001e flag United States indivisible here here Mr Cory here Mr here Mr uko M here Mr here Mr put here miss to hereon representa here miss Ferguson here miss kuski here miss lski here Mr pet here miss motion to approve the agenda adding in item eight regarding the um Italian grant that would bump everything else down in eight and then also adding a possible action item there anything else anyone had for adjustments to the agenda anyone want to move that motion second all those in favor yes Service public participation the board invites members of the community to speak on topics to be addressed on the agenda or other topics of Interest individuals wishing to speak must State their name and address at the beginning of their comment the board will not allow comments regarding specific
002staff members parents students or personal grievances courtesy is expected in this submitted public forum the participating time will be limited to three minutes per person and 10 minutes overall no signed up speak Over the River and Through the Woods good evening everyone I'm so superintendent we are very excited this evening because we have members as as parents [Music] and so that is just awesome so we are GNA start with our community um recognitions Mr CER if you want to come on up um traditionally this isair and I do presentations do have some of our community Awards and special awards that were made by for this particular um event this evening yes which are beautiful so throughout the month of March torington Middle School holds what they call Pride of tournament and it's a tournament to
003really have a positive tone about the city and to really recognize the wonderful things that go on in our community every day so students actually get to vote on um who are the institutions that get recognized this evening normally it's one but because it yes so which was really awesome so I do want to acknowledge the members who kind of orchestrated that they could not be Jason sty DJ Douglas um and we also have our student newspaper uh editor the TMS times and this grade student gabri so congratul Gabriella as well so the whole process started with 35 options uh such as our awardwinning TPS music department and then as Mr scer said they expected one clear winner but the results produced three so they are here with us tonight we're going to start with
004our Warner Theater build in 1931 uh still shining with its Art Deco design the water contains schol for the Performing Arts and stages that are graced by the World by World local Stars so here to accept the award is ex director of theater printer this is gonna go in the box office picture of all three of you I had the honor of being on a panel a leadership panel with ruus and it's just really wonderful and the great creative um ideas that are being presented and living throughout our war are really our inspiration so thank you um our next award winning group uh in 1947 Park and supervisor Carl hosinski invited Santa Claus to town so now a parade bring Santa Claus and the Magical crew back each year and I know that children as
005well as adults really love this event it's really a beautiful way to celebrate the holidays um Mr binski said I'm just trying to do something TN here to accept the award for Christmas Village our director commission secretary jimd thank you so much and finally last but not least over 40 years the drisol family and friends along with many volunteers have continued Tim dr's mission to support the St J Children's Research Hospital this year the true Community effort led to a new record of 8,329 [Applause] award for the St T are and we have [Applause] [Music] so squeeze in that would be great you honor Us by being here and for all that you do Forton thank you so much recently we had Connecticut history day here in torington over the last several years I think
006the last 10 years we've been honored to have US History Day here for the entire region so we have folks who come from many different towns to get to know us a little bit better they were very impressed with our construction um we hope to continue that once building built as well and we have several students who were recognized during that weekend they work very very hard they have to work months and months on their research projects and those students are being honored this evening we'll start with uh the junior group documentary in second place um laia and the Revolution and those two students are Diego Flores engage [Music] you your individual documentary L and Clark exploring the New Frontier and that is uhz [Applause] exhibit King pH that is edn [Applause] Madrid to see
007these projects they get to express themselves and their knowledge in so many different ways in visual ways and Performing Arts as well as websites and document so a lot of expertise and good stage pres uh junior individual website haret tuckman and the Underground Railroad goes to McKenzie uh proost and then senior group exhibit first place Apollo 11 gos to uh three different students that's Sophie B Evelyn Hernandez and Amy [Applause] the same category that uh title of the project is Deni entry and that's third place for Olivia and Friday Kaya Rodriguez and Kayla [Applause] senior individual exhibit acception new frers the 1964 Land Reform and that first place award goes to Evelyn Oran so it senior individual exhibit second place Eli Todd creating curing mental illness goes to Brendan and Third Place Alex Hamilton and
008Federalist Papers [Applause] Rose very last award senior individual website and I had privilege of being a part of judging this um presentation of this website was Lea the first dog at space and that award goes Ace Bon awesome job by our US history so we have some teachers who are being acknowledged this evening we're going to start with toring fer and both uh teachers were being acknowledged this evening I've done a great job with our student council Sarah coads the student council she buil open a little pre library at tord she maintains it she started composting initiative that students facilitate to use in Outdoor Classroom the whole idea that student council is really all about the [Music] leadership is coing with Erica mcmurty Miss mcmurty uh leads the third grade dance student I'm not surprised
009because she's been doing this for years and years um way back when she was with me at fors so she's been wonderful doing that for such a very long time she serves on our Wellness committee for the building and the district she serves on the Veterans Day committee Winter Games committee and leads the Field Day committee to coordinates the Kids Marathon for touring for and J for heart events and fundraisers we really appreciate all the work that they've done through the kindness campaign that has raised over ,00 for the St Tel which we just acknowled and Sarah and Erica have both brought the dance te and student council event to perform and um app to the school so our student council is very AC allow students to be leaders good citizenship good citizens role models
010and we so appreciate all that we give to come [Applause] School we're recognizing some other faculty members at Southwest and once again this is is for student council advisors and those four folks they can make their way while I'm reading some wonderful things about them uh our student council advisers at Southwest are Michael motter Matthew Park House Angel calib and Annie Wilson and you can kind of hang out for a few minutes so the team is really working on building leadership throughout the Southwest school students have participated in the annual Christmas Village parade wonderful that all of these honors are recognizing the organizations that were also recognized this evening they have shown students how to um organize fundraising events such as the penny Bo which raised over $7 for St JW's telecon again and our
