April 24, 2025 Board of Education Business Meeting

001Okay, it's 7:02. Um, and I'd like to call this meeting of the board of education to order and ask that we all stand and say the pledge of allegiance. Uh prior to moving on to our next agenda item, um which is our consent agenda, I'd like to take a moment and ask everyone for a moment of silence. Um as many as you many of you know, the Greenwich Public School community uh recently experienced a loss with the untimely passing of one of our beloved teachers, m Mr. Joseph Baski uh who passed away unexpectedly and the loss is going to be felt deeply throughout our entire school community. Um he was a valued member of our social studies department and touched many lives uh students and colleagues during the 27 years at which he taught at

002Greenwich High School. Um he will be greatly missed and um our hearts are with his wife Michelle, his children, his family and the extended community of students who have had the pleasure of having him as an educator. Um, and with that, I'd like to just ask for a quick moment of silence. Thank you. Um, and with that, I'd like to move on to the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to accept the consent agenda, Kathleen? Uh, okay. All in favor? Yes. Uh, I don't think we approved all of them now. I can go back and look. Uh, I don't think we did. I think one of them was on and then we hadn't actually approved it at the at that meeting. The whole package was taken down and we had to revote on them.

003Okay. All in [Music] favor? Sorry, and I can't see Wendy. Are you all in favor? Yes. Oh, okay. So, that is a 701. They pass. Okay. Um, next on our agenda, um, are public comments. Um, starting with the high school student government. I see I see our gentleman there. Come on up. Can you hear me? All right. Hi, Chair Hirsh, Dr. Jones, and members of the board. I hope everyone had a relaxing April break. My name is Mihir Sha, and I'm the student body vice president at Greenwich High School. April is the last full month of classes for many of the seniors. as next month most of us are going to be off in our communities engaging in the workforce on internship or doing a project. I'll be out working for Mrs. Marinacio at wisdom.io

004for those wondering. I'd first like to start by describing the many events that took place this past month in student government. The sophomores are working on organizing a fun run in May, a 5K, and other activities to enjoy the amazing weather we've been having. The juniors are also in the midst of planning fundraisers and events to cap off their junior year. And we seniors are working on ending the high school on a high note with events, games, and spirit in the coming weeks and numerous senior events to end the year. Finally, our student government elections for the 202526 school year are kicking off with many candidates running for each position. Election day is May 29th, and we'll share our updates next month. As for the upcoming school budget, many of the students have been following

005the budget discussion and are frustrated that the board of ed has to find more than $4 million to cut out from our schools. We heard about the idea to move the GHS start time from 7:30 a.m. as a way to save $2.5 million to avoid cutting many teachers. In our mass meeting, we discussed this idea and several students support taking gradual steps towards a 7:30 a.m. start, but also want to ensure that the entire community has a chance to share input on this big dis decision. For example, we could start at 8:00 one year and then 7:45, then 7:30 instead of just going from 8:30 to 7:30. Um the ghs student government will solicit feedback from many students as this converta conversation continues in our town over the next few weeks. Thanks for having me

006once again. It's always an honor to speak at the board about all the great things at GHS. And now I'd like to introduce our student body president, Rocky. Good evening members of the board of education, Dr. Jones and esteemed community members. As always, it's great to be here to share some updates about student government and our efforts to improve the school community. First, some updates on our student government subcommittees. The community service subcommittee chaired by Leila Galal hosted their GHS community service fair yesterday in the media center, bringing over 12 local nonprofit organizations for students to help out and earn community service hours from. Overall, the event was a major success and we hope that this event will be passed down by future student governments. Additionally, the subcommittee will be hard at work organizing the

007annual Red Cross blood drive, which is set to take place on April 30th. Meanwhile, the advisor based subcommittee headed by Angela Bay is looking to implement more auditorium based events for next year's AB schedule after the sophomore class's success with their AB Jeopardy event. Some considerations include bringing in guest speakers for special holidays and commemorations uh social emotional learning lectures and engaging fun activities like Jeopardy. Lastly, as Mihir said, looking forward to the our end of year plans, our student government elections are set to kick off this week and our new student body president and vice president will be joining us at our last board of education meeting together in June. Thank you for your dedicated support and we're excited to share updates again at our next meeting. Thanks, guys. And I know it's going

008to be really hard to keep focused on school work with the lovely weather outside, but just remember, you only have a month. Just dig in there. Uh, exactly. But who's counting? Um, next up we have GA comments. Comments from Lil here. I see you hiding over there. Come on down. I got props. Good evening, Chair Hirs, Dr. Jones, board members, teachers, parents, students, and our entire Greenwich community members. I'm Lillian Peron, president of the Greenwich Education Association. You know, I was looking back over the last five years of speeches during this time of year, uh, and I noticed a trend. Now this may come as a surprise to you all standing here uh that this trend GA seems to always be standing here and asking the BET to fund the budget. And here I am

009again standing before all of you and asking the BET to reconsider the SOM of the RTM and fund the board of ed fiscally responsible budget. Go figure. These six BET members are spin masters trying to mislead the public with false narratives. Again, saying that our teachers are paid too much. The BET and the town were at the table. I know because I was there for the last five negotiations. We want to hire the least expensive teacher. Yep. That's all what we do in real life. We hire the least qualified, the least qualified to build our homes, the least qualified surgeons. I think not. Again, every year, the same six who shall not be named talk about absenteeism. Trending absentee rate in Connecticut and nationally has tended higher. And yes, in Greenwich, it is trending a

010bit higher. Maybe we should ask why. We're told we're paid too much. We're given too sick, taking too many sick days. But we are short pairers, short substitutes. And we need to cover classes, give up prep time, pick up work of unfilled positions. Now, I know teachers been called superheroes. But you know, I have to tell you, we do get over work. We laugh. We do cry. We get stressed. We get sick. We have family members that are sick. We have children that are sick. We are humans, too. It is very hurtful. These continued attacks against teachers and lack of respect for teachers must stop. My teachers are upset about this. And if it hurts teachers, it's not good for students. We have all have seen and lived through the havoc of not funding our

011school buildings. These conditions are unsustainable. Our students, family, and staff deserve more, and Greenwich has more to give. We need to fully fund our budget. These continued cuts in order to keep the mill rate as flat as possible are not only decimating to our schools but negatively impact our entire community. The hallmark of a Greenwich education has always been for striving for excellence is what our students deserve and what a parents have come to expect. Our educators are dedicated professionals who diligently work and go above and beyond every day to serve the needs of every student. Greenwich deserves nothing less. I'd like to close make a public announcement as as um Chair Hirs has mentioned um it was a very difficult situation but sometimes in the darkest era or time in life there shines a

012bright light light to keep you going and the amount of work that Dr. Jones and Ralph and Dana did to help organize letting staff go to the services. The administrators all who stepped up all of them played an important role to doing double duty and covering in their building. So administrators came to the high school to cover classes. Teachers volunteered and pick up classes. That's what Greenwich is about. We stand up together in the darkest times and there's always a ray of light here and we show up and do the best. That's why I wore the hands. These are the hands of the community that lift us up. Our students, our staff, our administrators, our parents. I asked the BET to take the hair hands out of their pockets and 30 cents a day is

013small change for big impact and students. Please fund our schools and I won't give out your phone numbers. Don't worry. Thank you. Thank you, Lil. Um, next up, comments from PTA Council. Do I see John? John Fischer. Oh, is there an elephant in there? Please, I hope. I miss my buddy. We shall see, shall we? Uh, Cher Hirs, BOE members, uh, Superintendent Dr. Jones, everyone here and online. Uh, thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'm John Fischer, uh, Greenwich PTA Council President, parent of two of the 8,513 great kids in the Greenwich Public Schools. PTA Council is the nonpartisan umbrella organization made up by and for the 15 PTAs in town with just under 4,000 PTA families who invest millions of dollars and hundreds of volunteer hours every year to enhance the learning experience

014for every student and to support our teachers and our schools. We also want to add in regards to Mr. Baski that he was truly a beloved part of the community and we extend our condolences to his wife Michelle and his children Genevieve and Joe and his colleagues and his students at GHS and his friends and everyone whose lives he touched. Next, we want to add some of a round of huzzah on the groundbreaking at OS today. We thank and congratulate everyone who worked and jumped through countless hoops and did whatever was needed to be done to bring the G OS renovation to life, especially the building committee, James Waters, Dr. McCanthy Anthony. Isn't it amazing what can be accomplished with appropriate funding and support? So, let's talk about the elephant in the room. The BET

015vote put a huge bud budget sinkhole under the BOE, the administration, the schools, and the community. It's pathetic that an elephant-sized hole has dredged up discussions about dumping investments that are producing gains in the quality of our schools. Returning the GHS students to an early start time, early years ALP and foreign language. The community advocated for years to get these things in place to create better academic outcomes and better student achievements. and the student this community isn't accepting this. The first selectman issued a public statement asking the BET to reconsider the budget and specifically to rec consider the school's budget. The RTM on Monday overwhelmingly passed a sense of the meeting resolution asking the BET to reopen the operating budget vote to better meet the financial needs of the Greenwich public schools. There's an online

016community petition with over 1,600 signatures now and counting urging the BET to call a special meeting before May 5th and to increase funding to better meet the financial needs of the Greenwich Public Schools. We note the action item on the agenda, BET reduction from fiscal year 26 BOE operating budget. don't know what that is, but we suggest that it should be a vote on a sensitive meeting resolution from the BOE to the BET requesting them to reopen the operating budget vote and to increase funding to better meet the financial needs of the Greenwich Public Schools. I'll close by noting that National Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up. It starts on May 5th, ironically enough. There's no better way to demonstrate teacher appreciation than having everyone support better funding from the for the schools and the

