Weston Board Of Education Meeting 3/23/2026

001Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Who are we missing? Just Michael, right? Once the poll sits, we're all set, right? All right. Yeah, I know that. I haven't even called the meeting to order. Give me a chance. All right, I'd like to call the Weston Board of Education special meeting, public comment about school facility campus revitalization and later discussion, to order on Monday, March 23rd, 2026 at 7:03 p.m. We will start with the fact that we have a quorum. Great. And now it's time for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for I want to thank everyone for being here tonight. This is a special meeting of the Board of

002Ed, which means that it's simply in addition to our meeting calendar approved earlier last year. Um since December, the Board of Ed has had several um special meetings to specifically address campus revitalization. We reviewed prior studies beginning since 2017. A lot of good work was done. We needed as a board to review the studies and all the committee work, etc., to become better informed. We also commissioned a what's called phase two study by SLAM Collaborative, which entailed providing a very detailed look at both renovating as new Weston Middle School and building new Weston Middle School. That report was presented on February 23rd. Our consensus, and just a consensus at that point, that the build new approach was preferred, basically because the costs were almost comparable and the disruption to students was much less. During the

003course of our special meetings, we also heard Superintendent Forty and her team's perspective on various grade configurations from an educational perspective. We also heard First Selectwoman Sam Nestor describe in very broad terms potential town needs for facilities. More information, I think, is coming based on survey results to be reported soon. We asked SLAM and Colliers to review uh their opinion of probable costs and give us an update. Also, we asked them to give us a very rough estimate of the cost increase of adding grade five to a middle a new middle school and to explain to us the ramifications of the timing for applying for a state grant. Along the way, our communication subcommittee has provided summaries and links to all reports, both past, present, and I imagine future, on our website and has also

004um provided a newsletter with communications about our special meetings to parents, and that newsletter is also included in Town Hall Happenings uh newsletter. Um our board members from the communication committee are also attending various PTO meetings. And we are lucky to have had some press coverage by Weston Today. So, that brings us tonight to hear your feedback and input. We have to as a board operate within certain parameters when it comes to public comment. So, I have a um a statement that I need to read as I do in front of all public comments. Uh in summary, we're basically going to listen. We're not going to respond directly, but if you listen to our follow-up discussion either tonight or at the next meeting, we may end up addressing some of the points made during public

005comment. And if you're not able to be here in person tonight and you're watching from home, please, please email us. We take and read emails just as seriously as we do hearing you in person. So, with that, it's time for public comment. Oh, no, wait. I've got to read the preamble. I'm so sorry. Okay. The Board of Education welcomes the opportunity to hear from members of the public about matters concerning the Weston Public Schools. Tonight, we're focusing on campus revitalization. We value and pay close attention, but it is our practice to not respond substantia- substantively or sometimes at all. There are reasons for this. Engaging in a discussion on non-agenda items could violate the board's obligation to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. Second, the board or the administration may not be prepared to

006discuss certain matters raised in the first raised by public comment. Third, the board develop its develops its meeting agenda carefully to ensure that the board addresses matters that are pressing. We encourage members of the public with specific questions, concerns, or other ideas about campus revitalization to reach out directly to Superintendent Forty and or email the Board of Ed directly. Additional comments or details about public comment are on our website, but just to um cut to the most important one, uh we in our practice has been to limit public comments to 5 minutes per person. All right, with that, please do um come up and identify yourself, name and address, and Jody will keep track of time. So, who would like to speak? There's a microphone up here at the table. Good evening. My name is

007Kelly James and I live at 11 Bernhardt Drive. I want to start by thanking the board for your continued focus and commitment to the campus revitalization project. I've been following the discussions closely and I truly appreciate the level of thought, care, and diligence you've brought to this process. In particular, I want to acknowledge the thoughtful and thorough questions you posed to SLAM and Colliers. It's clear that you're taking the time to fully understand the options, challenge the assumptions, and ensure that every decision is grounded in both data and long-term impact. I also appreciate your commitment to making the right choice, not only for our students and staff, who deserve safe, modern, and effective learning environments, but also for the residents of Weston, who will ultimately bear the financial responsibility of this project. It's especially encouraging

008to hear your continued focus on identifying additional cost savings, whether through grants, private funding opportunities, or advocacy at the state level for increased reimbursement. That work matters and it does not go unnoticed by the community. Thank you again for your leadership, your transparency, and your dedication to getting this right for both our schools and our town. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to speak for public comment? >> Hi, I'm Helen De Kaiser, 30 Salem Road. And I just feel the communications remain such a huge hurdle in this town and that something like a I know you have separate newsletters. I've just asked Jody to familiarize me with how deep each of these trails can go for seeing actual meetings and so forth. But to have more concise questions, almost what you did

009in the reading that you had tonight, but going in greater depth. We have looked at the possibility of working regionally on certain programs. These are the reasons why we are doing it with one or two things and not with many others. These are the reasons why we've thought about and obviously cost savings would be a piece of this having specialization that we >> [snorts] >> can work on together. Anything that is why is the administration so much deeper than it used to be when there were more students? They're concrete questions. They could have thoughtful answers presented that really satisfied probably an awful lot of people. And for those who had further questions, they can share those. There are similar things. These are the new directions that education seems to be going in various ways. We're

010doing obviously a very very good job to be rated as we are as a system. But are there things that we're looking for going forward so that people are kind of brought along to the thinking? On the question of the fifth grade and what is optimal for where thinking is and has been versus what may be much more sensible from an economic point of view allowing us to put the second into the WIS and you know, how can we make things work as broadly as possible for people's understanding of how you have looked at educational issues and really to be clearer about that process that you've come to and the answers you've come to through the process you've done. So again, I compliment everybody. It's an enormous task. But I do think communications remains a

011really big piece of this and you hear the seniors in town, the empty nesters as a broad group in town, continue to support a very fine education system and have for years. There are so many seniors, however, that you do hear may have to move and they hate to do that because it is deeply their home. And I think this is a way of making things clearer to them and it's also something that maybe, you know, and I'm I'm happy that the students have been reaching out to the senior center as interns. This is a great integration of different ages in the community, which just brings me to the last piece. I have missed us not having a broader conversation about facilities as a whole. Many moons ago, it was starting to be looked at

012as community center needs, which has a subset of space for the seniors, for example. Yes, the the portables disappearing, but where would those be that are close to meeting the spacing of other town hall obligations and so forth? So that wider conversation, what do we want the entire system center to look like? And how can lifelong learning be what goes on in Weston? Thank you very much for listening. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to speak this evening? Hi, public speaking. Okay, Susan Baron, Old Hyde Road. I keep hearing building is new, renovate is new, but I there's one I word I never hear, renovate. And I don't understand why we're not that number has not been brought to the public. I also feel announcing these meetings has been insufficient. Non our

013selectmen should be sending out emails or blasts on Fridays that these meetings are going on so the public can show up and people can have babysitters or whatever they need. Um I see you spending my money and I'm not happy. Okay? I've lived here for since '91 and I've done nothing but support your schools. My children do not go to the schools here. And yet, I don't get anything back. I just watch my tax dollars going and going and going. And I vote you in, but you're not listening to me. You're not listening to any of us, certainly not the white-haired set. And I don't see many of these parents in school here tonight. Where are they? You know, I feel we need to be heard. And I'm very very distraught. We are in the

014problem we have a problem now. And the problem is WIS. You wanted WIS, we built you WIS. It took us years to pay off WIS, which is why all our buildings are in disrepair because we had no extra funds to take care of the buildings that we had. And now you want to build a new building and how are we going to pay to take care of the other buildings if we're going to pay off a more a bond? I I'm just frustrated and I'm frustrated With all of you and I I don't think you're being responsible to the community. I think you're spending our money and you're not thinking about what the cost is going to be and you're going to put it on the next generation to have to pick it up. That's

015your children and your grandchildren. And I think it's something you should think about and you should think about renovation. It's not a terrible thing. And my junior high, my elementary school, my middle school and my high school are all standing. And they were built long before these schools were built. That's it. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to speak this evening? Sure, just come on up. State your name and your address, please. Hi, I'm Jasmine. Um I live on Old Field and I came here because I'm very concerned about this discussion for rebuilding the school, mainly because we've had these discussions. We've had a subcommittee. We've had our selectwoman and our select team tell us that 140 million was unaffordable, that it would impact our triple A rating. This was from our

016BOF. This was from everybody in town last year. And for this year to have the same proposal makes me feel like we're not listening to people who have worked really hard to show us like what our town can afford and how it has impacted us. We have statistics and we have data on how the last bond has impacted our town. And I just want to say something because I had to pull my kid out of school this year. And I went to visit almost 50 schools and I can tell you for a fact that a better and new facility does not make a better school. It does not. We know enrollment is down. We let go or potentially worse, supposed to fire 10 teachers. And last year in April, we we came together to save

017a few of them and the response from our Board of Ed was that enrollment was down. And so now we are projecting that enrollment is up and we keep talking about building new and renovating new with the cost of the state um reimbursement, but that depends on enrollment. And I can tell you right now talking to families, because I do talk to a lot of families, half of the people that I talked to are applying for private school and the only thing limiting them from leaving is that there's not enough private school slots to take them. And this is the problem. We're projecting that we're going to have a bigger enrollment and so we're building a bigger school. But we don't know that for sure and you're you're you're inflating the cost of building something.

018And I'm for building and and making the school better. My kids might not be using Weston, but I have friends here. We're not also we're we're not looking at our seniors. Half of them can't even afford it. I moved here and my old neighbor who's 80 years old, her husband died and she literally could not afford to move anywhere. She didn't know where to go and no one helped her. There was no help from the town. And so, after watching that and seeing how much like sort of funding we give our seniors, you have already risen the cost of taxes for everyone when you reevaluated our houses. And now with the bond, you're pushing families to a point where a lot of our seniors will move out. And I don't think that that's really where

019we want to take our town because the seniors needs very little resources. And so, I think that we have to make some sort of balance and you have to present us and you promised that you would you would give us option as a town. Not that you choose the 140 million that we have to like approve. You have to give us options and we want to know what are we getting for that. What are we getting for 120, 140, 100 million? And it should be our vote to tell you what you guys could and and should do. And I think that that is a responsible thing to do. I'm sorry, Jasmine. Can I just have your last name for the record, please? Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to speak? Okay. We

020will end public comment then. Thank you, everyone. Okay, that opens um us up to the next agenda item and the only agenda item is discussion. Um I want to thank um Colliers um Scott and uh Kent Mooreheart from uh SLAM for both being here tonight and of course Phil and Superintendent Forty. Thank you. Um last week we left off um uh [snorts] with some revised numbers that um had been brought down from the original or the phase two study. Uh and we also um heard some information about what grade five would look at would look like and caught not look like, but um a general price range for the fifth grade. And we also um heard a little bit about the timeline of various grant applications. Since then, uh some board members have forwarded um