011student officer team presents the check at the tele on 6 students have organized student uh school spirit weeks uh they do morning announcements made from their home room with our principal Dr Canon our advisers reinforce expectations of respect responsibility and safety and they are mevel score student not only in their school but for thank you that's okay you you want to come a involved in community everywhere thank you thank you we're gonna move on to the high school and we have had so many wonderful events this spring and as you can see torington so strong for Community efforts community events giving back um to those who are desperately in need and this next next award is no different we have not been able to celebrate empty bowls in such a very long time so we
012are very very appreciative of Brian King that he has been able to bring that back as ceric speaker at T High School really has spearheaded this event it was a beautiful event I was able to go to that as well and just to be able to see the the student creations and um we had uh High School choir singing as well and students serving the uh community members it was really beautiful this um and Abdullah won't be able to be here this evening but he just wanted to let you know this is in his words he has participated in CL club and really this has been inspirational to him it was a part of what generated the bowls for empty bows he says play clubs all about creativity collaboration and charity what a beautiful combination
013everyone partakes in different stages of creation some members prefer to make the physical Play While others love to decorate them our creation goes towards the charity uh event a large community sale featuring local schools and Studios who donates REM wear where all the proceeds go to the torington soup kitchen additionally we also spend time making our own projects and use the time to express our creativity together so thank you so much Mr King Ryan King come on and now we have some special Awards going to our middle school and our high school students we're going to start with our high school students they are being recognized with the c Awards and similar to what I was saying before in terms of outstanding service to our commun c is all about that it's talking about leadership
014it's talking about giving back to your community it's talking about making sure that you are dedicated to your studies you're respectful of uh your fellow students and your school and your community and these students embody that so we're going to start with Katherine Frid so if you can make your way up while I'm saying some really wonderful cine is a senior at torington high school she's an industrious student with the GPA of 101 who would have thought right that that was impossible um she is an independent thinker who continues to challenge herself with honors and college level classes that will allow her to graduate with more than a semester worth of college credits out uh over the past four years Katie's High School career has been one of involvement dedication and growth she has participated
015on the THS soall team as well as town and travel team in addition to sports she's been a long being member of the interet club once again a club that gets back to the community and has volunteerism at its core and has been an executive member of student council for the last four years amazingly Katie also holds a parttime job at as the team Le wow awesome awesome awesome you get a letter from Cate as well as their special award but we want to acknowledge [Applause] our next student if she could come on now while we're talking is Ashley pel and she's at THS and she's being honored here this evening is an exceptional student who's dedicated to accomplishing her goals asley has maintain a one 101.4 GTA while taking advanced placement and Ukon classes
016she has also been inducted into the National Honor Society additionally she has held many leadership positions in school and Community asley has served on the mayor's Community for youth has had positions uh sorry mayor's Community for Youth and been a member and officer and student council participated in diversity equity and inclusion committee is the president of the science club and the state winner of the commissioner advocate for change grant for THS and that was a Statewide um competition and uh her proposal won for T High School which is awesome she's also on the swim diving and tennis team she was truly a remarkable young lady who is an inspiration for others and at TMS we have for our first cave recipient we have Shirley come on [Applause] down shle is an outstanding student who exemplifies
017our TMS spiking values in addition to excelling and academic she enjoys volunteering in her spare time at little Guild animal shelter once again M service to see it and hear it over and over again multi-talented charlee also has participated in All City Orchestra not surprisingly she is also a member of the National Junior Honor Society she always has a positive attitude and going to work all these wonderful attributes for model student and last but not least our final award for the evening goes to Nicholas Coleman Nick Coleman is the definition of a leader not only on his team but throughout the whole school he continues to demonstrate academic excellence and exceeds classroom expectations he is an athlete and while participating on inton Warriors football as well as on the rros team he is respectful to
018staff and to all of his peers he consistently supports his classmates and re-engages those who struggle with classes he takes initiative going above and beyond in his classwork he is a leader among his peers Nicholas is an exemplary role model for the entire building we are proud to honor his success appuse for everyone sh there is no student report tonight so we're gonna go right into the superintendence report and I know we ran a little in those Awards so I will be very very brief it was just so nice to recognize many of and staff and our community um because there are great things that are happening here but there one of the things that start have spr so gota make sure that we celebrate while we have our students um we did have just
019something else to celebrate uh we went through an exhaustive extensive uh audit in terms of our food service program and we passed with f colors Gott with um St this morning and they were very very pleased with how we are doing at each one of our schools and just uh the respect for the students that of the program the streamlining the efficiency and um the collaboration and the communication with Ed Advance which has been such a great partner with us throughout these many years so just wanted to acknowledge them and give them a shout out as well um we also had a wonderful audit of our jrc program all a that and some of those Folks at our next meeting once we get that report but it all sounded good thumbs up so we're happy
020so more to come good thank you this of teaching and learning up so I'll be quick too I had a little more plann but I kind of blow through it um spring testing uh we recently wrapped up our spring STAR testing which is our internal assessments I think you're aware of that the big deal that's coming that we're hearing up for now is our ESA testing which is our State our annual state assessment and the testing window for that runs from May 8 through May 26 so at this time of year I feel like that's all we do with our kids it's just test so we're doing that we've seen some really impressive growth on our star test so hopefully that same level of achievement is going to translate State Testing so more to come