017students and to support the teachers who p pour their hearts and souls into the schools and the students every day. Meanwhile, it seems like only yesterday that we were discussing the superintendent's contract extension. With that, I'll thank you for your public service and for this time to speak. [Music] Thank you, John, and uh Mr. Elephant for coming up here. Always my favorite. Um next up, we have community comments. Just please remember um you have three minutes to speak. Our secretary will call and bring you up. If uh you run over, please feel free to submit your written comments to us afterwards. Um, and we just ask everybody's respectful. I know we have a a long meeting and some deep discussions ahead. So, with that, uh, we look forward to hearing hearing from you all. All

018right, I'm going to try and prioritize those with children so that you can get home and do homework and all the other things you might need to do. So, the first uh on the list is Peter Schwarzstein and children. Uh the second speaker is Sabrina, age nine. She will be next. Um you can give me a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether you want me to interrupt you with a 30 m 30 second uh time cue. Um thank you to the board and Dr. Jones for allowing um people to share comments today. My name is Peter Schwarzstein. Uh my three kids and I recently spoke at a BET public hearing. Um and I won't reiterate everything we said in that meeting. Obviously, you know what happened at the BET after that meeting. In the

019wake of the BET making that irrational and frankly unjustified decision to defund our schools, you all are faced with incredibly tough decisions, basically only tough decisions at this point, unless something does change. As as John mentioned, given that reality, we as the Greenwich community need to prioritize and protect programs that number one advance student performance in math, reading, and writing. In other words, core academic skills. And number two, prioritize those that provide social and emotional learning benefits to our students that support their learning and development. and you look at all the programs and policies and expenditures that you all are going to be looking at and potentially facing tough decisions about. There's one program that accomplishes both of these goals that serves to advance our students performance in those key academic programs and that provides

020social and emotional benefits to all students, not just to a specific group of students. and that's the advanced learning program. And again, I I don't I know it's impossible for you all to choose among all the great programs that Greenwich Public Schools offer, but when you look at the advanced learning program, when you look at what ALP does, both for the students who need more and for the students who are not pulled out from the class, but then have a teacher who's able to differentiate for those students and not face a situation where I need to teach at multiple levels in the same classroom, which only leads to problems with class discipline and with students getting unruly. Frankly, I was in a at a school in the suburbs of Boston growing up, uh, public school,

021and it was a a town very similar to Greenwich. It did not have a program like Alp in my elementary school. And I was that kid who was acting out because I was bored. And uh you know I think my daughter Morgan who's 12, she's at CMS. I think she would say that before she was in ALP, she faced some of those challenges and things really changed for her in second and third grade and beyond. So, you know, again, at the end of the day, I'm not going to go through all the arguments for ALP. I think you've heard them all. You recognize them all. Um but I I just want to stand up stand up here and say I've heard so many great stories about the ALT program from other parents. We've seen it

022with our own kids. Um, it's an it's a program that's not inexpensive, but it's a program that services both the students who are pulled out and the students who are left in that classroom. And I want to just end by having my daughter Morgan share a couple quick comments. The out program has changed. The out program has changed my life. Please don't destroy this opportunity for my younger brothers and so many students in the future. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Uh, do we have Sabrina? Good evening, members of the board of education. My name is Sabrina Hess. I'm a fourth grade student at Costco Elementary where I'm a member of student council. I'm also in all three ALP classes or ALB classes. I know you have difficult decisions to make, but before you

023do, I want you to understand how important ALP is to kids like me. Before ALP, I got yelled at for finishing my math assignment quickly and working on to the next lesson. I didn't even want to go to school anymore. In ALP, I get to do challenging work that pushes me to explore topics more deeply. It's actually fun. And now I have friends whose brains work like mine. In ALP, we get to do extra projects on things we're excited about. A couple weeks ago, one of my ALP science classmates did a project on sodium chloride. That's table salt. It wasn't an assignment. He just thought it was really interesting and wanted to do a presentation for the class. And our teacher, our math, our math al teacher and science teacher, Mr. Mucio, let him. ALP

024is the only place we get to do things like that. In Alp English, I discovered I really like writing poetry. My teacher, Miss Sar, has been encouraging me, so I wrote some over break for my grandmother. I am also working on my first novel. I got the first seven chapters done, and Miss Sar let me share it with the class. I'm in fourth grade al math, and we are doing fifth grade math, and I'm doing well in it. If you cut ALP, then I'll have to do fifth grade math again next year. It doesn't seem fair that I wouldn't get to learn anything new in math for a whole year. Having a few of us in ALP also means my home room teacher has more time for the other kids and she can focus her

025lessons at the right level for them. So, ALP is even good for kids who aren't in ALP. Please save Alp, including for the second graders. We really need it. I neglected to say that next is Jack, aged nine. And while Jack's walking up here, I was going to say, when you're done with that novel, can I read it? I can't wait. I hope hope to get the copy of that. Sting testing. One, two, three. Okay. Hi, my name is Jack Gregory. I'm a fourth grader at Parkway Elementary School and I disagree with the reduction of $4.1 million to Greenwich to the Greenwich Public Schools budget. And this is why. My first grade teacher, Miss Malikica, taught me how to read, and now I'm training out for reading ALP. My My second grade teacher, had to

026leave in the middle of the year. We were fortunate enough to have an amazing substitute teacher, Mrs. Hand, who is now a permanent teacher in GPS. She taught us math and was very kind to everyone. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Griffin, was wonderful. She was kind and very patient. My ability to speak in public started with her. Now in fourth grade, math got hard. And guess who came to my rescue? My fourth grade teacher, Mr. Wolfgber. And I'm beginning to feel confident. He is strict, but for the good of the class. There are more staff members at Parkway that contribute to our success. Like Miss Ettonazia, our librarian, and Mr. John and Mr. Young, our custodians who saved my friends James' ball from our sewer, or Miss Steel, the art teacher. My sister would have

027never found her passion for art without her. In conclusion, please reconsider these budget cuts and at the very least, please protect the wonderful people and programs in our school. Thank you. Next are the grant kids. What do you need? My name is Gavin Grant and I'm a second grader at Parkray Elementary. I moved to Parkray from my private school because of ALP program starting in second grade. ALP has allowed me to grow and feel seen. I love my teacher and the thought of that changes makes me sad. Please don't cut out. Thank you. Hello everyone. My name is Vivian Grant and I'm a fifth grader at Parkway School. I'll be going to Western Middle School next year and was looking forward to middle school sports. Sports brings people together and helps make new friendships. It's

028especially important for the sixth graders because we are new to the school. Middle school wouldn't be the same without sports. This year, I had a school play at Parkway School and the person in charge of that is my music teacher. I have heard that her budget is being cut. Please do not cut sports in my music teacher's budget. Thank you. Hi, my name is Scarlet Kaufman. I am a fourth grader attending Parkway School and I disagree with the um deduction of $4.05 million. Here is why Gernish public schools does so much for us. Um they help us all meet the standards. And um when I was in second grade and I didn't um I wasn't in an al class yet um I was getting I was already learning stuff that I already knew. And if

029we um if we cut that again and I'm not and we can't go to ALP again, I'm going to lose that um opportunity and I'm just going to be learning the same things again and again. Thank you. Uh, next is Carrie Gr and uh her Oh, it's You're not Carrie, but you look just like her. Hi, my name is Taylor Gers and I'm a seventh grader at Central. I want to speak on the behalf of middle school sports. I play softball and basketball for CMS and today I hit a game-winning three-run homer for Central. It was such an awesome feeling for the team to be cheering me on and celebrating me and our win. Riding back to on the bus to school with my team was just such an incredible feeling. I take pride in

030wearing my jersey to school on game days and CMS. Winning the girls basketball championship was one of the highlights of my winter. Middle school sports gives me the ability to bond with kids from other grades and other classes and makes me feel like a larger part of my CMS community. My middle school experience would be absolutely worsened if this wasn't able to be a such an important part of my life. Thank you. Was she yielding the rest of her time up to go? You are. Yeah. Hi, my name is Ana Gaeski. I will be a sixth grader here at Central next year. If you would ask me what I was most excited for in my middle school journey, it would be playing soccer for the school. I've heard middle school is hard no matter what,

031but I know the ropes of joining a team. The sense of belonging, community, and pride you will build with your team. To deprive anyone of that during such crucial years of development is incredibly detrimental to one's mental health and social emotional learning. Studies have shown that one of the only touch points for children in our techdriven world to build community is through playing sports together. Think about the children that will now not have a practice to go to and have to go home and sit in front of more screens instead. It has been said that in our town kids play club sports. My club, a local club, cost my parents $3,500 for me to play in. I'm here to advocate for the childrens that don't have that alternative access. You may also ask where I

032learned my ability to speak so po. You can thank my music teacher at Parkway Elementary whose budget may be at risk of cutting. She also heads our school play each year teaching confidence public speaking and articulation. These line items are what really builds education and develops a healthy child. Thank you. Thank you, kids. Uh, next up is Miss Jen Venango. I know this is a tough act to follow. Um, good evening members of the board. Dr. Jones, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight on behalf of GOSA. David Walco, my co-president, senses regrets and asked me to speak on behalf of the Greenwich Organization of School Administrators. I also want to thank you, those of you who came to our groundbreaking. It was magical. We appreciate your dedication and leadership as we