021additional questions. Um not sure there's been time to answer all of them, but to the extent that you can update us uh Scott, that would be great. Okay, thank you and good evening. We're just getting a PowerPoint loaded up um that I want to start with first. Um it it doesn't follow all the questions in order. I do think we have responses to all your questions, but I think uh globally a little bit uh just a little larger uh presentation on where we were, square footages. There's been a lot of comparisons to other projects. Um you know, that we've heard that your your neighboring project in Greenwich, their middle school um and the um the pending project in Trumbull, the new Hillcrest Middle School. So, um we take a took a look at those and

022walk over and You got it? Okay. And everybody gets treated to a beautiful picture of Lake George, New York. >> [laughter] >> There we go. All right. Okay. Um so, first off what I did is there's been a lot of discussion on um square footage, student population. Uh so, I went back to the to the ed spec that was generated by um Tecton Architects to try and understand a little bit better of how they generated that the initial number um which was 104,701. What was the starting point? Um and actually this was at at 574 students. You're a little less than that. You're at 554 now, but this is the the ed spec that was produced uh when Tecton was involved with the district a couple of years ago. So, what Tecton did to generate

023the 104,701 is they took your your students I don't know if that's even Yeah, probably not close enough. Can you try that? Um the 574 and multiplied that by the the space standard that the state provides. These are numbers that are generated by population and school size. So, a school in from, you know, 5 to 750 students um 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, the multiplier is 168. So, that goes to 9 97,396. So, based on the state space standard, um the state says that's how big a building should be for 574 students. But, we're going to talk and I'm going to try and educate the board on the differences between student population and building size and cost because it's it's not just a straight line. There's a lot of variables here that we'll try and

024get into and hopefully be able to demonstrate through this presentation. So, they took what would be your where you would maximize your state reimbursement. If you built a building net, this is inside face of exterior walls for 97,396 square feet, you would get your maximum reimbursement, either the 12% or the 22%. Then they increased that by 7.5% for their exterior walls. That's how they arrived at the 104,701. It wasn't based on your program to educate the students and then including a factor for walls and circulation. What they did is they said, "What's the maximum the state's going to give us?" and multiplied that by 7.5 to get the outside face of exterior walls, the building area which is the number that you normally you would use for um budgeting purposes. Okay. Just trying to Yeah,

025I disconnected it. Oh, okay. Uh I'm sorry, you disconnected it. There we go. Okay. Um where's the player on this one? >> You just use the laser on that one. Just toggle back and forth. >> Oh. I Oh yeah, there is working. Okay. So, um a lot of numbers here. Um I'll try and go through it slowly and and um you know, I've got a couple of slides here. The first column here is uh the author of the ed spec. So, I'm comparing Greenwich Middle School, the new proposed Trumbull Hillcrest, Weston Middle School it was produced by Tecton and then the revised um numbers in building square footage that was coordinated with SLAM um under our current process. The projected enrollment for students, 660 Greenwich, 826 Trumbull, 574 again which was the old your current

026is 554. The space standard. So, we just kind of talked about that. I told you how Tecton arrived at 97,396 square feet. Again, that's their net projected. So, it's it's based on these number of students, what is the maximum the state will give us. Doesn't necessarily mean we can build the program area for that. That's just where the state says you should be. Um a gross up factor for the exterior uh building square footage. So, this this would be taking the projected net inside face of exterior walls is the net and that's what the state evaluates building size on. But, when we budget a building, you have to do it by the outside face of exterior walls. We have to we have to build we have to buy those exterior walls. So, a lot of

027times it's confusing. You'll see two numbers. You'll see a number on an on a budget estimate. That'll be the higher number. That'll be this row here in in the case right now, the current one that that SLAM had projected is 122,630 square feet. The net that you compare to the space standard is this column, 116,791. So, in both cases when Tecton produced their ed spec, they projected, "What's what's the maximum the state will give us and we'll use that and we'll just scale that up by the exterior walls. Here's what it we think our building should be." Now, in the next slide item I'm going to show you a little bit of how student population doesn't necessarily correlate to the building size. You want to hit an optimum with the state of Connecticut as far

028as student enrollment. You want to be on the high end of their what they call their space standard um to be able to maximize your reimbursement. Greenwich was interesting. We know that there was a break um CSG when they did the ed spec. They had their space standard. They did have a gross up factor. In their case, they went from 108 and they said, "We think circulation, walls is going to account for 124,620." They didn't really differentiate that at all in the ed spec which I think caused some of the confusion. Ultimately, the building for that 660 students was constructed and was 133,900 square feet. It's going to be completed this summer for a total of 112 million. Um I believe it's actually 112,700,000. Um again, Hillcrest, Tecton used the same number for their space

029standard to the net, scaled it up. This one's due to be constructed in 2029 for 142 million for 826 students. And then potentially your project, if it moves forward, right now on the schedule, we're projecting that your project could be completed in 2030. And this was the number that was shared at the meeting last week, uh 127 million 569. Who's that? Oh, I keep forgetting. >> [laughter] >> Got to got to use two. So this this is this is interesting. So what I did is I took each of those projects that we just discussed, Greenwich, Trumbull, and and Weston. And I looked at the number of core team classrooms. So I I wanted to do an apples-to-apples comparison. And I said this is a good way to say how many students can can each one

030of these facilities educate based on the number of classrooms in the ed spec in the program. We need this number of of classrooms to educate our students. I think this might be dead now. Yeah. So Greenwich has 34 core team classrooms. I assume 24 students a classroom. Again, this is just for a calculation purposes. I know you're never going to hit an exact 24, and that would be the high end of anybody's number. But just assuming their core classrooms, we put 24 bodies in each one of those, the max capacity for Greenwich would be 816. When you look at their space standard then, if I use that max number, 816, and I multiply it by the square footage that the state of Connecticut gives me for each student, it comes up to 134,000 square feet.

031The building that they built was 133,900. Okay? Same thing. Now Trumbull's interesting. Their student projecting student enrollment is 826. Little bit bigger building. They went from 34 to 36 core classrooms for the teams. You multiply that by 24, you end up with 864. So only 38 more students. So they're they're right at the top of the range. The building that they're building is going to be in essence almost full. And again, there's other specialty classrooms and things here, but I just used the core classrooms as this comparison. If you take the 864 and you multiply that by the state standard, um you get 141,949, and they're building 145. It's almost exact. So again, if you look now in these first two examples, the max capacity of the building is right at the state standard. So

032the state works these things out and says when they did their space standard, we want you to build a building that is fully occupied. That's going to maximize your reimbursement from us. But we can't always do that. And and and a simple example is if we had 28 kids in a thousand or a 900 square foot classroom, we're not going to put 28 kids in a 900 square foot classroom. When we get to 28 kids, what do we do? We got to have another classroom. We can't educate 28 kids in a classroom. So we get a second classroom. Now we got 14 kids in each classroom. But we got 1800 square feet of area that we're paying for. It's not optimum, but we're in that tipping threshold. So you look at the Weston numbers now.

033Um you know, what was the projection when Tecton did it, 574, but what is now the projection, 554. So again, your your space standard is 94,003 square feet. In Weston's case, you've got three teams, 10 core classrooms for each team. 30 classrooms times 24. So again, very loosely, right now the maximum you could put into your school, if if the new school is either built or renovated with those core classrooms, could be 720 students. And again, that's two teams per grade, five classrooms per per team, 10 per grade, 10, 20, 30 classrooms. 720 times the state space standard, which state says, "Okay, for 720 students, I'll let you build a school of 122,170." And SLAM calculated that they felt that the new building would be 122,620. Again, so when you look at the max capacity

034of what it's generated by the state space standard to what the projected construction area is, very close. And And the nice thing with Trumbull is they're at 826, they're going to 864. They're almost there right now. They're building a very efficient school for their projected population. And And I don't know all the background behind the demographics. They may have picked the highest number and they may be falling off from that. So this is a win for for Trumbull. So then the very bottom, I said, "Well, what happens if we cut one team from Weston Middle School?" You know, what does that do? If If we say, because we can't cut just a classroom in a team, because you've got a teaming approach. So again, I just took a real hardline approach on this and said,

035"Let's cut one team. Let's go down to 15 classrooms." Well, 15 classrooms times 24 students is 360 kids. Well, we know we got more than 360 kids, so we can't cut down to a single team per grade level. Again, goes back to the example that I just provided on the classrooms. When we got 28 kids, we can't do 28 kids in one classroom, we got to have two. Now we're at 14 a classroom. So there's more area. So unfortunately, Weston right now for the projected enrollment of 554, you're kind of right in the middle. You know, if you went to one team, you could you'd you'd have um you know, a maximum of 360 kids in the school. And in a lot of the other areas, gymnasium, a cafeteria, a kitchen, um administrative areas, you

036can build all those. 7,000 square foot gym, I you know, we can build a school like that. That's going to serve two, three, four, five, six, seven, 800 kids. Never changes. You get more efficient when the schools get bigger. It's more classrooms, but that core area never changes. You know, I've had the argument with the state and said, you know, when you get down in some of these communities that we work with have very small schools, you know, two, 300 kids. And if you go by their space standard, I've said, "Okay, if I go by your space standard, I can build a gym for these kids, a kitchen, a nurse, a cafeteria, you know, and maybe two classrooms, and I'm done." How can I educate 250 kids? So the state space standard is really skewed

037away from that mid-range or smaller school. You want to try and get to the maximum. So I'm going to stop here for a second, cuz I know that was a lot to throw at you. But does that make sense to see now, because a lot of people are looking and going, "Well, wait a minute. Greenwich has 660 kids and their school cost this." And you can't really look at the students and necessarily the size of the school. It's the program area required to take care of those students within a reasonable class size. But unfortunately, you know, are you close to the maximum? You know, based on Trumbull at 826, they probably got 20 to 22 bodies in each one of those little you know, in those chairs. Unfortunately, you guys aren't going to have that.

