May 1, 2025 Board of Education Special Meeting

001I'd like to call this meeting of the board of education to order. It's 6:32 now. Um, and we can stand and say the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Um, and now I need to make a motion to move into an executive session to discuss a personnel matter. Uh, superintendent's uh, contract. Do I have a second? I'm happy to second it. Okay, Kathleen. Then uh, I think we don't need to have everybody vote it on it, but uh, we will move into Well, you guys can all vote on it if you'd like. Um, we can move into executive session. Um, and I'm sorry. I will

002let uh or Michael, can you uh put a note up letting um people who log on know that we are moving into executive session? Um I expect that we should be back. I don't know if it'll be 7 7:15ish at the latest. All right, sounds good. I can handle that. Thank you. Okay, once everyone's seated, um, we're all here And uh we can move on with the uh action portion of our meeting. Is everybody seated? I can only see half the room. We are. We're good. Perfect. Uh so we're moving on to the um action portion of our meeting. Um we have exited the executive session in which we were discussing a personnel matter. Um and to let uh the public know votes were taken. Um and that's it. So our first action item um

003on our agenda is a superintendent contract extension. And in order to put the item on the table, I'd like to make a motion to extend Dr. Jones contract uh and add two additional years uh through June 30th, 2028. Do I have a second? I'll second Sophie. Uh open to for discussion. I see you, Michael. Yeah. I'd like to um I'd like to move to table the motion. Um because I given the budget and everything else going on, I feel like this probably is the best time and I think speaking personally, I think we need more time as a board to um um to consider the matter and things like that. I don't want this to be construed as a um unendorsement of or anything any kind of comment on Dr. Zone Dr. Jones's comment uh

004conduct which I find exemplary but um uh I don't think this is this is this is the meeting while we should be doing this um in the midst of the budget so I' I'd like to move the table the item can I respond Karen sure yeah was um I just I actually think to the contrary because of the budget I actually think we need to be having this conversation um we there are many superintendent positions open we've put Dr. Jones in a very difficult we've asked her to do a lot and um frankly I'm not sure if we could find another superintendent right now given the situation we are in. Um so I think it's exactly the right time to be doing it. Yes, I was going to note there are two two districts that

005just uh hired and went through the process of superend uh looking for and hiring new superintendents. There's two other districts um that are currently looking as well. I I've heard of a third that that uh m may be coming up as well. Um you know, especially with the large reduction in some of the things we're going to be talking about later um in this meeting. I think we need somebody who has a good handle on what's what's going on. She just, you know, got a generally positive uh feedback from all of us. Um so I see no reason not to um have this discussion this evening. Um and we are following uh her contract um as I mentioned earlier uh contract section 3 clause B um which I can read but uh in regards to

006uh responding to her request um prior to the you know 3 months prior to the end of uh her contract date I see your hand raised. Yes. Um I do think that we should table the discussion. Um I think we should wait. We're we're still waiting for the FOYA ruling which they're going to be having a briefing on May 5th and that soon after we should probably have a resolution because the last thing I think we want to do is enter into a contract because I don't know who will be able to get out of it or undo it. Easier to to revote many of the things but it's very difficult to undo a contract. Just to let you know, um, and I know I sent information out to the board. Um, in regards to

007FOYA, uh, May 5th, they're submitting briefings. It won't be, we won't hear back anytime soon because it still then has to go to their hearing commissioner and then over to the FOYA commission itself, just so you know. Wanted to just give you that as a information. Well, we Yeah, we can agree to disagree because that's not my information that I've heard. So, okay, that's what we heard from from the commission itself. So, okay. Does anybody else have their hand up? Karen, uh may um yeah, I'll just be repetitive with Mike, but I'm disappointed that we're doing this. We talked about it in private. I think it would have made a ton of sense to do this at the May 15th meeting um right in the middle of all the budget stuff. I think you want

008to see the results uh and get through something uh like what we're working on. And um I think it's so much better to have a consensus contractual change than forcing something through. But as we know, the reality is you guys can force something through if you want. But I think to Mike's point, um it's independent of uh the views on Tony. It's just about from a what what seems clean and makes sense from a procedural standpoint. don't extend a contract when you're right in the middle of something major. You get to the other side of it and say, "Great job." You know, here we are. So, I would so much prefer to do this later. Um and uh you know, I'm disappointed that we've brought this up now. And just to add, it was also

009this was also on our our long-term board planning for later in the spring and it was just added to the um to the agenda as a last minute item last week. um for the first time it it was you know so in our meeting scope that we see every month so um all the more reason why I don't think this is appropriate time again it's following the contract provision but um I think there's a question on the table so Karen um I just didn't know if anybody else had uh comments no Um, okay. Well, I don't know if you guys want to, you know, uh, yeah, there's a motion on the table, so call the vote. Yes. Well, no, the nobody seconded Michael Joseph's motion to So, Oh, I'll second it, you know. So, we

010can vote on the motion to table it and then we can vote on the motion. Okay. Yes, that makes sense. Okay. So, um, can I see? Well, I can't, you know, hopefully um I'm going to turn this over to our secretary to actually uh take the vote only because I can only see it's hard for me to see all of you guys. Laura, if I you know, I'm just getting a pen. Perfect. Thank you. And Wendy and I, since we're on Zoom, probably have to say verbally, yay or nay. We should all be doing a voice vote. Okay, I'll call the role in order of the folks I see first and that's Cody. Yes. To delay. No. Kathleen St. Um Jen Beette. No. No. Sophie Coven. Yes. And yes to delay. Okay, Wendy and Karen.

011Uh, no, I don't think we should table it. Don't forget to call on yourself, Miss Colston. Um, that all the time. I think we should vote. Yeah, I'm a I'm a I'm a no for delaying. So, that fails. Uh, so now we're on we're calling the question. more discussion. No, we're next on the next one. Uh so the motion on the table is to extend Dr. Jones contract by two years. Let me say I think this is uh disappointing that we are having a partisan um fight here for no reason. Um this is the second time this year that we are making a what should be a bipartisan decision, partisan for absolutely no reason. There's no reason we should be doing taking this vote tonight. It is bipartisan. Okay. And the motion's on the table.

012We already had the discussion. So now you're kind of point of order. So Cody, what So can you run the vote? Okay. So uh I will call the question hearing no other discussion on the uh extension. Cody, no. Kathleen Stow. Yes. Jen Beet, yes. Sophie Coven, yes. Dr. Marcante Anthony, regrettably, no. Uh, Wendy Walsh, no. Karen Hirs, yes. I myself am a Yes. So that carries five. three. Uh on to the next item on our agenda. Yeah, thank you. The next item on our agenda is to just uh to go through BET reductions uh from the FY26 uh board of ed operating budget. Um do I have a second to get this on the table? I'm happy to second. Well, not happy, but I'll second it. Okay. Um, just as a note, um, again, I

013would like to just comment, I know I said this at our meeting last week. Um, seeing as how there were some other items, which I once I will turn this over to the budget committee, um, to sort of discuss, a lot of these items that are that are on this list are new um, for us as a discussion item. Um, and I think it while I think it's we we might be able to vote on at least items that we've spoken uh discussed at our last meeting, I think it would be uh I I'd like to to you know at least share that I think we need to ensure that we any of the newer items for reductions that we have tonight that we make sure we are giving time for the public to have

014feedback um at a meeting, you know, whether we can do this at the start of put a date on next week to do that only because I do believe we should be able to give the public opportunity to opine and a lot of these items were simply uh placed up for discussion yesterday. So, um with that in mind, um I'm going to hand this over to our budget committee to lead this uh discussion. Do you mean uh Ben and cabinet or you mean like Cody and Well, our budget committee is chaired by Why don't we have Tony Start? Dr. John start and then we can Okay. Um, just to start us off tonight, which we've done the last two meetings, it's just a review of the numbers. We do have 271 people already online. So,

015I just want to make sure everybody understands what the numbers are. So, Ben, if you could start us off with that, please. Absolutely. the page in front of you. We have seen the last two meetings on this subject, but again just a table sat set. The first line item one is the starting budget that the year we're sitting in. You can see the progression from the superintendent's budget. The board of ed adjustment is line three. Uh what was approved by the board of ed is line four. The 202 and change. You can see then the adjustment that the BET made which is line five bringing to the BET budget that's currently before the RTM at line six which is the 198 and change which is a 2.99% increase. One thing we just want to highlight

