March 19, 2026 Board of Education Business Meeting

001flag of the United States of Americ Good evening. Good evening everybody and folks walking home. Welcome to the uh Greenwich Board of Education meeting for March 19th uh 2026. Um before we um launch into the business meeting um tonight um it's only appropriate um that we um acknowledge the the passing of um Frederick um Smith Merin at the high school. Um this is um as many of us know this is the second um sudden blow that GPS has suffered in in two years um after uh Joe Basky's passing last year. Now you have um >> and the um um Freddy's passing last uh last week. Um I know um uh as someone who um as a was a was a faculty member of a school that that had a um a sudden passing it's it

002can be it can be very unoring. Um, so I know there's a lot that um, uh, our GPS staff ungodly going through and our students, particularly those who knew many of these folks well, particularly Freddy. Um, if you heard, if you see in the media and those of us, even those of us who don't have teachers at students at the high school know that Freddy um, by all measures was um, a cornerstone of the culture there. Um and so the the quarter century there as a campus agent and a coach, we know that his legacy will uh far outlast um anything we can say. Uh but it's probably only only appropriate that right now we we take a moment um to in tribute to that legacy to observe a moment of silence. >> Thank you.

003Okay. So, the rest of our agenda, we're going to start with the B. We have the business meeting tonight. We've got a number of different things on the agenda. Pay uh prek enrollment, um elementary building capacity, um and um the um the the the rink um proposal um in town. But first, we want to turn over to Dr. Jones for the superintendent report. >> Oh, but first, we're going to go to the consent agenda, which I have forgotten. Can I get a motion as is our tradition? Can I get a motion to uh approve the consent agenda? >> So moved. >> Thank you. >> Second. All right. Second. All in favor of Sophie second for those who don't. All in favor of the consent agenda. That is unanimous. And now Dr. Jones with the superintendent

004report. >> Thank you. Um we're going to start out tonight just by saying thank you to our board of education. This is um the board of education appreciation month and you don't get paid for the many many hours that you serve, but we are giving you a beautiful chocolate bar to say thank you. And I those of you that are new on the board, I think are probably learning, you know, sooner sooner than you thought how many hours it really takes um to serve on the board of education. So, just know that all of the staff, community, our students, we are all incredibly grateful and I love that this board, these board meetings have been so efficient. So, fantastic job. Um, I'm just going to add also, we are still looking for a bus slot

005just so that people know that we're not letting up. We talk about it every single day. Um, we have a couple of irons still in the fire. Um, so we we're trying really hard. um from the musicals. We have musicals around the the uh district. Um so just best of luck to all those schools that are hosting their musicals. That's why we're in the cafeteria tonight because of CMS's. Um on Saturday we also have the GHS Jazz Festival which is highly highly regarded and it is all day long. And then of course our girls are going to the state finals of basketball at the Moheaggan Sun on Saturday and we wish them the best of luck as well. Thank you. I know with a lot of the we had a lot of different committee meetings

006over the last couple weeks. So, and everybody have a committee report. >> Mr. Cheney, >> just got a couple of quick ones. I hope everybody else follows suit >> digest. Uh, Central Middle School update. Uh, they're still set for the beginning of August uh for substantial completion. Um, an EMAC update for the Hamilton Avenue HVAC. Uh the esteemed bin Brandon said all systems go and they've signed uh and they'll be starting work over this spring break. Um and there's no substantial RTM updates, but there is now an RTM leazison for Riverside building committee and a new liaison for the Central Middle School building committee. So, welcome aboard, >> Veronica. >> I will be the longest, but I'm just going to warn you now. Um >> substantive. >> Yes. Yes. It's a little long but um

007I had three I had many committees this week but um three in particular to report on starting with the Greenwich Alliance for Education. It was a regularly scheduled board meeting uh board meeting on Tuesday and we were lucky enough to have a presentation from the implementation strategist coming directly from the AVID center. I want to remind everyone AVID's mission is to close the opportunity gap by preparing all students for college and career readiness and success in a global society. We discussed with AVID teachers both from middle and high school levels how AVID looks for students at both schools and then explored how it's being implemented at the elementary level where AVID the AVID foundation begins. AVID elementary just finished a research study demonstrating that with two or more years of participation. The program builds foundational

008academic skills early, produces lasting gains that extend into middle school, improve classroom culture and learning behaviors, and it works best when implemented schoolwide and with fidelity. During the school year, the Greenwich Alliance through its reaching out grants has been funding AVID professional development for teachers at Hamilton Avenue School in order to prepare them to implement the program schoolwide beginning this fall in 26. Lastly, we learned about the Avid Excel program, which is a sequence of course designed to change the trajectory of long-term English language learners by accelerating language acquisition and placing them in a path to enroll in the high school AVID elective and college preparatory preparatory coursework. The data from the research study on AVID Excel also demonstrated tremendous gains for students who qualify for the program. That was just the board meeting. uh

009the alliance trivia challenge. I'm going to start by saying I am still totally shocked our table didn't win. I I was >> I think we were rock. I think I I I want to recount. >> Well, we were we were fabulous. I just want to say but the alliance trivia challenge was a absolutely tremendous success and it was so much fun. Uh a big thank you to all the educators and the community members who took part. There were so many. Um, a special thank you also to the school principles, many who offered experiences as part of the auction, and to all of those who raised their paddles to beat the match for the Avid Success Scholarship Fund. Um, yeah, thank you. It was a really great event. Um, moving on to the Distinguished Teacher Award.

010Uh, the nomination packets for the Distinguished Teacher Awards have been received and the committee is diligently reading through them and learning about all of the amazing educators in the Greenwich Public Schools. I want to remind everyone that the award recipients will be recognized at our next board meeting which will be April 16th and the community warmly invites the board and anyone else to attend the distinguished teachers celebration on Thursday May 7th at 4:30 right here at Central Middle School and I have one more uh CAT the special education advisory committee met on Tuesday. Dr. Dr. Hilleiganthaler reported on some AI tools that GPS is piloting to help with the alignment of goals and objectives in CT Seds, which is a statewide system that manages IEP and 504 plans. Dr. Hiliganthod reported on staffing changes within

011special education and reassured the group that staffing has not been reduced, but explained changes made to meet student and building needs. The special the SCES department has also been working on a lucky to have you lottery week where one staff member is randomly selected at each school and able to choose a prize as a token of appreciation. Then Jessica Mckelly presented her role as the district's coordinator of student well-being and support outlining how she is streamlining staff efforts to support students across all grade levels. She's currently assessing situational supports, MTSS, and special education to bridge gaps and create a unified district-wide framework. Her objective is to ensure that every student has access to a consistent and comprehensive mental health support system. On Tuesday, May 6th for your calendars, Jen Libby, the CEO and founder of

012Promley, is going to be presenting to Greenwich and Seak on mental health in our youth in uh mental health in our youth, sorry, in a program entitled Raising Resilient Kids. that'll be free and open to the public. And lastly, there are open positions on SEAK for next year if anyone is interested. Our next meeting is May 12th if you want to check it out. And I'm done. Thank you. >> Anybody have any questions for Miss Chevro? >> Wendy, go ahead. >> I just have a couple of update myself. Um, the Italian textbook committee continues to meet. We're re we're reviewing three new contenders for our textbooks um for our test our textbook and we're going to have a final meeting before April break. That date is to be contin uh to be determined. I haven't

013I don't know when that is yet. Um also we have um an update for the JC building committee. Uh we continue to make progress towards its goals. Phases one and two are almost complete. The ADA um compliant and secure front entrance are complete with only minor punch list items remaining. The elevator is also complete with only inspection remaining. We expect to close out these phases in the coming weeks and then we're going to begin phase three, the cafeteria renovations. Um they've been con contracted contracted with JA Rosa who will begin the pre preliminary work over April break and scheduled completion prior to school beginning in September. Uh the final phase the ADA classroom work is in the capital budget for the board of ed for next year with plans to complete in summer of 2027.

014Go ahead. >> Uh, quick update from the high school science textbook committee. We are at this point we've received materials from all of the publishers and I think it's five or six publishers across three subjects uh, which managed to fill my entire 8oot dining table uh, two weekends ago. Uh so we've been through all the materials. We've had presentations from the publishers. We've gone through and compared the way the same concepts are treated by the different publishers. We've got a committee that has subject matter experts, the teachers who teach these classes, administrators. We have representatives from the PTA. We've been going through uh the teachers have gone through the problem sets. We've compared them. Uh we've also looked at the online resources and we had a discussion on Tuesday of this week uh specifically about

015online and the uh the growing concern among parents for the amount of time our kids are spending on screens in school uh coupled with the a number of large sample size peer-reviewed studies that do show particularly in STEM subjects that learning outcomes are inferior when students read online versus in print. So we talked about the importance of having either printed or printable resources to ensure that we are maximizing outcomes. We also spent some time talking about how the teachers teach uh which has changed rather dramatically since I was in high school in the late 80s and early 90s uh and the way they incorporate the uh the material so that we could make sure we've got the right materials um at the right level for our ontrack and our advanced students. Um, and I think

016the um the the team has been really thoughtful about that. And I think when we come back to you next month, we should have our recommendations finalized. >> Sophie, >> thank you. Um, so the finance committee met twice. We're going to talk later about the um tuition rates for next school year, but I just want to briefly say we also spoke about the non-lapsing account. Um, it is only March 19th. We don't know how much money. >> Luffy, what is a non-lapsing account? >> Sorry. Okay. Um, a non-lapsing account is an account that is set up by the board of education. Um, and per state statute, the board of education is allowed to keep up to 2% um of the fiscal year budget. If we have surplus, you can keep up to 2% of the

017fiscal year budget. So, that's what a non-lapsing account is. the money that goes into a non-lapsing account can be used for educational purposes only. Um, and the board votes on those uses the same way that we vote on budget typically when we do our budget process in the fall. So, it's sort of like a um parallel process that would happen much later in the year once we have a sense what that surplus might be. Right now we are looking like we'll have a surplus at the end of the year but we never actually know. Um and last year we talked about it really in May, end of May really is when we were discussing it because we ended up using um we ended up putting surplus money in our non-lapsing account and using it in

018order to pay for transportation expenses which were significantly higher than we expected. and that was really the only option that we had to be able to secure transportation for the following year with our contract. Um, so we don't know at this juncture whether or not there would be a use that we would have for any surplus funds that would go in the non-lapsing account. Um, so it's really too soon for us to say um how much money there would be or what uses we would consider for that. Um I do want to also tell the public we are conscious of um there's some concern about this. This is a relatively new process. We are in conversation with the um with our peers on the BET about how this would look um in terms of like

019how we could communicate with the BET about what those uses might be. Um so it's this is sort of an evolving thing. This is really the second year where we've actually had this opportunity to have the money in a non-lasting account potentially. So, we will keep you apprised, but we did discuss it in the finance committee and of course um we welcome any questions. >> Uh thank you so much. Uh you mentioned that this was new. Um uh where did it come from? Is it legislative or is it policy? >> Oh, sorry. It's is this is a state statute. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So this is this was a statute passed at the state level that was passed in the I want to say the fall of 20 2024. So that's what last year was the

020first year that we could that this was an option. Okay. other reports. Paul uh the ad hoc curriculum committee um has met um uh two times and we're finding our way to exactly you know what the purpose and of this is as an ad hoc committee that's not um uh quite a committee yet. we have the we have the benefit of being able to grow and start something and um if that is uh fruitful uh we'll we will continue it. We've been learning from um uh the administration and our next meeting will be meeting with the curriculum folks as well as some of the other um important actors in this area so that we can um have the best education possible as we try to um build this committee out to be useful. and um

021specific to um some of the concerns we're hearing about digital resources and screen time and all those kind of curricula. That's that's kind of been a lot of your conversations. >> Yes, that's the that's the focus of it. And in fact, we may, you know, want to circle back with the chair and um uh um qualify the the the ad hoc committee uh memorialize it better in in a meeting. Um, and we could potentially give it another name because it conflicts a little bit with uh a name of a committee that's on the administrative level. Um, but yeah, we've been focusing on um digital learning, um, gamified tools, screen time. We've been um, studying the research that's been done on that and we've uh, been learning a lot from uh, Dr. Jones as well. That

022sounds like a good segue to the policy committee which also met multiple times. Um the policy hopefully by the time we have the next business meeting we will have u before you first read a um revision to the policy on board vacancies. We've been working on that uh for a while. Um we also started uh last week discussing a possible policy around a student representative um a non- voting student representative on the board which is something that came to us from um um student government at at the high school. So that's something we're also talking about that many many boards of read across the state and country have but we we historically have not. um the old Greenwich building committee. Um this will be the last report we from the old Greenwich building committee before