033work together to navigate difficult budgetary decisions. GOSA still holds out hope that the BET will reconsider the arbitrary and capriccious decision they made to reduce the board of ed operating budget. We hear regularly from teachers and administrators still working each day with the highest standards of excellence while riddled with anxiety about the safety of their jobs. This is not the Greenwich I have worked in since, as my daughter reminds me, the 1900s was 1998. Our highest priority remains preserving the quality of education for our students, especially where it matters most, in the classrooms. With that in mind, we strongly advocate for protecting class sizes, mental health services, and maintaining our current teaching and administrative positions. Research consistently shows that smaller class sizes correlate with higher student achievement, particularly in the early grades and for students

034who need the most support. Maintaining our current staffing level allows us to continue delivering personalized instruction and building stronger relationships between educators and students, relationships that are foundational to academic and social emotional success. to reduce costs with the least disruption to student learning. We hesitantly support the discussed proposal to modify the start time at all schools. While later start times have been advocated in recent years, the research on the issue is not unanimous. A comprehensive 2021 study published in Sleep Health found that later high school start times did not lead to significant improvements in academic performance across diverse populations. In fact, the data shows it is not start time that makes the impact, but having our students achieve 8 to 10 hours of undisturbed sleep each night with limited distraction of screens from phones and

035computers. Additionally, an earlier end to the school day allows for greater flexibility in afterchool employment, extracurricular sports and club participation, and family responsibilities, benefits that matter deeply to many of our high school students and their families. We also very hesitantly support your discussion of only a modest reduction in the advanced learning program at the elementary level, specifically the second grade and science programs, both of which are strictly enrichment and not tied to pacing or further advanced learning opportunities at the additional grade levels. While we value enrichment and rigor, research has shown that homogeneous groupings of students, especially at young ages, can inadvertently reinforce achievement gaps and limit peer collaboration. A 2016 metaanalysis published in the Review of Educational Research revealed that heterogeneous classrooms with differentiated instruction often yields equal or better academic outcomes, particularly when

036teachers are supported with appropriate resources and training. We believe that excellence can be fostered inclusively and that strong instruction benefits all learners. In closing, we thank you again for your time, attention, and thoughtful stewardship. These are not easy decisions, but by keeping students at the center and focusing our strategies that maximize impact while minimizing disruption, we believe we can move forward together. Thank you. Next up, we have a very familiar face who used to sit at this table, Miss Laura Ericson. Good evening, Dr. Jones and members of the board of education. I am speaking tonight regarding the anticipated reductions to the BOE approved fiscal year 26 budget resulting from the BET decision day actions. After a lengthy, thorough vetting of the budget by your administrative team, your board, and the full day BET budget committee

037meeting, a precipitous vote to cut over $4 million at this stage in the process is regrettable. I understand that one of the options on the table is rolling back school start times at the high school from 8:30 to 7:30 a.m. And on this point, I wish to give some perspective on the process that was followed in my capacity as former chair of the board during the several months this issue was debated. It was an extensive process and we heard from many members of the public, both pro and con, all of which is documented on board docs if you care to revisit. The board voted 53 in June 2016 to adopt a later start time as of the 2017 2018 school year. And I think it's fair to say that that board vote was representative of

038the larger community concerns. It would be unfortunate to roll back the start times without a similar process. Although I realize that 2 and a half million is a significant chunk of what you're trying to find. The later start time has been in place for six years now. And I think this might be a case of the toothpaste is out of the tube, especially when there are ongoing statewide efforts to adopt the later start. Now, I'm putting on my hat as a former BET member, and I would suggest respectfully that you do the work and make your best effort to find class savings that have the least impact to staff and students, and then seek an interim for the balance, which will give you the time to present previously reported and new information. This should also

039include an analysis of what the BOE budget would look like without the costs of private school transportation which used to be carried on the town's budget and then the capital items which were transferred from capital to operating which also includes digital learning. These accounting changes weren't meant to be punitive. I haven't done the analysis but I think it should be done to make sure that isn't the case. I urge you to make the best decisions in the interest of our students and staff for the right reasons and not because an arbitrary number is before you. Thank you for your time and your service. Next up, we have John Simone. I don't know if he's online or He is online. Mr. Simone, if you unmute yourself, you'll be able to speak. Okay, he can go ahead.

040If he's having trouble, maybe we should come back to him. I think that would be best. It seems like he isn't unmuting. Uh maybe he stepped away from his computer. Okay. Next is Jonathan Rosterman. Thank you board Dr. Jones giving me the opportunity to speak. Um, I want to take a short period of time to advocate for the ALP program in the hope that it will not be impacted by the potential budget cuts. Uh, this program has a profound impact shaping the lives of many students and I want to make sure it does not get paired back or reduced. What amounts to smaller dollars has an outside ability to change our kids' lives. I have seen in my own son and I'm I'm a parent of two Glenville elementary schoolers how he is engaged and

041loving learning because ALP has been able to challenge him at a young age. It's really made a difference. The depth and pace of study of ALP provides and helps and ensures our children remain engaged and and really on a path that influences the rest of their lives. You go from elementary school being bored to challenged and interested and loving learning. And I I I can see it and it it's so important at young ages and throughout the time. ALP is essential for my children and and many others. So, thank you for your consideration and I I strongly encourage us to keep that funded fully. Thank you. Next up is Karen Krauss. Good evening. My name is Karen Krauss. I've lived in Greenwich for over a decade and my husband graduated from Greenwich High School. I'm

042here tonight because we both believe deeply in the Greenwich Public Schools mission. The board of education is in an unenviable position being forced to scale back programs our community values. As you make these hard choices, I urge you, let the Greenwich Public Schools mission be your unwavering guide. That mission begins with two fundamental promises. First, to educate all students to the highest level of academic achievement. and second to enable them to reach and expand their potential. This mission must be priority number one. Programs like ALP which have provided academic rigor for advanced learners in our district since 1961 along with AP courses and the resources needed for manageable class sizes are not extras. They are essential tools to fulfill that mission. Cutting them erodess the foundation of academic excellence that GPS promises. It risks diminishing

043the potential we are sworn to nurture in every child. Worse, cutting academic programs disproportionately harms our most vulnerable students. Those whose families can't afford private school or afterchool academic enrichment programs. Those whose parents didn't have an opportunity to attend college and may not be able to supplement their students learning at home. Making cuts to academic programs betrays GPS mission's promise to enable all students to reach their potential. It risks widening achievement gaps and ultimately damaging the reputation of our town. We cannot let the legacy of this board be declining academic outcomes. Therefore, I urge you to focus the cuts on non-academic areas. Seek further administrative efficiencies and streamline processes. Explore optimizing schedules for fractional teachers to reduce travel time and maximize instructional time. Ask families who can afford it to contribute financially to offset the

044substantial cost of afterchool sports and other extracurricular activities their children join. Pause the launch of any new initiatives, including extended day programming, until our core academic programs are secure. And while there are clear health and well-being benefits to later high school start times, we must ask if those benefits outweigh the profound harm that cutting essential academics could cause. If this crisis forces a choice, the mission demands we protect academics first. Please protect our students futures. Protect our district's promise. Fund academics first. Let the GPS mission, your mission, be your unwavering guide in these difficult decisions. Thank you. That was perfectly timed. Um, is uh John Simone uh still there? Does he want to speak before we get to our last speaker? He's still on live. Okay, he's raising his hand. Uh, go ahead. You have

045three minutes. Great. Thanks very much. I'll keep it brief as I'm dealing with bedtime here. Uh, as much like uh everybody else, I assume. I just like to um reiterate my support for reopening the conversation around the uh budget shortfall for the board of ed. I think it's a little bit disappointing that we keep having to reopen this conversation especially since the town has so overwhelmingly uh made it clear that you know the community expects this to get resolved. Um, you know, as you know, the RTM meeting last week, I think was evident enough. Uh, you could see, you know, how many different people across the entire town have uh voted in support of passing uh this budget shortfall and really kind of figuring this out and uh, you know, maybe seeking budget cuts elsewhere.