016is you would go down to line nine. Uh in a perfect world you would say line nine and line five would be the would be the same and we wouldn't be having line seven, eight and nine. However, there's two additional uh items we uh want to address as you're looking at the budget adjustments. Line seven, as we talked before, there are three positions that were originally budgeted in the board of ed. Uh they were then uh cut in the year we're sitting in. We did not build them into the budget that was presented to the board of ed. The town did not build them in either. Those positions are needed. They're currently without a budgetary home, but the work needs to be done. So we need to find the additional 334 and change and also

017as we talked about we know with a high degree of confidence that the prek will need to be added early in the in September versus the January which we budgeted for. So knowing that expense we thought it would be prudent to budget for the 204 which is the cost of the one teacher and 2.4 Paris. When you add those two numbers together, you get what we're trying to adjust is 4,587962 is the adjustment versus the 4 million 048621 that the BET adjusted. So again, the goal we have is to adjust our our budget of finding savings of 4,587,962. So, just to interject, and I know I mentioned this last week, as we didn't have that extra preschool section um in the current in the FY uh 2526 budget that we numbers we had asked for,

018and we would probably have to go back for an interim. I think, you know, 4.1 is enough for us to have to to ask for to to cut additionally for that. I mean, our our plan would have always been to go for an interim for that um because it wasn't part of our, you know, request. I I think it would be easier to focus on the 4.1 that was already reduced instead of adding you know more right that's ultimately up to the board however you want to pursue it we we were just putting that out there for discussion for you know we can put a pin in it for later I just think we need to focus on what was reduced from the current budget that you know request that we had made and that

019wasn't part of that request That's all. We can certainly discuss that later, but then I'll I'll turn it back over to you guys for discussion. If All right, there's no further discussion. I can go on to the next two slides before we get into the final slide. So, we put an I just put a red line through this. This was this the original transportation scenarios that we presented. We had five scenarios. Uh we presented that at the April 24th meeting. Uh we just wanted to show you that we did come up uh an a scenario six. So we've maintained the scenario numbers, but we've uh came up with additional scenario number six. In the next slide, just because we were essentially running out of real estate, we dropped scenarios one and two because they really

020weren't getting uh much uh discussion. Uh but scenario five is the one that we've talked about has the greatest uh budgetary savings but also the greatest uh schedule disruption that involves the high school being uh moving their start time from 8:30 to 7:30 uh based on the comments and conversations we had in the uh with the administration. We ran the numbers of making the high school 7:45. So really hone in on scenario six. If you go to 7:45 for the high school and you add 15 minutes to the middle school and to all the elementary schools, you can have a bus reduction of 18 or just under $2 million reduction with scenario six. So again, we put it between uh four and five. Four was the original one where we maintained the secondary schools and

021had the elementary schools start at 7:30, 7:45. the so everything you've seen before just the new scenarios scenario number six I just want to speak to the elementary the scenario 4 um the board's aware that we put out a survey to the elementary parents um because up until really last Friday what we had heard from people was that you know little ones get up early we probably need to look at maybe um the younger grades going first but within the first 15 minutes of sending the survey out, we had several hundred people that had replied. Um, this was printed um late yesterday to be prepared for today. And we had 1,886 um people that had taken the survey and then as of this morning uh or this afternoon, sorry, uh we're up to just under

0222,000. So, it's obviously a big issue. And Mike, if you can put up the survey slide for me. And the first one we're looking at says parent or guardian because I know this is information that will be helpful um for the board in decision- making. Okay. Is this showing Tony? Yes. If you look on that left hand side where it says parent or guardian, that's perfect. Um so what you're seeing here is the green is the number of and percentage of um parents that said it would be very difficult for our family. You see a lot of green and I think it's a lot more than what we anticipated. Um the blue is it's somewhat difficult for our family. So basically when you look at this you had you know 75 76% of the parents

023who are saying it would be very difficult. Um so that's the parent feedback. The next slide um is the teacher input and for the teacher input the interesting thing is it's almost the exact opposite. Uh it worked well for our staff. Um I think they were kind of excited about it. Um but um again it's just you know two very different viewpoints there. The third one was looking at the noncertified staff. We did um one for them as well. All of our paras and um you know custodians everybody that gets impacted. Um and again they were actually favorable. So from the staff side it's favorable from the parents. It was not the very last one is just all rolled up together. Um, and the last slide, um, that's why you see the 2.0, that's the

024average rating from everybody who took the survey. And I I think it was very telling. I I was enjoying watching it come in over the weekend. Um, because it was it it's obviously very important because so many people took this survey so quickly. And when we do our family surveys at the end of the year, we have a great return rate, but we don't get it in 48 hours. So, any questions about any of the scenarios? Um, I have a quick question. This is less about the scenarios than um the surveys. Um, did the results that you uh just shared with us, did that incorporate um all the additional uh people that had responded as of later today or no? Well, that's what I was saying. As of right before this meeting, uh, we were

025at just under 2,000. This was pulled when we were right around 1. Well, we were 1,886. So, it's not enough to swing it one way or the or or the other. That's all I wanted to that I wanted to ask that. And then we didn't survey for middle or high school, just elementary. Did not survey middle and high school. And what I've said even on the high school is it's been discussed for over a decade. And I think we know there's people on both sides uh that like 7:30. there are people that don't, you know, like it. Um, and this decision and what I have said is that if this decision is made, it's really not about our input and what we think is best. It's about the financial situation that we've been put in.

026That's the only reason you're discussing this right now. And so, um, you know, if we're going to ask the elementary one, we've never talked about that was brand new. I had no idea whether people would love it or not, but now we know. Okay. Yeah. And I mean and again I know it it also supports the high school changes. It supports what was being discussed up um at you know in Hartford where they were talking about trying to make a ear you know later start time change and and you know doing research into it for a statewide uh requirement and it failed there as well. People begged them not to do it because it was too financially incapacitating for almost every district uh to to do. So um you know very few followed suit when

027we did it initially and I think just to put scenario five and six in a perspective. So going from 7:30 to 7:45 your elementary and your middle school move by 15 minutes. So it's not a huge impact but it has a the cost of half million dollars to move 15 minutes just to help you keep it in perspective. Thank you. Um, I guess I I want to say I'm I really don't like this change. I understand that we're considering it because of the situation that we're in with the budget, but I you know, I was a parent at the high school the first time that we made this change and attended many meetings where people spoke um very eloquently. We had lots of doctors, lots of educators here talking about how important sleep is and

028what a beneficial change this would be. And I think it really was a beneficial change for our students. And I think this would be to their detriment to our high school students to change it back. Um I just, you know, and also families, everyone has adjusted to this. Um the reality is if we change it back, um whether it's 7:30 or 7:45, you know, that first period class, the kids are not really awake. They're not really paying attention. A lot of them haven't eaten their breakfast yet. They're kind of sleepy and hungry. Um so it's yeah I think there's real academic um impacts and I think there are negative impacts to mental health. Um if we have to make this change I would be much more in favor of the 745 and um the reason

029for that is I imagine many people in this room are counting their steps every day and you know wearing an Apple Watch or whatever. you know, 15 minutes a day doesn't sound like such a big difference, but cumulative cumulatively over the course of the year, you know, it really does add up um to hundreds of hours of sleep, extra sleep that you would get, you know. So, I hope if we must do this that we could at least give the high schoolers that extra 15 minutes. I also think that means, you know, realistically, if you're coming to school to meet with a teacher before, like you can meet with a teacher at 7:00. You're not meeting with a teacher at 6:45 in the morning. Um, so if we're going to consider these, that's the one

030that I would prefer. Can I respond? Karen, is it okay if we just talk over here so you don't have to call on us? Yeah, you're on mute, but that's okay. Sorry, I was just I don't know if somebody there. It's hard for me to see hands up to call, but I'm gonna keep my eye on it. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, um, feel free to jump in, Cody, but I feel like we should start with transportation because, and I'm happy you did, Sophie, um, because it's kind of like the obvious one. It's the big it's the big number. Um, I mean, it's kind of like are the kids going to get up earlier or are we going to cut their teachers? So, that's it. It's it's like really that sadly that binary. Um, and so