038So the state space standard hurts you from that standpoint. Quick question. Yeah. So um where did the 30 the the core team, the number of classrooms, where did the 30 come from? That's your you've got two two two. It's pretty much two two two two two. Two science, two history, two your core Right. >> team is is five five teachers and five teachers, 10 classrooms times the three grade levels is 30. Okay. And I And I I I applied that same logic to each one of the schools. Again, I know there's specialty spaces, there's a lot of other program spaces. But again, just to kind of do this demonstration of how student population and you know, having a student population that works really well with the program and the amount of classrooms you need. Now

039if this was an elementary school, it would be a lot easier, because you're not doing teaming. You don't have to have those teams. You know, like the bottom row, I said, "Well, what happens if we go to one team?" Well, if we go to one team, we only have 360 kids. We can get accommodation. If it was an elementary school, we could say, "We're not teaming, so we don't need 10 classrooms per grade level. Maybe we could do it with seven. Maybe we could put third and fourth grade right near each other if it was a lower elementary. And if you've got a cohort that's larger, you know, one year that room is a third grade room, the next year it becomes a fourth grade room, because you're you've got larger roles moving through the

040school. But unfortunately, with the teaming with you know, the your educational process, and and we see this all across the state, um you know, with middle schools, it's you know, it's a wonderful way to educate the kids, but unfortunately, it's not optimized for building a school to the state space standard and reimbursement. Um so we So fifth grade is on a diet model, right? And sixth grade is currently on a teaming model. But we had previously hypothetically talked about a scenario where fifth and sixth grade could be on a diet model. Mhm. How does that How does a diet model impact the square footage? Is it more efficient? Without having an ed spec for that model or you as as as the people, you know, who are in charge of you know, deciding how you

041educate the youth of this community, certainly if you went to the model where fifth and sixth grade were were more aligned from your teaching and you weren't teaming at sixth grade, potentially you could reduce some sixth grade classrooms. Now, again, you know, we estimated and again without an Ed spec, but we do as we just kind of estimated somewhere between 12 and 15,000 square feet to bring fifth grade up to the middle school. Um you know, let's just say you could cut and I'm going I'm going to again real high level here. Let's say we could cut three classrooms from sixth grade and and still make it work. You know, we'll go down to seven. That'd be about roughly 3,000 square feet. You're taking 800 clear square foot classroom, you got walls and then you've

042got a a corridor, a hallway outside of each. That adds more square square footage. Um you know, so maybe that that 12 goes down to to bring up fifth grade 9 to 12. You know, 1,000 square feet. And that's roughly and we'll get to the cost a little bit more, but that's roughly, you know, $1,000 a square foot. So, you're somewhere, you know, 9 to 12. We figured you get about three back from the state, so that's probably 6 to 9 million. So, you're still adding dollars to the project. But yeah, bringing fifth grade up. But again, we don't have an Ed spec to tell us what that square footage would be. We would really need, you know, the board and the administrators to get together, look at that educational model, provide us an Ed

043spec to give us area. Then that we could then take a look at what does that equate to dollars and square footage. But but generally a diad model is more space efficient for the state reimbursement standard. Okay, thanks. Scott, I have somewhat related two somewhat related questions. >> [snorts] >> So, is it correct to say the larger the occupancy of the building is, the higher the reimbursement is on a per square foot or is it the opposite? No, it actually shrinks. When you get over 750, um the state starts ratcheting it down. Again, because your core area can service a lot of kids, but when you're just adding on classrooms, so as you add on more and more and more classrooms, the state's recognized that that building's more efficient. So, they start actually ratcheting down

044the square footage you're allowed. So, they do it in ranges of of school size. By adding another grade onto the middle school, would we get a net negative on our Ed It No, it it it still keeps you within the same range for square footage per student. It it doesn't move you to that next tier. You wouldn't drop. It still stays below 750, cuz I think you're at about 142, I believe. So, it was like 696. As long as you're below 750, you still use the same multiplier. You know, and again, bringing that fifth grade up adds square footage, but again, if you change the model and all, um you know, that is that certainly is is an option, but you know, I can't tell you educationally how you want to I can I can

045react to your Ed spec and I can give you all the the costs and the data and the information once you provide that to me of of Scott, this is the building we want you to build. Great, I'll put a I'll put a number on it. So, based on uh your the bottom line there with which is your design, I No, no, no, no, no. >> [laughter] >> Not my design. I just I just said what happens if you cut one whole No, sorry. I don't mean >> Not not So, no, I was just I was hypothetical. I hypothetical. Right. Okay, I'm talking about in the shaded gray, the 554 number. That's the current the current understanding of the project. >> Right. >> Yes. So, the 554 is based on our highest enrollment over is

046it the 5 years? >> 8-year period. So, the design would allow for a 720 students. More or less, again, I I just used a baseline of the core classrooms. So, um you know, you may be able to fit in more because there's other program spaces that would have kids in them at certain times. Um you know, music classrooms, other things. Um but again, this was just a way of of sort of demonstrating how schools that are closer in you know, number of seats within the classrooms more efficient, um you get a better reimbursement rate. Or you get you don't get penalized as much in your reimbursement, I should probably say. Your rate doesn't change the closer you get, you know, if if you're if you're way under, the state starts reducing your reimbursement rate by

047the percentage you're under. If we're under the square footage that's recommended by the state, No, I'm I'm sorry. That No, I I probably confused you with that. >> If you're if you're over in square footage, let's just say you're 20% over in square footage of of the allowed, the state would then multiply your reimbursement rate and let's just say it's the 22% * 0.8. So, it reduces it down to about 16 or 17%. So, if you build right on, which in essence Trumbull is doing, 141 to 145, not much of a you know, reduction at all. Um you know, if I go back one slide, um you know, you're looking at 94 compared to 116. So, you take that you take that percentage, how much is 116 over 94? Whatever that percentage is, you multiply

048that by your reimbursement rate for the project. That's what the state will reimburse you on. They'll reimburse you on the whole building, but instead of 22%, they'll multiply it by 17%. For example. And again, it's just not exact math, just doing stuff in my head. Can I get for clarification on this chart as well? So, this uh the second estimate that we have, the Slam estimate, can you cover it again? Perhaps you didn't, I must have missed it. The space standard square foot is 94,003. Mhm. The net square foot you bumped up to 116,000. Then of course, the gross we understand with the exterior walls. But why is it that we did that bump? Looking at I see Greenwich did a similar bump, but they actually went to their exterior number almost, right? >> Well,

049no, they in within their Ed spec, they never provided an exterior number. It wasn't clear. Okay. So, I I didn't know, so I showed the same number in both, but I did recognize the fact that their actual constructed area was just shy of 134,000. So, the the gross should have been 134,000, but they didn't define it in their Ed spec. They they had no nod to it. Um I couldn't find anything about it. Right. >> Um But so, they um okay. In in in essence, your program right now, your your basic program um assignable rooms, assignable spaces is somewhere between 77 and 80,000 square feet. So, classroom, you know, these classrooms for sixth grade, these classrooms for seventh, locker rooms, toilet, you know, all the all the the offices, about 80,000 square feet. What Tecton

050did, they didn't say, "Okay, it's 80,000 square feet. What do we think all the hallways and all the walls are going to count to?" They just said, "What's the space standard for 574 kids? 97,000. Okay, so somehow you've got to build a building with 17,000 square feet of walls and circulation. And again, when we've looked at all these other schools and again, you can you can kind of see it that you know, a space standard of 108 for Greenwich turned into reality of 133,9. The the problem is again here, if we go you know, going back to that to that next slide. If you were at 720 kids, your space standard would be right at 122,000 and that's right where Slam projected that building should be. Um you know, in the maximum 122,000. Again, now

051if you compare it to Greenwich again, um you know, 122, Greenwich is at 130 34,000 square feet. Their space standard is 108. Um you know, versus your space standard at 94. So, 14,000 more square feet. Well, 122 to 134 is 12 almost 14,000 square feet. Again, we're we're we're working with some very high level numbers here, but you can you can start seeing that reality matches what Slam said we really truly believe the building should be. Yeah, I think if if you had passed a building at 104,000 square feet to the state and gave that to an architect and said, "Design this Ed spec and all these required rooms and everything else and you can't go over 104,000 square feet." Similar to kind of what happened in Greenwich, it would have been worse in your

052case. You know, you you the architect I don't think could could do it. You you don't have enough circulation and wall area. So, this was just an exercise because a lot of people were saying, "Wait a minute. Why How did we go from 104 to 122?" And and believe me, when Kemp first did it, I called him up and said, "Kemp, what what what are you doing here? What's you know?" And it took me a while and I spent quite a bit of time and I talked with Phil a a few times last week till I had the revelation of I and all of a sudden it I understood and I said, "Now I see what Tecton did." All they did was do the space standard for 574, but you're not optimized at 574. You'd

053be optimized at 720. And the space standard at 720 is 122,000 square feet. So basically Basically, there's no way to get a smaller school that's going to work with the team program teaming model that we have now. So in order for us to get a smaller school, what you're saying is order for us to get a Cuz right right now 720, it's larger than our projected student population. So that's not really right-sizing the building. >> [clears throat] >> But based upon the teaming model, it is right-sized. There's no way that we can reduce the size of the building unless we change the model of how we educate the children. Or or look at other program areas and cut other program areas. You know, do we have three conference rooms? Well, we need two. And again,

054I I I don't know what those cuts may be. I know you spent quite a bit of time with your administrators developing that Ed Spec. So again, I can't really comment on that. Um you know, it's it's what you felt was best to educate the students of the community. Um you know, I I will say looking at your Ed Spec um comparing it to Trumbull, I think Trumbull's classrooms are 900 square feet. I think yours are 850. 825. And and we're going to That was one of your questions we'll get to in in a little while. Um but you know, you've already sharpened the blade a bit. You know, you've already gone on the lower end of of some of these spaces. And just to follow that up a little, Sharon, not that I have

055an answer to anything, but one of my questions was um looking at the Ed Specs and what was the history of them and Erica checking with her staff, you know, found the committee of professional archi- you know, the the professional building people and the professional teachers, etc. Um so I just asked a couple of questions. One is to crawl through the special ed spaces making sure that we're not leaving anything out. It would be terrible to build or renovate something and then say, "Oops, you know, we don't have an tea room." So um Dr. Edwards is crawling through that. Um I've also asked to look at um the the larger rooms, Scott, that you mentioned. Um there are four or five of them. Do we need five if we could do with four? Um so

056again, it's kind of playing around with the edges. Uh but it is an exercise that I think um Slam and Collier's will be working on. Yeah. So we're we're just crawling through it a little bit, you know, the basic spaces. The classrooms are teaming is teaming. And there are subtleties as well like the the building because you've you know, with the existing building, say assuming you built new. Um and again, the new should be a little bit more efficient, but the new, if you recall that was proposed was a three-story building. Well, three-story building comes with a lot of stairs and elevator shafts, mechanical shafts to get things up and down through it. So the renovation was just slightly smaller in square footage, but it's just because this building is it's a little bit older.

057They were ripping down parts of it, but it's not as efficient as designing a brand new building to your Ed Spec. So the renovation plan for this building was just I think a thousand square feet or five or 600 square feet smaller than a new build. The new build is a little bit more compact and efficient, but you've got stairs that are, you know, 12 ft wide by 30 ft. So it's 600 ft plus area in the in a hallway to get to the stair plus elevator shafts. So every floor that you go up is probably got an extra two to 3,000 square feet in area because you're trying to minimize the footprint and because you don't have a lot of open land here to build without starting to encroach on wetlands and some of

058the other things you've got here. So you know, if you're going to build a new building, it makes sense. Let's go vertical. Let's try to minimize the footprint, but that comes at a at a slight penalty of a little bit more building area versus just building a sprawling a sprawling building. Have we done a study on the grounds to to to understand and know for sure that we don't have the footprint to have a single-story building? I don't think that's ever been fully explored, but um I think it's it was a prudent approach that Slam took to do a multi-story academic wing. And it makes a lot of sense um culturally too. You know, you can give one floor of an education wing to sixth to seventh to eighth as they progress through the building.

