reserve you'll know you know by the end of summer what the actual increase will be and it just protects you from having to reduce something else in the future a little bit that's that's those are the two options the town or your health reserve so can we draw from the health reserve for emergency things like shelter not if you're under so it has to be in surplus than what the recommended right so it can't be so
062it's not always yes the answer is not always yes it depends on what claims come in and and what is in the reserve and is it over the cl it's a very complicated thing to withdraw from it um the only reason we would put money in it this year if it's a dollar if it's a thousand is that we don't know what next year is going to look like and it and with every thing escalating my recommendation to the board is to deposit you know the thousand dollars or the five or whatever number in the health reserve just to protect us from next year going negative honey i think that's a good question you can't take money out of the health reserve and buy a truck or a book that that that doesn't happen but
063if you're if your increases are more than we think then you would if if you have to pay for your claims so if you increase the reserve then you you can keep a higher amount in there in case the claims go like we think they might be going and you wouldn't have to reduce in some other area in the budget to pay for it so that's how it impacts the boiler correct okay so they put it in i would also agree because it's a discussion it's like a it's a it's an amount we know we're going to incur it's not it's really sort of a crude already um and we know we're going to accrue some additional amount for the health insurance as well so it's not really in strict accounting sense in some ways
064it is not a surplus because it's already been spoken for either for the boiler or for the uh insurance claims so that that's that's my feeling on it that i agree though it should we should put it into the uh insurance account yeah it sounds like putting in the reserve is a good idea in the meantime now after listening to chris um maybe peter can get with chris and they can look at grant write in for boilers for uh shelters that are used for the the town and if the you know the environmental uh whatever the fema whoever has grants available to do it we love it he did actually present us at the finance with a grant for the hvac you know the possibility of a grant so do we agree to deposit the
065money in the yes yeah so you have to make a motion i'd love to have a motion [Music] balance if there is any observer sounds good second all in favor hi hi that was unanimous thank you um item 10 on our agenda is the report for our incoming superintendent schools yes it's not okay i just wanted to give you folks an update on some of the work that's happened uh over the past month so under the the uh arena of community engagement we had an amazing meeting this morning with allison blake and her team from the child and family agency they came in this morning and met with the leadership team and talked about their plans to move across the street from the high school hopefully starting in september and gave us an overview of
066all the wonderful services that they're going to be able to provide our children and then eventually families in whole we also discussed a variety of ways that we can partner with them to publicize not only the clinic and the services but also do some some projects together including a potential podcast this summer so we're very excited about that uh danielle cheeseboro is organizing a meeting for the school system child and family and human services to maximize communication and again figure out how we can best provide efficiencies for services to our our our families uh in addition to that um we would like to suggest that the board of education perhaps entertain a presentation from them in the fall so that again we can keep this very very public so that all folks can take advantage
067of those services this week we had a meeting with the ocean community chamber of commerce president and all of our art teachers in the town to identify what ways for our k-12 students to participate in the lobster boy tree project that was so successful in the borough last year as well as this new starry lights project over the holidays that is going to be in westerly as well as pocket talk it's going to have donahue park is going to be involved as well as wilcox park there'll be stars different types of recyclable material used to make stars white lights soft white lights of stars displayed all up and down the the center of town in the businesses and we're looking for our children not only to provide artwork but also service work on helping uh
068deploy the displays get some manual labor out there and help the two people that are involved with the chamber who are actually providing all of this and and help not only set it up but tear it down as well so more on that when we figure out what we're doing we have secured five buoys already they're actually in dr riley's office and we'll be having one for each building constructed to be on display at the tree this coming christmas season uh our third high five friday or fist bump friday depending on the children's preference we'll be at stonington middle school tomorrow it's been a great response we've had a great response from families it's a lot of fun the staff has a smile on their face as well as the students when they enter the
069building and it's great to see the officers out there with our central office staff as well so if you're not busy come by it's a lot of fun 7 45 tim is that 7 45 a.m uh as far as curriculum oh i'm sorry and lastly under the community engagement we've identified approximately 10 teachers representing all four buildings that will be taking up nessa's offering of free professional development in expeditionary learning well we're hoping to have that happen before our school year starts just because we have so few professional development days we need to kind of look at other models of getting professional development delivered to our teachers so we're very thankful to nest for that as far as curriculum this is an important cte update i did receive communication from todd burch he's the state