031I think that, um, you know, we I said it at the meeting last time. Um it personally it's it's not a a huge issue for for my family, but I have had a few friends since um last week tell me that they will probably personally egg my house. Um but I am just going to have to accept that and I think hopefully they will um still hang out with me. But um I I think that we kind of have no choice but to do something for the high school. I am so happy too that we surveyed the elementary schools. That was um it was just a a good exercise if nothing else to get their opinions. I too thought oh you know I was one of those people don't like little kids get up early

032you know and um but it turned out those parents you know knew what they knew what they needed and so we have to listen to our community. Um I think this was like I said this vote was before I was on the board. Um it was 53 at the time. It was a very um and um and we've gone eight years and uh I think it's probably had a lot of benefits. However, we're now at a situation where we have to reconsider. And um I I like your point, Sophie, on 15 minutes doesn't feel like a lot, but when you put it that way, if you're having um extra help before school, the fact that it could have a seven in front of it instead of a six in front of it is actually probably

033a pretty good thing. And also, if we're going to do something like so drastic, like maybe just going 45 minutes back rather than an hour is just um enough to kind of see how it goes really. Um and so I'm I'm inclined to um to head in that direction as well. Karen, maybe maybe you should appoint a facilitator. I haven't se Yeah, I mean I was going to say I I can make a comment and then I can call, you know, I see Laura's hand up now. Um I was offering to be your facilitator. Oh, you can be my facilitator if you'd like to as well. I was just going to say, you know, much like Sophie and Kathleen, and I'm sure most people here, I mean, I think changing school start times when we

034did it the first time, it was a a very slippery slope, but we made the, you know, we we jumped in with both feet and made the decision to do so um to support this, you know, social, you know, the mental health and sleep habits of our high schoolers. Um, you know, based on on, you know, act scientific studies and and whatnot and um I hate to be making this decision solely based on the financials but you know we're are you know our our hand is being you know is being forced here and certainly you know we can go through and cut and you know so many different ways and try to make up $2 million somewhere along the way but I you know I I think that this is you know un the unfortunate

035aspect of this is that this is one scenario that won't imp you know I'm sure it will impact the classroom in some way but it I think it won't take away as much from the academic uh supports and things that we can give to our students. We're not cutting teachers. We're not um you know you know impacting programming and and things like that by doing this. Um I too would suggest the 745 um option. Um, you know, again, if we change the school times again, I really would love to see if we can continue to monitor what sort of impact that would have on student growth and academic excellence as well as student success on the fields on the stage and other extracurricular curricular endeavors like a pilot program. um you know if if it's

036if the impact of the students at GHS is I mean if if changing it back is is a huge change and we do see a major impact you know it may have more impact than we realize I think that that's something for us to keep our eye on um and push to bring it back if we if we have to you know if we can going forward but um you know I'm I'm loathed to do this but I don't see any other way to to get to a a a budget number uh that we're being asked to without without this Michael Joseph. I mean I um loathe is a good word. I I I think we have to think of a couple of perspectives here. I mean there's a lot of different things um and

037options. None of them great. Um but um I think it would be incorrect to look at scenario five or you know scenario five as um or six the changing the high school start time as well. It's an easy one to do because it doesn't touch academics. Um I think to Sophie's point um I think it does touch academics. I think we saw finally in just a Greenwich Together survey last week. Uh some positive trends in all of our social emotional data and um coming out of CO and things and um having the the conversation that this community had 8 years ago to go back on that um for what seems like an odd reason um or not a reason that's grounded in anything other than to reach a number is is unfortunate. Um, I'm not

038quite sure um because we don't have a budget exactly what decisions we're making tonight. The um, you know, one thing that's worth saying, I think scenario three is probably a no-brainer. Uh, if we have to do something, I think it sounds like changing elementary is off the table given the survey, but if if we're trying to back into a different number, you know, scenario three is pretty, you know, which we haven't really talked about at all. you know, you're talking about 20 minutes to the middle school, 15 minutes to some of the middle schools. I think that is um is interesting and and worth considering if especially if um the situation changes. One thing that um is also worth noting that I actually didn't realize on scenario 6, if I'm right, so scenario 6 is

039the new one which GHS starting at 7:45. If I'm reading this right, that currently Hamav, JC, and New Labs start a half an hour earlier than our other elementary schools. Is that is that right on this scenario? Yes. No, currently they do. Yes. And they get out. Yes, they do. Right. So that's that's that's fascinating and maybe an an interesting benefit here. It's curious that um schools with um obviously our most disadvantaged populations and most uh uh challenging and and and have the the the biggest uh gaps and skills compared to the other schools start a half an hour earlier than the other side of town. The um I didn't realize that. So, if we're talking about the importance of sleep and things, um it's it's it's curious that I mean that's that that's clearly

040a structural problem that scenario six actually fixes. Um because it gives um that side of town more more more, you know, another half an hour sleep. Uh which could actually improve help help the improvement act because that Yeah, this has to do with the buses. It has to do with where the buses are coming from. Um because you're talking about the west side of town. So, if you have buses that are primarily before them dropping off the east side, you've got to be able to get buses over um and it it's how they structure the routes. We can certainly go in and look at it again, but it's structured that way for a reason. I mean, and I thank the board for putting this meeting off on Tuesday and waiting till Thursday because this was

041one of the primary reasons when we knew we needed a new scenario. It takes hours and hours and hours and um thank you to to Kayla Coker who runs all these for us but there's definitely a reason for it and I could get an answer for you. What what happens what happens um at the high school with um both morning to what um um Kathleen was saying with both morning and and afternoon um supports and clubs and activities and stuff with the change to 7:45. How would that what would that what would that do to things? I think that's part of the the whole discussion going forward and but quite frankly I've been here six years. we've done something different every year because flex was such a mess in many ways um for for clubs

042for everything. And so I've had a couple of high school students reach out who actually um like it because they feel like they could go back to having some clubs after school. And right now they're already coming according to the student input that I've received and I don't know how widely spread but some of the clubs are already there at like 7:30 7:45 right now. So they felt like this actually would be helpful for them. Anyone else facilitator speaking? I I can just speak kind of anecdotally to your question, Michael Joseph, that um you know, for students who are participating in sports after school, it's hard for them to go to extra help. And so going before school is ideal and a lot of teachers get to school early because they're trying to beat the

043traffic. So, you know, I I I am concerned about that. Um that it is a it's a good time to go in to get extra help, make up a test um for kids with 504s who need to take, you know, need extra time to be there early in the morning to start stuff like that. So, I mean, it's something that we would have to grapple with. This is why it's extremely less than ideal. But then anecdotally on the positive, I heard from a bunch of people at the high school today saying that, you know, we adjusted for sports, but that this will certainly be helpful again to sports because they can get up, you know, up the coast, if you will, um by four o'clock, which is when many of the the games start and

044then of course there will also be more light, which as we all know we're challenged by. So yeah, I was going to say additionally, I mean, you know, the school ran at those hours for so so many years and it and it worked. Um, you know, we I know the studies were done focused on uh giving the students at the middle and high school um more sleep. It wasn't they didn't really focus on the elementary school students. They didn't suggest the change uh in in to a later start time for them. It was based on circadium the circadian rhythms that start uh around puberty. Um which is why, you know, we really never looked to do anything for the elementary students at that point. Um but you know again anecdotally um you know it students

045will miss less school still miss less school if we do this um if they're student athletes or they're they have other um after school activities. It gives students an opportunity maybe to do um clubs uh if they're you know not going to a game and they want to be able to have the opportunity to participate there. This school is doing um practice um which is what students were able to do prior to this. So maybe it'll give them more opportunities for that. Um and then finally, I think also um you know, I think that there's a lot of benefits um for them if they, you know, they'll be coming home earlier, right? You know, they were stuck in traffic, they were missing classes to get to games um and stuck, you know, coming home much

046later. So if we're actually able to get to the games on time, we'll miss the traffic and they'll be able to get home earlier to be able to get their work done. Um you know, or at least hopefully. um you know so that that's a I would hope would be a positive in an otherwise uh unp you know unpopular decision that we might have to make here. Ms. Stow is raising her hand. Um I also just on behalf of every student feel like I have to pick scenario six because you actually go to school less it seems than versus scenario five. Is anyone else following that? Like so the proposed time is 7:45 to 2:10 whereas the other one is 7:30 to 2:15. Am I missing something? Scenario five is what we just put it