021on that we typically get those scores summer August is okay um the reading adoption we're really excited Andrew and I had a surprise visit yesterday from uh the woman we've been working with bench mark Advance um we had the opportunity to chat with her for a little bit about professional learning and what the roll out will be and what the presentation's going to look like so we're pretty excited and you know we really want to make sure we get this right and that all our teachers feel supported and I think we're well on our way um a little bit of excitement so Rachel if you could just tee up uh the photos over April break uh Eric Sullivan and her crew took a group of our students to Italy probably don't remember approving that field
022trip because it was probably two years ago remember but they went and they had a wonderful time so she was good enough to send me a few photographs which I'm sharing with you um the kids were amazing she said it was a great trip they visited sarento pompe um when they were in Naples Naples experienced their first snowfall in over 30 years and it was just a little dusting and every all the Italians were like oh my gosh it's showing and our kids were like what are you talking about nothing um they made their own pizzas uh they dipped their toes into the Mediterranean they went to the Coliseum The Forum they had some quiet time at the Basilica um and then if you could just bring up that video just hum me it's real
023short our very own Connor Sullivan in Pompei at the amphithe was asked to test the Acoustics so here's what happened [Music] King composing Hallelujah [Music] [Applause] [Music] broken hallelu [Music] hallu isn't that wonderful that really [Music] is experience great people from all over the world there joining in song anyway so I leave you like that thank you that's great special education update okay I don't know I want to change the order maybe for next year I always get after these guys um all right so our numbers are up a little tiny bit uh as I explained last month the end of the year we always seen up upswing in um referrals uh some parents get a little bit nervous about students transitioning and whatnot so we have done a little bit more testing trying to
024get testing done before the end of the school year uh we had kind of a several students particularly in one School uh they did a lot of testing and identified a few so we are up 11 kids um in District three of those are prek um as always that number goes up kind of a I had to double check this number to make sure it was right though because we had four um leave the um the East Academy the torington transition Academy because of Aging out um or for various other reasons so we're done a little bit there um for the first time since I got our numbers down our prevalence rate is over 15% just 15.1 and you can still see that's below the 16 so I'm not concerned at all um but that's
025kind of where we are at this point the other thing I included on the next page for you um your one of your goals as a board this year is uh for next year I guess is um the kind of monitoring where we are with special ed and your investment in us um so I went back to just kind of break it down into what we've done since we kind of came on board so I just um presented just very simply what we had um set for our budget every year and then what we actually spent um just to let you know when the 2019 budget that's when we came in that I did not set um and then we are the 20 2020 on and you could see each year that we have been
026under budget so um we're pretty proud of that I think you know we work really hard to be responsible asking for what we need but not asking for what we don't need so I I feel pretty good about where we are at this point and I will continue to try to share this with you as we um move on we've been working with Scott Ashley and I and as of right now um we look pretty good that you know I'm hoping that we will be able to also come in pretty well under budget for um this year as well so I will try to just continue to share that with you just so that you um are aware of what we're doing with our money great job on the financials can I just ask on
027this magnet parent choice boag an increase of four for March April would that be kids that move into TT that are already one of those schools magnet parent choice y so any number of reasons it not I don't know of anybody that said I'm leaving torington right now so yeah chances are it was somebody that had moved in during the year thank you for this very absolutely does anyone any questions thank you I will also try to be brief um so you have the the normal report um you can see that um we do have a great two opening uh that's a new opening and um that resignation is uh on the consent agenda um you'll see next month we're going to be filling that with a long-term sub through the end of the year
028while we try to figure out our new hires for next year so that is actually already um covered and taken care of um our non-certified positions uh we had some movement we were able to fill some positions internally um we're down to one cafeteria opening so that's exciting and um we actually also filled one of the two Behavior technician openings uh that you see on the left has already been filled since I sent this in on Friday so we're actually down one more in addition to that um Laura and her team have really been working with some outside partners and things to really try to fill those vacancies so um you know we've had some recommendations and um I think our new salary has really made a difference so I think we're making great progress
029there and our sub rates and our absences are trending about the same as they'd always have um we are U moving and grooving on our ESS transition so that's going nicely and uh we're excited about that and uh we held a couple of meetings uh informational sessions with their team so so those went really well um with recruitment um we're working with the teacher residency program in relay on our candidates for 23 24 so that's been really good um we've attended some job fairs we have some good Pro Prospects and uh actually we we've had our first recommendation from a principal today from somebody that we met at a job fair who uh it seems like it's going in a good direction so I'm excited about that um and we still have a few job
030fairs to attend and we're doing mock interviews at quid ofak University and um continuing to just try to recruit for our other positions that we have open um we've scheduled our HR office hours for May so tea and I will be out finishing up the year at the sites doing the last session of HR office hours and then uh for our Wellness we've started the the our six week yoga and our annual walking challenge for the walking challenge we have 323 people registered which is the most that we've ever had registered in the six years that we've been doing this so it's super exciting everybody's really into it um you hear a lot of Buzz about it everywhere you go so I think everybody's really getting into the to the swing of it um our
031metrics for this for the first week were as a district we walked 16, 52,0 34 total steps uh as a group 68,7 average steps per member and an average of 10,219 average daily steps per person that was registered so um and the goal is 10,000 a day so of the people that are participating they're all doing their 10,000 steps a day which is great so um for our yoga we've actually had the highest participation so far since we've been doing the yoga as well so um the staff are really excited about these two programs so I think um we're just seeing a lot of good movement there um second page you have the same numbers we've been showing you um I did include on the the turnover numbers I included our resignations retirements that we've