070apprenticeship director from the department of labor he's meeting tomorrow with representatives from the cte community and we're hoping to get that hbi apprenticeship curriculum approved tomorrow so that we can move ahead with that implementing the grant that we were awarded to to have that curriculum uh starting in play at the high school next year so stay tuned on that there's another grant of ten thousand dollars i just want you to know that you know the high school folks are working on that as well it's not just all chris uh just some updates on potential summer work with the board traditionally we do not hold a board meeting in july and i know sarah you were looking forward to that i would suggest that you might consider anyways and i know for rupal um will organize
071this if it's of interest to maybe that you look at that july 14th as part of my evaluation meeting that's it's already on the calendar if you want to move that around we can certainly do that as well i'm not going anywhere the policy subcommittee is going to have some half day working meetings uh we've got july 19th 20th and 26th after we kind of do a deep plunge into the the policy work that hasn't not been focused on in a while we will adjust from there when that subcommittee might like to set up their regular meetings or if they'll find that maybe working meetings like of a longer duration may be more productive we'll go from there and annot again to mr anderson for offering august 10th and 17th for facility tours that the
072board of ed has been so interested in so wear your comfy shoes get your get your sunscreen on because he's probably gonna have you up on the roof and on all of that good stuff as far as family engagement goes our welcoming schools and board liaison assignments will be coming out to you uh i will be taking cash bribes in the parking lot if you want to know what school you've been assigned to and there's a there's a reason behind the assignments as well we're just waiting on one school that hasn't had an opportunity to set their pto schedule next year we're trying to dovetail the alternate meetings that you'll be sitting on with the working um the welcoming schools committee groups and then then alternate meetings or alternate months will be up to you
073in that building principle to kind of figure out when it makes sense for you to get together with them i did put on the draft calendar that will be coming your way very shortly i did put on some placeholder dates but again just know that for those one-on-one meetings that's up to you to meet with that principle at your mutual convenience i do also want to say the survey that kevin has helped me craft we've on revision about 12 i think we'll be going out tomorrow and waited for the climate survey to close but this is part of my entry plan is to survey families to see where their their feelings are about different programming and needs and wants and wishes for their children so that will be going up forthcoming tomorrow as far as
074personnel goes our new director of finance has already made two site visits um has met with the business office staff has met with cabinet members has participated in a professional development session with miss mccurdy and mr smith and myself uh met with chris and gary again this morning as part of the transition planning process she's scheduled to come in again next thursday so um we're looking forward to that uh we will be interviewing for the new assistant principal of stonington middle school june 20th and 22nd uh and the last um kind of fyi uh we're going to be looking in conjunction with the new director of finance to uh to announce some summer hours uh to provide a little lift of morale at the central office we'll be looking at um having office hours during
075the months of july and august at eight to four monday through friday and then eight to two on fridays and the the folks will have the the option there of making up the extra minutes in their days uh during the week so that they can enjoy some early afternoons and friday on friday and that's anyway any questions dan with the high five fridays um where did that initially come from or who did that initially come from my understanding is that officer browning found that particular concept from the new london public schools and asked if it would be all right to borrow that i think it came out of one of the the um the the lead state uh school resource officers that origin originated in connecticut i'm not sure if it's happening in other states
076at all but it is such a positive way to start the school day and it's been it's been great for everybody involved and it's a riot to see the families go by if the parents go by in their cars and smile they're probably laughing at us but um just to smile sometimes i think you think that might be the only time people smile the whole day long but it's a great way to start the day now excellent excellent and she should be commended for it um have we gotten any um pr on it the day did come out on the d when we had the first one at dean's mill westerly sun was supposed to be at west vine and they didn't show last week uh and i don't know if anybody's coming tomorrow i
077just think you know the the timing of it after what happened in texas and evolving to that we already had this plan and it was just like you know and this people are you know people i didn't know that we were doing it saw the cops there and they got a little apprehensive or whatever but once they realized what it was for it's just like you know such to do it on such a positive reason as opposed to what's going on in other places especially it just you know just shows that uh you know stonington's got some bright minds looking out for our children thank you you're welcome mary ann um as far the as the hbi goes you said you guys applied for the grant actually we were offered the grant we were in
078conversations with hbi um and you know we really were very interested in it before we even were offered the the grant and i think it's probably again because it hasn't been officially approved by the department of labor and they wanted to get their legs into connecticut and so we're happy to be first so i'm hoping that i'm going to get a very positive phone call tomorrow afternoon and if i hear i should hear back uh todd was not anticipating any issues but you never know what what might happen but if i hear tomorrow i'll blast you out a note just so you can yeah and that will uh allow kids to get ready for next year correct absolutely it'll allow us to get that pre-credentialing that core component course in place that they're not going