046I understand the need for fiscal responsibility and the BET has a very difficult job and I respect that and I appreciate it. Um it just seems that uh education should always be the absolute last thing on that list. Um so that's it. Thank you very much for your time this evening. Thank you. And our final speaker is Julie Finiars. She here. Good evening, Chairwoman Hirs, Dr. Jones, members of the board of education in the community. My name is Julie Finnears, and I am the executive director of the Greenwich Alliance for Education, our town's education foundation. The alliance is an active member of Greenwich Together. Community members should bookmark the Greenwich Toto together.org tab on their computers to find very useful mental health and drug and alcoholrevention resources. I look forward to hearing tonight how the

047results of the recent youth survey are shared with educators at all grade levels and how this information will be used to help our students make safer choices. Tuesday is a big day for AVID. AVID seniors will be celebrating with the lunch speeches and recognitions by their teachers Frank Kovac and Ken Elorn. These teachers have taught their students since freshman year and have seen them grow both in maturity and in academics. they are ready for college. Ken Elhorn started teaching AVID in 2010. This is the last AVID class for him and he has truly created possibilities for more than 100 students. Thank you, Ken. On Tuesday evening, the AVID class of 2029 will sign contracts with their families and begin their AVID journey. To our schools administrators, thank you for dedicating hundreds of hours to creating

048a school budget that meets the needs of our very diverse district. We urge the BET to reopen the school budget discussion as supported by overwhelmingly by the RTM, the First Selectmen, and thousands of petition signers. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. That concludes our public comment. Back to you, Miss Hersh. Thank you. Um, next up is superintendent and monthly reports. But beforehand, I just wanted to take just a moment to say we I know tonight's discussions are going to be difficult. But before that, I wanted to celebrate some two, you know, at least two exciting things we got to do this week. Um, and just take a moment to congratulate all of the students who were recently honored at the community service awards ceremony. Um it was hearing about each of these

049individual students was exceptionally inspiring. It was a celebration of their service, compassion, and community spirit. Um they not only met the needs of their community, but they inspired us all to do more, give more, and be more. And um you know, I know that while there are so many students in our district that give back, um that don't always get, you know, an award, um we recognize you and we appreciate all the all the students that step forward to to serve and volunteer in our community. Um, and as principal Ven Seveno mentioned uh earlier, we also got to celebrate the groundbreaking uh breaking of OS's renovation and expansion. And I just wanted to say it was lovely seeing all of our students out there in their little hard hats and the biggest smiles you've ever

050seen and the excitement that was there. Um, and just share with the community that when the work is complete, Old Greenwich School is going to be a beautiful blend of its historic beginnings and a modern student centered learning environment. It reflects the warmth and strength and excellence of the community that it serves. And it's going to honor its past and fully embrace its future um and give the students the tools, space, and inspiration that they need to thrive, which I think speaks to all the things that we're going to be discussing later this evening as well. And I know when we get to uh officer Leort's, I'm sure a member of our building committee will also speak on the old Greenwich, you know, groundbreaking. And I'll turn it over to Superintendent Jones. Thank you, Chair

051Hirs. I'm just going to add a little bit to what you just said about our volunteer service um community service awards. They were just beautiful. But one of my favorite things is that we actually have Dr. Fleman who comes every year and started this award decades ago and it's just such an honor that he every year um comes and does that for us. I also want to echo um the old Greenwich um building committee James Waters just doing terrific work with that entire committee and Dr. for Ben Savango. What a well organized, wonderful childfocused event. And I loved how you did all the adult pictures when they went back in. So, it was just fantastic. Um, and I also want to say the GHS pool feasibility is well underway. Um, last week when we were

052in break, they were still working. Um, they did hold um a session this week with coaches um with uh Pete, our athletic director. I think it was over two hours of just taking notes and information and we'll continue that outreach. So the board when you see that email if you want to come and and sit with them you'll have time to also contribute. And last but not least anyone that is looking for start time information because some people have asked for that. Um, some people find board docs difficult to navigate, but if you go on just the regular old website, you click on the board of ed, there's actually it's right there and it goes all the way back to 2015, all the documents, agendas for anybody that wants that information. That's it for me.

053Thank you, Dr. Jones. Um, I now open it up for reports of officers, committees, and liaison. Would you like to start us off? So, I have two two reports. Obviously, the uh old Greenwich. Let me just let me just add um um what a uh the my kudos really to to Dr. Bengo, James Waters, and the building committee. Something ridiculous like 119 meetings over two and a half years to get us to that point. Um it is a really an exceptional group of uh community volunteers leading leading that effort. um where the old Greenwich project is going from here. The um this was the ceremonial groundbreaking. Construction really um is starting this summer. Everything is currently out to bid. Uh bids are expected to close in the next week to to two weeks depending on

054on on the package. Um as the board might um uh suspect, this is a rather unique fiscal climate in which to be bidding on things. So, so we're uh keep your fingers crossed as as everything comes in here. Um there are some biders that are more hesitant than others, but we're we're we're getting there. Um and the playground uh we all things being equal, the new playground will be the we ordered the playground this week because we have to move the playground. Um and the playground will the new playground will be up and running uh come come September. So, we'll keep our fingers crossed and we'll keep you updated on that. Um other report is policy committee. policy met this week and uh the policy committee finalized a draft AI policy um after oh probably

055about six months um all told of conversation. Um so they we look forward to bringing to the full board the draft AI policy. Um next meeting we also have um bringing to the board of retirement of a COVID error policy. Um and at the same time we started discussions on a new policy to go to existing regulation around around donations um accepting donations and and gift caps and all that. So we hope to bring that to you before too long as well. We are on a bi-weekly cadence over the course of the spring to continue to uh push through different policies and bring them here in a in in a swift ma swift and productive manner before the end of the school year. Thank you. Dr. Mccanty Anthony, do you have a question? Are you

056I don't know if it's in order the rules or whatever, but are you allowed to preview the AI policy at all? I can I can Yeah, I can email it to you. So, the AI policy Yeah. So in general we are trying to um with all good policies we are trying not to um be too too complex and and and put too many parameters on things because policy is supposed to set guidelines. Um it's easy it's fair to say that the policy we tried to strike a balance between uh supporting the innovation and use of AI uh while um also trying to put some safeguards on there around um acres preserving academic honesty and transparency. Thank you. I know we we did have deep discussions and reviewed, you know, policies and discussions from all over

057the country before we moved forward on this one because it was a such a big one for us. Nobody put it in chat GBT and pitch that you know I hadn't even thought that thought about doing that. Um does anybody else have a uh committee update or liaison update anything? Well, I know we're going to get the budget committee's update shortly. I have one question, Wendy. Hi. I have one for for Julian Curtis. Um, so okay. Uh, last week during break, THP was able to successfully relocate the water lines and the electrical conduits which were in the way of the elevator shaft. Um, also the corridor uh wall demolition was completed and steel frames installed in the corridor walls to provide structural support. The area of work was cleaned on Saturday and kids return to

058school on Monday. And this week they've been working on some brick infill around the steel frames. And the schedule for next for the next few weeks is steel and rock excavation. More drilling will take place Saturday with rock removal for Monday. TH plan plans to work for the next four Saturdays. Uh pretty much putting in steel. Um yeah, so things are moving along at Julian Critis. That's great. Love to hear about all the the awesome innovation that's happening. Anyone else have a committee update or anything? Sophie, did you want to I mean I'm happy to if you want to share anything about the Havmmyer committee. not our committee, but I thought I'd if you want to give like a sentence or two, I just know people have asked, so I figured I um I think

059as people know there there was going to be a request for funding for a consultant that was going to the RTM um but the decision was made to not move forward with that at this time. Uh the committee is going to make a recommendation to the first selectman of the process that we think should be followed and I think that recommendation will be coming in probably the next two weeks is is my expectation is being drafted and then that will you know that will open up a much more public process. I know that um the first selectman will be releasing all of the proposals that were received by the committee for public review and I think that there'll be public meetings with an opportunity for public comment. Thank you. Um does anybody else have a

060committee update or no? No. Okay. Uh so then I will move our us on to the discussion for discussion items. First up is textbook recommendations. Come on down, Mr. Deo. Huh? Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Dr. Jones, and guests. Uh, these remarks I'm about to uh share with you are carefully curated through chat GPT, so I hope you enjoy them. Uh, I'm here tonight to present Thank you for putting an asterk on that. that that was in our policy. I'm here tonight to present three textbook recommendations on behalf of Lucy Reco, Shan Hoy, and Jeffrey Shanker. I extend my sincere gratitude to them and to the dedicated members of their textbook review committees whose thorough assessments have been instrumental in identifying the recommendations before you. As this is the board's initial review,

061I'd like to highlight a couple of pertinent details for AP Physics C and Spanish. Our current primary resources have been discontinued, necessitating the adoption of new materials. In the case of AP Psychology, our existing textbook no longer aligns with the College Board's curriculum outline, prompting the need for an updated resource. The rationale for these changes is clear and straightforward. Additionally, feedback from staff, parents, and students has been overwhelmingly positive with evaluations consistently reflecting the highest levels of approval. Before opening the floor to questions, I want to express my deep appreciation for this board's unyielding commitment to our K12 curriculum. Over the past five years, your support has significantly enhanced the quality of education our students receive. Mr. Reco, Mr. Hoy, and Mr. Shanker are available to address any specific inquiries regarding their committees recommendations. Thank

062you for your time and continued partnership. Does anybody have any questions? I had the joy and pleasure of being on the very least one of these textbook committees. Um, I seem to be on all of them, but I could I couldn't I could not manage to do all three, especially since some of them met at the same time. And I will just reiterate and and stand behind what uh Mr. Mr. Demoiko said is that there the amount of time, effort and energy that is put into reviewing every single textbook uh that we review um for students. We have students look at them, teachers that look at them. They are brought into the classroom for you know additional students who aren't on the committee to to dig around and and look at and play with and

063see what meets the expectations of our teachers, our staff, our parents um and meets the rigors and and quality that we look for in textbooks. So, you know, I I certainly stand behind uh the recommendations from the even the committees I wasn't sitting on. I know how much uh goes into that. So, Miss Cen, uh when would these uh textbooks be purchased? Well, first we need the board's approval and then we can start the the purchase process. Do we have uh well one of my recommendations well not recommendations one of my unfortunate cuts was textbooks. I'll just simply say if at least two of those if you do cut if not the third we probably would have very difficult difficulty in running those classes two of them being APs because as Mr. As Jigo said,

064two of them, one of one of which is an AP course, uh those textbooks have been discontinued, so we wouldn't have a textbook. And the third one, uh for APsych, um no longer aligns, the AP redid their whole um program of curriculum for that course. Yeah. Yes. Um so no longer aligns with that curriculum and thus would be very difficult. They've been trying to to do their best with what we have, but uh it is time. So yes, it would certainly present us with a with a difficult situation. So this so this wasn't my original question. So when you say what do we mean when we say a book has been this seems like an odd question. What do we mean when we say a textbook has been discontinued? Does that mean an ebook is