059Um so from a teaming approach, separation approach, you know, we do have some, you know, potential soils issues. There are a lot of wetlands around here. So again, um you know, until you again, if it's a new build, until you tear down the existing building, you've got limited area to work with to build that new building. Um and again, same thing on this one as as well. You know, you you are kind of constrained about how big we can go around this one. Okay. If I may also a multi-story building is going to be more compact. Uh of course, that's going to take up less site area, but it's also going to be more efficient because you're going to have less sprawl. And you're going to have less ex- potentially less exterior perimeter of exterior

060wall, so you're going to have more energy efficiency with a more compact building. That was the opposite of what you said though, I thought. I thought you were saying that a single-story building would be more efficient on a on perhaps where Square footage. Our efficiencies are in different areas. Right. Not exterior wall and long-term heating, ventilating. Um yeah, you've got more surface area. And and just because if it's a if it's a large building, either you're going to have very long travel distances or like this building, there's areas of this building that have no windows because it is a big flat footprint and you've got interior windowless spaces which are not conducive to education. Those are really horrible. I've actually been into those. That's Yeah. Um Feel free to answer this later because I know

061we're talking about square footage, but it did pop out at me. And did you both work on Greenwich? No. Oh, okay. So what pops out at me, it's not really the square footage, but Greenwich has about 20% more students than Weston and it's costs material materially less. And I'm wondering if you know some of the reasons why. Well, we're going to We're going to speak to that. >> Yeah, we are going to That is one of the questions um that we will get to. So um But let's let's finish up on this if we could first and then yeah, we will be addressing that. It's a great question. So any anything more on this to people? Do you Do you understand cuz if you don't understand, I'm happy to take more questions. It is complex.

062Um but I hope that this demonstrated where you guys are and unfortunately, you're not in the in the sweet spot. So um moving on, this is kind of the last slide I have and then we'll get to the questions questions, but somebody asked could we put together all three options on the one sheet and and compare them? And you know, on the surface, they look very similar. Um You know, the the pointer the pointer's still not working. So the very top one um is filing a grant by this June of 2026. So the very first little gray bar you see there takes us from where we are now to June to select a project, make a final decision on what the project's going to be, budget the project, market the project, get it to the

063community. Um get the the town and all the steps which we talked about last week. You know, we've we've got to have the motions from the Board of Selectmen, set [music] up a building committee. There's a lot of things that you have you have to file with grant application. And then um I believe this is a referendum community, correct? Okay. So you'd have to set a referendum date um because the state requires when you file a grant, if you're if you can have the referendum in November, they'll allow you to do that, but you actually have to physically set the referendum, have a motion that says, "We will have a referendum for this project [music] on this date." And in these schedules, I've assumed um at least the first two, November 3rd, election day. Um

064again, what we understand in most municipalities, when a ref- once a referendum is set, the the district, the town cannot promote that project or whatever that referendum topic is. So there's what's called a blackout period. So one of the questions was, "What are advantages and disadvantages of of the first option of bars on the way?" Because you can see that really the design phase doesn't change, the construction phase doesn't change. Um again, this assumes you would have a successful referendum in November. As soon as you pass your funding, a referendum would be approving the funding for the project, then you hire an architect, an OPM, a construction manager. And from that point forward, all of the the things all of those expenses would be reimbursed by the state once your grant is approved. So all

065of that money is approved. The problem with the first one is doing a grant by this June is can we get all this work done? Can we get public support? Are we comfortable moving a project forward by this June? The second option has a grant assumes a grant filed in 2027, but you're still doing the referendum on election day in November in 2026. So again, look at the the gray bar there, that first gray bar that says grant. Much longer period now. Now I figure we can go up until September. Um we're still waiting on confirmation of what your referendum process is, but for this exercise, I've assumed two months. So typically, you set the referendum two months before. If it's only one month, then we could market and and have public input all the

066way up to October. In this case, September. So the timeline now to get all these things done, build some consensus within the public, make sure we have our numbers right. We have longer to do that up to election day. Um the the funding passes again, we hire the architect, hire the CM, the OPM, start the design. You can file you file your grant anytime now before June of 2027. Now, your funding is is approved a year from when you file your grant. So, your funding would get approved in 2028. That's the green bar. So, now that's a big change between the top one and the second one. The green bar. So, when your funding's approved. So, in the in the top option, if you could get the grant filed and everything through and get a

067referendum passed by November, if you filed the grant this year, your funding would get approved 2027. Now, why is that an advantage? Because as soon as that funding's approved, you can start going back to the state and say, "Hey, we want our reimbursement for the money we spent to date from the November election up till now." So, you can see it's that that blue bar, the design phase. You're about a third of the way through your design. The second option, which gives us more time to market the project, look at the numbers, build consensus with the public, moves the grant, the red bar, the big red bar that says grant, moves it 1 year over to the right, also moves the funding 1 year over to the right. Now, the funding happens right at the

068end of your design. So, you've got your design done, you're ready to go out to bid, ready to start your construction. The construction period itself never changes. The only thing that changes in this case, the disadvantage is we got to carry the architect's fees and some of those fees a little longer till we get to July 1st of 2028, then we send the paperwork into the state and say, "Reimburse us for this past year." So, it's it's a difference in when you can start getting your reimbursement, but that's a trade-off on how much time you need to prepare the grant and to build consensus and market the project. The bottom one just says, "Okay, well, what happens if we really need a long time for the grant? We push into the spring of '27." Well,

069we still file the grant by June, the end of June of 2027. The green bar is still in 2028, but now we don't have enough time to get the project designed and bid. And it pushes that completion date out. The first The top two we're anticipating new new This is just on new construction. I I do want to make it more I didn't do the the renovation. Renovation would be about another 12 months, at least another year. But, what it does is it pushes for a new option, pushes the construction past a fall opening of 2020 of 2030. So, you would either do a mid-term, a winter break move. Those are very challenging as far as I would never recommend it, trying to move a whole school mid-term. You know, so potentially if you if

070you felt you needed the longer grant or longer grant time, the bottom one just shows you if you push past November, again, November is kind of that sweet spot. November, we figure 16 months to design it, it's it's perfect. You get your funding on the on the middle option right when you're ready to go out to bid. And the state won't let you go out to bid until you have your funding approval. So, the middle option gives you a little more time for the grant, aligns your funding approval right when you have a shovel-ready package ready to go out to bid, you start your construction, you don't lose any time. So, the top two could also could open it at 2030. But again, if if a renovation option is shown, I I just didn't want

071to add too much to this slide. The red bar just gets a lot longer cuz it takes a lot longer to renovate a building, tear down, move kids around, and build new. So, that was one of the questions that was, "What are the advantages, disadvantages of the three schedules that we showed you last time?" So, questions on that? I I have a question and and for option one and two are pretty similar, [music] but we're not discussing kind of what happens in the grant process. In option one, we're going to get on that grant list much faster. If we if Phil, you know, we you can discuss what happened with the HVAC grant, where the state had HVAC grants and then they decided to put it on the no priority list, and so we have

072to wait another year. The option of the faster we get on the grant list, the more permanent it is. We're never sure about what's going to go on um with the state. And and I think that should be a concern when we look at option one and two. Mhm. Scott, can you um couple of questions. So, the quiet period or the blackout period? >> Right. When does that start or when does that Our understanding is typically that starts when a referendum is set. But again, we've we've asked that, you know, we need to go back to the the um you know, legal authority here in town and and the authorities that handle referendums to look at town statute and language and confirm that. Um because that's a big part of this. Again, if you if

073you can't promote the project, but you're not having a referendum for another 5 months, um again, it's very hard to fight the negative because the people who are against the project have 5 months of, you know, you you can't say anything unless you've got a really strong pack or or outside group outside of the the town that can defeat um you know, dispute some of the inaccuracies that typically are thrown out by an opposition. You know, the opposition doesn't have to be factual. They can put all kinds of stuff out there to try and kill the project. So, that's that's the concern and again, that's what we really need, you know, the town to verify is what is that grant pro- or the the referendum process. Um because that's really the concern. Now, if you

074could file a grant and keep going all the way to November, that would be that would be terrific. But in both in both options one and two, the referendum date is the same. Yes. Okay. >> But because you're not filing the grant until [music] September of '27, again, to file the grant by '26, you have to set the referendum. Okay, I understand. >> a motion says, "We intend to have a referendum on in this case November 3rd, 2026." That has to happen before June of this year. Okay. So, that actually answers my question and just to sort of uh repeat it back to you cuz I think it's it's something that's weighing heavily on me. So, in order to file the grant for June 30th of 2026, we have to have a referendum date set.

075Let's just assume that it's 2 months. Um that we Let me back up. So, could we potentially if Yeah, let's say it's 2 months notice. I'm making that number up. Don't know that it is the case. So, the latest that we would be able to set the referendum date would be June 29th or the day at the same day that we apply the grant application in that grant application. >> You probably have to have it certified by the town clerk or you provide some certified of that resolution and motion to the minutes. So, you probably need a couple of weeks. I don't know how quick your town clerk can turn that around, but Okay. >> So, Yeah. if now we're talking June 15th, let's our argument sake. Sure. So, between June 15th and election day

076in November, we can do nothing to further promote it with option one. That's been my understanding with other communities and their legal counsels' interpretation of the statutes and and and um you know, right, election law. At whereas with option two, again, I we're working with this assumption it's 2 months and couple of weeks to set the date, we potentially could be uh working with the community to socialize this and really get feedback well into August. Into September. Even better. September. [music] Okay. So, I think for the purposes and again, I might be oversimplifying it, but for the purposes of option one and option two, the completion date remains the same, the construction period remains the same. Uh the other question I had is, do you have an estimate So, I I understand that we would

077be carrying the design costs for a longer period of time, but it is uh it is at the the benefit potentially to that is that we can work with the community for a longer period of time to get closer to the referendum. What do you have an Do you have an idea what the design cost would be? Just a round ballpark number. >> [laughter] >> Um Four or five. Yeah, I mean, your your fees your fees probably six to seven. So, yeah, probably I mean, yeah, you look at construction manager. You're probably looking around somewhere between four and five million. Okay. Again, real high level, just grabbed that one out of the air. You know, again, once once a once a plan is selected, we can do a a schedule that would show, you know,

078cash flow. We could do a projection of a cash flow. It's still a little early to do that yet. Um but we can do that and that would tell you all along, month by month, what your the anticipated expenditures would be. Okay. So, I think just uh So, for my two questions for option one versus option two, being the project gets delivered at the same time, the upside from where I sit is that we can work with the community much for a longer period of time up to 2 and 1/2 months, maybe 3 months before the referendum. The downside is we have to carry a four or five million dollar not going to hold you to it but four or five million dollar design verse We lose the ability to really talk about this further

079with the community and work with I assume even between the boards if the silent if the period if it's if it the blackout period is that among the boards as well? >> promote the project any town agency can't promote in in you know it it gets into legal ease of what's saying you know you can't say vote for this project or you can't even say you know our opinion the project will cost it it you know I'm not a lawyer but I know when the lawyers have looked at these sort of information sheets that you try and put out to just give people the facts it's it's hard to give them the facts without sounding like you're promoting the project. So it sounds like even the ability to modify it and interactively work through the