032had through end of the year but I kind of gave you the notes on the side so that you can see the comparison between what we've had so far kind of as we've been going along through the year but like you could see for the teachers it's 24 but that includes our 16 retirements and resignations that we've already received for June so the people that are currently still here they're just leaving in June and the same thing for Paras and cap workers we've had four PE PA professionals who have notified us that they're leaving in June retiring and uh cap workers same thing so just so that you can kind of see where we are question I have a question on the recruitment I don't know what it class for to attend at different job
033CHS or to go to the to these places but we had talked about briefly maybe last month um going to U for Roger Williams yeah because we we have a lot of local kids that go to school there a lot of them for teaching so I don't know if it's something that we can set aside or you know give you travel money or whatever yeah is out there to maybe look into some of those and there may be others too in the area that sure you know a little bit outside of Connecticut but just a thought to give you a bigger pool yeah no I mean especially because we can split that up between K and I right um you know we're definitely happy to explore that so I'll definitely look into those yeah for
034sure great yeah I told you if you want to send me to Hawaii [Laughter] so um you have the march in front of you we're actually at end of the month so what I did do is I just wanted to talk about where land for a so what I did is I ran all the numbers as of Monday so I could get a full pay and get numbers to Friday so um the C changed a little bit went down a little bit but not um not anything that concerned with and it looks like we have a healthy Surplus and I just want to call out more and student services um because that's really where it's all coming from and they're doing a great job there so I just wanted to call that out um so
035having said that uh Sue and I have been modeling um how much the GB we going to use for the reading curriculum um so that's why we're I'm getting pretty comfortable with what the Surplus is going the Surplus um is that going to be used is the is the first million going to be used towards the reading program or was that paid for or something else no so what we were thinking is the reading program would be about $800,000 just because we want to because if you're looking at each one of the documents that Scott presented right now it looks like a 1.2 to the good we're in the black um so that will probably go down somewhat but we feel really comfortable about using 800,000 for the reading program and then we would use
036sr2 funds for the remaining amount which should be about 200,000 something okay okay so that we could get to that I think it's one mil 10,000 something so we're getting more comfortable with that great so we'd like to go ahead and move forward with that um at this point so that we can get the materials and we can get them in the hands of teachers before they leave the we voted on that already yeah you already voted on the adoption we just wanted to make the board aware that's all that's just more information questions would you clarifying um at the city council meeting last night there was a question brought up about us buying a vehicle out of the operating budget was not what happened so I just want everyone to put on the record
037absolutely about the special education B that we purchased where the funds came from yes we had um brought to you so uh we had brought before the board a nice package and we weren't actually if you remember we weren't supposed to get the f till June July time frame and we actually got it early so what we what we did with uh Donna was graceful with the grant we we put that to the ARP Ida 611 student services special education grant and all the money for the um Band came out of that Grant and we also have some funds there to fund a driver for me so none of the funds for the band or the driver for the sh come out of the general fund so there was no misuse of funds nothing came
038out of about just for the record Ida 6 student servic speci and made sure I wrote it down to ask times so it's part of that ARA Co you know left over and then we got special money for special ed as well a size so that was the perfect use of it and yeah and if you remember at that point we were really having a lot of difficulty with transportation and I said I had a child who needed a wheelchair van and we couldn't find one and we needed to provide home bound it was crazy so that was kind of why this was approved under this grant um for special education for um makeup Services kind of I guess during what threw me last night was it first reference as a car and then that
039it came out of the operating budget so I'm like what are she talking about that's why I thought kind of and then you said it was a special ed which for it made sense luckily our departments are resourceful and and our handicap student was able to get where he needed to go through a grant so thank you uh Italian Grant so this came from budget committee oh I'm sorry did you have ahe go ahead I'm sorry so um at last night's meeting couple points came out so I gave you hand out and Rachel's kind enough to throw it up on the board so um what I hand it out to you if we could look at the 2023 2024 budget changes because it came out how they um they threw out a percentage of 2%
040like what would 2% look like so in order for us to get down to 2% and the other handout is going to going to segue into that in a second but let me look at this one first so in order to get us down to 2% we would have to take out 1.86 five $948 to get us down to the 2% so what we did just with if you remember in Sue's presentation she had the uh teachers that were there that equal 552 so what we did is we put the uh we put all the teachers and the schools that they were going to be which is the Spanish teacher the P teacher social worker alad teacher school security and the IT Tech Innovation director we also put um in there the two sped teachers
041that war that might be able to do without we also put the HVAC C testing in there and a possible 6 FTA red FTE reduction so that was 87 4 which just got us down to 3.27 so we would have to take out about another million dollars to get us down to the 2.2 so now that we I went through that if we could just look at the other sheet just briefly because this was the point that uh chairperson Fiona was trying to make last night if we were just to take the certified salaries which are our contractual obligations which were okay by the city finance committee as well as the health insurance increase just those two items equal 2.2 71 million which which is almost a 3% increase so if there and that just
042sorry to cut you but really quickly that certified salaries increases only for staff who are currently working so that includes no new positions right well the new positions you wrote off on this page I no right but I that's important just toay contractual rais people who are already here just to open as we are right now that we need a minimum of 3% so so even if we were to bring it down to 2% we're still in the whole almost a percent so I just wanted to put that so we could visually see it and even some of the things that you took out here like the gback testing that's something we have to do right I mean can't take that out and I know you're just putting numbers in there but just for discussion