023ground breaks over spring break. Um so we're excited about that. Hooray. A revised building permit um was issued today. So it's all systems go there. Um and uh they'll do some work over spring break and then the dirt will really start flying um come summer. Um and uh finally briefly the um I am also the representative of on the social studies textbook committee. Um there were three social studies textbooks we're looking at for the new the AP geography course new AP geography course that we passed um last month. So that's that's that's gearing up as well. Any questions about anything else? Okay. So, with that said, we're going to move on to um makes appropriate sense. Bring up the two gentlemen from student government uh for your report. Um thanks guys for for for wearing

024ties. I I I appreciate not being the only one. All right. Good evening, distinguished members of the boards of education and Dr. Jones. I hope all has been well since the last board of ed meeting. My name is Colin Reynolds and I'm the student body vice president of Greenwich High School. First like to thank you for your actions at the last board of ed meeting. Recently, many people have spoken about stadium lighting and enrollment of Central Middle School and at the last meeting you all engaged on these issues and students are grateful for that. Additionally, the new GHS courses have been wellreceived. I know many friends in the grades below who are looking forward to taking them next year. Furthermore, I'd like to build upon the recent proposal that was developed by our senior class

025vice president Nicholas Sosa. In his proposal, he shared with Dr. McKanththony, he advanced the idea of having a non- voting students on the board to allow for more direct student feedback. Students are the core of every decision made by the board of education. Yet, our involvement is limited to these monthly board meetings. While our few minutes here are incredibly important and we recognize the board's willingness to listen and take what we say to heart, a consistent presence on the board will allow for a deeper understanding of student perspectives rather than the perspective of the collective body which Gabe and I represent. In years prior, we've seen what happens when student perspectives come too late. Many issues come to mind. the removal of flex time, the potential removal of a house, uh reconstruction of houses, the

026cell phone ban, consolidation of freshman classes, and so on. Luckily, while most negatively perceived proposals have been the subject that discussion of one of the board meetings, public comments have impacted the board's decision to improve student to integrate student feedback. This practice, however, causes stress and anxiety for many who must wait for the board meeting to get their input heard. A consistent student perspective on the board during these discussions would significantly decrease the likelihood that any policies get passed without valuable student input. I'm suggesting that big decisions may have turned out differently and with less less controversy had a student been present on the board to offer the missing perspective and a consistent voice. Thank you for continuous involvement in student initiatives. I look I hope you look further into Nicholas Sosa's proposal and I

027hope you all have a great rest of your night. Thank you. >> Uh good evening. I have to say it was it was kind of weird getting here with the lights still out. Is that just me? It was I came in and I saw the auditorium was closed. It was a little but but um uh before I start I want to thank Miss Miss Krauss. Uh we had seen each other last Thursday at at Bloomberg. She she gave a speech to some students and myself on a field trip and it was was very educational and we also had a moment to discuss um screens in the classrooms and I think we both came to a consensus that it's it's pretty bad but I do think that the changes that the phone policy group came up

028with last year have been really positive in the classrooms with you know the new pouches. It was a little hectic at the start of the year, but I think it has seen a lot of uh positive outcomes at this school and I'm saying that from my this off the dome uh firsthand perspective. But with that, uh good evening members of the BOE, Dr. Jones, students and community members. I'm Gabriel Lesi, the student body president at Greenwich High School, and I'm happy to both see and speak for you this evening. As March moves forward and spring settles in, Greenwich High School students have continued their hard work, and I'm happy to report continued progress within student government. To start, the senior class has been hard at work planning for prom with their prom committee assembling decorations

029for a newly released theme, Masquerade. Uh, senior spoons, a nationwide senior game, is also underway. While at the same time, preparations are being made for graduation with class gifts settled and a list of possible comment speakers made. Uh, the junior class held a successful pizza post fundraiser and is now deep in prom committee work of their own. They also continue developing the Cardinal Cookbook, which will collect food recipes from the diverse Scrunch community. So, if anyone if any parents are watching, you should uh submit your recipes. I think they just sent out the form. Uh the sophomores have fundraisers planned through profit shares with local restaurants. And they are planning a Jeopardy event uh during SAT day on March 25th, which last year had went successfully when the then sophomores had planned one. Uh they're

030also working on holding schoolwide performance night uh where students can demonstrate various talents and abilities. The freshman class has created a new tradition at GHS where on the first Friday of the month a morning movie will run and it has been quite successful. You know, we've had a lot of engaged kids. Uh and they had a St. Patrick's Day candygram as a fundraiser as well. Uh our student government committees have been very busy as well. Uh the events committee wrapped up their classics book drive and saw great success with their schoolwide video game tournament uh where students competed intensely for the grand prize and I mean intensely. Uh the community service committee hosted a volunteer fair at GHS on March 16th connecting students with local organizations looking for help. Uh and the relations committee published

031the first student government newsletter in an effort to keep the GHS community informed and engaged with what we are doing. And lastly, we have a research fair uh which would connect all of the students at the various high schools across Greenwich planned for April for midappril. Uh so if any students or parents are watching um have your students sign up. It's it'll be a great demo of all the hard work that gets done at the high school. Um so as for the action items of the night, I understand the board will be discussing the last day of school and the date for graduation. I'm not sure if I should feel relieved that these dates are being set or nervous. I'm sure that sentiment is shared amongst all seniors. Um, you know, we're time is coming

032to a close. Uh, before I finish speaking though, I would like to touch on the idea of student or student representatives to the BOE as proposed by Mr. Nick Sosa, our senior class vice president. Uh, while I do enjoy these three minutes where I speak with you each month, I find that the opportunities for student input could be strengthened. So considering the mission of Grunch Public Schools is to educate students to the highest degree, that mission is best fulfilled when students are not just the subjects of policy but active in shaping it. If we believe that the purpose of public schooling is to prepare young people for a democratic life, then it follows that we ought to practice that democracy within the institutions that teach it. The proposal to add student two student reps to

033the board is well outlined and I would like to see that it move forward in discussion. I raised this especially now because we live in a time of depolarization where our national discourse suffers not from a shortage of opinions but from a shortage of perspectives. It is in the best interest of setting good image to future generations that we start solving this problem at the local level starting with these new voices. Uh so with that I thank you for your time and for your service to Greenwich. I look forward to speaking with you next month. >> Thank you gentlemen. We appreciate your input. Um, and Gabe, if I don't think we got that newsletter, if that's something you can send to the board, we appreciate it. Thank you. Um, okay. Up next, um, >> welcome

034Margaret Jensen with Jenkins with the GA conflict. >> Good evening, board members, Dr. Jones, and community members. My name is Margaret Atkins, and I am the president of the Greenwich Education Association. Tonight marks the beginning of the celebration of Eid, a major Islamic holiday marking the end of Ramadan the holy month of fasting. As I noted its presence on my calendar, I was reminded of the students who spoke so eloquently last autumn asking the board to consider making both Eid and Dvali school holidays. Our neighbors in Stanford are closed on Eid. And last year, Governor Lamont and the state legislature officially recognized Dvali as a state holiday. And six districts are already offering time off for observances. But I'm not here really to talk about calendar changes, although they are a part of my purpose

035in speaking to you tonight. There is no doubt that our country is a nation of immigrants and Greenwich has become more culturally diverse than ever before. According to the US Census Bureau, 22% of Greenwich residents were born outside the United States and 34.5% of the population does not identify as only white. And those statistics don't include the number of cultural or national backgrounds of our residents, and I can only assume that they are many. It seems to me that cultural diversity in Greenwich is considerable and something that should be celebrated. However, our level of cultural awareness and appreciation needs some improvement. Acknowledging diverse holidays as a start, but it's not the complete solution. Being mindful of this diversity allows us to be more respectful of the ways others operate based on their cultural backgrounds. Cultural

036awareness helps avoid misunderstandings and biases that can negatively impact students. Without this awareness, we may unintentionally misinterpret behaviors, communication styles, or family involvement. For example, what may seem like disengagement could actually reflect cultural norms around respect or communication. By being culturally informed, we can respond more appropriately and fairly. Cultural awareness supports equity and education. When we understand systemic inequalities and cultural differences, we are better equipped to provide the appropriate support needed for success. Today, communicating and interacting with global communities has become a part of our daily lives, making cultural awareness a valuable skill that can help advance both professional and personal relationships. by comprehending the differences as well as the similarities in beliefs, ethics, attitudes, and values of people and developing our own sense of cultural awareness. We can create a culturally safe environment where

037every individual can feel like they belong. And when I say we, I mean all of us, teachers, administrators, board members, students, parents, and the community at large. Cultural awareness is not something that is acquired by reading a book or watching a video. It can come from formal training, but it is even better when it is generated by sincere curiosity and personal exchanges. I encourage each of us to consider what we can do to improve our own level of cultural awareness as well as what we can do collectively to create a more culturally welcoming environment and Greenwich Public Schools. Thank you. Now pinch hitting tonight for PTAC. We welcome uh Katherine Mccurski to the stage. >> Good evening, Chair Manty Anthony, board members, Dr. Jones and GPS community. I'm Katherine Mccersie, the first vice president for

038the Greenwich Public Schools PTA Council or PTAC. Unfortunately, our president, Lisa Sylvester, could not be here tonight. In brief, our theme tonight is community input. First, we want to thank the administration for the opportunity for six elementary school to complete a survey regarding start time. We encourage all families who received the survey to fill it out. Continuing along with community input, we would like to re-emphasize our commitment to involvement as you review textbooks and implement curricular materials. Finally, we look forward to hearing more about and providing input in to the conversation regarding elementary buildings and their utilization. Specifically, we would like to understand more about the realities of buildings which are facing future over capacity as populations rebound. We look forward to being part of the dialogue and process for key decisions facing our elementary

039buildings. PTA Council remains focused on all topics relevant to GPS families and is proud to be a conduit providing all GPS families with an opportunity to be involved. Please reach out to us with questions, concerns, or interest in future involvement. Thank you. >> Okay, moving on to public comment. Um I believe we only have one. >> That's correct. >> Okay. For public comment, we have Alina Dumitz Vincent. I apologize. I did a terrible job at that. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. Thank you very much for the time and opportunity to speak. My name is Alina. I am here as the parent of two elementary school students in the district and kindergartener next year. So, three in total. Um, I'd like to briefly discuss a concern that is very troubling to many parents of elementary

040school children in our district. that is the lack of guard rail guard rails and clear guidelines to limit screen time for our youngest learners throughout the school day. There's currently no coordination between teachers and classrooms as to total screen times that the students are exposed to. Subs pop in a movie. Art teachers show videos about art. Music teachers show videos about music. Media classes more screen time. Then in the home classroom there's Lexia, Math, Exllex Math, Epic, Free Form, Short, Starfall, Bookit, Class Dojo, Seesaw, Pebblego. This is only a sample list of apps that my kindergartener and first grader have used in this only this past week. To re to reiterate, no one keeps track of the cumulative time and hours of screen time within the school building. I'm very concerned that our five, six,

041and sevenyear-olds are exposed to so much screen time and video content that their minds are overwhelmed by the time the school day is over. Their attention span is impacted. Their ability to focus and um and to effectively communicate is impaired. Also, the opportunity cost is huge. More screen time means that they spend less time interacting with human beings, learning social skills, engaging with their teachers and peers. Screen times comes at a very high cost especially for elementary age uh children. Please please act swiftly to put in place guard rail guardrails and clear guidelines to ensure that the children's mental health and their well-being are protected and that the very least they are not harmed. Vague and subjective guidelines are not helpful and they end up harming our children, harming our children. And I really very

042much appreciate the work that's currently underway on this topic and definitely look forward to um any further developments. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. >> Okay. Any uh questions, comments? >> Yep. >> Uh yes, I just wanted to respond to the student government's comments about wanting to have input more than once a month. And I just want to make sure you guys know your input is welcome at any time. You have our email addresses. I can't look at my personal email during the workday, but I read them on the train in the morning and in the evening. And and that feedback is absolutely uh welcome at any time. You please don't wait for the meetings. And I'd um I'd be remiss if I didn't note that the policy committee did over our last two meetings um

043as we said we would um talk about changes to the calendar policy um in response to the comments last fall about uh Diwali and and and Eid and other and other holidays. Um ultimately we did not um we decided not to change the policy um right now but um Miss uh Dr. Jones is working on um a regulation around religious holidays and how they need to be recognized. Um and then we also we already heard that uh how the um the currently named ad hoc curriculum committee is looking is is is very much looking at that uh at the the issue of screen times. I appreciate your I appreciate your comments. Um um I can say personally that um one of the things that um I'm personally worried about is is this is exactly what

044you said how um audit is the wrong road but the wrong road but I'm not sure we have a a clear sense of how much at each grade level over the course of the day. We know we have guide rails and and and on that and and expectations, but how much that's covered at each level is um sometimes something that I think we need to investigate more. Any other thoughts, comments? Okay, moving on then um to discussing items tonight. Uh up first is the elementary school capacity and utilization study. Um Dr. Jones, I think this is you. I'll just say a quick quick comment and then turn it over to Ben for a second. Um, this is something that actually has been requested uh from the BET over the last couple of years. We had