047back to what it was originally was before the change made. Scenario six, we just did the math associated with the 45minut adjustment. So it is the five. You're absolutely right. It is the five minutes, but scenario five just went back to the baseline. Got it. Okay. Okay. I felt it was like the express train or something. Okay, got it. All right, that makes sense. Thank you. I see Wendy's hand up. I know it's probably hard for you to see that, Laura. Oh, Wendy, go ahead. Um, so while I you know co Cody and I I don't know if you both realize we are products. We we of the 7:30 a.m. start time and we did survive to all of you students and people angry parents, angry people that are emailing us. Um, you know, and

048I have a high schooler. He's not going to be thrilled with me. But, you know, I I think getting home from sports is is always a plus because you can eat dinner, you can do your homework, and get to bed earlier. Um, but, you know, I'd be open to scenario six, too. So, either one of them I'm open to. I I mean, I think you to your point, going in early for extra help, 7:45 is a good start time. It's not as bad as 7:30. But what do you think what we could have accomplished with an extra 15 minutes every day? I'm going to call on myself and say that I think we should remind the BET once again that we gave them 4 million in revenue and um I think we should send them

049a bill for 2 million for the private school busing so that the town can cover it. So that's my feedback. I am consistent. Um, are we ripe for more discussion? Go ahead. Oh, Cody got you. I'd be remiss to remind my peers that the reason we have to pay for private school busing, which makes no sense to me, uh is the uh mandate from the uh people in Hartford, including someone, you know, well, as an aside, I was going to mention it that you know you know people who live in town, whether they have students in public or private school are paying taxes and some of you know, some of that obviously goes towards our schools including if you have a student in private school. Um it is a state mandate that we um provide

050busing for private schools but only if they reach a certain threshold um of students. And I was going to say Dr. Jones, have we um I know in the past we've reached out to double check that, you know, they they usually request um I know some of the schools uh chose not to get transportation um they thought they would be at or under. Have we just have we checked recently to make sure that they're all at or above? Yes, it's an annual report uh that we check every year and the one that usually uh is right on the cusp is Eagle Hill and I've already met with them uh twice in the last few months. So they are on notice that if they have the same percentage in the fall that they have right now,

051they will have to be pay for their own buses because they it's has to do with how many students live in Connecticut and how many students live in New York that actually attend their school. And that's the one school that um can easily swing to have more New York students. Okay. So there's a possibility that that things could change there too. Um although I I have a feeling if they're close enough to the cusp we would still extend that busing to them. Um, so, um, yeah, I mean, I'm not thrilled with this and and much like Laura has said, um, you know, we certainly have given them back revenue and I believe the private school busing was because, you know, obviously the taxes go towards the town and that money was I think the town

052originally paid for the busing for private school, but a few years ago they put it back onto our plate. Is that correct to come out of our budget? Yes, that's correct. So, do you want do you know what year that was? Just out of curiosity. I can't remember off the top of my head. No, that predates me. Okay. So, yeah. I mean, that is another point to be made, but I don't I don't mean to go backwards, but I did have a title one principal just share that the title one schools are running earlier, and this has to do historically, I guess, uh because the parents need to go to work. So, it's actually very positive for them. Um and in this survey, if I disagregated by school, which I I did as well. I

053just didn't bring it tonight. Hammav was the school that was much more positive about an earlier start. So I would say that brings the validity to that. Um again I know this was something that we as a board um discussed last week um without the um additional scenario uh six um though it's still sort of in line with some of the ideas that we went over last week. Um, you know, I don't know if the budget committee would like to take a vote on this separately. Um, and then we can discuss some of the other ideas. You know, we can always revise if we need to um vote. But, um, that's just my my thoughts. I don't know if you guys want to take a vote on this just to get an idea of what

054else we might need to look at. What are we finding? So, I think we should kind of maybe go through everything else quickly. Um, but I do think that maybe we should have a a view on transportation if we're all for it. Okay, that's probably very helpful. Um, but I think otherwise let's we obviously have some people there's a lot of people online. This was posted. We should probably discuss some of the thinking real quickly behind all the other items. Um, but I do think at the end of the day it probably important we give a view on transportation tonight. Yeah. And that's why I was saying I don't know if you guys wanted to do a straw poll or do you want a sense of the meeting? Yeah. I just that's why I'm wondering

055if you guys wanted to do a sense of the meeting just on this now just to sort of see. I think it makes a difference on That's fine. Okay. I'll ask each person about their preferred scenario. Is that what you want? Well, I could do a sense of the meeting and maybe just lead with one of the items. So, um, I'd like to take a sense of the meeting that the high school starts at 7:45 a.m. overhauling the three terror bus route for a change of 1,957,842. Which scenario? Six. And it's not an actual motion. It's the sense of the meeting, but I guess someone can still second it. I'll second it because I'm I think it will help us with our discussions as we move forward. I'll make you can call the votes. I

056mean it's discussion so go ahead. I'll just make mine easier. I'm relatively indifferent between scenarios five and six and actually generally all of them and so would follow whatever consensus we can get amongst everybody else. What's your pleasure? Um the motion I put forth. So the 745. Okay. Uh me, I'm no for everything. That's the one thing. Uh and then uh Jen, um I would say like Cody, I'm between five and six. Okay, Miss Coven, um I would be reluctantly supportive of six. Doctor, I am only supportive of scenario three. Okay, Wendy, what's your preference? Oh, you're on mute. Reluctantly between scenario five and six. Okay, Karen, what's your feeling? My feeling is that this this is a painful exercise that I wish we truly did not have to go through, but I think the

057only way to get where we need to go is to have to make a which I said last week is to change school start times again. Um, and unfortunately, you know, I'm much like Jen and and Wendy. I'm between scenarios five and six, although I would prefer to do none of them like Laura. But I think that, you know, we have to be somewhat responsive. That's the only thing I can think is five or six. Preferably six, but uh well uh Dr. Manty Anthony is the outlier at number three. I don't you Laura, remember I don't disagree. I I'm indifferent between three, five, and six. So you're changing your vote. Okay. Mine already was that it was state of indifference, but a minor favorable. All right, so I don't know where that leaves us. Okay,

058let's keep going then. Okay, who's uh going to lead us through the other options? I mean, neither one of us want to do it. I was happy to do it, but I think the way things have gone, it's better for the ruling party to take us through this. So, Dr. Jo, so I'm happy to sort of Dr. Jones, would you like to take us through it or I'm happy to sort of I mean, this came from a thousand people, right? So, are we are we going through the options that were also provided last week because this I think we had a sense in the meeting on those last week. So, I think we're I mean, I think they're off the table. I think everyone showed their they didn't want to do the advanced learning program

059and the sense of the meeting was also against paytoplay. Right. Agreed. So I think now we're kind of at the next list of options. Okay. I know we took a definite sense of the meeting on ALP. I'm going to go back and look. I don't remember fully on paytoplay. It did not seem like it was uh something that the board was in favor of though if I'm not incorrect. Go ahead Dr. Jones. Okay. And I just like I've done the last two meetings, I just want to start out and say this list is generated by, you know, input from GOSA, from GA, from the board of ed, from community members. So there's a there's a lot on here. Um the first two items were built into the budget um this year. The first one is

060positive pathways um which is a program that we were trying to build for elementary and it's specifically for children who are more disregulated and as you know we've been seeing uh a positive turn in the number and the percentage of students who are outplaced uh which again allows us to have you know a more positive budget where we can put dollars where we need them. Um, and I will say when you're looking at a program like this, I know it's easy to cut it because it doesn't exist, but that 343,000 actually saves money. And I know that's hard to see. So, I just have to say that. And to give you an idea, um, when we have a little one and we need a a setting like that, they get on a bus in Greenwich.

061They usually, right now, it's up around Inson Sonia. They're on the bus for about 45 minutes. Um most of those parents would rather have their children be able to go to a neighbor a neighborhood school in Greenwich. Um but it it it is kind of um it's challenging to cut it because it's just going to cost us more actually. Um he hammav extended day. I know the board's talked a lot about that. Um I will say the hamm extended day. One thing I'm very thankful for is all of the funding from the alliance who this year and also um hopefully next year um they've really helped do a lot of uh power tutoring and things of that nature for students and so u we've been working on that. But both of those were brand new.