043purposes some of these things I think honestly none of us want to take any of them out testing we have to have a stipulation that this is currently statuto required so if we don't get the money the city is going to have to do the test right so and what we could uh the mayor mentioned it last night uh that it's entirely within our per you to um return the city's buildings to them in which case they would be obligated to pay for that testing out of their own pockets they now right so yeah we should do that here you go problem solved so I'm not oh go ahead just real brief on the uh I was on a call with the state today um and we actually found a lot of interesting things about
044the uh HVAC testing that's the call is about um if you remember uh there was a grant that came out uh in October and was due on December 1st and it was about the shovel ready projects um they actually gave us a handout today it was rather interesting Donna and I really found it interesting that of the uh little over 60 schools that received that grant money um 50% of those schools uh are roughly 30 of the schools had already done their projects so this was reimbursed back to them so there was only about 25 projects that were new projects okay and of the and of those projects that were new projects they only facilitated out $ 54 million of the 150 million there was $168 million in requests for schools that were denied money
045um the list is 14 pages long um I showed it to Donna today we found it interesting but one of the things that we were told on the call um which we were not told initially was that the air testing that they are uh that they are mandating in the statute that money can be applied for in this grant so the state is going to run another round of Grants and um everybody's the light bulb went on on everybody's head went oh you mean we can actually get the money to do this testing out of the absolutely a can so uh potentially there's some savings did they give any inclination as to how waterburry had so many million of project actually all of water B's projects were not shovel ready projects water B's projects were
046actually reimbursed back to them as projects that um had already Stanford Bridgeport Region 8 Ridgefield Hartford um some of the Waterbury projects those those were all projects that had already been done and they were just they just submitted in to re get the money back so they were retroactive projects do we have any retroactive retroactive projects you could submit not not on the hbac site oh just the hbac okay I was thinking bigger try to throw anything we put in so just the point is there is is a potential for some savings there if if the fact is is that and they still have uh about aund a little over $100 million of this money to facilitate um all the directors of facilities that were on that call today uh with our working group at
047the state um you know all said oh wow we can you know we can you know this is a a big Hub up with everybody um there's a lot of confusion over this and they are looking to push the deadline out to 2025 that hasn't been done yet but January 1st 2025 so I think from our standpoint until they statutorily change something or we get a grant we could propose it as a cut but with the understanding that if we have to do it we're not going to replace the money we have to buy gr and paper to do this I mean we used to get our budgets Frozen you know the first month of school and that's not productive for anybody so I think we need to caveat that if we're GNA put that
048in as a potential cut we decid well they want a list of what would bring us down to 2% so these These are the suggest well these were just I was looking when I spoke with them today we want to look at obviously things that aren't going to impact our existing employees right so we don't want to lay people off if we don't have to right yeah can we just clarify for people over here that these positions listed here were to be newly added positions for the next school year these aren't positions that we're looking to cover right except for when we get down to the Tob detered correct I just want to make sure people here understand that we don't get false information out there that oh they're gonna cut you know Spanish teacher
049you know we don't want that understanding that however to cavey at that as well the reason we need these teachers at THS is because of the increased graduation requirements so if we can't provide the teaching staff necessary to meet the graduation requirements I'm not sure what we do with that right well that that was going to be my question is uh what what does meeting our uh our state obligation as far as Furnishing the students with credit earning opportunities uh what is that like assuming that you get zero new authorized positions what happens uh and and frankly is it a solvable problem without any new positions or is it just not solvable unless there are new hires that's not solvable unless we have it so we're we put those positions there basically as placeholders those
050are all the positions in entirety that I had proposed so that as Fiona said it's not impacting our existing staff however I propose them because I truly believe that they're very necessary and as you say the high school teacher is absolutely necessary for graduation so there's just and and I'm not asking this because I want to do it but there's no way to move anybody around that the fact is there has to be a new position authorized for us to to meet Our obligation to the students right because there still is that requirement of at least one year of CL so students have to take that and then most of our students take at least three years of course and we want that right yes so should we remove that off this list then well
051I think that's a discussion right that's yeah and go ahead I'm gonna make the same argum forette that's embarrassing the level of physical physical education we provide our students in fact it's a crime I think um we spend all this money on the concerns of anxiety depression Health all these other things which and you can download as many studies as you want about physical education it's one of the it's one of the leading uh causes or I say benefits that you know unruly kids can get um in a daytime of going to a class we had four years of fad and we had twice a week um we had fewer behavior problems um we had more concentration we had better grades we had a whole host of other things we spend a fortune on all
052the other all the necessary services to handle all the problems you see with kids they don't get the activity they need and a lot of times you go home and there's nobody there they sit around the house all day um and they sit in the school all day we have to provide them with good statistic is what the federal government is telling us let kids leave in high school 70% of the kids fail the basic physical test we can't even fill the ranks of of our of our our Army Corps or or Air Force or any of those you know those military branches it's an embarrassment not just it's not just torington it's most of the country but we're lower than low versus the rest of the state I don't know how we could even
053consider not you can I would ask Laura about what she thinks the physical education benefits might be I this is a script I you know everything I've read in the studies it's CDC the NIH American Association of Pediatrics run down list without physical physical ation school you're going to see far greater problems with children far more far more depression anxiety and all the other things that go on with it because in today's day and age specifically more than more than before kids don't go home and do anything um so it's the only place to going to get physical activities at school and we give them what two quarters I forgot that or four quarters um at high school throughout their whole career here it's nobody's fault but and everyone at this table agrees correct just