045done the work inhouse uh for about the last three years. So this year we actually hired outside consultants to check our work uh and to bring more validity to the work that was being done. So Ben, go ahead if you want to introduce our consultants tonight. >> Oh, absolutely. Before I introduce them, just want to thank our elementary principles. They were highly engaged uh with this project and our consultants visited the schools and filled out surveys. What's not included in this document is individual uh school layouts. So, we did go to that level, but for obvious reasons, we didn't want to post those floor plans uh in this report. So, I will turn it over to our side consultants. We have Mike Zuba and Pat Gallagher from M&P Planning Group and they have done many

046of these reports and we were lucky to have them and so the floor is yours. >> Mike, you want to get the the presentation up and I'll I'll kick us off. >> Um, >> go ahead, Pat. So, as as we're um getting started here, I think it's important to kind of lead off on what is capacity. And, you know, having done this for a number of your peer districts in Fairfield County, you know, to us, fair uh planning capacity really reflects how you educate your students. And it really reflects ideal operations and your current educational program, not the hypothetical maximum number of students that can fit in any of these buildings. And capacity changes as your educational model changes. And especially, you know, in a in a community like Greenwich where many of your buildings

047are 50 60 years old, you know, the capacity of your schools today is different than they uh than when they were built simply because the way you educate your students um is different. Um if you can move to the next slide, Mike, we wanted to lead off with um our key takeaways and that way as we go through some of the details um you can see how they dovetail with these key takeaways. uh we really focused on the elementary schools and we are projecting that district-wide schools are projected to be well utilized averaging 96% of our planning capacity and again that planning capacity reflects ideal operations not the maximum um and we do not have sufficient capacity across the district to consolidate any facilities um so well utilized however there are some discrepancies between buildings

048we have a number of schools that are projected to exceed 100% of the planning capacity And in a little bit I'll touch on kind of what that means from an operational standpoint. We have two schools that are projected to operate really close to the planning capacity. So really in a comfortable level. Two schools are projected to be moderately well utilized. And then two schools um Parkway and Hamilton Avenue. We identified some flex classrooms which are classrooms that could be converted to K5 instruction or preK instruction without impact to your educational program. We've reserved two of those rooms at Parkway for future preK expansion. um which bumps it up to about 85% utilization and Hamilton a being your lowest utilized building. And then we also have some information on how your construction projects will impact capacity

049that we'll touch on later. And as I noted, um expanding preK to Parkway will help better utilize the available space within that building without disrupting the current operations. And I'll turn it over to Mike to run through some of the process and then I'll I'll finish us up. >> Thank you, Pat. And you know, thank you, Ben, for uh thanking the uh building leadership and principles. They were a huge help as part of this. They not only assisted us with floor plan markups, um gave us input on questionnaires early on, which really kind of helped us draw our focus on certain areas of the buildings that we really wanted to look at. Um and you know, for those that are living in the building every day, teaching in the building, um they have a different

050perspective than we may have just kind of walking through at one time some of you know, what are those pinch points? um where are some of things that maybe not in a given standard day but in in a couple days a week or a couple days a month where you know we have pinches of space. So you know those questionnaires were very helpful and then really kind of that inventory which I'll touch on here and then Pat will really kind of dive into. Um so those three components really help kind of begin to define what's going on inside the building themselves. So, you know, as we begin to map out spaces, identify the uses in those spaces and get a good understanding of what the program for elementary schools looks like in Greenwich Public Schools,

051um that really kind of that knowledge then gets applied across all the schools. Um we leverage your loading levels, your class size targets at each grade level. We'll talk about that. And this inventory represents um this current use of space. And what we also did as part of this process, and you know, Pat is talking future utilization. it leveraged um a report that you had commissioned from Dr. Peter Prada um earlier in the fall where he went and did um 10-year enrollment projections. So that was very helpful to inform our process. So getting right into our capacity methodology when we work in districts across the state, especially those that are largely neighborhood schools and when we say neighborhood, it's you know those schools that group by address. So, we know you have some magnet schools

052embedded in those um elementary schools, but by and large, Greenwich Public Schools for the elementary schools and you know, throughout our neighborhood based schools. Um we always look at a section per grade model um which really kind of, you know, if you haven't heard the term before, it really looks at a consistent number of grade levels across the board or classrooms per grade level across the board. Um we'll typically see two, three, four, or five um in Connecticut themselves. And this results in really efficient operation as well as staffing and planning from a given year. Um I will say that we do see where you know it may be a three section per grade school but you may have a bubble one year. Um that bubble is important. Um you're you know really leveraging either

053a a you know a lower enrollment at a cohort um you know in a different grade or you're going to leverage a flex classroom to be able to uh you know provide those key number of sections. Um, we also really look at that, um, flex classrooms across the board. In our experience, we see that, you know, you'll typically have a room that you need to flex out, um, where you're trying to adhere to your class size guidelines. Um, you get a few additional students over what you had planned. You want to be able to have a room that's on the ready to be able to, as you're working through the summer, be able to flex that out to have an additional um, grade level room. So getting into the our different loading levels, we noted

054that your class size targets for prek were 15 students. Um K and first is 21, 2nd through third is 24, and fourth through 5th is 26. Um we also noted that there was two district-wide self-contained programs. Um these typically take up spaces in full-size classrooms. So we wanted to be able to understand those programs as well as understand what those class sizes look like. So, at Nord Street, we have the Unique program um that loads up to eight students um per classroom and positive pathways at Old Greenwich um has eight students and actually unique has 10 students at Nord Street. Um we also apply an efficiency factor. Um what we've learned over time is that even though we have our targets and what you'll see, you know, if you look at your average class sizes

055is that you never hit those targets exactly, especially in neighborhood schools. Um so we have a deduction of about 10% to account for headroom. you know, typically, you know, throughout the year, you'll see some enrollment fluctuations, some bubbles, some growths. Um, so with that headroom there, you have sufficient um space in the in the rooms themselves to accommodate those additional students. And then when we get into maximum capacity, it's really one of those things that, you know, rarely do we see a neighborhood school um anywhere um really operate at maximum capacity. Um if you tried to do that, you wouldn't be in adherence with that top bullet. um your loading level and your class size targets and policies. Um only places that we really see that are in those districts that are really 100% magnetized.

056So if you're operating all magnet school, students are placed by administrative placement, there's control over there to be able to um be in alignment with those class size targets without going over um through those class through those um choice and magnet parameters. Um, so when we go through into our planning capacity itself, um, we really take an average of what the K through 5th loading levels are and I believe it came out to about 23.7 and then apply that 10% deduction on there to come up with an overall average class size of 21 students um, per classroom for K5 education. Getting into our elementary space program, this is really where we look across the board across all your schools. what is everybody doing? Um what kind of what kind and types of spaces are being

057utilized in each of those buildings? What requires full-size classrooms? What doesn't require a full-size classroom? And Pat mentioned earlier about different vintages of the buildings. Um so how do you make some of those spaces work in some buildings that may not have some smaller spaces? So you know those areas shown in teal, especially in that first column on the left, our grade level instructional room. It's pretty simple. Those are all programs uses that need full-size classrooms. Um down below that we have our specials. Um so that includes our visual arts, our general music, our instrumental. Um those programs themselves also need full-size classrooms. And then you'll start to see where we have these um different types of uses in red. So those are programs that um you know need full-size classrooms. However, maybe due to

058the um number of students in it or due to the needs of the students within the building that they can be accommodated in some smaller spaces in a given year. Um so for our specials, those include both out programs, the ELA as well as the math science. And then over in the middle column here, our special ed resource room, you know, that's another one that you typically would need a full-size classroom, but depending on um the needs of the students in the building, you may be able to use a smaller room themselves. And you know kind of you know something that didn't really exist back 50 60 years ago when some of the buildings were built um was just the number of support services that we see in modern education in each of the buildings.

059Um so those include our social worker, our school psychologists, our speech language p pathologists, um our different interventionists, coaches, par profofessionals, Esau, um where you know if you are in a newer building, you will see that in those newer buildings, you'll have some smaller spaces that are purposefully designed and built to be able to accommodate those support services. If you're in an older vintage building, we'll see, you know, and it's pretty common, not just in Greenwich, but many districts where those are in shared full-size rooms. So, when we get into the inventory of spaces, which Pat will talk about on the following slide, you'll start to see where we're counting half a classroom, and you're wondering why we have a half a classroom there. So, it's really indicating where the some of those different services

060are shared between um one given classroom. Um and then last but not least, we have our administrative functions in our building. Those include our main office, health suite, um conference room, teacher workroom, faculty lounge, all those necessary support spaces that the administration needs to function. And then we have our core spaces which are our calf, gymnasium, library, media center, you know, and those are typically um appropriately sized to the student enrollment. Um although we did note in some of our walkthroughs some issues with just some of the queuing in the servery and um just the configuration of some of them spaces themselves. So, I'll pass the baton back to Pat and if you want to walk us through our inventory. >> Thanks, Mike. So, as Mike had mentioned, you know, the focus of any capacity

061study is really on full-size classrooms because we know we need those full-size classrooms for K5 instruction. Um, and as we went through the inventory, we really wanted to also establish par between the different buildings. So looking at, you know, schools that have appropriate spaces for all of the different users and then kind of use that as our standard to which we compare all of the other buildings. Um so as we can see in this table, um we have a range of K5 classrooms in use today from a low of 12 at Hamilton Avenue up to 23 at Glennville. Um most buildings have the two full-size classrooms uh for music. Um, some buildings did have some smaller spaces for the instrumental music. All buildings had parody in art. Um, and where we really started to see

062some difference uh was when we got into specials uh like ALP and the maker space and special education resource rooms. And as Mike had mentioned, a lot of this comes down to the vintage of the building. So, for example, New Lebanon, one of your newer buildings, has a lot of those purpose-built spaces that are kind of small and medium-sized um that were purpose purposefully designed for programs like ALP and um special education resource uses, those are are not big enough to be converted to K5 classrooms. But if we look at other buildings like a North Street that has fewer of of those uh small and medium-sized spaces, we see much more of your special education support um services within full-size classrooms. On the next slide, we get into a little bit more detail um on

063our methodology. So, as Mike had mentioned, we use a loading level of 21 students per classroom um which is about 90% of your maximum class size average across all grades. um that compares to an average of about 19 students per classroom today. In addition to applying that loading level of 21 students to existing uh K5 classrooms, we included what we are calling flex rooms. So those are classrooms that aren't used for K5 instruction this year um but could be used for K5 instruction without impacting educational operations. um all of those rooms are in use. Uh and so if they were needed for K5 instructions, the building leadership would simply kind of uh shift things around, perhaps move um some of those users to shared spaces. And we also made deductions for program deficiencies. So again,

064we really focused on par. If buildings had spaces that really didn't meet the high standards for each of the different services, we made deductions. When we compare our enrollment to the capacity, we are um showing our utilization. Um again, our our 100% utilization isn't necessarily the maximum number of students that can fit in the building. It's really your operational target. Um what we found over the years is that when you start to exceed 100% utilization, we're really in a situation where um things need to be managed much more carefully from a year-to-year basis. um building leadership may have to convert um a room to a K in additional K5 classroom um for an enrollment bubble um and may have to um have more support services sharing spaces. K5 is always going to be kind of

065your um kind of the first priority in terms of needing physical spaces and then it's really the support services that um end up um having to to bear the brunt of that impact. Once we once we start to exceed 110% of our planning capacity, we really are starting to see some more um severe operational impacts um and and may have some situations where we have um you know really uh not ideal uh physical spaces for some for some of those support services and and multiple users sharing spaces. So this just shows the results of that inventory. Um we identified um two buildings with flex classrooms, so three rooms at Hamilton Avenue. Um they are currently the only building that has um all of their special education teachers in their own full-size classrooms. Um so we

066can we can gain uh two full-size classrooms from there by simply moving them to shared spaces like all of your other buildings as well as a steam lab. And then Parkway, we identified four flex classrooms. Um we have a number of support services that are in full-size classrooms that could be moved to uh other spaces. We also have a um steam lab and a computer lab in that building as well. And we have reserved two of those flex classrooms for future prek program expansion. And so that is accounted for in our capacity and our utilization for Parkway. And on the other side, we noted uh several buildings with program deficiencies. So these were buildings that really had some challenges um having spaces that met that ideal standard for um uh for your buildings. um Glennville

067and uh North Miamiis uh and Dundee had some K5 classrooms that were really not in the most ideal spaces. Glennville has an interior classroom that was has historically been used for resource uh that's currently being used for I believe third grade instruction this year just because of an enrollment bubble. And then we have two schools uh Dundee and North Miamianas that have some undersized classrooms where we uh we are limited on the number of students that we can put in there. we can't go all the way up to that maximum class size there. And then we also have deductions for um lack of space for support services. Um so a number of buildings, North Miamiis, North Street, and Riverside um we made deductions for those lack of spaces um for those support services. That leads