080nuances of it could be interpreted as promoting the project because if the feedback is we can't afford that or it's whatever the case may be if you make adjustments so it's more palatable to the community that could be potentially interpreted as Yeah I I Okay. >> I don't want to comment on a specific scenario because I'm not I'm not a lawyer you know I mean in in again in these options your other option is file the grant wait until the green bar till your funding is approved then start your design but you're losing a year and a half and right now again we're projecting year over year escalations at about four and a half percent so a year and a half you're looking at six seven percent on top of let's just say a hundred

081and twenty million dollar project that's probably eight or nine million dollars now you've delayed it by a year you now you can start getting your money in but you're probably two or three million dollars more in the hole and you've pushed the project out another year. So you know I don't want people to think you have to start designing as soon as your funding passes but we always recommend that there's an advantage to that because if you wait the escalations year over year on that construction cost it's the project cost just keep going up. So you can in essence by starting it early you're almost buying the design for free. I know that's a little weird to say but you're you know if you wait a year you're you'll have lost all the money you

082would have spent for the whole design not just not just design but design and construction oversight and everything all the way to the end of the project. I have a question cuz it's a corollary to Lisa's question. How much money is available for the state for fiscal year 2029 starting July of for school construction? You don't know right? >> Nope. We do know that money's available for fiscal year 28 starting June 2027. How do we know that? Because East Windsor knows already they're our competitor for funding cuz they're putting their grant in for their middle school this June. They know they're in for a hundred to a hundred ten in a sense they got the inside track. So they're saying hey I know I'm getting my money. We wait to fiscal year 29 there may

083be no money available so there's actually huge downside risk in option two of the unknown. That's the problem that's the squeeze we're in. Except we've I've never seen when a school's put under a priority project that it wasn't funded. There was one time where the funding was delayed I think in one of the recession years I think it was the late nineties Camp you may recall it got pushed off to September by the legislature. But there's no we've been there's no December in option two with the nice bright star saying we've been accepted. >> I would encourage you to talk to your state legislators and get their opinion on that. I mean I hear you Peter I know where you're going there's no guarantee in in life I mean you know but we're just we're

084just trying to give you the information so you guys can make the best educated decision. I I think it's great I think this is a good chart but you know there's no free lunch. No. I think David's on the right track you do if you do you're damned if you do you're damned if you don't and you just got to pick which risk you're willing to live with on this stuff. Okay so now I think we're going to I unfortunately I don't have it in the PowerPoint but I can always go back to these slides so I'm going to we're going to run through the questions really quick that I got from Phil. So the second question I think I think we've addressed the first question which had to do with schedule pros and cons

085is is everybody comfortable with that response? The second question can we get a more detailed look at why Greenwich project is priced eight hundred fifty to nine hundred dollars per square foot compared to Weston's one thousand. And I'll I'll send these to Phil after and they responses to the questions just didn't unfortunately put them in a PowerPoint slide. >> [snorts] >> So again you know Greenwich is going to be completed in 2026 your project again based on this will get completed in 2030 so there's four years of that escalation that 4.5%. Right now I had the wrong number up there I believe the Greenwich's total was a hundred twelve million seven hundred thousand. If we divide that by the what we know was the constructed square foot of a hundred thirty three thousand nine hundred

086it comes out to eight hundred forty two dollars a square foot. So if you take that eight forty two and you multiply it by 1.045 times 1.045 times 1.045 to capture the four years of four and a half percent escalation which compound on top of each other it results in one thousand four dollars. Now are we guaranteed it's going to be four and a half percent again Peter just pointed out we don't know we look at historical trends we're constantly watching the market you know there's a lot of turmoil right now in the world you know but that's we we've used that factor for escalations when it was COVID it it it really shot up there was some strange years there you know I think at this point right now we feel reasonably comfortable at

087four and a half percent escalation so that is how we get from the Greenwich cost it just shows you what delaying four years pushing it down another four years does to you you know it it it escalates it quite a bit. Um Question three I'm going to turn this over to my partner here to my left it was Ken Collier slam provide more descriptions about energy standards I know that the three point five million dollar allowance for sustainable initiatives was removed and I know that the design cost will provide will provide a lead silver question mark standard what is that? And could we get a summary of what that means what in their opinion about options for PV photovoltaics solar panels or geothermal and whether we include an allowance is a good idea. Thanks Scott.

088So I think we mentioned last time the last meeting on the 16th that the current state building code and the pending change to the building code which is expected to happen in June this coming year or this year has provisions in it that have requirements for energy performance and sustainability that will give you a very good sustainable high performing building just with base state state building code and so that will more than probably exceed the lead silver equivalent that we see with the Connecticut high state high performance building standards. Just with the building code so you will have a very high performing building just with that. Now if you want to consider photovoltaics or geothermal systems as a means of on site energy production which is really what that is that helps offset energy costs

089for like offsite purchase of costs like electricity or fossil fuels. Those are definite things that you should consider as part of this project funding because it could have a long term benefit to the district by offsetting those energy costs which are you know anybody's guess where energy costs are going and we all know they're going up but we don't know by don't know by how much. So those are things that should be considered as a matter of course in Connecticut school building or you know pretty much any school building these days we make these buildings what we call PV ready. So you know we factor in the weight of the panels on the roof into the structural design we factor [clears throat] in extra space within the electrical panels and electrical structure gear structure as

090well as conduits up to the roof so those panels could come on after the fact if you wanted to wait a few years and put a system on the roof later on in in the building's life cycle. We could also bid it as an alternate in the event that you don't think you may not have the money on bid day when you're bidding this project but you could bid it as an alternate and see if you do have the money. The state will reimburse photovoltaic panels so that is you know something that we do quite often with these projects. For geothermal you really need to do the due diligence early on in the process understand if it's where you want to go because you need to design the HVAC system for a geothermal plant. Um

091But it does come with a little bit of extra cost but it's an investment in the future to avoid unknown energy costs in the future. I I was the one that asked that question >> [music] >> cuz we removed 3.5 million. So, I'm just thinking is that like if we got interested in geothermal, then what do we do? Or Yeah. >> Are these numbers like just because they're they're so they're so much an estimate, do we kind of Well, I you know, I think the other question is with geothermal. Again, we know we've got some wetland soils. >> [music] >> We know you've got your um your septic field is is down in the fields to I guess it would be maybe the south. >> Okay. Um you know, where would you put these? We

092you know, we finished uh Colliers working um you know, with a a different design architect just finished a uh net zero school that had geothermal um in it and it was an elementary school about 80,000 square feet had 68 wells just for that. So, you're probably looking at a well field of probably well over 100 wells. Now, looking at you know, where you may or may not have a reserve for your septic fields, where you have wetland soils, I'm not sure you have the available land to implement a geothermal solution. Um and and you certainly you know, you can't you you couldn't say, "Well, let's put it where the existing building is if you built new because you know, if you got to tear the building down, you got to heat the building. And the

093geothermals do come with um I don't want to say a penalty, but it it does take more room for the uh the units, the individual units they're they're feeding the classrooms and all. So, the the building itself gets a little bit bigger. Now, PV absolutely. And and I think we talked about this at the last meeting. The concern we have um I think you've got to do a little bit more of an evaluation, but looking at you know, the tectum roof panels, your roof structure here, and then knowing how we showed a an image which I've got the slide here, but how little area you have between your ceiling and your roof structure that a lot of your new mechanicals because again, building ventilation and indoor air quality, you know, the newer schools that we

094saw through COVID with MERV 13 filters and dedicated outside air and 100% outside air and heat recovery, the students, the teachers, those schools got through COVID a lot better than the schools that didn't have those systems. Um so, you know, you're you're going to want to as part of an energy upgrade and efficiencies, you know, you've got to meet those energy standards. You've got to meet those standards for air changes. All that stuff's going to have to go up on the roof. Now, we put that stuff on the roof. Now, we don't have any room for PV. Where are we going to put the solar panels? So, again, that's a trade-off, one of those advantages, disadvantages when you look at you know, renovating this building is the potential for PV. Now, they do make um

095carports with PV on those. We implemented those at um um in um uh Windham High School because their roof didn't have the capacity. You couldn't put panels on the roof. So, we put the But, it comes at a cost. Those are expensive. A lot more expensive than putting a panel on a roof. Um but I I would think again, you know, we put contingencies into these budget estimates. Um I think as we talked about last time, contingency for a renovation, redoing this building is going to be a little higher. We build more money in cuz of the surprises. New construction, you shouldn't have as much. But, um exactly like Kemp said, potentially building in an alternate a PV is a wonderful alternate to to build in. So, you have you say the contractor, "Give me

096a separate cost to put PV on." And if all the numbers come in and you do great on bid day, you can say, "This is good. We're $2 million under budget and we got a quote here for a a million .5 for PV. Boom. Let's put it into the project. So, there's there's ways of doing that. And then I don't know if everybody's familiar with what LEED stands for. Um it's it's different levels of leadership in enviro- energy and environmental design. And you have to achieve certain thresholds in a building to go from LEED silver to gold to platinum. There's very few platinum buildings. It comes with a lot of bells and whistles. Um difficult to achieve, not impossible cuz people do it. Um but once you get past silver, which is a really well-performing

097building, you start going into gold, you start spending a lot of money trade you know, trying to get that plaque where you might not really realize all the advantages of spending that money versus putting that money into academics. So, but it's it's an acronym and it's just levels. So, you start out at LEED silver, you go to gold, you go to platinum. Um but you start looking at square foot cost for a platinum building, it's a lot more than $1,000 a square foot. Yeah. LEED is is a benchmark for those that don't know. Um but the state statute in Connecticut is that all public projects that spend $5 million or more needs to meet LEED silver equivalency. You don't have to get the plaque through the um the USGBC program. But, you still do the

098same things and you have the same result. You just don't have a plaque on the wall that says it's certified. Um so, anything more on that question, we'll keep moving cuz I know it's it's running long here. Um can Colliers or SLAM give us an opinion on the size of the following spaces in the ed specs? Music spaces, general course music, band, instrument choral strings. Each list is 1,400 square feet. Is this a standard or based on number of students or based on a range? Do you have any comparisons to other recent middle school projects in our area? And then same question for 825 square feet listed for general classrooms. Sure, I'm going to start with the general classrooms uh cuz we we talked about 825 for 24 students, which we felt was a reasonable

099number of students for a maximum uh class enrollment. Uh if you do that math, that works out to be about 34 just over 34 what we call net square feet per seat. And we have a range with our programming efforts. If you're between 32 and 36, you have a very well-performing classroom for 21st century learning environments. Um so, we're comfortable with 825 square feet for a classroom of 24. Uh as far as the music spaces, 1,400 square feet is a pretty reasonable number um for a middle school. Um it really varies depending on how you plan to use the space. Um the ensemble size that you want to accommodate during a class session is going to drive that that area of that of that uh classroom. And you know, that was likely discussed when the