062Um the K5 reduction is going to be um based on minutes. That's a 2.0 FTE. The board talked a lot about this last year, but it was a bigger number. I think we were originally looking at six and seven and there was not uh the support from the board to cut those kind of minutes but this does shave minutes u from PE. Um the next one is an outgrowth out of last week's meeting where um there's some discussion about world language um or even from the end of last year. So instead of looking at one of the suggestions that was put forward, well actually even by two different groups was just do away with all world language um because it was a bigger number. This actually is third grade. It it would eliminate the third

063grade program and it says 2.0 because you have to go in and really calculate how many students are in third grade next year. So we would have to refine this number. Um number five is looking at the cross teaming. This has to do with central. um they have some cohorts that are a little bit smaller. I think this board talked a lot about being committed to teaming. Um what this does is more than likely sixth or seventh grade team. You'll have a teacher who has to do a little bit on sixth grade and a little bit on seventh grade. So for a couple of years we would have to go cross team and so and where and how that really impacts the teachers is the way their schedules are structured. When you're part of a

064team you share the same students. Well, if the teams are meeting, you know, at the same time or you're on one schedule or the other, you're going to miss team meetings and talking about students. And that's why we're committed to the teaming. But, um, that would cause a cross team of 2.0 positions. The, um, Greenwich High School House restructure is probably one of the bigger items on here. It's five different positions that goes across GOSA, GA, and GMEA. Um, when this one was put on here, I did quite a bit of research because I don't I didn't really know the history of Greenwich High School. Um, Caner House was put in right around 2003 and it was after um and again, I just I learned all this through studying the history of it. It was

065after um a board a year-long uh study because the high school was going to hit the threshold of 3,000 students and was getting very large. that was the anticipated. So they put in Caner House um and the house um and so obviously that was the additional house administrator which people in the community know this history um the dean of student and the assistant dean those came in right around 2012 um when Sydney Frey Dr. Fin was the superintendent. He was here for two years. His second year he put in the dean of student primarily to help with discipline. I'm sure it's morphed and changed since 2012. Um the assistant deans we all five were put in because again the house was all five were established by then and they were put in to be a

066point4 uh for each house and over time they are they are now full-time. Um and then there are three counselors. This includes one counseling position and an admin assistant. So that's what the positions are. Um that's where the history comes from. The restructure adult ed um adult education is required by law. The enrichment portion which is like when people take guitar or they want to go take ballroom dancing, whatever it is we're offering. Um that's not required. But this um actually just maintains to make sure that we have what is required by law but it's taking a go of position and actually readjusting that. Um more than likely we would not have a go of position uh doing that actual work. And then the print shop we've talked about the print shop a lot over

067the last two years. We used to run uh just two years ago fully functioning print shop for the town of Greenwich also for the schools. We had the huge flood. Um, so instead of restoring it, we actually went to a totally different model to see how it would work and we have a courier. We used a outside service in Stanford. This would totally eliminate it. So people need to take care of their own copying. Town of Greenwich could do their own uh budget books, whatever they need to do. We would do our own. Um, and we would no longer have a print shop at all. Um, the non-personnel Schooly is um a student software. Again, this was a recommendation. high school is the building where we still have Schooly and Google Classroom that are both

068utilized. Um in K8, we're all Google Classroom now. Um that change was made about two years ago for K8. Um we do have some curriculum materials um inside Schooly as well. So even though it's not a big dollar amount, there's some migration work that would have to happen. And I had another good question from somebody today about Schooly. So we're trying to be very thorough about that. But again, it's not a huge dollar amount, but it was somebody's suggestion. Um, curriculum, instruction materials, professional development consultant, those are coming down where we know they're manageable, but not so much that we actually can't do what we need to do. Um, the board is well aware we've been implementing the science of reading and our early grades, our writing units all the way through uh the um

069elementary like K5. we have that work to do next year um because we have the updated materials and we it will take our consultants actually come out and help everybody learn how to implement those materials. So um but it shaves off enough to be to be a help and then the transportation at the bottom. So those are the items that are on here tonight. Well, I mean, I'm happy to open discussion and just simply say, you know, again, these these are, you know, for the for the public that that are listening, um, you know, GOSA representatives, GA representatives and and members for both, um, because I've heard from a lot of staff as well. These are items as that the board had discussed um, as Dr. Jones mentioned before, things like a reduction in PE

070or or world language. Um and some of the items are a little bit you know are newer. Um so it doesn't mean that every single item here is on the table. It's just that these are things that we have discussed before. Um there are a few new ideas and they've come from various different uh areas. Um and I'm happy to you know if we want to go item by item or section by section which would you prefer. Kathleen and Cody. Uh Sophie has a question. I I just want to make a comment about positive pathways just starting at the top I guess. Um you know specifically the board of education and during my tenure anyway has been tasked from the BET with thinking about how can we bring down the cost of special education and

071positive pathways is actually a program that is intended to do that and also to you know improve the quality of our special education services for our most vulnerable students. So it feels deeply ironic to be considering to cut a program that has been, you know, thoughtfully developed to meet the needs of those students and would be, you know, resulting in cost savings over time. You know, I understand that we want to cut programs that don't exist yet as opposed to programs that we all already enjoy and that the students are attached to. Um, but this just feels absolutely pennywise pound foolish. Um, so you know, it just it feels like a terrible um prisoner dilemma to be cutting this program because I know next year it'll be like, well, how much money do we spend

072doing all these other things because we didn't have positive pathways, you know, and and so I just feel like it's incredibly foolish. Um but but I would cut it if I had to as opposed to cutting say PE minutes you know which is going to impact our students today that we're taking something away from them that they have right now. um you know I mean that's why I wanted to see how you guys wanted to run this discussion and I would say I think one of the other things I'd like to mention you know um suggestion well something that we were working on anyway and certainly something um that was brought forward um from the vice chair as well um and I drafted a letter to BET on our behalf. I'm happy to share it

073with you guys after the meeting, but I'd love to have a discussion of also sending um a letter to the BET um requesting, respectfully requesting that they reopen um the discussion on budget um in support of um the RTM SOR um as well as giving us that option. I know we're we're trying our best here to um work and show them that we are willing to to meet to meet them at least partially um and some of those reductions that they made. Again, I think I mentioned this last week, it's been mentioned several times. um the method which which with which they made those reductions um was slightly flawed in the fact that they gave a flat 3% increase for um staffing uh increases u salary increases and ours does not work that way. So

074they were already off by I believe was $1.7 million. They reduced two staff members thinking that they could consolidate us with the town. Um, and towns were paid for, but we had to put them back in at at our cost. Um, so, you know, I I'm hoping that they will be willing to see that we're willing to work on this. Um, but any of these reductions that we're talking about now, I mean, even including a redu a change in start time are going to have an impact on our students. And as much as we want to protect the students and the classroom and find ways to make reductions elsewise, um all of these will have some kind of negative impact. But we are we know that we, you know, have to be fiscally responsible um

075and uh respect the request of BET. Um but I'd really love to respectfully ask them to sit down at the table um and reopen discussions. I'd love to see if the, you know, the board itself would want to sign on. Um, and I'm happy to send that letter to you guys because I'd like to get that, you know, and make revisions if you guys are up for that as well. Miss Behead, yes, I would absolutely support sending a formal letter back to the BET. We are in this situation. Okay. And you have the public has heard it and there have been discussions and articles and there have been emails and outcry about this situation and frankly it's a situation that doesn't need to be. We are impacting students. Students are not dollar signs. You cannot

076equate the two. and looking at cuts that that hurt our kids in any way. We are a district that is so proud because we're distinction and we have all of these great accolades and that's the first thing that we we want to cut is the education portion of it. Yes. Could we be a little bit, you know, could we make cuts here and there that don't impact the classroom and don't um impact instruction, programming, etc. But, you know, we've heard from the community, the RTM has heard from their community. We have had, you know, emails written and I really strongly strongly support sending a formal letter back to the BET because those actions and that vote put us in this position. And you've heard it from most of the people on this board here saying