068to our planning capacity. Um and uh Mike, if you can just go back one more time again, that's our kind of ideal operational target for each of the buildings, not the maximum number of students that could fit. All right. And then uh on the next slide, we're just showing briefly our enrollment projections that were prepared by Dr. Peter Prada um this past fall. We will note that we added an additional 30 preK students to the Parkway projection um so that we had an applesto apples comparison with our capacity which includes those two future prek classrooms. And when we're looking at projected enrollment, we really focus on the first five years because we're dealing with more more known data um existing enrollment and known births and then have greater uncertainty as we move out. Um but

069overall we are projecting a modest rebound in enrollment over the next 5 years of about um 7% um growing by about 200 students um by the 203031 school year. Next slide compares our planning capacity to the projected enrollment. Uh and again the column in red really draws your eye to the first 5-year average. Um really kind of driving our short-term decision- making is is our near-term average. And we are projecting district-wide to average about 90% uh 96% of our planning capacity and peaking at 98% in 203031. But we do have some differing trends by school. Glennville, North Miamiis, North Street, Old Greenwich, and Riverside are projected to exceed 100% of the planning capacity with um a few buildings having years in excess of 110% of the planning capacity. um Costco and Dundee are are also

070projected to operate close to the planning capacity. So really at kind of that maximum efficiency. On the other end of the spectrum, Hamilton Avenue is projected to operate at about 74% utilization over the next 5 years. Uh largely driven by those three flex classrooms that we have there. Next slide shows our planned future changes. Um we we know you have a couple of um projects in the works um that will have impact on your future capacity. Um as as we noted before um we are adding two future prek classrooms to Parkway. So that is included in our study. Um we also are noting um two projects uh Old Greenwich and Riverside um that are in various um planning and pre-construction stages at Old Greenwich. Um we're not anticipating a net gain in capacity since several

071uh existing full-size classrooms will be reconfigured as part of that renovation. Um so that planning capacity will remain at 416 students. Um and then Riverside uh we are showing uh based on the edspec an expansion of about um 80 or so seats up to a four section per grade school with the capacity uh reaching 504 students which is largely in line with the projected enrollment. Um, so it'll help meet some of the future enrollment needs of that building should it move forward as as um shown in the EDS spec. And just to kind of conclude with our our key takeaways, uh again focusing on our next five years, we're projecting district-wide that your elementary schools will be well utilized um at just under 100%. And and again, there does not appear to be any sufficient

072capacity to consolidate facilities. And and I think you know the the the ongoing challenge is going to be to um to look at the imbalance in utilization that exists between your schools. Um especially the schools that are exceeding 100% of the planning capacity where you know we know the building leadership on an annual basis does a great job of trying to manage that um through the placement of different um uh support services in specific spaces. Um but that's going to continue to be a challenge at Glennville and North Miamianis North Street. Um and then Old Greenwich and Riverside having some relief uh when those construction projects are completed. um and then a number of other schools operating you know below that 100% of the planning capacity but um uh really being efficiently used and then

073Parkway and Hamilton a really being the two schools where we identified some space with prek filling two of those um four flex classrooms at Parkway and Hamilton A um having uh some available classrooms to meet future needs um program needs for example and with that we're happy to take any questions Thank you, gentlemen. Um, questions folks. >> Yeah. Go ahead, Ken. >> Yep. Um, I'm curious since you've you've worked with so many districts. I'm curious if you've seen how schools have addressed uh when they do get this close to capacity or bubbles, what some of the solutions are. Do they add more magnet programs to dis do they redistrict? Do they add portable classrooms? What are some of the options if we find ourselves in a particularly tight spot? >> I Well, I can get

074started, Pat, and if you want to follow on. I think um >> all there's many there's many different options and we've seen >> all three of what you mentioned um being utilized across different districts. Um, so it really kind of depends on the pinch point. Um, how long the pinch point's going to exist, but I think this does a good job of illustrating that, especially in those next 5 years. You know, you do need lead time for any one of those to be able to plan and implement it. Um, and I think another thing that you didn't mention would be just if you're adding additional um, sections of program. So, like in the instance of Parkway, um adding two preK um classrooms there, that's utilizing some of the free space there. Or if you're looking

075to do, you know, a wider program expansion. Um you know, those are all ways to be able to utilize space. Um and then looking at sort of the inequities across the board of just kind of balancing utilization. I think, you know, if your FTE targets and and you're staffing efficiently across the board, then, you know, all things are are are kind of working. You know, we try not to just kind of focus on one school unless it really gets into that point where um it's really a negative to the educational program there that capacity becomes an issue where you're now either putting things on carts or you you're really pinched for providing the necessary services. That's when you would really kind of get into, you know, taking one of the more um drastic actions of

076looking at you, do we need to put portables? Can we put portables? Do we need to rebalance the enrollment between the buildings? You know, that's when you kind of get into that. Um otherwise, it just becomes are these operational deficiencies that make it a little bit more challenging, but you know, can they be overcome? And you know, is it more of a short-term problem? Then that's something that, you know, we typically see where you you have good building leadership. Um they're the ones that are making decision. they're the ones that are kind of making decisions on operations, you know, every year and daytoday on how best to be able to utilize the spaces that they have in the buildings. And I'll just add that um a lot of the schools that we're showing exceeding 100%

077of the planning capacity um those assume that any of the kind of um inadequate or or um not ideal spaces you're using today um move to a a full-size classroom. So essentially you're taking away K5 classrooms to address those programmatic deficiencies. And so, you know, those schools short of doing any of the other options are just going to have to maintain, for example, in North Miamiis, instrumental music's going to be in a a kind of small irregularly shaped room. Um, North Street, you're going to have uh, you know, a handful of workstations in the media center. Um, because we know K5 instruction is always going to take precedent. this kind of reversed it and said, let's assume that we're providing, you know, adequate, you know, kind of ideal spaces for all the support services and

078how that would impact K5 instruction. But really, the opposite is is true. That's going to take the K5 instruction is always going to take precedent and we may have to maintain some of those support services in the spaces that they're currently in. Um this is this is much smaller but on on slide seven uh under the specials I noticed for Glennville ISD Julian Curtis and New Lebanon you have zero classrooms for ALP. U having visited I don't remember stepping over kids doing math in the hallways. Um what's what's going on there? >> Sure. So this is only an inventory of full-size classrooms. So um some schools have full-size classrooms that they use for the ALF program. Other buildings have um you know med what I call mediumsiz spaces. So maybe 400 to 600 square f

079feet for ALP um that work for the you know 10 to 15 students that um that will be using that program at any one time, but they're too small to ever be used for K5 instruction at those buildings where um where we've noted it. But every school has um at least two spaces um devoted to help Yeah, Bob. Uh, >> again, thank you so much. This is really informative and I think you answered my question on slide seven about maker spaces. I was going to ask about that and it seems like because I have seen some being shared with the media center. So, I guess that would not count as a as a full maker space and it also looks to me on that same slide that special self-contained special education rooms are sparse. Um,

080uh, so this is really informative. I appreciate that. I I had a question on slide 10. Um I understand or I guess u I'm thinking so it could be wrong when I think uh the parkway is a 20% because of the two prek uh additions. I was wondering why cost Cobb was up to 16%. If I'm correct in that first assumption >> you are correct on that first Wait Pat did did we add in the prek into No, we added into 26 27. So that's showing the background growth not including the prek at Parkway. >> It it it does include Parkway. We added 30 students, 30 additional students, but it does have some growth on top of that. Um that that's pretty sizable. Um we did not do the projections. Uh that was a different

081uh a different demographer. >> Understood. >> Yeah. But but yes, those are the two buildings where they're showing the greatest growth. So, so just clarify that does or does not have prek in that at parkway. >> We did add 30 students to Dr. Proud's projection for Parkway. Yes. >> All right, that makes more. Okay, just making sure. >> Um, would you mind? I think it's two more slides. I think it's slide 14. Yeah. Yep. N >> this one. >> No, one before. There we go. Yeah, I really like this slide. I appreciate um this because I think this is really helpful. So um help me um let me know if my thinking is is right here because um or if I'm reading because I have some um other takeaways. So when I when I look

082at this slide, um I see that um it looks like Riverside were kind of in the worst shape just on the slide, but we also have a building project there that hopefully will alleviate a lot of those pink numbers um where things are uh consistently over capacity is consistently over 110% um year after year after year. So, if you take Riverside out, it seems like where we're really in the worst shape is Northanis. Is that is that fair to say or am I reading too much into that? >> Um, you you're correct. So, North Miamiis and North Street outside of Riverside um are projected to have the highest utilization. >> Yeah. and and with um North Miamiis 2, it was really we had a number of those space deductions due to the deficiencies there. Um

083so that if if as Pat mentioned earlier, if they're going to stay in the spaces that, you know, they may not be ideal and they may not, you know, have parody across some of the other schools, but if they stay in the spaces, you know, the the space pinch is going to feel the same as it is today. We were just calling out that if you're looking at the buildings critically, um you would note that these some of these uses um really require larger spaces. Um however, you know, kudos to the staff that are in them. They're they're making it work with what they have in the existing buildings. And just to add to this slide, because this is my favorite slide as well, is when you align this with the capital plan, >> I

084don't know what that says about us, >> but when you align this with the capital plan, our 10 or 15 year capital plan, you as they already mentioned, OG and Riverside have established building committees, the next three schools that are in the 10 to 15 year capital plan. It's North Street, North Miamiis, and ISD. and it and particularly North Street, North Miamiis aligns really well with the capital plan. I think this this is going to inform our conversation in the fall when we build the capital budget. Are those where we have them currently slated? Does it make sense to address what we're seeing? But this is why we do this study so we have some time to figure out where we should slot that in. >> Thank you, sir. Um, so go ahead, Mr. H.

085>> Thanks. um when you were doing some of the im you know the the inventory and and comparing uh different schools uh you know I know a lot of our schools when they have run out of capacity or where bubble has kind of gone through some of these full-size rooms that might have been offices or conference rooms for um you know staff have been turned into classrooms over the years. I know it happened at Glennville very early on when with the new building. Um, so were you able to gather any of that data that whether any of these rooms were repurposed to be classrooms? I'm just curious to see because it, you know, some of the room, if you compare, right? You know, some have maker spaces, some don't. Some have, you know, full-sized two

086music rooms and some only have one, etc. >> So, we we were for um several of the schools um able to get floor plans that kind of showed the historic uses there. uh most of the buildings um you know the with a couple of exceptions Glennville being one um the the K5 instructional rooms are largely historically been K5 instructional rooms um in maker spaces for example in the buildings that have them most of them are in the fu uh the former computer labs um that were adjacent to the library um in other buildings where the former computer lab was needed for other support services that's when we saw the maker space being kind of put within the library but Um we we did have historic use for um for some of the buildings that that

087kind of informed our our analysis as well. >> Uh just cuz it would be interesting to see if there were some schools that still had the flexibility if they needed to turn a an office or or conference room per se like you know if we needed to renovate just a a classroom uh to make to make space. Um, and then I guess the other question is I know this wasn't a request or ask and I think that this is just at least something that we as a board should be discussing because if we are looking at a lot of these numbers that are at 100% capacity or just above or just below I mean you could probably agree with me the goal is never to be at even 97 or 95% capacity in a classroom.