100previous when Tecton worked with the previous board uh developing the ed spec. I would have I would imagine that the the pedagogy of those spaces was discussed to some degree to arrive at that square footage. But, as a point of comparison um for choral room uh band room and orchestra strings room, your ed spec is at 1,400 square feet for each of those spaces. Uh the Greenwich Middle School had 1,100 square feet for each of the same type of space. Um but if you looked at Torrington, we just did a a Torrington Middle School recently, um they had a much different program and so they they uh program those spaces quite a bit higher. So, up to 20- up to 2,400 square feet. And that was because in that particular building, we were getting shared

101use of those spaces between middle school and high school cuz it was a middle high school. Um so, that's why those were a little bit bigger. If that helps answer the question. I um it does vary. And and again, there is a chart that unfortunately I don't have that I can put on the screen, but we will I will send this to Phil. So, the response to that question includes a chart of the information that Kemp just presented. Um next question um there's been informal talk about the concept of private donations. Does Colliers SLAM have any experience or opinion? Um I don't have any experience in a private donation for a public school project. Um I don't see why it couldn't happen. Um I would have the donation go directly to the town so the

102town could use that to offset their share of the costs. Um you know, I wouldn't intermingle that with any state process or or any funding. Um you know, it used to be and I think we spoke about this last time that um grants in the past, the state would take back their percentage of reimbursement. Um you know, a lot of times it's it's on and off again. Um there's been some some good grants from uh Eversource uh for energy efficiency for lighting. Um you know, it can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Um years ago, the state would say, "Well, if we reimbursed you 20% for the project, then 20% of that Eversource money is ours." And they take it back from you. They don't do that anymore. So, if you get a

103if you get a grant of that sort or something comes to the project uh as part of the project, you get to keep that money and use that to offset. I don't know if you've ever had any private donations, Kemp? Not private donations, but I you know, the the incentive programs through Eversource is where we see the most of the rebates coming back in projects and they can be substantial. Um in the hundreds [clears throat] of thousands of dollars. Um the next question, uh we're getting there. The question six, what is the sequence of events to get us to the point where we qualify for build new at the reimbursement rate of renovation and be we lobby our state representatives for additional reimbursement um specifically when? So, again, um you know, I think we did

104talk about this last time. There was a slide, but um you know, to achieve renovation status and again, renovation status just says everything that's the what I like to call the nasty R word, repair, replacement. Normally, all of that work if you're doing that work isn't reimbursed by the state. So, you're going to replace all your windows or all your lighting. You know, the floors are shot. We got to put all new floors in, doors, hardware, all our toilets, our plumbing, the pipes are bursting. Any of those repairs without renovation status, the state says, "That's nice, but we're not going to give you a dime." Renovation status is is part of the exercise that Kemp just performed phase two where the architect goes in, they evaluate a building, and they evaluate um you know, what

105you're going to need to do to it, what its systems are, how much it would cost to renovate it versus building a new structure. And as we talked about last week, um it's very close, but right now the budget estimates show that building new is slightly cheaper than renovating. Meaning you're not going to get renovation approval. If if the state says, "Wait a minute, it's cheaper to build new, I'm not going to pay for you to run I want you to build new. I'm not going to pay to renovate this old building that's that's 60 years old. You just told me it's it's better it's my money is better spent building a new project." And the architect does a form uh 35 35 or 30 >> 3501 3501 that [snorts] the architect signs and that's

106part of what Kemp was hired to do as part of this evaluation for renovation analysis is they put on that form what they believe to be the cost for new, the cost for renovation to the Ed Spec and then they sign it. So, with that form, if the architect has certified that it's cheaper to build new than to renovate, you're not going to get that renovation status. The board and town then needs to you select an option, you file your grant, and you'd file your grant at the new building rate. You know, you'd file the grant and say, "We want a new building." And the state can say, "Okay, your new building it's 12%." As soon as the grant is filed, then you can get the paperwork into the state and you can say, "But

107look at here, it's cheaper to build new than to renovate." And there is a state statute that says if you can prove that it's cheaper to build new than renovate, they will bring you up to that higher threshold, the renovation threshold. So, you file the grant first. Used to be 5, 10 years ago the state would have a dialogue with you and we'd say, "Hey look guys, it's cheaper to build new than to renovate." And they'd say, "Okay, submit it in in you know, give me an indication that yeah, we're going to push that right through." At this point now, the state will not talk to you about any project until you select the project you want and you submit it as a grant. Once you've done that, then the state will open up a

108dialogue with you. But again, there's um you know, statute it's we've seen it happen a number of times now. If you can prove it's cheaper to build new, you'll get moved up to that higher number. So, that isn't something that happens before the grant, it's something that happens after the grant. And it's on a case-by-case basis. Um you know, again, we've seen it happen. There's statute. Will the state do it? Most likely. Can I tell you 100%? I can't tell you 100% what the state's going to do for anything. So, um And then and and yeah, so that that that kind of any questions on that part of the process of what the steps there? And then as far as engaging our representatives, um you know, I would say reach out as soon as possible.

109Um you know, for a general reimbursement increase, um you know, you can coordinate that at any time with your with with your legislators representatives, get some notwithstanding legislation. Um we're working in a town in Willington. Um last year they had approved 15 additional percentage points on top of their reimbursement rate. Now, it sunsets by June of 2027. So, they got that approved ahead of time, which was wonderful. But their legislators did a great job. Said, "We're going to give you 15 extra points." They went from 65 to 80%. Um and but they've got to get a grant through and they've got to get their funding approved, not just the grant applied for, but they've got to get their funding approved by June before June of 2027 or they're going to lose that. But so, there

110is precedent that you know, you can do it before, you can do it after. Um you know, so I would encourage you know, the board and the town to open up that dialogue, start talking about the possibilities of what can we get? I do know that Greenwich I think their their base rate was like 7 and 1/2%. They got 20% approved. I was looking for it on a priority list, couldn't find it. The reason I couldn't find it on the priority list is it was just special legislation. Said, "We're going to give Greenwich 20%." Um you know, so again, here's a neighbor that worked with their legislators, they got some additional funding approved um that certainly helped them out. Um please confirm that the state would not consider qualifying a project at a higher reimbursement

111rate until we're on the priority list. I think we just talked about that. They're they won't talk to you till you file a project. Once you file a project, then they'll talk to you. Um To be on the priority list, we need to have filed the grant application and had the town referendum. Um yes. You can file the grant. And again, um you know, in these scenarios we say potentially you'd have your referendum in November 3rd. You have till November 15th by statute to file a certified approval that you've you've voted and you've authorized the funding, you've approved the funding for the project. By November 15th, get that to the state. So, if you submit your grant application, you get to it to the state, state puts you on the priority list. Now, that's kind

112of the form in in option A up there. Option B, you haven't put the grant in yet. You've got your funding. Now, you've got your funding before the grant, you're you're in good shape. You submit the funding approval with the grant in in um 2027. But if you if you do the top one in 2026, you have to have your um your funding approved or they would take your your grant application, they would just throw it away, start over next year. Before we go on, 2 seconds. Phil and actually Eric, I guess but you guys would be the two to ask. We keep talking about, you know, filing for the grant in June of this year or filing it for the grant in June of next year. Peter's point is a very valid one, the

113further we wait, more expensive [clears throat] the project could potentially become, etc. We're also 3 months away from the deadline for filing. How long does it take to actually put together the compile the information that's necessary for filing this grant? Is it something that we can do within the 3-month window? So, is that is it In other words, is is option one even an option? In terms of what's needed? In terms of what's needed to apply for the grant, do we would we be able to do that? We could get the information together to file the grant. You mean there's motions, resolutions Board of Selectmen have to pass, you have to establish a building committee. Um you know, again, you would have to set the referendum. You'd have to pick a project and and a

114cost because it it's not a range of cost anymore. We have to pick the project. This is the project. Approve the final Ed Spec. Um if that hasn't been approved, it's it's going to have to get reapproved because the Ed Spec again is written for at 104,000 and you do not want to submit a project to the state saying we're going to build a school at 104,000 square feet cuz you could again, what we talked about in the beginning, couldn't do it. So, you need that Ed Spec. We need the the estimates, the resolutions. We can pull all that together. But you've got to have consensus that the community and and this board and the town is willing to go forward and file the grant and set that referendum date. I think we yeah. My

115my honestly, I think the challenge for us right now is getting the board consensus together to determine what it what I mean we keep talking about all these dates, but we don't even know what it is specifically that we're going to be filing for. So, is the board need to kind of put these dates to the side a little bit and really focus on we've got the Ed Spec you know, the Ed Specs. We're in agreement that we're going to you know, build a new middle school. Here's what the size is going to be. Here's what the budget looks like it's going to be. Now, we need to find a way to finance this. I mean we've we've sharpened our pencils. Maybe we can sharpen them some more. I don't know, but I In my

116opinion, I think we really need to be focused on that before we're really so focused on referendums and everything else. And they're quick. Yeah, that's a good point um and you that's a great intro. Are you I I am so glad you're here, but I'm also going, "Are you almost done?" Yeah, but it's >> [laughter] >> I I think I think we've answered nine um you know, commitment for higher reimbursement rate before the town filed a grant. I think we've already covered that. And if the square footage of the Ed Specs are reduced, can we assume the project cost will be reduced at a rate of approximately $1,000 square feet? Yes. If you cut program area, if you cut square footage, the the the cost will be reduced. With that, we're done. >> Thank you.

117>> Hey Deb, just to alleviate a little agita and stress, I I have all the checklist that um East Windsor went through and it was your your colleague CSG Mhm. CWC did it and and we got everything. Here's the list and we got it. We just have to put together an ad hoc building committee. They were smart. They put their state senator on the building committee. Which is quite interesting. How about that? The little things you find out You can't do that. between uh Yeah, we have an interesting scenario. Uh but uh It it may take you >> achievable. It's just a matter of will. There are some new specific requirements for the building committee. You have to have representatives that have construction experience and you know, it's within the statute of that motion, but

118that may take a little bit of time for the community to find you know, that group of individuals willing to put you know, four years of their lives into into a building project. Uh town building committee already offered. So, it's kind of interesting. I mean, they they have a lot of experience. So, I think we we have a pool to draw from. Okay. Um we're at a point where we're finally going to get to talk as board members. I'm also looking at the time. Um >> [sighs] >> All right. So, we do have a special meeting again next week and I I'm hoping that's a we are hoping to come to an agreement um as a Board of Ed next week on a recommendation or recommendations plural to the town. Both the Board of Selectmen

119and the Board of Finance and each of those boards when faced with a potential large construction project and you've heard all their alluded to the steps they have to take. You know, with all their roles and responsibilities and perspectives that are different from the Board of Ed. Uh but we I think uh need to make the first step. And yes, we don't know everything. Um but I think we've gotten lots and lots of information. Um I think we have tried to right-size the building. Um we are crawling through the Ed Specs a little bit. We've heard about educational grade configurations, all of that. Um and I could go on and I don't want to. Uh and we you know, the price is where it is. Um it has come down significantly and importantly. Uh doesn't