065no longer available online or does that mean we can't purchase new hard copies? what it it can mean several different things, but usually what it means is the publisher will will reach out and say, "We're no longer producing this edition. We're moving towards a new edition." So, so that wasn't my question, but that was Thanks. Um, so first of all, the um I really appreciated uh reading everything um in the AP physics uh for what it's worth. Um it was the first time in reading through um documents sent to the board that I saw that that I've seen spec specific mention to some of the the real science of learning concepts that uh we talked about like that was talked a lot lot about last year at research ed and things like that particularly interle

066and worked examples and that was that that was great to see. I I just wanted to point that out because the first time we saw saw that cognitive science working working in I really excited to see that. Um my question um and wife talked about it earlier and I don't know how much we really want to get into this uh tonight but my question is back to this idea of in general um when we're talking about hard copy textbooks and the the quote here is for mostly ebooks and it seems like um the the research is pretty settled on comprehension is much uh e more easily supported around hard copies than reading online. Um is that and and are we how comfortable we are with seems like purchasing 50 hard copy textbooks but much more

067online books and things like that. I suspect in Spanish it's probably because of the nature of the program. Um, but I don't know if that's more of a philosophical thing that we need to get into as a board. If this is another component of the whole screen time debate that maybe we're not paying enough attention to about how many of these resources are electronic um and are maybe not as efficient as as they should be uh as they could be if we were really the old fashioned way. But I don't so I don't know how if anybody wants to speak to that the it's probably a longer conversation. So I'll speak to the Spanish book. One of the great things about getting the ebook as opposed to the actual text is that the resources are

068updated and so teachers can actually print things that are timely. So students aren't carrying around a large book. Um so students do have the opportunity to read on paper and have contact with a pen and highlighting and all those good skills that we want them to have without having to look around a textbook. That's what I was. I think it's also important to note that the pronunciations, it's helpful to hear the pronunciations in the ebook. Ebooks are are are much more nimble. So, whenever a publisher makes edits or updates, it's instantaneous if we have that platform. Um, I also I think it is a philosophical debate, probably one we don't want to get into tonight, but would love to would love to talk further about. I was also going to say if you've ever seen

069the size of at least one of those textbooks and I know because I have a bunch of them in my house. Uh it's a lot for those kids to carry around and it's it's very difficult. Like I was the AP textbook I think is a good this this thick. Um and you know as was mentioned you know the other thing that that not only can you print things out the kids can especially on some of these they can print out flashcards for themselves to do test you know tests themselves. There's additional support in the ebooks. Um, you know, a lot of them have like, you know, retach lessons or again, if it's Spanish, you know, proper pronunciation, they link them to videos for real world studies and and other and other articles um that they

070wouldn't have access to in a textbook. Um, which also I think makes them very easy. And if I'm not incorrect, we still would have to purchase financially uh the number of licenses for students that are taking those courses no matter whether we use them or not. And so it would cost additionally more to purchase that many more textbooks. Um and I know when we always make sure we have textbooks for students that need them or request them. And again, um there are parts and things that could be printed out. And often times the teachers, they do have permission from them, you know, to be able to print a lot of those documents for the students. So they're not lugging around the big textbook, but they're still reading on on paper if I'm not incorrect. But

071we those are things that were discussed at the in the meetings. It's over $400,000. If anybody's wondering what the line item is um just a very quick just a very quick question with the purchase of the new textbooks. What is the anticipated life cycle of use for the hard copy and and and these resources to have to re-evaluate again in the future if you can if you can tell it? Well, all roads lead back to our curriculum management plan. So, we have several phases within the plan. you know, we we go through a a discovery uh or an internal audit of our resources in one particular phase and the internal audit is overseen by our content coordinators. What do they look like look at during an internal audit? They look at the year of the

072publication. Um Dr. Jones has stated this in the past. In in many cases, we we fell well behind and updating some of our textbooks and we had textbooks that were 20 years old. um we've been very aggressive in our approach over the last 5 years um to bring textbooks up to um a much more relevant and current standard. Uh in some cases what the coordinator has to look at is alignment. So for example with our AP courses it depends on how often uh the college board decides to make changes. Um we have our big ideas platform in math that's in um you know it's third fourth year of you know of use and we've already been notified by the publisher that they plan on updating and changing their platform. So when we go through our

073curriculum review cycle for Big Ideas Math um they've already changed the name of their of their next publication. I suspect some of that has to do with uh um moneymaking on their behalf. Um but you know in every case it's somewhat unique. So it's really the responsibility of the content coordinators to look at um publication in terms of how long it's you know its shelf life could be um adjustments college board and then also the most important driver is academic success. So is the primary resource yielding the academic um outcomes that we are hoping for. And so we look at the hard data we talk to teachers and get feedback. we speak to uh parents um and and you know we take all of those variables into consideration um and then we embed it in

074the curriculum management plan as to what's the proper phase uh for each content area. So that's why when you look at the curriculum management plan it's so expansive. Yeah. Cody, do they do the textbook companies tell us uh years in advance of the when they're going to discontinue books? not particle of big ideas math. You know, the um the agents, the salesmen just told us today, not today, but recently that they were they're switching uh branding from big ideas to a new name and therefore not they're not going to support the platform we're currently using. And so when our five-year license is up, we have a decision to make. Yeah. And then how do we incorporate that level of uncertainty for the the the plan? Um if if the thing that drives the new text

075like cuz you were saying no we have this all roads lead to the plan but then the thing that drives the decision-m is kind of arbitrary corporate decisions that we don't have visibility into. Yeah. So when we talk about the curriculum management plan, even though we lay it out for you all for five years, what I always say is realistically you can look at the current year and the in the year moving that we're moving into, which is usually our, you know, our focus based on budget and um our data analysis. But further than that, it's really speculation because we do um have that unknown as to whether or not something's going to be discontinued. And um then we have to make adjustments to the management plan and you do see those changes um on

076our plan and we present that each fall. Just as a fun side note, I spent probably a year of my life working on Hton Mifflin as an investment. And from an investor standpoint, they like to brag about their ability to oh we just move a little here and there and then we can go stick everybody with a huge bill and sell them the same curriculum. They don't say it that way, but that's sort of the implication. So, I'm sitting here listening to all this just thinking about being on the wrong side of that trade. Aren't you glad they didn't recommend how Mifflin books then? One of one of them. The Pearson is the physics one, but there's a Hton Mifflin further down. Okay. Sure. But they all do the same thing. We'd like to add

077one more point. Come on up. She was on our committee. Sure. Wanted to add something about My name is Margaret Jkins. to teach Spanish at GHS. And to help perhaps put this in a little better perspective, the textbook that I use in Spanish 4 still has VHS and MP3 players in our technology unit. But more important than that, these textbooks um date back to 2013 and they have a far more traditional style of instruction intended in them. And right now it's time for Greenwich Public Schools to catch up with the rest of the language learning world and have product that help us build proficiency in our students rather than simply wrote learning. And the textbook that we have chosen is very very geared toward that. And the best we can do is give our students

078more tools and opportunities to develop their language learning and all four of their skills on a modern level. Thank you. Sure. Good evening. Um, in regards to the AP PhysicsC books, um, one of the resources that we looked at was, um, through the company Open Stacks, which is free resources for at the college level and at the high school level. And, um, and so, uh, there is an option to purchase physical copies is what uh, which is what we put in the proposal because we do find value in students reading out of a physical uh, physical uh, book. Um but the the notion that all the online resources are free to anybody and that we could provide access to high level resources to any student is what drove us um to this. And um a

079lot of the uh resources that were um being used by some of the other companies especially in AP classes where um these books have to be reviewed or updated every 10 every 10 years. um the online platforms that they uh provide um aren't really used by um our classes since we utilize AP classroom so heavily um as um they have all the progress monitoring and things like that in there. So, um, a lot of these books for us at least in science, um, including, uh, AP physics C, um, would be, uh, a primary resource that students be able to, uh, leverage, uh, on the side of AP classroom. Sean, don't sit down. Um, so, mama, that you're here because I do have a child currently in AP physics and I'm literally sitting here thinking, does

080he currently have a book? They do. They do currently have a book. So this is the one that's being discontinued. Yes. And it is it is an online book and um so every year we have to purchase a new set of these online books um for AP Physics C and it is strictly dependent on the enrollment and um but yes all students have access to a book. Okay. So as you can see I really help a lot but um obviously that enrollment in that class has pretty much doubled right. I mean, we should all just call out this one teacher is just amazing. Um, and so it's kind of grown this. I think it's probably the highest in throughout Fairfield County. The number of students taking AP Physics C, which is pretty remarkable. And they

081take both AP Physics Courses in the same year. It's incredible. And the results that this one teacher I know has shown is pretty amazing. Um, so it's continuing to increase. Is this um has first of all, I guess did he weigh in on this book is my biggest question. Yeah, both of our AP physics C teachers weighed in on the book. Um, we had a a parent who um whose child went through the course and that that student also weigh in on the book. Um so they all agreed that um this the open stacks um really provided a lot of the derivations that the students would need to be able to go and master the curriculum um and make sure that they were in depth enough and they had enough practice to be able to