088Um, I definitely think this should lead us to have some further discussions. I know we have some of the other elementary schools coming up to to discuss for renovation and and things, but you know, what do we do for those that are further down the road uh or have already been renovated and we're seeing these ginormous bubbles? So, I I would love to have that opportunity to have a discussion as a board at some point um because I think we all know the difference between having a classroom of 20 kids versus 25 um on individualized attention for those students. And so if we're looking at what you know the best opportunity for our students to to uh to grow um academically and reach mastery in subjects I think space utilization is very important. This was

089was eye opening. Um I wanted to check with Mike. you had mentioned one of the um one of the levers that might be pulled and you use the term um balancing uh between buildings. Is that the same thing as redistricting? >> Yeah, enrollment balancing can be done through either u moving lines or shifting um programs around. Um both of those can achieve the uh can can achieve that. Um, you know, it's it's it's it's a word that you don't ever want to throw around a lot, but um, you know, it's it's an effective tool in in the right circumstance. >> Yeah, that's exactly why I brought it up. It is a word that you don't want to throw around a lot, but unfortunately, we have to bring it up, right? We're looking at these numbers

090now. Unfortunately, we are looking at a a building um redo here, uh, renovation at Riverside. Um like Ben said, the capital plan seems to be in line with these other things, but we heard from parents earlier this evening about um some other areas of education and wanting consistency and wanting to know, you know, what's happening across grade levels and across uh across different schools. you know, we also have to um be mindful of the um the amount of time the teachers can spend when they have the right size utilized uh you know in that 90% that you're at. And so it is a horrible subject to bring up uh redistricting or micro redistricting and I hope we never have to do it. But I'm glad that we're having this conversation and I'm glad that we're

091seeing these types of numbers so that god forbid we do have to do it. um the public and the parents are aware that you know what we're doing is is trying to balance the education and make sure that you know the children get the share of their teachers attention and get the resources instead of having to whack up classrooms into corners and things of that nature. Um, a lot of the areas that uh I see are going uh into, you know, uh the highest utilizations are areas where we have the most um resistance as it relates to uh redistricting. Again, I I I wanted to bring up the word because it's a difficult one. I'd rather bring it up now when there's nothing in in in the future. Uh we're not considering it right now,

092but um uh this this uh projected utilization um helps to realize when we might. Thankfully, we've got the the buildings and the uh 15-year plan that seem to be keeping pace with this. >> Um no, I want to thank you. I I do appreciate the level of detail you've gone into. I would ask, you know, since this has been so thoughtfully done, if we could share this with planning and zoning, I know we do occasionally get proposals for massive apartment buildings, 200, 300, 400 units. If something like that were to happen, knowing now what I know now about how long it takes to add to a school, I I don't know what we would do if we suddenly found ourselves. I mean, if you have a 400 unit building, even if you had one kid

093per unit whose school age, which which might be low, that's a whole another school. And I think as we're talking about this, I think we should share that with planning and zoning so they understand um and and what we would do as an emergency if a building got a big building got built faster than a school can be built. >> That's a that's a good point. That's probably um Ben's job, but that's always popular also also my job. I can certainly do that. Um the chair of planning and zoning which makes sense if they're not watching JP they usually do. Dr. Jones, anything you wanted to add there though to close us out here? >> Yeah, just a couple of comments. You know, most of my career I've been in growing districts where we're talking

09410 and 15% per year. So the problem is not unusual across the country and there are ways to solve it, but it's never easy. I just want to point out a couple of things. One of the buildings I am most concerned about is Glennville and exactly what you were just saying Karen is that um there are some there's a major development at American Way several hundred homes and that is a decision that when I met with the developers about a year or so ago you know I told them I can't guarantee the board would have to make the decision where would that complex be zoned it could be split part to Parkway part to Glennville but there'll be decisions like that along the way um and If we were going to add another layer, it's

095probably and I do keep up with it, but it would be a little bit more formally looking at what has already been approved and what do we anticipate uh the students per development. Um when I was in Northern Virginia, we kept up with that every single year because the growth was so challenging in that area. Um the other thing I just want to mention is that um in the unique classroom, we only have six students, not 10 right now. 10 would be the number that would trigger needing a whole another classroom. So, I just wanted to clarify that. Um, in the budget Q&A, uh, we do have a chart that we show we have over the last several years class size and compared to all of our, you know, regional partners here in southern Fairfield

096County. We are on the high end and probably should not be talking about increasing class size at all. Um, so our numbers are already there. Um, and the last thing I would say is at Parkway we're talking about um, we will have two preks. As a reminder, we've already done the lottery. The first one is already booked and the kids are there for September. Uh the one other thing I was going to add is because when you look and I don't know if if the gentlemen that were doing the the utilization study here uh noted this, but we have different numbers uh especially for kindergarten and first grade at Hamilton Avenue because of the historic uh No, we don't anymore. We changed. We used to because those classrooms are much smaller, but I guess we've

097outgrown that. So that's why I was just double checking. So that was originally I had to do a lot of research on that and going back, you know, obviously nobody was on the board. I wasn't here. Part of that had to do with the racial balance plan and it never worked and it actually wasn't helpful for the building and so we moved away from that um yeah in probably about four years ago maybe even five. >> Has that been changed on our >> All right. >> thing. Okay. >> Okay. Moving on. We're going to uh up next, speaking of utilization and capacity, we're going to turn to ice capacity now. the um up next we want to welcome um I think we have online uh Luigi Romano and Steph Cowi uh from the um first

098selectman's um um ice rink task force um who are going to walk us through the current proposal for the remodel Dorothy Hamill um ice rink um obviously we are a um a very large a large tenant of the of the current ice rink so they asked for some time to talk to us this evening. Um, so hi Steph, hi Luigi. Thank you for Thank you for joining us. >> Hi, thanks for having us. >> Good evening. Thanks for having us. >> It's great. Um, good evening chairman Meranty Anthony, board of ed members and Dr. Jones. My name is Steph Cowi and I serve as the secretary for the Hamill Ring Task Force. Chairman Matt Dasham says sorry you couldn't be here this evening. I'm here to share a bit about our task force process and

099here with me is Luigi Luigi Romano which I the his his title is very long ready town of Greenwich director of building construction maintenance and facilities and he will discuss the enhancements to the site that was chosen. The task force um was established with a clear mandate to identify the most suitable location for a modern ice rink in the town of Greenwich. The task force committee compris was comprised with the BET, Veterans Association, ADA, EMAC, RTM, Byram Neighborhood Association, and First Selectman representatives. Total of nine voting members similar to all of our other building committees. And we also have exeicio members, DPW, parks and wreck, PNZ, and public works, and also our town planner. Over nine months of thoughtful, rigorous work, we met weekly. We prioritized transparency and deep community engagement. Our process included extensive

100outreach consultations with rink user groups, our TM committee chairs and their committees and by community leaders. Public access. All meetings were held in person or andor via Zoom and all agendas, notices, meeting recordings and transcripts made available to the public as well as meeting minutes. direct feedback. We held two dedicated public hearings and several public comment opportunities at the end of the meetings and maintained an active public form that received well over hundreds of community submissions. Addition, add additionally the task force developed a project plan as well as the d the rink evaluation matrix known as the rem a tool to evaluate each site looking at flood risk, soil issues, cost, size while keeping with the POC all in mind. All can be found also on our task force website. So there's a tremendous amount

101of information that you can find there. After deeply analyzing 12 different locations from approximately 200 town owned parcels of land, we ultimately landed at Morlock Park. The site outperformed all other sites including Island Beach Lot, Horsene Neck Lot, and Baldwin Park due to fiscal responsibility estimated at 4040 million savings to the town. No need for a temporary rink. community support. Byum community wants the ring to remain in Byum. No interruption to skating. All program especially all those heavily um skating for Greenwich High School. I know there everyone is really concerned. All programming programming will continue through construction and also energy opportunities. The proposed modern facility and park enhancements will serve Greenwich for the next 50 years. There is a tremendous support from the Broom and and townwide who support this project. Dorothy Hamill actually even

102called us during a public comment evening to say she was all for the rink and we were all very surprised by her call and it was lovely. But what she shared with us was that growing up that this rink provided her an outlet. She was very shy and anxious and doesn't know what she would have done without it. and I certainly can't imagine a world without Dorothy Hamill. We look forward to seeing all of the Morlock Park site enhancements come to life. Now the real work begins for Luigi Romano and his team. And with that, I'll turn it over to him as he will take you through the Morot Park enhancements. Thank you so much. >> Thank you Steph for that wonderful introduction. Uh good evening members of the board, uh Chair Mante Anthony, Dr.

103Jones, thank you for the time to give you an opportunity to see what we're working on over here. Um, I'm just going to share my screen quickly if that's quite all right to uh give you a visual of what we're talking about. So, stemming off the great work of the task force, we uh looked back at Morlock Park and we're trying to to come up with a plan that really enhanced the overall park itself, not not just limited to a rink replacement project. So here is the existing park as it is today where you have your rink in the southeast corner. You enter the park via Sumer's way and you enter this large parking field in the center of the park. You have a baseball field over here to the east, the Byron Veterans Memorial

104Tree Grove to the north and a playground area to the west with a steep slope down here towards Byron Road. In the proposed version, we're proposing a little bit of a layout modification. Uh a lot of this uh as Stephanie has commented on is based off a prepoundonderance of public input and community feedback that we received. The uh one of the main comments that we heard over and over again was concerns about the steepness and narrowness of Sherman Avenue specifically during winter months. The addition of an secondary access point to the northeast along Western Junior Highway is anticipated to uh remedy those concerns. Uh this will provide a much flatter and easier access point to the site uh with a closer proximity access to the post road uh via Western Junior Highway. Entering the site,

105you will have the parking field relocated to the southeast with the ring facility moved closer to the side along Western Junior Highway. The intent of this is to open up the core of the site and overall park to enhance the centralized green space and take this uh outfield of the baseball field and utilize that as a a flex space where that green space would abut the Byron veteran memorial tree grove the playground area and really provide for more overall enhanced park area. Uh, one of the comments from the Byron Neighborhood Association representative was uh, concerns about access to this area with the revitalized location. So, we also included a smaller parking lot over here so that uh, anyone who wanted to come and just visit the Grove or uh, go to the outfield or the

106playground had a a easier point of access over here. This also allows for a little closer access for elderly visitors or disabled people to uh to access and visit the grove as well. So overall the uh the intent behind this layout and the modification was to really focus on the overall property itself and the park as a whole and to see what can be done to really enhance everything here. Uh there's a significant number of plantings that are coming back. I'll scroll to the landscape plan briefly for you. So, we have about a little over 70 tree plantings that we're proposing, about 36 removals. Uh, this will really screen a lot of the adjoining properties. Overall, the building is getting further away from most of the adjoining neighbors. Right now, the facility butts up against

107the backyards of these residents on Sherban Avenue. uh relocating it to its proposed location moves it net further away from the nearest residential house. Uh overall lots of tree coverage, lots of enhanced access. And uh speaking of the facility itself, uh it'll be a full-size sheet. It'll be uh equivalent to what our students are used to playing against at competing areas uh in different teams throughout the area. So that's an NHL size sheet as referred to. You'll also have four locker rooms for teams. Um that'll be a improvement for parks and wreck and their utilization to program the rink more effectively and allow for enhanced usage of uh both their users and our students. Uh and uh uh furthermore, just reiterating that point that Stephanie made earlier by moving it in this location. Uh this

108allows us to construct this new facility while keeping the existing facility operational. Unlike other sports, uh skating cannot be done just on any other old field. So, uh when you're uh redoing a baseball field or something of the like, you can pro move your programming to a different field in town. Being that this is the uh sole home ice for our uh scholastic teams and the youth sports programs, we need to maintain some operational ice for them to continue their programming options. Well, the task force had u identified that need early on in their work with the athletic director and uh this plan achieves that goal. And with that, I'll u move on to take any questions you might have. >> Thank Thank you. Thank you for that. Um we appreciate um the presentation. Um

109questions. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> I don't I don't have a question. I was just going to reiterate what Mike was saying. Uh just thank you for coming and and uh filling us in because I know that uh our students uh really do enjoy using the ice rink and I will be very pleased as as our hockey teams and not just kids learning to ice skate but also you know Skyliners and whatnot also and will really appreciate having the opportunity to uh skate on a skate on a new sheet of ice. So, I just wanted to say thank you for all the hard work you guys have put in on this. >> Thank you, Karen. >> Thank you. >> I as well wanted to thank you. Um I I don't want you to take the

110lack of questions as uh not being interested. You should very much um you know, ask a volunteer board ourselves. Um we uh we want to stay in our lane and we very much appreciate what your board has done, the time you put into it. we don't have that education and those nuances. Um, and being a, you know, a robust board here. Um, I think most of us just want to stay in our lane and are grateful for all the time that you put in and don't want to presume anything other than you guys are a lot of smart people that did, you know, some great work. And I'm sure this is going to turn out to be wonderful based on the uh on the um members of this group. Thank you a lot. Thank you.