077that we are loathed to make these cuts to push us back where we want to have the best for our children. People buy in this town uh because of the educational system and we do. We have a great educational system. So instead of investing in it, we're going to pull it back and impact those kids. How is that fair? I'm sorry. I don't see it. Um, so I'm happy happy to support that formal letter back to the BET. I'll call on myself for a minute. I think all of these ideas diminish our program. It's not what our students and families um would benefit from. So um obviously I think it's all garbage. So are we taking a vote or are we going to to kind of quickly go through the items? Yeah. So, and I

078think in the interest of time, let's kind of move it. So, um is up as well. Who's Wendy? Okay, Wendy, go ahead. Um I just want to say I think we are looking at the wrong things. I mean, we are we really we're not even really looking at administrative bloat. I I not saying I'm just using this as an example, but I saw 105 secretaries or administrative assistants as do we I don't know if that's the right number. Is it? I don't know. But maybe that I would rather maybe eliminate a a a secretary or two. Maybe we don't need three at an elementary school or a middle school. um in instead of cutting gym or anything else that touches children's programming. To be fair, I I don't know the exact number of assistants, but

079a lot of them are not quote unquote secretaries. A lot of them are administrative assistants that actually um are doing more than than you know what you might think under that. That's but I don't know the exact number. I don't have the budget book in front of me. Okay. And and also we have 500 less students in our school district now. 500 and we have 20 more more teachers and and and going back we should get back to 2019 levels. Well, again, we don't have 500 less, but I would think more importantly, and I'm happy to share again with you that data it's we also have more need than we did in 2019 with students that need uh academic and psychological supports in other ways, especially Dr. Jones uh has some information. Well, and I

080think Karen, what you're speaking to, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but all of this data is out there. We presented the budget in November. We have done hours of meetings, hours of information and data, and we have graphs and charts that actually show that we now have gone from 11% to almost 16% in special education. you must by law have staff in order to teach those children and provide services. So what we have done, we've been very lucky actually that we've had a slight decline in enrollment so that we could take and when we didn't need a fourth grade teacher and move that across to special education. Had we not seen a slight decline in enrollment, we would have a whole bunch of teachers. So I think it's really important that we encourage

081the BET to go back for those members that didn't look at the data. Okay. So Michael Joseph, go ahead. I was going to a couple can we talk a little bit about specialies out a little bit because I I I guess I'm curious about some of the lineups. I know nobody wants to talk about, you know, um different bad decisions and and and every one of these is going to have its um um supporters. I don't know about Schooly. That seems like everybody should be on the same system at the high school. Probably the teacher who uses Schooly is going to be mad at that, but I have to deal with that. But that's only 32,000. What What happens with grade three world language? What is Because I remember us talking about this before. So

082what would students have instead of grade three world language? So what happens with that time? We would have to go back in and look at the schedule. Uh this year we made a commitment in K5 for everybody to have 60 minutes of planning. So that's that's what really drives it is making sure we have the planning time and we have to look at where that's going to come from and it would just be a matter of going and calculating the minutes literally school by school. Okay. So, um, should I just go to the list? Okay. Yeah. I think if you want to go from the top to the bottom, I think real fast. Yep. Okay. So, positive pathways. I think I agree with Sophie. I think it's a penny wise pound foolish. It's easy to

083get rid of things that haven't yet started, but I think when we have, you know, um, I think it's going to end up costing more than 300. Let's be very clear. So, if we suspect that that program will keep special education students in district, um any outof district placement is anywhere between 100 and $200,000 per student. So, it's not it's not a number. It's not a lot of students where you make that money back up quickly. Oh, thank you. About the uh extended day extended day. Does anyone have a thought on that? Well, I was just going to ask a question about positive pathways and Hamilton Avenue extended day, but for Hamilton Avenue Extended Day, I think it's something that the board really liked the idea of supported, but I know that it was still

084in the process of sort of working through. Would we be doing it for part of the school, the full school? I know that discussion was still happening. Um, and if we put that on the back burner for one year, would that, you know, I I would think, and I'll ask Dr. Jones cuz I'm certainly no expert. Would that give you guys more time to really get that program really set so everybody knows exactly what's going to happen and how it's going to run. Would it give you more time to plan? I mean, we can always have more time to plan, but this is actually the third year it's been presented. Okay. And then the other question regards to positive pathways. If we have to reduce that now and we end up finding funding um for

085part of it or in some other way, is that a program that could be started part of the way through the year if we needed to if we were able to get some kind of grant or we were able to, you know, go for an interim for it if it's we find we really need it this year. I think we could start it mid year. You probably would not have the same success you would have bringing students back. Um because right now what we try to do is if we have students that are in and out placement and they are on one of those long bus rides, we what we do is we work hard to say to the parents now we have a great program uh would you like you know to come back

086inside the district and we've been we've been successful uh bringing some of our kids back. So I'm not sure we would get the same. We also would not look at a grant um for a program like this because when the grant goes away, it's kind of like ARP how we had to be so thoughtful what we put on the grant because when it goes away um you just the funding goes away and um you don't it would put more into the operating budget. Okay. Okay. I mean I mean honestly like you know everybody else has said this is something that we were that you had looked into and and found ways to because it was a request from the BET that we looked find ways to keep our students in district and not have such

087exorbitant um out of district um costs if if we could find ways to to help retain those students and find a way to make sure that they were supported. And I do think that, you know, if it is $100,000 to, you know, as Michael Joseph said, all you need to do is keep three to four students in the district and you've already found that this was working. That's savings. You know, I don't and I don't know how anybody would take advantage of it if they were already being outplaced. Would they unoutplace their kid midyear? I don't I just don't think that that's practical. Future kids. Okay. Okay. So, I would argue for the Ham A that it's a similar situation in that you are um that kind of reme uh remediation and addressing student needs

088at the early level. Hammond Avenue is probably uh quite possibly um keeping costs down later on. those you know you you're meeting those needs in elementary school with the extended day and the more time and that is that's preventing bigger issues in middle school and high school for and higher cost of interventions and and other sections at that level. So I think you could probably make the same a same argument for hamath. That's the more popular of the two arguments I'm going to make. The second argument is that um I do not think it's um this is always this is a trade-off and it's a trade-off about choices um and priorities. Um I don't think it's ethical to um cut uh programs targeted at supporting students in getting to grade level in favor for some

089while keeping some of the programs that we have that are supporting students to accelerate beyond grade level. And before we went go to cut ham a I think we have to seriously look back at at at ALP and some of the post and some of those other things that nobody wants to touch. But it's not ethical to uh cut the programs for students that to get them to grade level um and keep accelerated programs particularly for students on the other side of town. Um all right say I have a response. I just you know and I I've said this many time before. I look if you're talking about advanced lang you know or ALP which we talked about last week and nobody wanted to reduce that um at all you know make the changes there

090I look at ALP as the other end of special education you're still providing a specialty special education for students that need more but they need more in a different way and I think it really supports students at all the levels because it's still giving you know it's it's reducing the class sizes in other ways and giving those students a more targeted um education to, you know, to their and focus on their needs as well in the traditional classroom as well as those that are moving. Certainly, that's certainly not a progressive position, Karen. Yeah, Cody. Um, you won't hear this from me a lot uh tonight, but I actually like these two programs and would not uh I think we thoroughly evaluate or I should say I like the HAMB one a lot. I think it's

091probably one of the highest dollars spent per student outcome improvement of anything that we look at. And um and I think that's why it survived the scrutiny the first time we did the budget. The other program I think is a um the only the key to it is to have some sort of followup. I won't be here but someone else should a year from now say, "Hey, what did we see?" It's very simple. If that program doesn't cause any outplacement changes, you should get rid of it. if it does, you'll know what the savings are. It's just and it's worth experimenting. Um, so I think both of those are not the right area to to focus on. Again, there's lots of other areas to focus on, but I wouldn't do those. Cool. Keep going. Um,

092K5 reduction in PE. I think we discussed this last year. I think the community kind of spoke on this, but I'm putting it back out to uh anybody else who wants to talk about it. I think we can move on down. Why do you use anyone? Okay. All right. Um cutting grade three world language. Um I mean I'll start. I think that um perhaps it's not the perfect program uh the elementary school world language program. Um, but I think it is a um I don't I don't know of any high performing school district that doesn't offer uh foreign language in the elementary school. So, I'd be concerned about doing that. They all do and and most of them in southern Fairfield County are K5. Uh I do not know if you guys want to discuss