082support the students. Interestingly enough, it feels like a bang for the buck versus the AP physics book or psychology book, sorry. It seems yeah the uh you know the the copies of the book are about $50 um in color and so it's uh very coste effective and if we decided we just want to continue with the um just online version um that's free. Yeah. Okay. That seems like a good decision. Is the Did I just totally miss but is there a cost for the Spanish book? I couldn't find it. The cost is not uh illustrated in the packet, but it's about 28,000 for a five-year comprehensive um license, which does include um some hard copies that are available for students who need them. Any other questions? Anyone? Wendy, I don't know if you have your

083hand up over there, Wendy. Nope. No, I'm good. Okay, perfect. Well, thank you guys for coming and sharing with us uh these new minutes for a vote. Sounds good. So, next up on the agenda is Greenwich Together survey results. Is Dr. Hyenthaler here to present or is we're just having together come up? Good evening. Thank you for having us back to report on the survey results and thank you very much for your support of the Greenwich Together youth survey which we administer every two years. My name is Ellen Brosovski. I'm the project director for Greenwich Together and I'll have everyone else introduce themselves. Hi everyone, I'm Karina Rashreo. I'm the prevention coordinator for Greenwich Together. Good evening. Nina Chana. I work with the Greenwich Together Coalition as the local evaluator. Uh hello, my name is

084Lauren Winston and I am one of the uh local school representatives on Greenwich together. I'm coming from Greenwich Academy. So, we are here, we sent uh I hope you all received the slides and the PDF of the full report. So, we're here to answer any questions or clarify anything that you might have had in the report or the slides that you'd like to talk about. Um, just a quick question, actually two quick questions. Was the survey available in other languages? Yes. Yes. Only the parent survey? Oh, go ahead. Uh, currently we only have the parent survey available in English and Spanish. So the the students were only able to do it in English. Correct. Correct. And then Thank you. And my second question was I I do recall several months back um when the survey

085was discussed there was an opt out option. Is that correct? Yes. Do we know how many? So we are going to have um a meeting with all the school personnel who administered the survey next week. So, we'll get a better sense, but we know from Greenwich High School, we did get a sense that there was about 25 that opted out. Do you know, Lauren, from Greenwich Academy? Fewer than 10. Fewer than 10. Does anybody else have any questions? Um, I guess I was going to say I will say thank you guys for doing this. I know how much incredible data that we've gotten um from learning about a lot of the questions that you know the answers over the years from all the students not just Greenwich public school but all the private schools as

086well and I know you've utilize the opport you know use this to uh to create um programs for students throughout the town and parents as well. Do you know anything going forward about what programs um you guys are looking to put together going forward? And then after that I also see Miss Ms. Walsh's hand up. Okay. Yeah, I can talk about that. Um, so, you know, we just got this new data, so we're currently kind of where you guys are looking at it for the first time. Um, hopefully after that, what it helps us do is create a new logic model and relook at our action plan for next year. So, we plan to do that now that we have the new data, see if there should be a focus somewhere else um with this

087new data that we just got. If we look at this past year um some things that we did with the data that we already had which if you looked at the data it's pretty similar um there was some improvements in the data um but it's pretty similar. So some of the projects that we did, we hosted a hidden in plain sight uh which was a project for parents where we had an um someone come in and basically set up a mock bedroom for parents to do a walk through and be able to identify any paraphernalia that you might find in a student's bedroom. Uh after that they had a discussion with an expert to go through not only how to identify the paraphernalia, but what do you do? How do you have the conversation with

088your student with your child if you find that in their bedroom? Um, so that was great. We also collaborated with the SRO at the high school. SRO Wallace came and gave a presentation of what he's seeing at the high school and current trends. Uh, so that's an example. We also continue to do our hope day event which is a a collaboration with the yellow tulip project. Every year we plant yellow tulips throughout the community to raise awareness around mental health. We just had our hope day event which is um the celebration of the blooming of the tulips and we have community providers and youth perform and um it's a great way to get youth together but also to spread awareness about all the great resources that we have in town and we continue to brainstorm.

089I could list off some of the events that we've done. I did include some in a slide on the flyer. If you go to our website there's a whole list of past events that we've done. We are currently working, our youth coalition is working on a social host campaign for prom and um graduation season, which our youth came up with a sticker and we're collaborating with Grinch Police Department and going to the local liquor stores and putting it on bulk um beer, seltzer, anything really that you would purchase for a party, let's say, to inform parents around the social host law and the consequences that would come if you um host a party on site and if you allow uh youth to drink or use marijuana on your property. So, those are some examples of

090what we're currently working on. Thank you. I think that's really informative and I I know that I've, you know, I've seen some of the stuff you guys have put forward. It's it's great. Um Wendy, you had your hand up. Wendy, I'm I'm fine. I I don't need to ask my question now. Thank you. Oh, okay. Does anybody else have any more questions? Cody and then Sophie. Um, I heard some feedback that um there's some mild frustration over the optout form being only in paper or manual. Uh, can you guys make it so that it's a digital opt- out form next year? I think that would be a small but appreciated upgrade. Yeah, it's actually we make it up to the school as to how they want to give the opt out form. Uh, Granch High

091School did do it digitally. So, it was a Google form um that they could fill in. I don't know how this is a middle school parent. That's why. Okay. Yeah. So, we can have that discussion with the principal around that feedback of that's an option. Thank you. I just want to say I'm really happy that you um collected information about technology and I thought it was really interesting to see that the students are conscious of the fact that they feel like they're spending too much time on screens and that they're proactively trying to limit their time on screens and I you know I'm sure you're planning things in this regard. You know, I I just think it's really interesting and I can say as a parent that it's a huge issue in my house. Um

092for the adults, right? For the adults, the teenagers, the younger kids, everyone. Um so I just I'm glad that you're tracking that and I hope you'll collect more information on that next year. And I also wonder a little bit of how it relates to sleep. Um and I thought, you know, just Dr. Ben Zeno was talking about like the importance of getting 8 to 10 hours of sleep and then in your survey only 50% of the students K through 12 are getting even like 45% of them are getting 8 to 10 hours of sleep and everyone else is getting as little as 4 hours of sleep. So I'm curious, you know, I don't know if you can follow up on that next year, but I'm, you know, I'm sure there's a relationship between those two

093problems. We do have a question in there um about gaming and how gaming impacts sleep and that I think about one in three said that they were definitely getting less sleep because of gaming. So we could add a similar question about smartphones and even social media. Yeah, that would be great. Thanks. Well, you do have you do have a 40% of students report interrupted sleep because of cell phones. So that that that is there. Um yeah, I mean I think I think I can't thank you enough. Um I think what your data is so incredibly important um as a community particularly because now we have this longitudinal um track here over so and and the way you tracked it over multiple years. Um, and quite frankly, I might be alone here, but quite frankly, I

094think that this your results should be creating as much concern as the budget debate. I mean the reason why I mean I don't know if the reason why it is is because we we're a little um numb to it because these numbers have been kind of similar for so many years but still we have 17% of um teenagers reporting being consistently depressed. Now that's down from 24 years ago which is terrific. And all the numbers seem to be dropping slightly. Uh but they're only dropping a little bit. Um but then meanwhile all of the cell phone data that you added this time continues the point which is a conversation we had you know over the course of the year of the complete rewiring of childhood um to make it completely different than the experience of

095any adult in this room. I mean we have half of high schools self-reporting spending three hours a day on their phone. 3 hours they're on social media. That's that's that's nuts. But that's half. 11% spend 5 hours. That's 300 kids spending more than 5 hours a day on social media. 40% point reduced sleep. And then 71% of what Sophie was saying, 71% feel more productive when they limit their smartphone use. I mean, so the kids are saying, "Hey, we want to try to reduce our smartphone use when you ask them that way." uh but we as a school system uh put um stepped back uh from supporting that in the high school. Instead, we got very strong at front and then we decided not to be leaders um and instead gave kids their phones back

096in high school. Um and you see across the nation you see the opposite happening. New York is about to pass a state law banning cell phones schools K to 12. Many other districts have done that. Dr. Jones tried to do that. This board did not decided not to. So, I really think these results point to how we have to continue to have that conversation and go back to the high school to have those conversations again and see how things are going because um these numbers are not suggesting that uh things are normal and okay. Wendy, I see your hand. Is that back up or It is but okay. I just wanted to make sure it's not related to this topic. Um I I just wanted to go back and just say should students or students

097should be able to opt out on their own without parental signature. Is there any way that you can make that happen? We do. They they are able to when they're when the proctor or the person who's administering the survey is talking about it, they do say you don't have to answer these questions if you don't want to. Great. So it's presented as not mandatory but optional. Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you. And I think just to follow up on that, they're also told that if they do the survey, if there's a couple of questions, they don't want they don't have to answer every single question either. Right. Right. Right. And they're told they can skip any question at any time and they can drop out at any time and they um you know, some do. Some just

098do great and then they don't do the rest. So, okay, great. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Wendy, did you have another followup? No, no. Okay, Cody, I was just curious if any of you wanted to flag any of the findings that you thought were particularly worth flagging. I mean, I think in general the trends um especially around mental health are finally going in the right direction. I think it was getting a little we were getting some pretty high numbers after CO. So, it's really for me who sees this data, it it's such a relief to see that kids are potentially starting to feel better about their themselves and how they're feeling, but also that they know who their trusted adults are and they have these connections with not only peers, but other ad adults in the