054say that they don't have line item control they'll say they don't have line control our budget so we want be were you looking to come out of this discussion with that cut down to 2% that's so here's what I would like to do which is probably going to be a little bit of shots firing but I'm not comfortable cutting any of these things I think that we need these things and I think that we should stand behind them if we didn't need them we wouldn't request them um something that I've always had an issue with and I bring it up every year is our health insurance premium so our bill is $13 million for the health insurance 13 million around that I don't have the exact number for next year projected to be 14 million
055next year okay our employees pay a million s to rewards that but our premium Bill does not get reduced by the million s that the our employees P so it makes no sense to right because if the total bill for the Board of Ed is $14 million the Board of Ed budget should absorb 1,700,000 less than that right and I'm just using round numbers right so I would like our first cut to be what our employees are putting into the insurance where's it million where where does that go and that's an an estimate but we don't get credited that amount back correct so in my mind which I've tried to argue before I think it's double taxing the citizens for that because the Board of Ed is paying 13 million plus our employees are 14
056million for next year plus our employees are paying a million s so we're paying 15 million 700 for insurance work is 14 so I would like our first cut to be that is this is this why Scott I asked about the the reverse the the the entry for retirement is always negative when you look at the retirement reimbursement for our insurance they pay us back so I'm guessing that we get it on the retire retired folks but there's no reoccurring entry for theay roll so we pay somebody out of our pockets out of the board of headed funds they're taking that money and transferring it to their account cut a check we we hold the money and then send them a check cor yeah yes it's been that way for years now do they give
057us a bill like do we do we have a bill that says what our what our health insurance premiums are like do we know that or do they just arbitrarily so we're we are still debating it for this year um in negoti well there's some um disagreements on the percentages so we're working on that sorry this see outage but I think like the premium is kind of a whole separate issue than the bill because the bill we will go back and forth on and we'll end up agreeing on some percentage that is appropriate based on how it's been calculated in the past which is a fiveyear average so do we give them the one so the money the people who are already retired who pay it to their health insurance there's a contribution if you're
058retired it's part of the packages what happens to that money you mentioned do we must get to keep that one because it's a revenue line for that so they we don't even it doesn't hand the same way in both cases so obviously something WR talked about this before I know the city doesn't like to do it they don't get comp buiness correct competive buing insurance insurance we've been asking for a few years to get an insurance committee together to put this out to B so what would stop us so the second part I would like to ask the board just a straw poll is I would like to get a legal opinion on if we went up to bid for our own insurance what would happen with the existing funds that are in the trust
059because we don't have insurance fund because we don't have a trust agreement and that's not us it's 50 years ago they didn't set one up so typically when people are self-insured the Board of Education with the city there's a trust agreement that dictates what's going to happen to that pool of money if anything should happen and everyone should separate but toron does not have a trust agreement which clearly outlines one the percentage of the splits going in and also the percentage of the splits coming out um so we were hoping to put together an insurance committee so we can kind of tie all this up maybe formulate a trust but that hasn't went anywhere so at this point I think from the Board of Ed standpoint it's in our best interest to get a legal
060opinion as far as how we would move forward in the absence of a trust to know what our rights are regarding that and I'm not saying that we would do anything but it would be just helps to what what our options that's a lot of money yeah um well I guess I'll start with the insurance of spread it up um I was I was actually G to say let's to stop this from moving ahead uh looking out for our employees ourselves so I'm in agreement um with that course of action um I also think it's probably um it's probably just beneficial financially uh for everybody um to do that but uh that's that it wasn't the point I originally raised my hand to make which is simply that uh I'm really not interested in providing
061any little worksheet to the board of Finance about what we'll do if they only give us less than half of what we're asking for I without being too disparaging uh I don't see any material benefit for either party for us to provide that I don't think it advances the negotiations I don't think it advances the budget process uh I think it's uh the kind of thing um that people who enjoy power more than substance would ask for um and I'm just not interested in nitpicking our own budget uh just to say here please give me 2% I'm just not interested I don't even want to be talking about what this list would look like tonight um they they know what our budget request is uh we gave them plenty of opportunity to ask us questions
062and they did and we answered them about why we need those things um which is the sort of thing that respectable people do um and I'm not interested in playing any of the other games like to yeah the trust fund that trustee account that's the money that we use to self-insure so part of our premium goes in so the $ 13 million goes in a portion of it is considered the high deductible aspect so we must self-insure for the first couple hundred, per person we have an insurance policy covers above so if somebody gets ill God forbid the city uses the truste account to pay the first whatever it is $200,000 per employee so if we were to depart the concern is that that millions of dollars we've put in that hasn't been spent may
063not follow us correct that's my concern I just would like some legitimacy to is that a valid concern or not I would be in favor of finding that answer here I mean just remember on the buildings the new buildings the city gave us an insurance quote 800 something thousand we competi competitively bid it and came in at 450 so there is an advantage to bidding and it's significant so we've talked about this for five years I don't know if it's the time to do it but you can get the legal opinion I guess in my opinion and I would never want to appe our employees to have a different insurance I think we just need to but if the cost is could potentially be half or 60% less than what it is now then it's
064worth and I'm sure they would be fine with insurance we all live here what's best we don't want to separate but being in this position every year of not having any control over this situation when it's such a large part of our budget do know how much is in the trust so that's kind of but not not any real way to and we're not unusual to any other towns I mean it's the same everywhere it's not just a Tor thing sorry have one quick question number of employees B of versus the rest of the city know the yeah but it's the way the insurance is done is not based on that I think what would maybe be good is maybe we can get together a half hour before budget and go through because it's a