120mean that um it's not difficult or that it's affordable. I'm not saying that. I'm trying to say let's as a Board of Ed not tie ourselves up in knots trying to anticipate what the Board of Finance and or the Board of Selectmen need to do and might do. Our job is a little bit more finite and more immediate. Let's we have to give them an it to open up the conversation to the Board of Selectmen, to the Board of Finance, more widely with the town to be able to talk about the affordability issue. Our job you know, we that's not our responsibility to model the debt service capacity. That's much more uh done expertly by the Board of Finance. So, what I'm hoping is that if we can as a Board of Ed um come

121to recommendations on the Ed Specs on a recommendation that might say, let's look at option one, two, or three on that timeline and figure it out as town boards together. Uh and say, "And by the way, here's our latest and best and most current opinion of probable cost." Then the Board of Finance has something to work with. So, that's where I'm aiming to go. We have to sort of get it The ball's been in our court, but we have to get a wider court. So, what I'd like to do now is hear every board member kind of weigh in on where you are and whether you think we could come as a board uh to agreement and to vote on again recommendations in that realm that I just described. Um so, I'm not sure who

122would like to go first. I'll put Sharon on the spot. >> [laughter] >> Thanks, so much. >> You You're the one that started nudging us along. >> [laughter] >> Uh um well, I can say I've been on the board for 5 years now along with David and Peter and um this conversation is just getting really old. We have to do something. We've all We're all in agreement on this. Most people in town are in agreement on this. We're not in agreement what to do about it, but I think we just need to make a decision. Um having gone through the schools, uh you know, all the schools of course need to be maintained, but the middle school definitely is the one that is the most problematic for us. Um I'm hyper sensitive to a really

123big price tag and the fact that we have no commercial base here in town, so that 100% falls on the individual taxpayers, right? Uh unless we can work with our legislators, but we can't I I it's it's it's tough because we can't guarantee that we're going to get you know, the reimbursement that we want. So, can we live with the reimbursement that we think we'll get? That's the question. And that's something that I think ultimately we're going to have to work with the Board of Finance for. Um but I think as far as what our responsibility is um when we take a look, I mean, and I know that there are some people tonight who were talking about their concern why are we not renovating? We've covered a lot of that in our previous meetings

124extensively and ad nauseam to be perfectly honest with you. And there are many reasons as to why renovation is not necessarily, in my opinion, the best option. One of which is the educational um uh I've lost my my word, but basically the the amount of disturbance that the children will experience while we are um going through a renovation. Um I think that that would have a negative impact on their educations and that's not something that I think we as a board want to do or as an administration want to do. So, I'm beyond the renovate um and renovate versus renovate as new is kind of an interesting thought, but um renovate is not even a thought because that's just throwing good money after bad. Um and renovate as new renovate as new I think is

125just a really difficult thing with a lot of um disturbances in their education. I'm leaning towards new construction. Um I wasn't happy with the size, as you know, and thank you for answering those questions. You're right. It's just like, you know, when we started going through budgets a while ago and I promise I'll make this quick. When we started talking about like a 0.5 FTE for those who are watching, that's a half of a person full-time employee. So, you can't do, you know, you can't do half students in in in work. We can't have a classroom with 28 kids in it because that's also going to affect the quality of the children's education. So, we are not at a sweet spot. We're stuck. Maybe by going into a school of this size, which I believe

126How does What's the actual size of this one? Do we know? Off the top of your head? So, it's still smaller than this one. 122 would still be smaller than this one. So, it would still be smaller than this one, but based upon the um it you know, can it could service up to 720 students. You know, that might give us if if we see a continued decline in the education in the um student population in Weston, which I personally don't think we're going to see, but if we do, that might give us the room that we could end up in you know, incorporating fifth grade in here and moving things around as well that we've we've discussed. Um anyway, I guess that's a very long-winded way of saying I think we just need to

127move forward and I um um I'm on this one. So, there. All right, thank you. Um I don't care who goes next. Nicole, just [music] cuz I'm bopping around here. Um yes. So, thank you so much for all of your time, for answering all of our questions, for giving us so many details. I feel like I really understand building new. Well, I don't really understand it. There's obviously a lot that I don't understand cuz it's so technical. Um but I really have a good picture of it. Um I bring the perspective of a new board member who hasn't looked at years of reports. Um and I haven't been sitting in meetings on it for 4 years. I wasn't living here when you were living when you were sitting in meetings on it. I um Sorry,

128I just like I have so much going on in my head and I haven't like thought about how to articulate all of it. Um but I just feel like I know a lot about what's going on with the idea of building a new middle school and I still have a lot of questions about the remainder remainder of the school district. Um Uh what I have gleaned from this year and from you know, even our earlier meetings where we talked about we wanted to get a holistic view of campus. We wanted to know the remaining district needs. [music] You know, I just heard you know, we just sat through this whole budget season where our school budget is increasing by uncontrollable and unavoidable costs where none of it is going into a change in instruction and

129or improvement in instruction for our students. It is increases in health care that we can't control and increases in salary, which I would love to continue to do for at to support everyone who's here working for our town and our children. But I do think that those increases need to be considered in conjunction with projects like this. Phil in an earlier meeting shared that we have $33 million in capital improvements in the next 10 years on all of the schools other than the middle school. I cannot ignore that number. I know that the conditions of Hess or Hurlbutt are also pretty poor and I cannot make a decision on the middle school without knowing what is going on with Hess and the students in Hess. Um I What else? I Oh, I think Jim in

130a previous meeting said you will have a successful you will have a more success you would have more successful public buy-in if you have a full plan of the entire district 10 [music] years for 10 years. I don't feel like I have that. Um I am the youngest person on this board. I have the youngest students in the school district. My children will undoubtedly enjoy a brand new middle school as will I, but unfortunately, that is just not something that I can support right now. I cannot make a decision like this. It is for me it would be completely irresponsible to make a decision of this magnitude without knowing everything else that is going on in in school district. Um and then another thing that I feel, which is about public comment and communication, I

131have been working very hard on the communications committee to try to increase ease of communication, and I am devoted and dedicated to continuing to do that with more information that you give me, because I do think that people in town deserve it beyond just our school district. And I don't know where I was going with that, but I care, and I'm working hard, and I will continue to work hard. I think we are working hard. I think we have momentum. >> [music] >> I have the energy to do it, and I will. I just need more time, more information to know what the right decision is. Now I remember why I was saying that. I'm rambling. Because I It is important to share the information and the options and why we're choosing this and why

132we're not choosing this with the public. They They deserve to hear it, and they also deserve to be heard. So, thank you for everyone who came out tonight to share their opinion. As I've said before, not necessarily publicly, there are so many people who cannot make an in-person public comment, myself included, on any other night of the week other than in-person meetings on Monday, because I have children who are at home sleeping, and I can't leave my house. So, I also don't feel comfortable moving ahead on a decision like this when potentially a lot of people are prevented from coming in person to sit on time for public comment where they receive no response from the entire board. Um, and another thing, we just learned on Saturday that Sam Nester has the responses to the

133town survey. I do not feel responsible making a decision on this project [music] without knowing what the results of that survey is. What is the point in asking our townspeople to weigh in on the future needs of our town if we don't incorporate them into our decision-making? Okay. Lisa. Okay, I'll follow. I'm I've been in meetings for a year. And and we have a very thoughtful Board of Ed. >> [music] >> I moved here 33 years ago. There was no WIS, but I moved here because it was the best school district in Connecticut. And that's what we want to maintain. Um, education has moved incredibly in 33 years. It's not the education that we have today. We have learned so much. We live in a state Yale University has done so much research, and we've

134implemented that research into best practices in the school. And that's one of the things that Weston is best known for. People move here for the family community and for the schools, and schools are very important. And probably every person who moves here moves here for the schools. So, what have we learned here? It's not only the facility that we're talking about, a facility that would support those students, but it's best practices in education. Why do we have a building this size, and we talk about an education program that supports best practices, the best education that we can provide, and that's what research has shown us. We're not interested in average. We're not interested in good enough. We're interested in the [music] best. And And people move here because this is a school district of excellence.

135I I'm retired. I'm a senior citizen. I have no children in the schools. They haven't been in the schools for well over 20 years. I want those schools. I think it's important. Weston was really good to my children. They're very, very successful. They're married. I have wonderful grandchildren. And it's because Weston offered schools of excellence. And the My children have wonderful characters. They're happy. They're educated. And it's because I lived in this community. I want the children to hear. They're not my children. They're our children. It takes a community to raise them. And I want the best schools for the children here as my children received the best education. In order to do that, we need a new middle school. I choose option one because I believe we have an urgency. We have to work

136with the state. We have to work for grants. And it's time that we move on. No decision is a decision. It's time to make a decision. It's time to support every child in Weston and give him the best education. And that's what we've talked about for 4 years here. And we need to make a decision and move on and give those children the best education. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Uh, I I'll build on Deb's comments to Lisa's comments. So, Deb is dead on. Uh, it's a little play on words here, but you're getting my drift. You know, we started the education optimization committee because we deliver education. We didn't start the tax optimization committee. We didn't start the real estate value optimization committee. We started the education optimization committee. And Deb is exactly right.

137Our sole responsibility is to deliver a recommendation that's best for multiple generations of students, teachers, and parents. Given Given that said, we're not the only ones who who understand this. We have other boards in the state that exactly understand the same thing. And they've landed exactly where we've landed. Right? We have experts here we've covered in weeks. Groton, Greenwich, Bristol, East Windsor, Trumbull. They all land in the same place. And here's the paragraph from the East Windsor communication to their town. The consultants further provided professional guidance that those conditions we suffer from the same conditions they've described require immediate attention, Lisa's point, and that continuing with temporary repairs was no longer a viable approach for facilities that are 60 years old. They explained that such short-term fixes would only become more expensive over time while

138still still leaving major underlying issues resolved unresolved. So, the smart The only smart move that meets our criteria is delivering education and listens to the consultants is to build a new middle school. And furthermore, option one is the only way to go because I think we're playing with fire not getting our act together now, not getting our grant in, not getting a referendum done, and securing the money we need as a community to build a new school. Thank I knew I'd be next. >> [laughter] >> Oh, thanks. Deb's going last. She's just getting started, Peter. Oh, yeah. I'm [laughter] just kidding. I'm just kidding. No, I said most of it. So, for me, you know, I wear my taxpayer hat, I wear my BOE hat, and my fiscally responsible mindset. Um, I feel like, you

139know, I said this before, our jurisdiction is over education. It's not on finance. It's not on tax. You'll rarely hear me say the words I agree with Peter. I do agree with him on that point and that point at the moment only, that, you know, that's not our responsibility, the finance financing side. That said, we have no direction from the Board of Finance yet. But today we don't have any direction from the Board of Finance. We have no feedback on why the selectmen killed this project 2 years ago. So, my only open question is sort of kind of where Nicole's head is at, which is um, do we just do a straight What about just a straight renovation of the school? Not a renovation that would equal build you know, full renovate as new or