093the CMS GHS. What do you want to go to next? Yeah. Well, I'm happy to talk about both if you'd like. Sure. I mean, as for Go to Central Middle School Cross Team. As for Central Middle School Cross Team, uh you know, I know that they have a slightly smaller student population currently, but we're rebuilding the school and I expect that those numbers will see like Glennville. if you build it, they will come. Um, and part of the things that we have been talking about and even just talked about um, earlier today with Dr. Jones is that we really focused on ensuring that there was consistency vertically and horizontally for all our students. No matter what elementary school you go to to what middle school, everybody walks into the high school with the same, you

094know, academic understandings. And I think to to make a change to the you know the teameing model at Central Middle School where the other two middle schools have that teameing model um will give more opportunity much like Michael Joseph says you know for things for kids to fall through the cracks right you know it's it's ensuring that you know the teams they have an opportunity they get together they discuss students who may be at risk or students who may need a little more support or students who are excelling and may need to move forward um they won't have the opportunity to do that if we change the the teameing model at Central Middle School, less giving. I think, you know, it's not not a lack of equity for those students there versus the students at

095Western and and Eastern, and I just I don't feel comfortable um making that change uh and giving them a different experience. Um and as for the the House administrators change, the restructuring, um I'm exceptionally concerned about that. Um, you know, we are sitting here, we just, as much as nobody likes it, we're all, you know, majority of us are in support of making some kind of change uh to school start time. The majority of us had said we'd be between five and six, which is the high school. Um, even if, you know, you said three, four, you know, three, five, and six. Five and six were there. That's the high school. Um, I think it would be a huge change for us to change the start time and then change the structure of the house

096system at GHS. Um I don't think it's fair and I think it's absolutely inappropriate inappropriate of us to discuss placing the brunt of all of these budgetary reductions um placed solely at the high school level. Um it's just far too much change at once. I mean that we we heard from a lot of staff and a lot of parents as well talking about the need uh for you know the staff at the high school you know um they're the first line of contact for parents for students who come in um and and need support you know at you know they have their their full workloads of staff there and I I truly think you know we it's much harder than it was uh in the past to provide support for these students saying they need

097support more quickly. You know, parents want responses. They don't like to wait. And you know, a lot of that also helps. Um, but mostly it really supports students with other needs at the high school as well. Um, a lot of these, you know, the assistant deans and things like that work on on, you know, work on um, you know, special education and other areas. I just I think it would be detrimental to make two huge changes like that at once. Anyone else? Wendy? Nobody has hands up. Okay. Uh the uh non-personnel portion. No. Restructuring restructuring adult ed. Could we talk about that? I mean Oh, yeah. That's under Yeah. Right. that that seem I I'm admittedly I'm I'm not I don't really know much about it, but it doesn't if I if I'm sticking with

098the theme of it not impacting our children, um I'm I'm okay with that change. It's uh $72,000. Not not going to get us to 2 million. No, but nobody it's something. Okay. If you're looking at that, right, it's not just that, you know, you have the FTE for that and then you look at eliminating somebody, you know, the print shop. Um, you know, yeah, I think those are two nobrainers. Ridiculous that we're that I didn't realize that we were doing outsourcing all of our print shop and still are paying for the town's printing. No, no. Nigh nigh I say. Okay. So, I think we have those seven and eight are no-brainers. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm moving to non-personnel. Going once, twice. No. Okay. Um, no, no, Wendy had her hand up. Oh, sorry, Wendy. Go

099ahead. No worries. Um, so can we just go back to number six for a minute? Can can you just can someone help me out and in understanding how eliminating a house impacts the other houses and how many more stu students uh per remaining house? Like what does that look like? And how many more counselors? How many more count like how many more students per counsel? How what will the case load of the counselors look like? How many more students are they going to have? Are there around 500 stu 500 students or so per house? I think Dr. Jones can answer that question. Go ahead, Tony. What I want to say is I I do have those numbers. I actually went out just when when this I knew this was going to be on here, but

100I don't have it formally ready for tonight. So, it's something I wouldn't want to send to the board. Um, because I went out and just looked at other high schools in the region and the way that you generally are looking is like counselor per student, admin per student. Um, and so we're still okay. Um, I can say that, but I would like to for to have the actual numbers and perhaps some comparables so that you would, you know, know what you're looking at. Okay, that would be great if you could get that to us. Um, thanks. Great. Thank you, Wendy. All right. Non-personnel. Um, schooly software. I did get a few like hate texts on this today, so I am not commenting on this. I'm going to let others do that. It's not broke. Maybe

101we don't fix it. But aren't aren't Sorry, I'll raise my hand. Oh, go ahead, Wendy. I don't think we need schooly and Google classroom. I feel like most people have transitioned away from schooly and they're using Google classroom. I mean are we paying for both? So if you go back really precoid uh we did have both but it was primarily uh 612 was on schooly K5 was on Google classroom. uh during COVID almost all well all but I mean literally a handful of teachers uh in middle school also solely utilized Google classroom so we were paying just over 100,000 for schooly initially about 120 and so once we realized because we run the usage usage on all of our software every year and once we knew it wasn't being utilized in in K8 we were

102able to reduce that that's why it's such a small amount now because it's only at the high school and in K8 we have teacher licenses so that it they can that's where the curriculum is sitting. we would have to migrate some of that over um and the Google classroom for the entire uh enterprise suite because Google is known for working with schools it's like 31,000 35,000 and that you know it it that was for the whole district so there was just such a huge difference in cost so everybody's using Google classroom except for the high school or or is part of the high school using Google Classroom and part of it using Schooly. So, it's it's it's really mixed. At the high school, there are teachers who still have um uh information in Schooly. As

103a matter of fact, I got a great question from a board member this week for a teacher that they knew put all of the math notes in um in Schooly. And the question was, if Schooly went away, what would that actually um do for that teacher? Do they lose all their notes? And then as I had somebody go out and look at it for us, it was actually in Oneote. It's just linking out. So it would be super easy just to have a different platform. That doesn't mean everybody is like that. Um, one of the issues that we need to explore a little bit uh more is for our specialty staff who uh like when they're in academic lab and they want to be able to find kids and what what's posted for your homework.

104Um there's a thought that it's much more difficult in Google Classroom, but it could be that we just don't understand the settings either and what we have on the enterprise because generally with Google Classroom, if they know they're competing, they get it fixed. So, we just may not know, but I don't have the answer to that. But because it's such a small dollar amount, I mean, we we would not do that until we have our questions answered. We want to make sure we're not messing somebody up, you know, instructionally. But I will say even a lot of our curriculum sits in Google but the link is on schooly. I was just going to ask um are we going to vote? What are we what's No. So we're just finishing up. So the curriculum and instructional

105materials and the eliminating the district level consultant. I mean I think those are again not directly impacting the classroom. So going with that theme I'm comfortable with those two changes. Is that fair? Anybody else generally? Yeah. I can't help but I can't help but wonder if uh particularly when it comes to consultant if we're we're able to do a little more um inhouse at this point. Um I know we don't um you know better than I but but if at this point you know if if we need to if we need to find another 100 grand might be a place to look. I'm in agreement with Michael. Well, I was going to say when it comes to professional development, um, you know, I know we've had teacher, you know, teacher teaching teacher model before, I

106mean, I don't know if this is eliminating some travel that may not be necessary, you know, I know or sending as many pe you know, to different things or just taking some of the prof professional development and just working on it without actually giving it. I you know um you know I know I know that's an area that we could possibly do a little bit work on and to me if schooly is not being used anywhere else then you know or if some of the it's only some of the staff using it I think that could probably go but I you know curriculum and and instructional materials I'm not sure that we could really do without that sort of stuff but yeah I just I do want to remind the board this is tied to

107the curriculum management plan it's tied to the strategic plan so you know that's one of the reasons we're getting good results, you have to support out in the buildings. And so that that's part of the complexity of it um is making sure that we can we have the funds to actually continue the work. Um the other thing I just want to remind the board, you know, one of the reasons that we're challenged with this is last year in order to meet basically try to get the budget lower, we pulled out the in the entire $800,000 of that curriculum side and then we used ARP. it and we messaged that. That message did not help us this year. So, anything we pull out in curriculum, I can tell you right now that as we're starting to