065very convoluted process for how it's determined and maybe invite uh Mr Spurgeon who's the insurance person to come out and help Insurance person can get our yeah they can explain just how they deter City want to set up where we're at right now I think it's important that everyone understand it City bring the price down because so many of there are right I mean we have more employees but the claim kind of drives everything and that's year to year is different so we won't spend any more time on that so I guess what's out there for you guys is is are you interested in eliminating this no do you or the positions hold on eliminating the the list like like ENT ignoring this not saying no to that that we're keeping that in keeping it
066in yes option two is to say we want the cut of 1,865 948 to come from our Insurance of which one s would be our premium the rest would be funding it at a lower percentage because there's a healthy I think we say that if they decide to give us you know a smaller increase then I think that's probably our best course of action but uh they haven't made any decisions yet why should we okay so then the third option would be to say that the board has made a decision to that we're not comfortable reducing to and are uncomfortable providing the list so just draw poll if that's the number three is where you want to go that's it thank you but Scott thank you for put together day thanks for your efforts thanks
067for looking it it's not a reflection on you no we do appreciate getting us thank you all right Italian Grant so you didn't have anything else SC you know why they used to put on my report card she talks too much Italian Grant so the budget committee is making a recommendation to the board to provide the I want to say Italian Club but I think it's called The Italian Club the Italian group the child program the CH program at cap thank you John is funded as it would have been had we received the grant yes what was the dollar amount 20,000 we're not actioning we're just discussion does anyone have question yeah I just have two questions in looking at the the request the grant was for 15,000 it looked like it was 10,000 or
0685,000 in the grant talking about 20 I'm not sure why but we have I thought 20 was what they got last year was 20 what you got last year um it was we receive 20 this year the amount that was awarded was 20 for this year okay there was something Jeff that said 10 and five which I didn't ask about because I was of the of the understanding that it was 20,000 awarded so I don't know if it was in a summary that we got where did the 10 and the five come from was in the email exchange so Donna do you want to speak to that seeing as you yeah this was a very convoluted process I have to admit very unique situation and over a decade of writing grants they never seen a
069thunder kind of say one thing and then switch the rules after an award um so that was kind of inconvenient 5000 from what I um recall was for actually a play to take the students to go see a Play 10,000 was to be for teachers that teach Italian um with the understanding that um the C program supplement our Italian program in the after school um verion so what I think the Italian government did is they sort of changed their rules and said if we're no longer going to support after school program so if we're going to accept the money it has to go to an Italian teacher so when I spoke um to the representative at the is counsil she said for auditing purposes she would need to see payroll um stubs and not an
070invoice to an after school per so that's sort of the a long story behind how it all happened so there was another 10,000 I think that was for the high school um and we couldn't to accept it because we had already um budgeted for our teachers so it would really technically be some planting um so the whole thing was kind of like I said convoluted never has happened in over 10 years and very unfortunate it's such a wonderful program um the after school program so that's basically where you're seeing all these sbbs all over the place um but technically it was the 5,000 for the I think they were going go a field trip to it was 20,000 awarded to the program and 5,000 for materials that would have gone towards the so it was
071actually 25,000 in total corre that it was for Italian teachers in our school system unfortunately that's like I said how they sort of Switched the rules mid game that says what we needed to do um because this is pass it's one page one p for every person oh okay yeah so even in um what Donna had received from allia Costa who is the director of this program um he thought it was crazy she said it was a bizarre regulation from Rome um that in order to receive the teaching material grants that they actually needed to have an in school program so that was the rub so it needed to happen during the day so it needed to be an Italian teacher who was paid this funding at the middle school and at the high school
07210,000 at the middle school 10,000 at the high school and then 5,000 for the Eno uh production which was the teaching materials and the play that Donna was referencing so it was totally it you know they just changed their minds in the middle of the year and as you know if you've heard us talking about grants we have to be really careful about supplanting and we have had in our budget funding for an Italian teacher all year long so then to say no we're going to pay for this Italian teacher out of Grant funds that would never pass our audit they would say what are you doing you already said you were paying for this out of General budget so you couldn't make an exception a change to the budget you can't make a change
073to the budget in terms of taking Grant funds because then it looks like you're doing something Shady if you're saying to the Auditors no we pay for an Italian teacher an Italian teacher is just like an English teacher math teacher social studies science it it's not like an extra program so we say this is how we're paying for those folks it's not out of a grant you can't then say Midstream at least not in the United States maybe you can in Italy um that you're going to change funding streams that would never pass muster in terms of ours it's just not done but I think the real but I think the real question is how much are we going to use to fund the program that the budget committee has recommended we keep going that's
074right that's that's what we're talking about I just have I still have one last one last question I asked two the second question was the program when does it normally start well it started last year I'm wrong but I believe it was in March yes and we went through May and this year we could go from May through June so it would be the same cost it's usually seven to eight weeks and that would be it under the same you would go up from March to May would be the same cost is going from May to June well it was I the end ofch be and we I think to John's point I guess I'm just going to ask you straight up so the budget committee discussed the number of 20,000 we were under the
075impression that that's what was needed um so let me just ask you is that sufficient uh to run the program or do you need 25,000 I think I just I I can't speak for what the board is prepared to give but you know I I want to know what you actually need as we go through the discussion here okay um again it depends on what we end up providing for the students but we were planning to be able to allow the students to have uh a possibility of doing some of the programs in New York that are offered which would require a little bit of cost to take them into New York uh I mean we can tailor this program but the thing I really I I beg that we don't lose a six-year program