111>> Um, I just had a quick question. Uh, I know that we talked about that the high school Could you could you guys talk about a little bit about the high school teams that use it? And then I was also wondering about um any Special Olympics programming and whether or not that includes any high school volunteers or coaches or um participants in the program. and if you knew anything about that. >> So, I'm not aware of any of specific uh programming with Special Olympics or things of that nature. I know that um we're with the next level of design. This is the preliminary site design stage that we're at now. As we move forward with final design, we'll get into some more details regarding the facility and its layout and configuration with parks and wreck

112and our architect to really hone in on some of those details and address those concerns. I just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work on this and also thank you or um for ensuring that our students have a great ice sheet to play on in the future. So thanks. >> Thank you. >> I guess we should >> Michael, can I would you mind if I add Michael Joseph? Would you mind if I add something to Is that okay? I um Veronica regarding the um the usage for the high school. So for the high school, the men's hockey team, women's hockey team, JV, varsity, both um they if if we had no sheet of ice, they will have no program. And that was definitely shared with all of us. And when we go

113down to the youth programs, which Luigi did mention, I mean, the number of youth groups that are Greenwich based, um, they're endless and they're growing. Hockey, whether everybody knows or not, it is a growing sport. Um, having won the Olympics, we can't have a better springboard on that. But, um, it is definitely what we're seeing. And more places are coming to us to ask questions like how much extra ice time will you have? You know, there's only a certain amount of time during the course of the day. You know, we want to keep our students and our younger players that they're earlier in the afternoon and our uh you know, our high school players might be later on the evening, but nothing that would be having them in the dark of morning coming to an

114ice hockey um rink at you know, whatever time. But we we do see this as needed. Many people have asked, "Is it needed?" And we had a overwhelming resounding response. Yes, it does. Yes, it is needed. And I believe in a lot of different types of active transportations. I mean, active um athleticism, any kind of movement is perfect for these kids, any age. So, um I just wanted to add to that regarding the high school. Now, I I I appreciate that because that's what I was going to clarify because I know your committee has has looked at um available ice time across the region and um and the lack thereof, there really right now there really is a sense that um should um there not be a rig available during construction, there's no there's no

115there's no se there's no high school seasons or >> No, there are not sports seasons. >> So, well, thank you. um we appreciate you um offering to come here and talk to us. We know that um I think it's both clarifying for the folks at home. We hear comments about staying in lane, what not to clarify that um the rink project is like we said, it's a town project. Um we are a um a tenant. Um our sports teams are a tenant of of the facility. Um but I know I and I I know I can say that um all of us um look forward to a a new link, a new rig um and and many healthy years of to come of of of a great project down the road. So thanks for your

116time. >> Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> All righty. Moving on. Up next, u tuition and fees. Um I was going to um um we have a special facilitator. I'd like to welcome Dorothy Hamill. This is a joke. Vision actually Sophie, you want to take over uh the facilitation of this conversation? Um the finance committee met twice to discuss tuition rates uh for 2026 2027 school year and um we quickly came to um agreement around the K through 12 tuition rates um which we thought a 3.1 increase would be appropriate for K through 12. We had very extensive discussion around what would be an appropriate um increase for the prek tuition and just for the benefit of the public if there is anyone listening to this this um uh the pre >> Well, they

117weren't listening to my jokes. >> I thought it was funny. Um the prek program is is very different than any other program that we run in Greenwich public schools because we are running a prek program that is mandated by law um to provide spe uh prek for students um with special education needs that are identified through IDA. So they start at 3 years old. Um and then we have a ratio um of 9 to six um typical peers and special ed students in our prek program. So we have some members um of the public who are enrolling their students in the prek who are paying tuition and some who are not. So the special ed children do not pay any tuition. Just to clarify that. So we're talking about a subset of the students who

118are enrolled in prek that pay tuition. Um last year we did raise the prek tuition by 13%. Um it hadn't been raised for a long time and it was well below any um private prek program in the town. We had a very robust discussion in the policy I mean in the finance committee about what is the appropriate amount that tuition should be and what are comparable programs. We looked at all of the costs really of the programs, private programs in Greenwich. Then we also looked at preK programs offered by local school districts. I have to say it ended up being a bit of a apples and oranges type um comparison where nothing really seemed um to correlate very well with the program that we offer. Uh we did then look at three different increases. We

119looked at a 3.1 6.2 to and then we also looked at increasing at 10%. Um so just to give people a sense of what that looks like um a 3.1 increase I'm not going to go through all the the various different um there's sort of a menu of tuition but I'm just going to look at the top two which is non-magnet prek and magnet preks. If we did a 3.1 increase, it's for the non-magnet increase and 429 for the magnet. And then if you look at it for 6.2, it's 6 $6 638 and $859. Whereas with a 10% increase, you're talking about a, $1,029 or $1385. So that just gives you a sense of the magnitude for those families that are paying. Um families that qualify for free and reduced lunch pay a reduced tuition

120rate. Um but just as a kind of very um general way of helping people think about it. If you're a family of four and you make over I think it's $46,000 a year, you wouldn't qualify for that. So, if you're a family that's making $50,000 a year, you would be paying full freight for our prek tuition. Um, so part of our conversation was about, you know, we don't know how price sensitive the families are um who are enrolling in our preks and we don't know at what point it would be a deterrent to them to enroll in the preks um because we're we're not surveying our parents in that way. So I I guess I'm going to kind of open the discussion to the board here. Um the recommendation at this point is a 6.2

121increase for next year. Um and I feel comfortable with that. It is it is significant though. I mean it is a 20% increase in 2 years. Um because last year was 13 and then this would be 6.2. So it's roughly a 20% increase. Um, so we will see if if that proves to be problematic or not in terms of um deterring people from enrolling in our pre program. >> Um, do you want me to call people Bob? Okay, Bob. >> Yeah, I just I just wanted to say that I I was while I do see the 6.2, I was still kind of in favor of the 13 the 3.1 rather with with the 13% increase last year. I thought the 3.1 was good. Um, however, I do understand how there is a perhaps a a

122want, a desire to to raise it. So, I I could see it maybe being raised 4.5 or 5%, but I do feel like 6.2 might be a bit much given the raise it was last year. And maybe we need to um talk ask Dr. Jones after everybody's kind of talked about this to see what what she might think. And also, maybe we want to see what the public might think as well. Well, I was just going to say just to to add on to what you were saying is part of the reason that we ended up having to raise it last year by 13% um was because it hadn't been raised every year. It had just been going up 3% for I think at least 5 years. And so we were we we were we

123were not even covering the current costs of the tuition students when we were raising it just the 3%. And so we were much wasn't just being below market value was not even paying for that part of the program. Um so that's why just for the public um why we went up 13% to to normalize it um across the board. I I can see why and we we didn't go we tried to not still go but I mean I I did my own research and I looked at every preschool in town and we are still well below most of them. Not all of them but almost all of them. Um, and so I I mean it's an incredible uh academic uh program. But the other question I was just going to ask is and I think

124you know we may not be doing this but I know in the past when we've gotten the tuition and fees it's usually in the fall. I don't remember if we had it this past fall. um the number of uh individuals taking you know from town and uh you know town employees staff um and those from outside the district who are taking advantage of the utilizing our programs. Did I does anybody else remember I don't remember seeing that this fall. >> Oh I don't know. >> I'll go back and look but information is available. So we do we do know how many town employees and um GPS employees. Yeah, it's in the enrollment report so you can see right because it is so that's why it is it's just it's only a subset of the students

125who are enrolled who are actually paying full tuition >> right so that's why I was saying I think since this is our first read I thought that that bit of information might be helpful for us um to make that decision um >> yeah and I will say I mean just for the public if you're listening that GPS employees they're they pay 15% of of the full tuition rate and town employees pay 95% of the full tuition rate. And that's true for preK. That's also true through um for K through 12. Karen Krauss. >> Sure. Um I just wanted to share a little bit more information with the public. You know, as we said, we are uh required by state law to provide prek for free for students who are diagnosed with special educational needs. we

126are required to have peers for them. So typical peers for them. Uh the ratio is not specified by the state but we have as a district chosen that in a class of 15 we will have five sorry six students who special needs and nine peers. Um we are not however in the business of it is outside of our mandate to run a social services lowincome preschool. We're required to find peers. Um, and it's wonderful when we also have the benefit that families who otherwise couldn't afford 20 $25,000 can can use those spots. But we do have to realize our mandate though is to find peers. Um, and we want to find a balance. You know, as we looked across these other schools, uh, we are less than half typically uh, once you account for the

127fact that our school year is longer, our hours are longer. Uh, but my perspective really with doing my analysis was try to find something that was fair. Um, and by that I mean fair to the families of the peers such that we're not asking them to subsidize the statemandated special education. So not paying more than their fair share. Uh, but also being fair to taxpayers to not subsidize uh not subsidize peers that could otherwise pay for their seats. Um, so I I did take a look at our overall spend and uh this is maybe too this may be too much math for the group but I do want to be I do want to be transparent and and in the interest of transparency and bipartisanship I did some analysis for myself which I then shared

128with the entire finance committee uh so that we were all working from the same fact base. Um, but we spend about $5 million a year on our prek for about 270 students, which averages out to about 18,000 per student. Um, but of course some students with more needs and are are of course more costly to serve as one would expect. I attempted to figure out what we're spending on a typical pier. And you know, while I don't have access to that, I did use through public information calculated that in K through 12, we're spending uh about 2 and a half times as much on a student with special needs uh than we do on a typical uh on a typical student. If that ratio holds in preschool, which is an assumption, and I did arrange

129for the group, uh, because needs differ by age, if that's the case, it's cost it costs us about 11 or 12,000 per typical peer to serve, which is then how I was thinking, okay, if that's the cost to serve a typical peer, of course, we're still, and I will say we will never be profitable, we will never be break even, um, given that the the special ed students attend for free, that we highly ly subsidized town employees, GPS employees, and that students on free lunch pay nothing. Uh on free lunch, they pay about $500 per year. Uh but for those that do pay to kind of carry their weight, uh ends up at about 11 or $12,000. Um and I would also note we don't pass these tuitions. I was actually surprised to see this.

130The tuition's paid by credit card and our credit card processor charges us about three three and a half%. Ben has the exact numbers. uh and that's not passed on. Uh so for those who were comfortable with the 3.1% kind of inflation adjusted rate, we'd be effectively passing on the credit card fee on top of the inflation adjusted rate at if we ended up at, you know, 6 and a halfish. Um and we're still that still puts us less than half the cost of the alternatives locally. >> Thank you, Karen. I mean, one thing I just want to address quickly with the credit card fee is that that's really a town decision and apparently um town finance covers the credit card fee for almost all the transactions that residents make with the town. So, I'm a

131little like uncomfortable with penalizing just the people who enroll in prek and and making them eat the 3.1 as opposed to all the other residents in town whenever they're doing other transactions. I mean, because the town could change their policy and say, "We're no longer covering the credit card fees, but I would imagine, and I haven't had a conversation with Town Finance, but that the certainty of using a credit card and knowing that it's paid is probably what they're drove their decision because you have the money in hand. Whereas, if you're processing a lot of checks, you know, they may not all clear and then you are in a situation of being in the collection um business, which I don't think any of us want to be in." And certainly I can say that Greenwich

132Public Schools is not in that business at all. And so we would have to actually develop a collections department. So I, you know, to deter people from using a credit card might have unintended consequences that we that we may not want. I mean, I think that that might be a decision for town finance to to, you know, explain to us their thinking. Sorry, Karen Hirs. Oh, well, I was going to ask who actually pays the credit card fees. And I mean, after my comment or question next, I was going to say Paul, like what what do I mean I'll ask you after I'm finishing like what we do for docks and voting licenses and all that things those things. Um, but I was going to say the other question is, and I know I bring

133this up every year, um, the tuition does not seem to come back directly to the school like to the board of eds budget. It goes to the town and then sort of loops back to us. I definitely still think I know we talk about this, the money that we generate, it should, it's a really a discussion. I mean, at least for our budget committee or more that that money should be especially like grants that are supposed to come to us, etc. Um, but I I'm curious to see why that still is the case. But yeah, the money that they Yeah, all the money goes they collect the tuition and um and then they keep it. Yeah. And we're and just to clarify too because I think it's important like I think this is an an

134interesting and important conversation to have but the delta that we're talking about between 3.1 and 6.2 and 6.2 and 10% is roughly $30,000 in revenue to the town sort of by each increment. And so then I'll just jump back to Paul like just out of curiosity because I know that you're uh you know harbor master and so forth. So, what is it? What is the harbor master uh >> in uh division? >> I don't handle the the docks. That's parks and recreation. I >> Sorry. No, no worries. >> I gave you it gave you more uh responsibility. >> That's fine. I I think I'm responsible for allowing parks and w to put their docks on my water, but I don't know if Joe would appreciate that um um level of authority that I may have

135just uh taken. Uh, but I do uh pay my my property taxes through Greenwich and I uh I pay the uh the fee I think because I have my own boat. I think I'm paying the fee. A as it relates to moorings which I am responsible for. We're in a robust um I'm uh a ex officio on the harbor management commission as the harbor master and they're in a robust conversation now about um charging the fees back as as well. Um, I recognize what you're saying about the money going back to the town, but I think that could be a slippery slope. Um, as the program, I think, uh, we lose $4 million on it. Um, so if we ask for the money back, they may ask for the $4 million in return. But, um,

136uh, the other thing I I I wanted to bring up is um, was from your earlier statement. You had said that um it hadn't been raised for 5 years and um >> Oh, no, no, no. The the cost did, but it had only been going up by 3%. Which wasn't meeting the current cost of the program. >> Yeah. So, it had gone up, but it had stayed at a flat 3%. Increase. >> I understand. I thought No, no, don't be sorry. That's why I'm asking. I wanted to clarify that the five years prior to that it I I um I thought what you were saying there was no increases. So, there was 3.1 There was no increases or there were 3.1s. >> No, it's what Sophie >> sir I think it was very modest increases

137and then last year we did a 13% increase because we thought that the increases in previous years had been too low. Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to understand that better. Uh I you know what the math that I was trying to do in my head was I suspect with a 13% increase last year um you know we're we're hesitant. We didn't want to make a 10. Um, you know, we're we're hesitating on a 6.2, but I suspect that, uh, you know, it may have needed to be more than 13, but we with that much of a increase in one particular year, um, I I I you guys would know better than me, you were here. Um, you know, you may have um, uh, on the side of of of lower, which might