099community, which we're seeing more and more is really what impacts them the most, I think, in being able to overcome challenges in their life. So for me that's always I always like to look at that and I think Greenwich does particularly well in the protective factors like the trusted adult feeling safe in their community feeling safe in school and that's always nice to see. Um and on the other side of it you know alcohol is still the most used substance. Um and that's across Fairfield County. You know it's not just Greenwich. So um you know we have some still have some work to do there. Was there anything that surprised you in the results? Um, I think the I think it's for me because it's new data. It's the technology stuff that these young people

100are sort of they're stuck because they realize that the smartphones and their technology are so a part of their life, but they see that it's also been impacting their life in some negative ways. So, how do they balance it? you know, how are they figuring all this out? And I think it's great we have this new data. We can kind of start digging into that a little bit. Anything else, Kathleen? Um, quick question. Is it the same survey given to grade seven as it is to grade 12? Yes. I have to admit that's a little having a seventh, 9th, and 12th grader, that's a little I'm a little bit unsure about that actually. And as I think about a little bit more, I do I think some of the questions that were posed to my

10112th grader I'd probably be okay with. and perhaps not with my seventh grader. Um, so I think maybe in the future we should think about actually doing it a little bit like grouping it a little bit differently. Yeah, I'm certainly we're open to that. Um, just as a reference point, there are two pretty prominent national youth surveys that have been used here in this community in the past and they are developed to be given the same survey to be given to 7th to 12th graders. So that's sort of the standard in this, but we could certainly always discuss changes. I was just going to say, I know we talked about like the first year that you guys did this. um I wasn't on the board yet, but we talked about that at at PTA council

102and I and having that same discussion that some of those questions were really seemed forward for some of some of the younger students and I think you know you guys had ultimately gone ahead uh and given that same survey to the younger students as well as the older and the fact that some of the results from the younger students were the things that shocked us the most is that sudden that that those students were aware and and using substances or or or or you know trying things out earlier than we would have expected. So I thought that data was really fascinating and I don't know I mean maybe now it seems like it's old hat but I mean I I totally get your point. I so I say I that's just showing the opposite side

103of it was just kind of an interesting fact from the first year at least. Yeah. No I I agree but I I definitely have some of her friends parents in my seventh graders that reached out and were uncomfortable with some of the questions and um Oh no no I get I just I thought at least that was interesting. Yeah. Cody looks like he's got some I mean this is just worth sharing. One of my a parent that I know texted me and said my daughter was asked she's 12 if she had ever had six drinks in an hour. She's like not thrilled about that. So I do think there's some validity to saying seniors are different than seventh graders. I'm not sure I've ever had six drinks in an hour either. But you know what

104are you doing after this? Challenge accepted. Okay. Oh, no, no, no, no. We're modeling for our children, right? He didn't say what kind of drink. It's, you know, I'm supposed to have eight ounces. How many? 64 ounces of water. I'm short on my water consumption. Like, Tony, are there um could you I don't know if you could talk about how like we use this data internally because there there's so many nuggets here. Um I mean it's so interesting like one thing like like half of all teenage only half of all teenagers report doing community service which is so interesting since we have the community service awards and the fair that the student government had but different things. So like examples of of nuggets like that. So you know like how do how do district staff

105um use this data to to to guide our work or is there more we might be able to do here? I think there's probably more that we could do with it. One of the questions that I'd asked and I know it's not possible. I wanted our data disagregated. Yeah. Because I find it very difficult to have the whole town data and I really want to know what's going on at, you know, in Greenwich um in public schools. So that that part has been a little challenging. I agree with what you're saying on the seventh grade survey as well. Um it's a little bit mature for some of our seventh graders or I should really say most of our seventh graders in certain questions. Um, but I think there's some great data and, you know, I'm

106not sure our numbers are always as high as they could be. And I think part of that is the way that we also have students um, when they take it, you know, how you push the survey out where when you look at um, like our end of the year survey for students, for parents, we're very strategic about how we push them out um, where it's done in a particular class or, you know, where we get a higher participation rate. So I think that's an area too that we need to look at a little bit more. Um not having it in Spanish for instance, you know, we're missing a whole demographic of students uh when we have the diversity that we do um you know in Greenwich public schools. Any other any other questions? Wendy, just

107checking. No. Well, thank you guys and I I welcome once you guys have had the time to go through your your data and you have any, you know, things that you want to share back with us, we'd love to hear it. I think it's uh fascinating. And we will be doing some focus groups with parents and children, so we'll get some qualitative data too to sort of build on the survey results. And um May 12th, I think it's a Monday, right? Um we're having a communitywide uh meeting around these survey results. So, you're more than welcome to come to town hall 9:00 a.m. that day. If anyone's available, we'll hopefully tape it as well, but um you know, just spread the word so that people in the community can get access also and it'll be

108on our website of course as well. Oh, that's fantastic. And thank you for sharing. It's going to be presented then, too. Yes. Thank you very much. Yeah. Um anyway, next up is the field use study. I'm gonna hand this over to Dr. Jones. And if there's I don't know if there's anything to be put up, but if any of the board members need to move. Yes, I'm going to invite Pete Georgio, our athletic director. Um we only have five six slides, not a whole lot, but it's uh this was a request of one of our board members and just going to talk about how our fields are scheduled um from the school perspective. Hello. So, I um Dr. Jones asked me to put a couple of slides together and I shared the the weekly schedule,

109how I share it with the town and the coaches, and I'm here to answer any questions you guys may or may not have. Well, do you want to go through the slides because we've not seen them? Okay. I'm sorry. I thought you've seen them. So, um, I don't have control over it. So, I think Mike's doing it. Mike, if you want to go to the next one, that's fine. So, this one right here is going over ownership, maintenance, and usage of the slides. We have all fields that the high school and the middle school elementary schools are board of ed fields. Um, we own them. Uh, parks and reccks maintains them for us and, uh, they're primarily there to serve the board of educational, specifically uh, school sports and, uh, after school activities. So, that

110was the first slide we had up there. The second slide is um going over the collaboration between board of ed, myself and people at parks and wreck and how we um happen to serve the needs of the board of education as well as the needs of the community. Um so that stuff is up there and I could definitely share this with you guys afterwards too as well. Um so we're trying to maximize the use of it for our sports programs, not just the high school. if we need to use it for our middle schools and stuff as well. Um because we've been hosting a lot of uh the middle school challenges up at the high school. Give them an area to to come at this winter. We had our championship basketball games that the young

111lady spoken earlier and it was a great environment to be in and it just gives those kids an opportunity to see where they're going and in our minds it keeps retention through the public school system. Uh and the next one, Mike, if you don't mind, this is our weekly schedule. So the idea of the schedule is so we have one main document where facilities, parks and reccks and our coaches know where everything is. Uh very recently we switched this which used to be a public facing document to just internal because we wanted um not to have too much information out for the public to let us know where our children are when they're least supervised at practices. Um, we prioritize the high school sport programs. The parks and recck and Don Moore there and myself

112work really well together to make sure that the needs of the board of education schools are met first and then um we try to get that into a big cluster and then Don goes ahead and does her their thing to make sure that all the community um gets usage of our fields too as well. I'm trying to see it from here. We have anything else on there? I think we're good. That last bullet point just lets you know how we work together. Um, a perfect example is last year we had uh we had a pivot from Greenwich High School to um have a meer field and it was a grass field so we didn't have to pay for any of that um for the usage of it. But obviously to get it ready we did.

113Dr. Jones at that point blaze and myself and Ralph found ways to make that happen for him which was a great experience. We do however do pay for the use of the one turf field that we don't own which is Costco. Um and there's a couple other stuff Hunter for obviously the rink and the golf course. Uh and our restrictions are up there too as well. Uh we've talked about it before. Uh there's a process that we follow for the lighting at the stadium. We also have um restrictions um with the pack and other activities going on. Me and Karen Foster work really close together to make sure we're not trying to book too many big activities to alleviate parking and stuff at the high school. We've been doing really well uh lately. So, we

114haven't had any, knock on wood, any big issues with that. Um Mike, next slide, please. So, this is like the scheduling priorities. So, what we've done in the past few years is we try to schedule all freshmen to go out to practices first. Uh some of our um difficulties with this is our daylight savings for the fall and for the spring. End of the fall is a challenge. Uh it helped a lot this year with the removal of flex and getting the kids out there earlier to get kids more time to get them home. Um so that's been really great. We try to prioritize, like I said, underassman first, freshman, JV, then varsity. Allows those freshmen to get practice done and then get home for their their studies and their dinner and get some rest

115that they need. We also did something new this year with the study hall. We have it offered all year long. It's a monitored um room. There's not really tutoring going on there, but there's a a certified teacher or someone in the building to give the kids a place to go to to study. It helps the athletes who need to go someplace before practice. It also helps the rest of the students by having a place to go and study quietly when they're waiting for the late bus or if they get out of the club early. So, that's been working really well for us as well as some other inter murals. And Mike, next slide, please. That's it. So, I'm here to answer any questions if you have. Mike, do you want to go back to the

116restrictions page? Right. Honestly, this is why I I asked for report because I didn't quite understand this. Um, so what does that mean? Um um other school activities like when um um when there's a college fair and things that that we're limited. So, it's not that we're limited, per se, like what we could do, but it's more like if we have a college fair and we're expecting a lot of uh people coming in to the school, it's hard for the parking to have uh let's say for instance a huge event. So, if we're going to have a homecoming game for football, which draws a lot of people, we'll try not to schedule the same day, but working with Karen and myself, knowing how many people come to the events, we're like, "Okay, this could happen