076with a tremendous track record and Donna and I had a an hourong Zoom call with the person Anna Valeria who is the the attache of education for the Italian consulate who actually supervises this grant and she was telling her please do not send this grant back for God's sakes because you're going to lose it forever and unfortunately apparently it was already done that time we have to abide by our audit well she was explaining to us exactly how it could be R but we have a question on that you were asked and the question is Right Ed what was your question an direct answer 20,000 words 20,000 wordss want to give you less than you needed and thank you I just wanted to understand if we could off the program would be materially the same
077that's all would be so do we need once we make a decision move forward and vote on it do we need any kind of a breakdown for audit purposes once the money is awarded for where it's going we need to document how it was used okay so when you do a field trip or you plan break down for us the actual expenses right yeah I I think that the the C has been very good about telling us the results of this yeah we do usually yeah videos from Italy and everything that is not a problem reporting to us not a problem do we think it'll be difficult to get kids this late in the year for the program I have a back list and including today kids are signing up they found out because they
078heard the budget meeting last whenever it was they they're waiting they're waiting they're waiting and all I have to do is tell them we have to send a poster D and I know we can get that can get that put together asap it was ready to go so how many kids would participate in well I I Ma I have a lot signed up but probably 30 would we say 30 would be a good number y 30 probably 30 I we could do a lot more yeah I wish I could give it to everyone I wish we had bigger space we would if there oh it's because of space I'm a little confused so we rewarded the Grant and we accepted the grant but it has to be an Italian teacher so how are we going
079to it went they sent it back nothing to do with the teacher we're okay cool and you can still go and present the play oh we could do all sorts of things you know once we have the kids but you would go to Italy that was last year oh no we would I mean all right wasn't that last year you went to Italy with the kids for for an award oh it was two years ago twice now took a family of four foures and they played you all know okay I'm not confused anymore thank you so just I just I'm still confused about the 15 versus 20,000 so the grant was for 15 but the budget committee is recommending the gr 25 the grant was for 25 guess that's where I don't see that anywhere
080right 10 for the Middle School 10 for the high school there's a five for the production historically they got 20,000 a year for the program but at this point the question is what does it cost the board to keep this program going, so the budget committee's recommendation do you have your hand up just wanted to clarify one thing ton public schools has passed all their audits with BL colors especially funds over 10 15 million um a year and it's because of you know all the wonderful work and oversight in our County department and the people that we partner with the reason why the funds we couldn't accept was because they were going to ask for an invoice on Capa as proof for our audit for accepting the money we couldn't provide um an invoice from
081captive because they weren't allowing us to do the after school program so we could provide payroll receipts and say and then give the money to C so I just want to make that clear we never you had to send it back or else it would be like a fraudulent okay thank you I think I finally understand any other questions about this because it is will be on as an action item so the action item will be that the budget committee is recommending to the full board that 20,000 of the Surplus for this year be given that's what so is any questions about that not give it we would we would fund a program right and that's how the motion would read we're not just we can't just move a I want to be careful about
082this motion because this is not something we've done before because when we're talking about field trips and different things I don't think it's just the child program I think we have to be very careful how the motion is worded um so that if the if the intent is not to restrict it how you were the motion could restrict right because I don't know what the definition of the child program is is that the accumulation of the one to it or how how do you want to word it I think is important or for an after school program for 30 kids more along those lines right yeah yes y all right so we already two budget ones so we're g to remove those two all right last day 2223 calendar so at the last uh board
083meeting it was suggested that um the last day be on for students be on the 16th rather then on the 19th we do have 181 days in our student calendar year uh so the proposal was to uh go with 180 and end for students on the 16th which would be the Friday rather than ending on the Monday this year we really are okay with our minutes we haven't had a lot of early dismissals um delayed openings so we are doing well um and so I'm just proposing that to the board with the whole idea that on that 19th that would be a professional development day and if especially with the purchase of the reading program it would allow us to have professional development on that last day for staff K through six and then we
084certainly have enough professional development opportunities for faculty at our Upper Grade 7 through 12 that we could plan for on the 19th as well and as we know the kids are checked out after Memorial back fin Friday I think it's a great IDE all right distinguished alness I would love to take the credit for this and make the announcement I thank the committee which that night was Kathy and Allen but I will let Mrs Ferguson make oh you want me to announce it well thank you it's such an honor so the school Improvement committee has selected among many many distinguished nominees a woman who lives here in town and is doing amazing things here in town her name is Judy mol and she is the director five points I had the pleasure of speaking with
085her last week after our sick meeting and she is beyond Thrills with this award she can't wait to come and speak to the kids uh in June at the event that we hold for this reason and she's just she's just thrilled we had such a nice conversation and I'm sure that her message to the students is going to be very very she talked a lot about you know just kind of blooming where you're planted and doing for your community what theun has for you can't wait to be person congratulations what night will that be I think first Thursday it's June 1 that's a lovely two people and they are both going to come and say a few words about her she's being introduced thank you to the committee com all right me charging policy 5194
086so the meal charging policy is a policy that we had on our Bo um Shipman also had one that our food services director Becky Tyrell felt was was a little bit more comprehensive and told the story a little bit more clearly um she recommended that uh the board adopt the shipment policy with the addition of some language on the first page that covers us for our C designation of the community eligibility provision uh for as long as the district uh has that status and the policy committee voted to bring It Forward any questions I got a beautiful email afterwards Thanking us for doing this but there was no discussion so she didn't have a chance to chime in and that would be Jo entertain a motion to go into executive session regarding anou with the
087tpsa inviting in superintendent lsky and M favor