138give us more of a reason to need to make that delta up. And there is a pretty big delta. >> I'm sorry, Bob. >> Yeah, I just wanted to try to to to work on how we're talking about this because I feel like uh people say, "I know it'll never be profitable or we lose $4 million." It's it's a it's a it's not a for-profit entity. The public schools are here. They're an investment in our children's futures. We're not losing money. It's not we're not losing It's not that it'll never be profitable. It's it's in my opinion I I feel like it's the public schools are here to help our children and it's investment in their future. I I think what we need to make sure we're focused on when we're on this particular conversation

139is that our mandate by the state is related to the uh is related to the special education and we are very generous with our our typical to special ed and I think appropriately so um uh to give our special ed uh students the best ops possible education they you know that we can provide them. Uh what we're talking about here, Bob, is not um the special ed. There is absolutely no compromise on our mandate for excellent special ed uh education. What we're talking about here are the k the people that are in the lottery. And um the lottery has become very much more of a lottery than it is of getting your kid into preschool. I my son uh didn't get in, my daughter got in. And when my daughter got in, uh, what I

140was very happy about is it was going to cost me a lot less money. Um, now with that said, I also we also discussed in our in our committee, um, not wanting to disrupt the diversity balance of the lottery, right? Because when you're picking random names out of a out of a jar, um if you pick someone out of a jar that happens to be from a lower income uh area or low a lower income family, that type of exposure um is important as well. Um, so that's where I started to, you know, that's what what I'm looking at is making sure that the special education children have the best education, including a diverse group of typicals. Um, and and that's my tipping point. Veronica, was there any discussion in the finance committee on uh

141what potentially the increas um and if there's any way to potentially um I don't want to say average, but if it's if we're talking 6% next year, but then returning to three next year that we meet meet in the middle of five these this year and next year. It that's just a question. Um there there was some discussion about a multi-year plan. I but honestly like we we really focus mostly on this year. I think what would be interesting to me is to hear from the public and also see does this have any impact on our enrollment. Are we you know we have historically had a weight list. However, the weight list is not equally long at all the different programs and typically um there's no there's no transportation provided for the typical peers in

142this program. So, it it is a very local program. Um you're not likely if you're living on the west side of town, you're probably not going to drive to the east side of town for this prek and likewise, right? So, people are really interested in the preks that they can get to easily. Um, I think a concern I'm going to speak for Dr. Jones because she mentioned this previously. She's worked in other school districts where they've struggled to have yet to get enough typical peers in the program to achieve the ratio that is true. It's not mandated by law, but the ratio that we have decided um we think is most beneficial to all of our students. We want to be make sure we maintain that. My concern would be, you know, we don't want

143to raise the the rates to the point that we no longer are being able to fill our classrooms and achieve our ratio. So, I think, you know, my thought would be if we do the 6.2 to just look and see. And if we discover that suddenly we're struggling, then we would we wouldn't increase the tuition as much next year. If we if we discover that it doesn't have much of an impact, then maybe next year we, you know, we look at it again. But I don't feel like there's any need to decide in advance. I think we need to collect the information and then decide. >> Yeah. Your thought. >> Yes. >> So your thought was um related to um making sure that we fill the typicals and and I I couldn't agree with you

144more and I want to elaborate on that and in support of what you're saying. Not only do we I think I said it once already and we spoke about it in the committee, but just so the public is aware, we're trying to make sure we we rehash some of our committee stuff uh here for for more transparency. Um not only wanting to be able to fill those typical typical spots, but filling them with a a diversity and that diversity, the lower end of that diversity. Um once that uh starts to affect them if we can't get into a sliding scale which we discussed and we felt you know would be more of a headache than the dollar amounts and because the dollar amounts aren't huge right it's we you said something like $39,000 we're we're

145we're working with a close to a half a billion dollar budget but what happens you know we expect the Greenwich public schools to go on in perpetuity for many hundreds of years so you know keeping up uh is there I I I um concur with what you're saying and I take it a little bit further and I know you do too um that uh we we we we don't get to a number where we discourage typicals and we don't even get to a number where we discourage a um a uh maybe lower income typical because our special ed students deserve to be in an environment that is diverse across um uh income as well as gender, ethnicity, and everything of that nature. >> I completely agree and I just want to say, I mean, this

146program is so important for all of our students and and just I hope and we obviously don't provide universal prek in Greenwich, but we all know as board of ed members, I think that prek is so important and going to a quality prek sets up our students to be successful academically. So, you know, it certainly is my hope that anyone coming into kindergarten in Greenwich public schools has had the opportunity to attend a prek and I'm glad that we have, you know, we do have a program that some typical peers are able to participate in. Wendy, >> uh, I was just going to say that I I think 6.2 is a good compromise for now. I I was thinking 10%, but you know, that might scare people away and we don't want to do that.

147And um you know this is a great program and I think people will still come to it. It it really it sounds like a lot that we've we've increased this a lot but we're still not in alignment with the other districts. We're still below Stamford and we're still below Darianne at at this in this at 6.2. >> Karen Cross actually Mike's had his hand up longer. >> Oh sorry Mike go ahead. I was >> right. That's all right. U so I agree I agree with Wendy. I like the I like 6.2. Um I appreciate the finance committee's work here. Sounds like you've put a lot of thought into it and and analysis. Um um um I think it's worth thinking of the prek program also to Wendy's point as really a long-term investment and really

148a cost savings because the uh work done at prek at the at that 3 four year old level alleviates the need for so many interventions down the line and other expansions. there's, you know, small kids, small problems in many ways lives out when it comes to pre-K, both on the special ed and the general ed side. Um, and um I think that's I think that's I think that's worth noting. I think the other thing from our previous conversation um around the multi-year, you know, where um Parkway is a new site for us and we really don't know um um we need to explore that and see see how that plays out because obviously Parkway is a little bit farther away. Um so so it's worth thinking about that and seeing seeing how that how that

149rolls out next year. >> Karen Krauss. >> Yeah. I just wanted to respond. Veronica had asked about the multi-year and I I had raised the uh the desire to give multi-year guidance. My understanding is we do have to vote every year. Um and so uh there is that that level of uncertainty. what we did all I think we had it may have been the only thing we had broad consensus on the finance committee was that we need to do this earlier in the year to give families uh an opportunity to plan and and the reason I had proposed giving multi-year guidance was that this isn't a one-year decision for most families right this is a this is most likely a two-year two or even a three-year in some cases depending on when the birthdays hit

150uh so we do want we don't want to put anyone in a position of having to make a mid-stream change uh but the reason this got my attention in the first place was the the 225 applications for the 85 spot slots. But look, if 150 of those are are waiting for Old Greenwich and the spots are open in Ham A, uh the wait list isn't as robust as as it may appear. And and and that is why I backed off from my original, you know, let's do 10% a year for three years. Uh because we we don't want to be in a position where we uh where we don't have that. Uh I really just want to make sure people are paying their fair share uh on this given what our mandate is and uh

151you know something that's fair to the families and fair to the taxpayers. >> Paul, >> thank you. I had this question earlier. >> Yeah. >> But I I only wanted to break in before because it was I was building on yours. So uh Veronica had had um asked about you know blending this across and um there's a reason why 6.2 two is exactly in the middle of 3.1 and the 10. So we did we did discuss that and we met right in the middle and I think I think our planning would be to try to achieve that that 10 um next year but thank you. >> We we did split the proverbial thank you. >> Okay. Anyone else? >> Okay. Dr. Jones. >> Yeah. Just two quick items. Um, you know, first of all, I

152just want to remind the board because some of you, obviously, a I don't think any of you were on the board when we actually got rid of the two pre-K classes at Parkway. One of the reasons that we actually moved them away from Parkway was because the children we were having to, you know, bust children from all over the place. The reason we feel comfortable going back is we have grown so much as a program. We have enough students now that live in that area. So that's we looked at all of that before we actually decided on that place. The other thing I just I I think school budgets have so many nuances in them that often I think especially the public don't always understand from from a prek perspective when you look at what

153it cost. If we had no peers whatsoever, we would save almost nothing because we need a teacher and two paras for our children who have special needs. So if we took every pier away and in some states they don't have the ratios like we do here. Um they also we don't pay for busing for children who are peers. Their parents bring them. So almost all of the cost is the same. and we would probably have paint and crayons and things like that. So, it I think it's really important to note that it's actually a real positive in what our peers contribute for the simple reason again the biggest cost we have busing and staffing in a school district and it would not change if we had no peers. >> Sorry, Dr. Jones, just to clarify,

154you're saying that right now we have a classroom of 15 kids and we have one teacher and and two paras. You're saying if we had a classroom of just six kids with special needs, we would still have a teacher and two paras. >> Absolutely. And if you think about our unique classroom, you can actually see it when you get into K5. You've got to remember that our children who have special needs, they're all in diapers, they can have feeding tubes, they there's complexity of issues um in our pre-K program and you would need a teacher and two paras and and that I mean that's the reality of the staffing and that's why it's staffed that way. It's not for the 15. It's staffed that way for the complexity of the programming. So just to to

155so if we had 12 special needs kids in a classroom, and I'm to be very clear, I'm not proposing that. Uh but hypothetically if we had 12 special needs who would physically fit in a in a classroom, you would then have two teachers and four paras for those 12 students. >> Highly likely it would be three or four. Yes. >> Okay, that's helpful. >> Yeah, I think we're good. Okay. Um, moving on. We're going to go to the monthly financial n financial point. Mr. Bryan, is this you or um >> you get you get Patrick? All right. I did last month. It's Patrick's turn. >> There we go. >> Hi, Patrick. Hello. Okay. Um so um on the monthly financial report uh before the meeting there are some question and answer that we exchange with

156the board members before tonight's meeting. Um so they cover some of the uh items that I would want to kind of like cover in here as well. Uh first of all uh there was a new budget committee capital budget added into the old Greenwich School renovation and that is for $8 million. This is a new funding of the project starting in February 2026. No prior year spending and there's no encumbrance uh so far. Uh the other one is regarding the 2017 new lab uh building committee capital project. The project is still as an open project in the uh capital project list. Uh it is pending for the state audits to be completed. We expect the audits will be finalized within the next few months. Once the audit is completed, we can kind of like close

157out on the financial and the project can be removed from the open capital project list. Uh we talked about the tuition just now uh about the revenue is being booked uh in the uh in the account with the TAN. Uh that is the case for uh our re uh tuition in the uh Greenwich public school. All the other fund including the school lunch fund and also the grant the revenue is booked and and is used to cover the expense for the school lunch and also the grand spending. All right. Then the other financial highlights that I would like to call out tonight. Uh first of all it is on the revenue uh again on the revenue topic. There was a 1.2 2 million uh special education excess cost grant received in February as expected and

158then the revenue is reflected in the uh February result on the page 10. There will be a second and final payment in May that will be booked into the revenue uh by that time. uh on the school lunch program with the year-to-day February financial result. The fullear forecast now we are looking at is expected to be better than the uh original budget and it will be finishing the year similar to the last year result. Uh and lastly on the operating overall operating budget we also look at the forecast do a full f full year forecast projections. We are expecting there will be a budget balance between $1.5 million to $2 million and then that is driven by the non-certified vacant position the teachers uh unpaid leave and the special education education saving that we mentioned

159uh across the previous month meetings but it is then offseted by the transportation spending. uh we are looking to provide another forecast update in the May business meeting such that we have a better idea before we are finishing the year by the end of June. >> Thank thanks Patrick. I um it's I always like when worth noting because you don't notice this if you're just looking at the numbers. The um um the number of capital projects that have been closed uh is such a tremendous outstanding um structural improvement um by the district. Um people people only people people didn't pay the um our friends at the BET for years have been have not noted these projects that used to linger for years and years and years. um we had, you know, four years ago, three

160years ago, we still had Misa and stuff like that on here. Um so the the amount of work that you and Ben and Tony and everybody have done um to close these projects out. Um and realizing the which means realizing the statement that we always reimbursement that we always talk about with these projects that um we only get once these actually close out. Um um um I really appreciate all the work there. >> All right. Thank you. >> Questions. I think you're still here. >> Yep. Next one. >> Budget transfers. >> Budget transfer. So the budget transfer that uh we have um I mean it is mainly it is the budget kind of like we allocating within the the the school within the special education program to fit for the needs of their uh budget

161requirement as they see. So the pathway is just we allocate their budgets to the teaching supplies as they see fit. And then the special education program is to kind of like reallocate uh some of the salary into the contracted services because as I mentioned about the teachers and pay leave some of those that kind of like not being filled up for the position by ourself but it is kind of like looking to outside um for the um surface companies to kind of like provide the resources for the coverage. >> All right. Good night. All right. And now for the main event of the evening. Um I would like to uh make a a motion to set the graduation date as presented. >> Seconded by Mr. Cheney. >> You need to set the as present. You