079to lose out on any we won't be delayed another year and that's important because the grant starts july 1. so it's not like we get a delay of game because it's not approved so it's a big deal thank you you're welcome thank you mario um now i was really looking forward to this like there's a parent square tutorial on the agenda chris for all yours [Music] all right this is going to be short and sweet and no acronyms i promise so we had some discussions and i heard from the board about uh you know the amount of messaging that we're receiving and we've heard this from families we've heard this from like i said some board members so what i wanted to do today is just a real brief demonstration on setting those preferences what
080those preferences are this is also for all the families at home they can watch this video we'll be sending out a very brief clip that we're going to show and walk through today as well as a single page pdf with a couple screenshots just so families know how to sort of fine tune these preferences in addition to this little tutorial and setting those preferences we've started having some internal conversations with the schools about consolidating some of those messages ranking priorities of those so i'll go over sort of all of those different settings here and we'll do a brief tutorial you are all who have a device in front of you welcome to follow along and fine tune and customize your preferences with me so we're going to walk through is signing into parent square the
081workflow to get to these notification settings and then adjusting them and afterwards i'll basically explain what each of these notification types are so once you've signed in you're going to click on your account up there in the top right and then you're going to click on these notification settings here [Music] yep you can do it on your phone as well i have a little pre-recorded one we'll be sending out so you all receive this as well we're just gonna do a brief walkthrough here for the desktop version but on the phone you can go in under the little hamburger stack drop that down and select those notification preferences so again we're selecting that title up here under the account settings and then the notification settings here and once you're in the notification settings you'll see
082a few different options some of you will have multiple schools so if you have students at several schools you'll see a few different listings here you can customize options for each school you can customize options for each type of alert or message and what i'll show you now is what these different options are so you see over here we have school alerts and that's simply on or off so when we have the different notification types they're sort of ranked in priority of criticality so a school alert is something like a reminder about school closure tomorrow is early dismissal things like that happenings at the school that rank higher than simply just a message that's notifying you about an event taking place or something like that the general announcements and messages that's sort of the catch-all
083right so that's going to be your pto events that's going to be the frequent messages that you see coming out about news and things like that that are happening so these you have three options here for text and for email you can turn on digest and what that means is at the end of each day let's say stonington middle school sends out 10 messages throughout that day if you turn on that digest setting you'll get one notification via email or text or you can shut off i don't want to get any of those text messages i just wanted a little digest email and when you click into that it'll show you all the happenings from the day so it sort of consolidates that for you gives you that sort of social media feed look and
084feel to it and then up here you see urgent smart alerts you cannot disable this this is for emergency alerting if there's any sort of an incident you know maybe there's a gas leak we've got to close the school quickly something like that those notifications are pushed out automatically via text email and phone call and you cannot disable those so we want to make sure that we can reach staff and families in the event of an emergency okay so again we internally are looking at how we rank sort of the criticality of these messages to make sure that we're not inundating staff consolidating some of these messages using newsletter formats things of that nature but this is sort of your your first line of defense if you will to uh message inundation and alert fatigue
085all right any questions on that [Music] we also have a pdf that we'll be sending out as well looks very similar to this well it is this and that will be sent out to staff and families tomorrow as well just again to update on how to set those settings all right any questions no great thank you thank you for doing that that's it short and sweet [Music] do we get different notifications as parents and then we get ones as board members so board members are unique and that you're treated as both staff and some of you are treated as parents in the district depending on your role well we have you set up as a staff member so you're getting those internal notifications if you would like to get the the full suite and onslaught
086of messaging by all means you're able to just send me an email i can set you up as that if you'd like to see all those as well you know back at the middle school that they tried to limit the amount of messages that went out because you know you sent out about the pto or the basket raffle which are all important in their own good but you know then the principal sends out something that's of utmost importance and parents are getting like like you were saying message fatigue so that was my concern with this so thank you chris um all right monthly reports kyle do you want to cover yours it's the last month i'd like to remove the student government yes so this past month we had the welcoming schools group where we
087met here with all the schools in the building and then individually we met with the consultant and broke into four games physical environment policies and procedures welcoming school staff and written materials and each of those teams had staff members and a student on them and they reviewed their respective focus and then we met back up and talked about areas that we can improve and which of those are highest priority we had senior project presentations so all the seniors this past year had a mentor in the community for a prospective career path and they presented their findings and final project to staff and students and then student government we had our wellness week which i thought was a success we had our new executive org and uh our induction last week first of all i so