140new. Although of the two, I think building new is obviously the prudent choice, but we don't have just a renovation uh, proposal. And I don't know if that's something that is just not feasible or where we're at. So, you know, where does that leave me? I support today what we have, option two. I think option one is too much, too fast. We're setting ourselves up for failure. I would Yeah, the grant timeline. Yeah, option two on the grant timeline. I think what we need to do is as a Board of Education, we need to move this to the next step. And the next step does not bind the community. That's something that's really important to me, is that we make sure the community knows that whether we move forward with grant option two, option one,

141option three, we're not binding the community to anything. Ultimately, we're moving the process to the next step that's been communicated to us, which is the Board of Finance has to look at this. After the Board of Finance looks at it, we go to a referendum. The referendum is where the community has the ability to say to us yes or no. So, I feel from where I sit today, we do have to do something, and that something today, at the moment, is move this to the next step. So, I would support uh, option two. All right. Well, we do have a week to sort of think um, now that we've heard each other. Um, I I would like to incorporate um some of Nicole's concerns. Um I think when you mentioned um the Hess repairs, I

142do think we have a capital plan that includes that and it's been there for a while. As a matter of fact, we're doing a trying to do a 2.5 million dollar project on the HVAC system followed by the roof followed by I forget the third thing. The what? Boilers, yeah. So, it it seems like Hess is on um a capital improvement plan. The concern about how we going to afford that you know, plus other capital improvements and this this construction project is a great one, but I think that is better done with the Board of Finance and the Board of Selectmen working together. Because um as a board, I think again, I go back to that tying ourselves in knots. That's a Board of Finance issue. That's a Board of Selectmen issue and we as

143a Board of Ed want to work with them collaboratively. So, I think between looking at the specifics of renovating new or building new, that we've gotten a good answer there. Taking the opinion of probable costs and being able to reduce those by about 10% is a move in the right direction. We have not lobbied anybody yet. Either state legislature legislate legislators. Um we haven't tracked down every single grant yet. Um and these may or may not yield anything, but those are roads that I'd like to follow. It's hard to go to anyone at the state legislate legislature and say, "Here, we need help." With what? Well, um it's coming. So, I really think that we have to take that step and get [music] this project in a larger arena so we can have those discussions.

144Um someone else brought up private donations. Hey, you know, we're not going to say no to any possibility. I think that's very creative. So, I I get the affordability issue. Certainly, as somebody that doesn't have kids in the school, moved here and probably owns the median site or the median priced house in town, you know, I'll be that example of whenever the uh Board of Finance um has uh reformulated their debt capacity subcommittee and I think it's first meeting, Mike told me on the way in, is on Thursday night. So, uh they'll start working and it would be great if they actually had something from us so they could start that process with something real. So, the more we can do that, I think that gets into a bigger community discussion into a better vision

145for the future involving the town. And uh the survey that Nicole spoke about was done. I think we all know that. And I think Sam during the Speak Up Weston session said that was going to be reported on soon. And when she came to us, she talked about things like uh more office space, uh the annex is about to fall down for lots of reasons, not the least of which are health reasons. Uh so, it's time limited. Um and then at the communities or a community center, the use of the pool, the senior center, that's kind of buzzing around and I don't know if the the town has an exact plan yet. So, we'll find out more information, but our part is to say, "Here's what we need from the schools and for the schools."

146And that brings me to the fifth grade question, which is it would be my personal preference is to have a recommendation or build or support a plan that has flexibility on our part. So, I don't know the answer to whether we should build for fifth grade now at the middle school. Again, that might be a larger town discussion. Because there has to be an impetus for it. We know our educational model works now. If we need to bring the fifth grade up, we know that that would be possible. Erica and her team have told us that grade five through eight would work. But you know, what's the immediate need? Is that a town driven thing? Is that an educational driven thing? So, I think that's a discussion worth having and I'd like to see the

147flexibility around the fifth grade site or I'm sorry, a a new school site that would say, "In the future, if we needed to add a fifth grade or another grade, we have space we can make an addition." And I think Colliers was working on that. They gave us the price and they said, "Yes." Um so, again, further discussion could yield light about whether we need to do that sooner or later. I don't I think that's an open-ended question, but I'd like to at least see the flexibility there. Because then to somebody else's comment during public comment, you know, and and Nicole's, weave the town into it. So, if the town ends up needing more space and we could put the fifth grade at at a new middle school, fine. Or even if we can't, we

148perhaps have some room at WIS. Could we bring up the second grade now? And I think based on our enrollment, we might be able to do that. But we have to go look at it. I don't think it's a huge study. I don't think it changes the footprint. Complicates parking a little bit, but maybe. So, why do it? Well, the town needs to weigh in with what its needs are. Do we need more office space for the town? Could we bring Erica and her team into uh the vacated space in Hess? All of these are questions down the road and I'm just wait I'm just raising them now to try to get at I don't think we can go forward with a an all detailed, completely comprehensive plan for 20 years down the road with

149all our needs and all the towns' needs perfectly laid out. That's a much larger conversation. I think we've done a great job on our corner of that universe and I think we need to move it forward so we can have these larger >> [music] >> conversations. So, that's why I was hoping that next week we can vote on some recommendations that are general enough to allow us the spirit of collaboration with which we're making these these recommendations. We want to continue working on the price. We want to continue working on the town. We want to plan for the long term. But right now, we need a new middle school. Cuz that seems to be the best option. So, anyway, we are we are 7 minutes over my timeline, but yes, Sharon, go. I want to

150ask a quick question just for clarification because it was brought up during public comment tonight and both David and Nicole have brought it up. Renovate versus renovate as new. Um what sort of reimbursement is there for renovate versus renovate as new from the state? Well, again, there's there's except for a roof project or maybe some HVAC or if it's a code project, um you know, making something handicap accessible toilet room, the state does have non-priority project funding for those types of projects, but that's it. So, again, Okay. >> everything else, finishes, lighting, plumbing, everything else, whatever you want to do and again, you know, we don't know what the scope of that might be, you know, how much lipstick are you going to put on the pig? How many bandages are you going to put

151on the existing facility? Um but I I would say the majority of all those costs would be borne 100% by the taxpayer. Okay. But I just wanted to ask that just for clarification and have it on the record so that they understand so people understand that it is something we've looked at before. Um there is no um sizable reimbursement for renovate unless it is a renovate as new project. Correct. And there we've run the numbers and we see where that stacks up compared to um a new facility. So, okay. Thank you. I remember the SLAM phase one report saying that um and this was the narrative around the H or the systems. Um the HVAC system needs complete replacement. The electrical system needs Oh, wait. Complete replacement. And the plumbing system needs complete replacement in

152order to guarantee that those systems will last up to 20 years. Otherwise, no. Unless you Unless you That's the way I read the SLAM. Am I right about that, Kemp? Yes. Okay. So, I don't know what each of those repairs would cost or how much each of those or how long each of those would take, but we're at least looking at every single major system being needing to be replaced. Otherwise, if you can't make something last for 20 years, it is putting good money after >> Right. And then we still don't have the strength of the roof. If we decide we want to add some sort of solar tiles or anything along those lines, we don't have the ventilation space. We have classrooms without windows. I mean, we've this discussion has been something that we've

153had ongoing for a long time. So, that's kind of what's led me to where where I am. But anyway, all right. Thank you. >> And just to put a quick number on that, so in in 2019, Silverpetrucelli did an estimate for a renovation of the middle school and it was just south of 38 million. So, I don't know where we would adjust it to, but my quick math was certainly up. Uh you know, I think I at some point heard it was 50 some odd million. It by today's numbers could be even north of that, but it wasn't you know, it was the major mechanical, so to that to the point that I brought up as well as Nicole, there is some dollar amount from a while ago to just renovate. Right. We could Yeah,

154let's step this out. We can get that updated. Yeah. All right. So, um we need to um what is it? Think about this for a week and come back and I I will consult with Erica and our legal counsel and um Dave and I meet with Erica on Monday mornings. Um and I if I can before then um send out a draft wording of what recommendations, you know, we might want to consider, okay? And then we can wordsmith them at the table next week and maybe take it from there. Okay? Um that takes us through our agenda for tonight. We're agreeing that we're going to meet next week. We're agreeing that we're going to consider voting and well, we well, we are going to vote um and then we'll bring um we'll bring some sort

155of draft wording as soon as we can that we can then work at at at this table. So, our next meeting is Zoom. Are we going to have any opportunity for public comment? Um it's a special meeting. I think it's going to take time to go through all the wordsmithing. That that's my gut reaction. So, I I'm just thinking based upon Nicole, I mean, your your comment is a very valid comment. There are a lot of parents who are unable to attend the meeting, so it would be really it would be nice if we could give them an opportunity to have their voice heard as well. And I mean, I anticipated a lot more people coming here tonight and we had only what do we have? Three people get up and speak? Four? So, I

156think that, you know, I I think that's okay, but I but I um we can we can not not we can I just want to make sure that people have people have the opportunity to be heard. And I I would appreciate it if we could incorporate that in. All right, that's fine. Um I do think we need to agree on a time limit because we also need to do our work. You know me. I've gotten in trouble for that in the Okay. [laughter] Yeah, I agree. A time limit. We have to have we can do a time limit, but I mean, I just think that we need to And I also don't want to discount what I said earlier that we take every single email we get seriously. Without that. >> So, it's not like

157we're not hearing the public. They can email us anytime absolutely and I encourage that. Um if they like speaking, that's that's fine, too. And I don't mind it at the next meeting as long as we allow enough time for our work. Yep, no problem. And don't forget on Wednesday morning 9:00, I see Kelly nodding her head. Um I'll be at the West and Hess PTO meeting to answer any questions about where we are and hopefully that will appeal to the audience of folks or some of them that couldn't make it tonight. But I do agree, Sharon. You bring up a very valid point about availability. Hold on. Is this the communications meeting a committee here talking about how we need to communicate to the I'm on the communications committee and I very much care about

158hearing from the public. So, thank you. All three of us. >> [laughter] >> Yes. I think all seven of us, but go ahead. All right. So, um any preference whether it's Zoom or in person, the meeting? Okay, fair point. All right. So, let's do it Zoom, but I I'm going to not get off on my point about we have to have enough time to talk amongst ourselves and come to a come to a resolution. Well, it's it's a special meeting, so public comment is discretionary, so I'm happy to have public comment. We're going to have to play by the rules we always play with around public comment, but we can in our bylaws limit the time that it takes. So, I think that if we agreed it won't go over 45 minutes or it won't

159go over an hour, I'm happy. But we have to have a time. Whatever. Here's another an opportunity. Sure. And I just want to couch it by saying there might only be one person who comes. There might be zero, but I just at least want to give the opportunity because I just know the life of parents at 7:00 p.m. Got it. Okay. All right. So, as long as we can do a caveat with shall not exceed 45 minutes, I think we'll be okay. All right. And then we have to do our business. And part of I know this is my problem cuz I don't like meetings that go past 9:00. So, Okay. So, I make a motion that we adjourn. Second. Say "I". [laughter] On a favor? I. Done.