108build or think about FY27, it is going to be incredibly challenging budget year and we can't zero out our curriculum again. The first year I came here, we were almost zero. And and you know, the board wondered why we had 11 elementaryaries with 11 different math programs. Well, if you don't buy people what they need, and we had a teacher stand in front of us from the high school just at our last meeting talking about Spanish books that were 20 years old and had VHS tapes in them. That is not appropriate resources for our teachers. So, there's a lot on these lines that help us provide really what they need. So, I there's some there's always some in the rumor mill when they see something like this posted, oh, one consultant is like 400,000. That

109is not the case. There are lots of things that sit in those buckets. Well, I was also going to say, I think I noted this earlier that, you know, that we've had an exceptional exceptional year. Um, you know, I mentioned this earlier to others that it takes three years to see results, right, of of of change. You know, our strategic plan, we're seeing, you know, great change and great movement. It's the greatest year of student achievement gains that we've had in in quite a few years, right? We've had more schools of distinction in our than ever in the history of uh you know state recognizing these things. We've had more of our schools in the top five in Connecticut and at every level and some being acknowledged uh nationally um you know and a lot

110of other other amazing accolades for schools especially even things like New Lebanon right and we're seeing a lot more excellence in in the areas of of that and and movement. So for us to then turn around and say we wanted to make sure that curriculum and instruction was, you know, matching on all levels vertically and horizontally, it's like I guess we can get rid of some of the curriculum and instructional materials. It's detrimental. It's detrimental not just to our students, it's detrimental to our staff as well, I think, in providing our students what they need. And I see Wendy's. Can can we at least stop with the international travel to Scotland and Ireland for people? Maybe we shouldn't pay for that. So, I do want to address that because that question was asked of me

111and um that was and I know the person that you're talking about that actually was fully paid for. I'm not saying that it's great to have people traveling just even the look of that um but it was fully paid for. That was not operational funds for the person who went uh to study colleges overseas. to go the whole thing By the grant, I'm sorry, not by us. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Did someone else have a hand? Jen, you had a hand, right? No, I was just going to piggyback and and support what Karen was saying about, you know, having curriculum and instruction materials. You know, these are the tools that help not only the teachers but help the students. And again, I just find it mind-blowing that we as a district are actually um have to

112consider cutting curriculum and instruction materials that aid the students in their learning and cutting into their potential. I I just find it absolutely mind-blowing that it's come down to this conversation. I I hear you. So, um I think we've sort of run the uh the gamut here, at least that we have for this evening. I think that the the big takeaway, which is the is the big number, um that we all agree on in some form, although not happily, is is transportation. Um I think it, you know, it's best to do that so that we have the least impact on the classroom. That that being the theme. Um, so we're somewhere between that 730 and 745 scenario for the high school. Um, yielding two to$ two and a half million dollars of savings. I heard

113consensus on nothing else with the exception of um 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. So, um, I think we have to go back to the drawing board on some of the other items is my understanding. I'm not saying I I didn't hear absolute nos, but I definitely didn't hear consensus. Um, ALP, we had taken a sense in the meeting, but if that someone else has raised that, that's their prerogative. Um, and paytoplay, I thought we had taken a sense of the meeting, but you know, have at it if we have to also bring that back. Um, but I think the community sort of spoke on that as well, but now I believe there's a weekend. I think we're asking the BET to come back hopefully. Um, and so Karen, I I turn it back over

114to you, but otherwise I think um hopefully we'll I assume we'll hear from people over the weekend on where they stand on many of these items. So, as I stated before, you know, I drafted a letter that I'm going to I'd love to have the board sign off on, not just from me, but from all of us I can share with you later. um as I'd like to send it to them basically respectfully asking them to uh urgently reopen the discussions on the you know fiscal year 2526 operating budget um their discussions on that for the Greenwich public schools um you know I I think you know the the RTM spoke strongly as well uh with their sense of the meeting resolution so you know we have two two boards here um you know asking

115them to to please take a look back um it's clear that we want to be able to work with Um we understand the importance of the fiscal responsibility here um and the town's budgetary restraints but we are prepared to work with the bet and sort of consider reasonable reductions where feasible. Um however a cut of 4 uh.1 to 5 million is far beyond what can be absorbed without causing serious harm to our educational program. And um you know I I think you know I will happily share that letter. I'd love to get everybody's sign off, but um I I do think and hopefully and I know that there are some BET members uh online and watching tonight that they know that we we are willing to try to to meet with them, but just remember

116that the impact of these cuts is not abstract. Reductions at this scale threaten the educational opportunities we offer our students and and really, you know, are going to jeopardize kind of the long-standing reputation of Brenish public schools. Um and we'd really like to um find a way to sort of meet in the middle somewhere um if possible. So um I'll share that with the board um after the meeting and and see if we can share that as a group. I see Dr. Jones's hand up. So because we do have uh BET members in the audience, they can at least nod for me if I'm correct because the one thing people have been asking about is the timing. It is my understanding they would ha they would need to post the meeting tomorrow and it needs

117to be voted on by Monday. That is the last date. So they're nodding yes. Um so it would need to be posted tomorrow. Um and and I will like I said happily send that letter out. Um I just I really want them to know that we are trying our best here to work with them and there are no easy answers and no easy solutions. Um and um you know I just we have a responsibility to protect you know the future you know for our children and and you know the you know the children of Greenwich um and ensure that we are you know helping to educate um and send out you know fully fully educated and you know adults into the world when they leave our our school system. And I I think it's clear

118we're willing to put everything on the table to look at. It's just there's going to be some hard decisions coming. I just don't know how we're going to reach 4.1. And I I truly hope that they will, you know, take into into account some of the the, you know, miscalculations and and things like that and work with us, you know, to know that we're we're willing to meet them partially if possible. Cody wants to speak to I would not be in support of that letter. Um, having spent many hours going through the details of this, I don't think we've fully done our job. Uh, there's definitely I think honestly what I observe is mostly political theatrics here. I understand the dynamic that it's much easier to not actually put something forward to just say that

119everything is so difficult and the sky is falling that a 5% increase turning into a 3% increase is, you know, um, the end of the world or whatever. uh and then try to force the hand of our counterparties. I think that's irresponsible. There are things we can do. Not all of them are agreeable. That's our job is to have competing priorities and to evaluate where we think the highest uh best outcome is per dollar spent as it relates to our strategic priorities and student outcomes. I thought we were on track to have a more serious discussion about this. It became apparent to me tonight that that's not the case, which I'm disappointed in. But um I would be it won't matter because the way that the board has decided to operate starting tonight is to

120ignore the Republican caucus's view. Um but my hope was that we were going to be much more constructive about this. And uh and so you can do that because you have five votes for a letter, but uh definitely do not have my support. And I think I probably spent more time on the individual line items, most of which are not presented here than at least most of the folks here. Um, so it's just I think this is a real shame. Well, Cody, do you have a motion to make? No. Oh, well then if you're not going to offer a solution and you're just going to criticize the rest of us, if you have a motion to make, that's a practical motion, you can make it. Nobody's preventing you. If I make a motion that loses

12135, it doesn't matter. Right? So I'm can recognize the practical reality. People who have spoken in favor of start time changes, which is a high dollar amount, but if you're not going to make the motion, then what's the difference? We're not We have not done what we've been passed to do yet. We don't have a 4 and a half uh uh change to the budget yet. Okay. But you could get halfway there if you're willing to make a motion. I think we've I think we had I think we had kind of concluded the meeting and honestly it's nine o'clock and we've asked for people to send us emails and to continue our analysis and I think we should leave it there and I'd like to make a motion to adjurnn. I'd second that. Okay. Well

122then I guess all in favor we have to guess we'll do it verbally. Laura, do you want to take the mo vote? I mean I'll take the vote. Are we taking a voice vote on the motion? Yes. Okay. Sophie, yes. Wendy, yes. Karen, yes. I'm a no. If you want to keep working, I'm ready to work. Yes. We stand adjourned. Thank you. Good night.