088appreciate your reporting throughout this year and i hope you tutor our new student representative because you are a perfect model and hopefully she can follow the steps we don't we can't find out what's happening whether we don't know what's happening to the students other than be represented you give us a little window to that and then it gives us opportunity to ask more questions and so to that end i have some questions about your report so um in the student government when the welcoming school group teams can reconvene i just wondered what was concluded about the areas of needed improvement and what are the immediate priorities of those um you'll have to forgive me i don't have them in front of me so off of memory areas we can improve reorganizing the website adding some
089more pictures that mirror the diversity of the student body and diversity of interest so it's not just sports physical environment we decided we could use some more directions on parking lot and how to get into the building how to locate the main office and all that because it is not very clearly marked for first-time visitors um and then uh policies and procedures we talked a little bit about having things like registration documents available in different languages translators available i think those were the uh high points yes i i think the effort was really is impressive and hopefully that kind of model is going to continue with that and then i um then i was just curious about um what their reaction was to giving up their devices um on tuesdays is it every tuesday that
090they're going to give up their device uh no this was just this past tuesday for wellness week it was entirely optional we went around and handed out coloring sheets and other activities decks of cards for people who were willing to do it and we had over 200 students participate so we were pretty happy with that turnout so how did they report did they um become anxious um people said that people said the time took a little longer than it usually does um but the decks of cards were a big hit in our survey um that went out to staff a lot of teachers said that their students are still using them during task blocks so i think it was a positive thing for people who participated i think it would be interesting to have it
091we might not have as many volunteers oh well just a dream okay thank you very much any other questions on the monthly reports all right next item on our agenda if there's any items for future agendas um i would like to do this to respect to our dedicated parent ashley and apparently other parents that she said she represents um and ask for a discussion as she has asked now twice for a discussion acknowledging columbus day as well as indigenous day and if a discussion could occur i will consider that for a future agenda thank you any other items for future agendas um last month i asked about a items for future agenda and i thought they were supposed to move forward but i didn't see anything one was a communication policy between staff coaches etc
092in students and the other one was evaluation of uh extracurricular activity leaders such as coaches and what have you and what happens there with a survey of the parents that are involved of the students that are involved complaints that are brought forward etc and i thought we were supposed to have some movement on that and i was supposed to get a report or something and nothing materialized so that's part of the policies we're going over in july the communication policy or what have you but i'll ask marianne to schedule a meeting for that on first week of july okay thank you any other item for a future agenda all right support comments and concerns and i would like to my fellow board members to allow me to start but this is for your information for
093public information so we're not constitutionally required to allow the public to speak about any matter within the school board authority in fact there's a united states supreme court rule that the constitution does not grant the members of the public generally a right to be heard by public bodies making decisions of policy we've made it a practice here that to allow our resident to speak about items on our agenda and we also allow it to be on the topic of items on our agenda and for three minutes only so just i want to make sure you're aware and sit down turn off his mic any other comments from both members sit down i asked for a german of this meeting motion to adjourn this meeting second can we uh suspend it can we before we before
094you adjourn i'd like to make some closing comments and that this gentleman would just be quiet for me this is my last board meeting so sit down just sit down thank you i wanted to sit down i wanted to thank this community thank this board for allowing me to to serve the kids in this community i think we've made a lot of progress in the last 10 years i want to thank our teachers someone asked me the other day what what do you want your legacy to be and i said well i don't want to be the spreader event that was for sure um but i do um i the legacy is are the people that have are working for you our teachers um our parents our custodians um and in one particular group that
095i just i can't believe this i've been in a lot of districts and that's those folks back there your leadership team and your other support staff it's showing you go out and you do an intergalactic search for a position and time and time and time again without question it's your inside people are are selected that says a lot for your for your uh selections over the years and i'm really proud of the of this group it's just amazing i hope you work together as a team with your leadership team they are amazing and uh this is my last board meet i counted him uh i think i counted him including nine years as a board member in a district obviously i wasn't working in that district and all the other meetings that i've been to
096over a number of years and i believe this is my 912th board meeting in stonington and no wonder i'm shaking it now um 912. um that's probably off by a few there's probably a few more that figure out but uh it's been it's been an honor we've accomplished a lot together and i just want to thank this community and this board and others for supporting me uh pandemics i didn't really plan on that one and all the other challenges that we've had but i think our community and our students are are better off for the what's happened in this district in the last 10 years so thanks leadership team thank you board thank the community appreciate it there was a motion to join the meeting and there was a second all in favor