162said as presented. >> I said as presented. >> Yeah. Mr. Dr. Jones, you want to explain? >> Um yes. So, in the motion, it actually says to set the graduation date for 2526 school year as June 18th. And just as a reminder, this is one of those items we don't do two readings because we can't bring it to you too early because we're in the middle of snow and all of that. But our families really need these dates. So, Granny and Grampy and everybody can book their tickets. We call the question. Oh, go ahead. >> Again, I know the answer to this. I'm sorry to ask it, but for transparency, Dr. Jones, uh, were we able to ask the governor for a, uh, exemption? Uh, like New York, >> um, CA at the state level

163actually had requested that, but, no, it did not happen. >> Oh, shocks. New York does not have an exemption. New York. New York just has 177 days in the school calendar. >> We call the question. Okay. All those in favor? Opposed? That passes 80. Okay. So for sticklers in the room here, so I would like to make a motion that the uh last day of school for the 202526 school year, it be Friday, June 19th for grades 6 and 9 and Monday, June 22nd for all students and Thursday, June 25th for teachers. >> I'll second. >> That was Bob again. >> Go ahead, Karen. Yeah. Um I just again for transparency of the public, I think this vote is mainly procedural, right? The state requires that we have 180 days uh for students. The union

164contract, sorry, the state requires we have at least 180 days for students. The union contracts require that we have no more than 180 days for students, which lands us at 180 days for students, uh except extraordinary circumstances. So, uh, there's really, I don't think, any discretion up here on that. Uh, but I I and I know some districts do have 181, 182 and and they've dialed it back this year because of snow days. Uh, but I also wanted to note for those who are confused about June 19th being a school day. Um, because Connecticut has made uh June 19th, Junth a holiday. I did want to clarify that schools have the option and and again our calendar was voted on by the previous board of of closing or of opening and having a um a

165suitable program to to recognize the the holiday which I believe is what we did last year as as well. >> Yes, that is what we do. We treat it just like we do Veterans Day. A lot of districts are out on Veterans Day. We are not. And again, it's also like we were talking about earlier tonight like religious holidays. We're in when other districts are out. Um generally the reason that um our calendar is the way that it is is because we have a full February break and our community has wanted that and so we've been responsible and honestly I think it's great for kids because all of our students are actually learning about the holiday instead of just having a day off. >> All right, let's call the question. Oh, and so why why

166do just for the record I don't know why do sixth and nth graders get out a day early? >> They actually start a day early because they imagine how big that high school is so you can get your schedule, follow your schedule before you have 2700 kids in the building. And same way for sixth grade. >> All right, let's call a question. All those in favor. All right, motion passes. 80. Dr. Bud, if you are there, uh we are on the staff absenteeism report. >> Good evening everyone. Can you hear me? >> Yes sir. >> Okay. So you see the report that's been updated and I added a little bit more information this month to be responsive to one of the topics that had been raised at last month's board meeting. So, I'll spend most

167of my time on the new information, but if you look first at pages one to two of the three-page report, you'll see the information we've been presenting to you over the course of the year. And my highlights there. Thank you so much. My highlights on page one right at the slide I'm seeing weekly average absences over time is that the spike that happened toward the middle and end of December has obviously gone back to where things were in the October and November range. Remember that we chart here uh sick leave which includes family illness leave and personal day leave for in this case the blue line represents our teaching staff. So about 890 people in that group and uh the black line represents the professional assistance and security which is a different unionized contract and

168uh about 180 in that group. Uh the next thing I would point out to you is actually over on the second page um which is the uh the second page please which would be the bottom chart on the second page. I just would illustrate that this month the highest recent absence week was the week we closed on Monday and Tuesday. But Wednesday through Friday we still had significant absences. And one thing I want to point out here is you might wonder why the vertical axis runs all the way up to 80 if the highest numbers here are in the 40 range. And I felt that was a more rational way to present it because when we looked at these numbers in December, we needed to have the scale go up to 80 because we had

169sick and personal day absences that were up at least for some days in the 70 range. So, I think to illustrate that, we have to keep things in perspective. Although we had a a high recent absence week, this week I'm illustrating it's still um in some ways almost half of the absences that we had back uh at that time period in December. Let me focus a little bit on page three if I could because that was responsive to the question that was asked last time. And the top chart on page three is a teacher chart and the bottom chart is a professional assistant security chart. Uh a member of the board asked last month, you might remember if I could provide a little bit more information about what's the range of absence usage. In other

170words, we must have some staff who are hardly ever absent and some staff who are absent a lot and where are the cut points and what percentage of staff or in which groups and I decided that what would be most meaningful to present is a a distributed chart here that I will try to explain the best I can. Uh let me just point out the obvious though which is in any group especially a group of several hundred uh there are bound to be people at the average above the average and below the average. So if patterns changed we would still have staff members at the tippy top and uh at the other end of the scale as well. But to illust to talk a little bit about the top chart on page three. Uh this

171data like the previous data run through March 3rd, Friday March 3rd which was for teachers the 115th day of the work year. And what you see in the pie chart in the middle uh corresponds to the legend on the right. Now I realize when we converted this to the document you see the green and the blue end up looking like very similar colors. So we will improve that for next time. But if I look at the pie chart on the top you see the 10.9% that's associated with the green that goes with the top legend which is equal to or less than 1.5. So in these 115 first days, 115 days of the year so far, 10.9% of our teachers were absent 1.5 days or fewer. Uh with um a few dozen actually uh having

172been absent zero days. Okay. Now this might be a time I should highlight the two bullets at the bottom. These these data like the previous data exclude people on approved long-term leave first of all because they go through mo more stringent requirements to submit documentation for example for child birth for major medical leave etc. And in addition many of them are replaced by long-term substitutes who then themselves get sick time. So, actually at this point in the year, March 3rd, we've had 78 teachers approved for long-term leave. It's a sizable amount. And we've talked a little bit in the past about the expansion of that. So, when you take those individuals out and have long-term substitutes in the group, there's about 850 teachers and about 10% of them have been absent 1.5 days or fewer.

173Then we move to the opposite end. 10.7% which is the blue slice of the pie. They go with the high end of the legend. So 10.7% of teachers at that point in the year have been absent 9 days or more without qualifying for long-term leave. So those are nine days of sick days, family illness days or personal days. And uh then to illustrate just slightly differently the professional assistance and security which is the bottom chart. It's similar in many ways. U to use the same references. The green slice 9.9% of our Paris and security personnel were absent 1.5 days or fewer in the first 114 days of the year. and 11.3% which goes with that blue slice. They go with the high end of the legend. And for that group, it's a slightly higher high-end.

17411.3% of that group have been absent at that point, 12 days or more. Again, that excludes the Paris and security on approved long-term leave. There were 14 of them. Now I just observe again that wherever we have u a huge group of people there's going to be an average there's going to be people at both extremes of the average but of interest to you I would think is the average of all of these people in those first 115 days of the year uh was 5 days absent and uh I think in general and there's my opinion you may have differences of opinion I don't know with me. But I would say of 115 days, if uh an average person were absent five, considering that there are significant illnesses that might go around or there are

175actual personal reasons one might not be at work, uh I think it reinforces that uh the vast vast majority of our staff are doing well to uh fulfill their obligations at work. We continue to counsel uh individual uh individuals who who uh benefit from that and have uh specific employee specific conversations with others as necessary. So I I hope in some way that is helpful and responsive to give you a little bit more glimmer of how this range of employee groups operate. Certainly be happy to have any questions I can answer. He's got in my head. >> Go ahead, Money. >> Uh, thanks so much, Dr. Bud, for putting this together. Uh, do you think next time you can make the font slightly bigger? I can't even see it with my glasses on. >> Oh

176my. Yes, definitely. >> Um Um, and I just I had a question. How are the substitute uh fill rates tracking this year, especially during like the last week of February when we had more um absences than usual? It's a good question. We still average about an 80 to 85% fill rate. Um, one of the challenges we had on some of the days in February, including the week that happened here, is we had uh some weather events and some other issues that had staff needing to call out later than normal. And and and some of that is simply at the last minute. for example, their child's own daycare center closed and maybe they were on their way to work and couldn't go all the way. And in those cases, we get beyond a point where a

177reasonable substitute can actually get to the assignment in time. So, we dropped into the 70% for some of those days, unfortunately. >> Eric, >> yeah. Uh, first of all, Dr. But I wanted to say thank you so much for uh being so responsive to our request for additional data. I do think this is quite helpful to see it this way. Um just so I understand though when I look at this uh this turquoise box of of of you know nine or more absences uh even at the low end of that at nine out of 115 days you know that is 8% of days. So just under a day every other week uh that's you know almost 11% of our teachers. So, uh, you know, 10.9% of 850s, 93 teachers are out a day every other

178week. I imagine it's bunchier than that. Uh, but, um, that's that's a significant, you know, if if I think, you know, that's a significant amount of time. Um, and I'm also curious if, um, if you see differences by buildings. I remember looking at some data. It was on the state website. It was was way before I was on the board of ed. um where Costco school and a couple others were were were rather extreme outliers. This was this was several years ago, so please don't yell at the principal at Costco. He wasn't there. Um but uh but they were very high. I'm wondering if you're seeing differences by buildings. >> To the first point, um yes, you're accurate in the number of what that statistic represents for the gross number of um teachers or paras

179out 9 days or 12 days or more. Um I would say that you see different types of patterns though. Uh some individuals are in that pattern of maybe one day periodically but there's also people in this group who had the flu for 5 days and so they they would be much lower on the chart except that they got the flu and some of them got the flu and maybe their infant child got the flu and they were taking it. So there's a lot of detail there. Um in our evaluation system, our supervisors um discuss and mark that they have discussed with every staff member uh ab uh attendance uh absenteeism or being present uh frequently and uh so that's a topic of discussion. uh the principles are receiving from me tomorrow uh the specific names

180of the people in their buildings in in these groups and uh in most cases this won't be a surprise to principles because if somebody's absent quite that often they're aware of it and again uh in all these cases um we're talking about a wide range of situations but are there some differences by school there are um without getting too detailed I would say to you though the demographics of our staff differ a particularly among the elementary schools and there are elementary schools for example who have had uh just if you were to look at um people who have returned from leave in the past few years. Some elementary schools have a lot more of those individuals than others. Those people tend to have younger children at home. Those people need more support if they get

181ill. So uh we try not to draw too many distinctions by school to overemphasize um you know what could be just a random situation. Great. Thank you. I really appreciate the additional color. >> Questions. >> So, it's quasi related. They we have to think this out a little more, Dr. Bud, but I can't I kept wonder I know I appreciate the the thinking on um attendance. Um I'm wondering if there's other similar HR data that might make sense um as you as we build out this this report um over time. So like for example um we we hear talk about um vacancy rates and you know challenges filling filling different positions and things like that and that that strikes me as something that might be um a helpful it's not counterpoint but but another facet

182of the of the HR conversation you know and as far as staff as far as staff absences go the um if we're looking at the picture you know trying to get a better understanding of the picture of um um when the when there are not adults um in the in the staff members in the school serving students. So so that you know how we're um and I know that's hard to fill sometimes but maybe um that could be something um we think about the we can talk more about that but other panels. >> All right moving on the >> Thank you sir. I appreciate it. Um so the last item is the BOE meeting agenda plan. Uh Dr. Jones, anything you want to highlight here? >> Yes, I'll just highlight a couple of items. Um

183just as a reminder, um next month we will have HAMAB Suzuki program at the beginning which will be wonderful. Um they want to come perform for you. Um on May 14th on that meeting, we did add the honors AP. That's the whole discussion about prerequisites and things of that nature. Um, we're working on some data for that. I also added in May 28th, this was another request from the board understanding special education staffing formula. So, that's on there. On the very last uh June meeting, what has been added again as a request was staffing report, retentions, retirements, and what I would say, it kind of goes to what you were just mentioning um Dr. County Anthony is that it's very difficult on a monthly basis to have a huge robust report because Dr. Bud all

184day long is in staff meetings working with people in crisis all I do not want him spending hours and hours to pull data every month. Um it's just not a good use of his time. But I know you want the data now. Could we move to a deeper report in the fall? Deeper report like this one in June so you get really good complete information. We'll you and if you have ideas that you want to see in June reflective of the years, just send me a note and we can see if that's data that we can be sure we add in here. But we'll try to give you a robust staffing report in June. Anything else for anybody um around the the um agenda plan? I would um suggest um I think we have to

185at some point have a conversation the April meeting might make the most sense u because it's not a lot going on yet um around um um habbermire um and because it's in the first selectman's budget and and whatnot and I think we we haven't had any conversation at the board level about that and we probably should start talking about what that does and does not mean um so we can um not an action item but but probably should should stop talking about what we're thinking about there. Okay. Um, is there a motion on the table? Would anybody like to make a motion? >> I'll make a motion to adjurnn. >> No, I see Wendy over there with >> seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths. All in favor? All right. Meeting adjourned.