117together." I give you a perfect example. we wouldn't have a a huge college fair or a huge performance in the pack if we're going to host regionals for swimming because we have 16 schools visiting there. So, it becomes a problem with parking. Uh where if we were going to have let's say a um a baseball game or something that might not draw as many people from outside, we only have two schools involved versus 16. It's a little bit more manageable. And what are the pack restrictions? pack is the performing arts center. Okay. So, so there is I I'm a little familiar with this, but there is um something in when they built the pack that we need to consider having two big events going on for the same reason. You're going to have um a

118huge performance in the pack. We must be drawing a lot of people coming to it. Again, you wouldn't schedule that with a football game, especially if it's like a rival game. us against Staples on Thanksgiving and something in the pack would not the parking lot would not accommodate having two big activities going up. Could have activities. We could have activities. It's just we have to work around the big ones. You know, we can have two major activities going on. And if I might add, there is an agreement. Yes, there's a formal written agreement. you know what the says it's basically it's it's kind of loose but it it is when it was built and it is about having a major event in the pack at the same time you're having any other major event on

119the campus and we're not supposed to do that and I can send that to the board and follow up and that's where me and Karen work together because she knows roughly what the events in the pack will draw in and you know what our sporting events will draw in so that's how we work collaboratively to make sure that we try to avoid that. Oh, and then how do we how do we we have 10 games under the lights. What do how do we divide that up? Uh we divide it very equitably. Uh we get a schedule for um our sports. Every team that plays at the stadium is guaranteed one night game, right, throughout the whole year. And then um when it comes to the the lighting, we just follow the you know, we follow

120that uh procedure that we've agreed to the agreement for it. And um we use it when needed especially for the practices. Usually we usually use the practices more in the fall. How popular are depending on the game, you know, depending on the game of the rival. Would would would um do you see an an interest in more night games or or um I could do some research to make sure. I'm sure that, you know, a couple of them would like more night games. Um, but at this point right now, that not being an option, following the agreement, I just stick to what we have and try to make sure everyone has an equitable piece to that and they all have opportunity to play at night who's played at the stadium. Um, I don't know if

121anybody else has any questions, but I was just going to point out I don't remember I was trying to just while we were talking look up, but there was a task force with the town and Kathleen was the board of ed liaison to that at the time talking about field usage throughout town. um when we were trying to figure out how many fields we had available and which ones were grass and turf and I think this was right be you know at some point in the western field discussions about doing turf and whatnot yes right before co and I distinctly remember that also showing that specifically we there was no downtime on basically almost any field in town all of them were always over booked and there was a whole whole bunch of other stuff

122I was looking to find it but I don't I don't know if you had access to to that survey you if you knew not survey but the report that they did if you looked at that I don't know if Kathleen remembers much from that I just time you know anything be in BC before co well you know no um I blame Ralph as you might recall from putting me on that committee and um so he and Jose were also very involved in it was um yeah that was pretty much the conclusion that we needed more money to invest in more fields and I'm pretty sure we didn't get it. So, um, and there was lots of debate about turf and then that didn't really come to fruition. And so, um, I I don't I mean,

123I'm sorry to sound so negative, but, um, I'm not sure that there's been much improvement on that front. Western is beautiful. Western is and actually I have to say my, um, seventh grader who after having that survey um, was able to go over at Western um did note that the western fields were amazing. So that is good. While I have you, how was the baseball situation? Baseball is a work in progress. It is, in my opinion, much better. We're waiting for the, as far as I'm told, we're waiting for the field to actually settle. We just had a a great win there the other day for youth night. We um and then afterwards, some of the kids got to come up and uh share some time with the varsity athletes, which was great. uh facilities

124did an amazing job. We were able to get the um the dugouts painted, washed, repaired. So, that looks really well out there right now. Um Parks and Wreck is out there, I think, daily trying to get the fields ready for us as well. Um we're still working on some other things that we're trying to move forward with, but um all well, we just uh did a good repair on the scoreboard, converted it over from solar to power, which uh has been working really well. So, you know, facilities and uh stuff is really working forward to try to give those kids a great experience. Unfortunately, we can't control the weather. No, but I'm really happy that you did that because I know it was a lot for the baseball team. So, thank you. They did a

125they did a great job last year pivoting to Havier. The kids loved it. Um I got phone calls about that uh after the season, how great it was, not just from our parents, but people in the community reached out saying it was nice to catch a game in the middle of the day, you know, down at over off of Gretner Jab. So, uh we're working towards that. We're listening to our boosters and trying to figure out what we can and cannot do um for that baseball field. Sophie, just just get getting back to the lights and the football stadium. Um you know, I know a lot of other towns have lights at their schools and um are able to use them in the evenings on a regular basis. And I think it's not just a

126use for the school teams, but also for the community. So, I'm sure if we didn't have those restrictions, I imagine that there would be plenty of use and perhaps rental income from that field. I don't know if that's kind of what your part of your question, but yeah. Yeah. If you drive by the high school, those fields when we're there, they're definitely used and we're we're we're fighting for space. So, if you were to offer me three or four more fields, we could definitely use them during the day. It's just that uh we don't want to practice until the odd hours of the night because give those kids opportunity to go home. Cody, do you know of the written agreement we have with the awful person that made us um uh do that? Does it

127have does it uh stipulate what the penalties are for breaking the 10 uh light agreement? Well, I was going to say I you know I have the agreement. I'm happy to send that to you later and you can look at look that over. But yeah, I mean that's certainly, you know, a discussion to be had on on another day, but happy to send it over to you or Dr. Jones can as well. Yeah, the area that I'm interested in is exploring. It obviously is so crazy that there's all this opportunity cost of not being able to use this amazing facility because of some silly arrangement with one person. It was a legal agreement that it went through the courts and it's very as we as we've experienced in our own court stuff with the BOE,

128sometimes you can, you know, get tangled up in court things and the cost of it isn't so bad. Uh so it might be worth looking at what the cost of violating the agreement is and then exploring that because it may be a cost worth incurring. So just I'm I look forward to looking at the agreement. I appreciate your thoughts, but I don't want to talk about, you know, may have a discussion about like purposefully planning to do something that would, you know, be against that that agreement. I mean, from years and years ago prior to us, but I think we could ask the kids if they want more night games personally because we are the only high school I know of that doesn't have Friday night lights. We have them, just not every Friday. I

129know. I think and I think that's and I think that's outrageous particularly in this time of you know of all these other restrictions that we have. I think it's it's completely outrageous and I think we should say so publicly. We should have more and I think we shouldn't be afraid to say so as a board because our kids are being hurt by this ridiculous agreement from 20 years ago. We have a brand new facility and it is completely ridiculous that we limit ourselves to 10 games a year for both our boys and girls sports teams. And I challenge anybody to tell me that's not ridiculous. Uh does anybody have any other questions about field usage? No. Thank you for for looking into a bunch of these things and Thank you. If I can find the

130s, you know, the information from the no from the back in the day of the field survey, I'm happy to send that stuff to see it find it. Yeah. Yes. Anyh who, so uh next up on our list is the agenda plan, but I know it got posted really late, so I'm not sure if everybody Yeah. Yeah, I was going to speak to that. I think we can just very very quickly let me point out a couple of things and then let's move on and we'll get it on the next agenda when you have time to review it. Um but when you're looking at it I tried to put a couple of items in yellow. Um we will be in GA contract negotiations this summer. So this date um that's on here mirrors where we

131were last year with GOSA. It may may or may not be that exact date. Um but it just lets you know what the timeline is. Um then you'll notice the GHS uh pool feasibility is on here. It's listed several times just in case we need it several times. It's a huge project. Um so that's why that's on there. Um about oh the third page over there there is a retreat where you'll notice um the K12 STEM report and the ELA report is there. I put it in yellow because we were uh considering doing your presentations like in the first hour and then going into executive session um for that meeting so that we can get those two updates that we're supposed to have annually and as you know we have not had them um this

132year. But I think if we leave it at that and give you time to read through it, send me any comments that you have and if I need to do a new draft for the next meeting I can do that. Did anybody have a chance to review it? I mean, I know I know I had looked it over, but I I'm happy to move it to the next agenda since this was just a discussion item. So, I do welcome or you know, suggest that board members get a chance to review it and if you have any thoughts or questions ahead of our next putting it on their next agenda to share those with me and Dr. Jones, that way we can make sure we get a lot of those questions and concerns answered in advance.

133Next up, uh, are Mr. Brandon, Mr. Lie on regards in regards to our monthly financial report and then following that, budget transfers. I'm going to turn it over to Patrick to talk about the next two items. Patrick, you're muted. Yep. All right. So, okay. You hear me? Okay. Good. So, uh, thank you, Ben. Thank you, Karen. So um on the financial we finished March right now three quarters into the years there are three more months to go until the end of June in finishing the years. The yeartoday spending is in line with the history. We are continue to keep a close eye on the transportation special education and food service financial. Uh as of now we currently see that we are on tracks to finish the next three months within the fullear budget. So, um,

134we'll be just like this and then see if there's any questions. Any questions? Buler, Buler, anyone? No. Okay. Uh, then we can move on to budget transfers. On the budget transfer is only one items in here. It is kind of like um uh the budget the temporary salary line is a transfer between programs. It is just a uh budget corrections to kind of like put the right budget into the right program uh where uh it is needed for the um temporary salary. So um it is within the same major object code but it is just uh uh between different programs within the student activities um departments. Anyone else? Anyone have questions on this before we move to the big item of budget? Small budget, big budget coming. Okay. So then I will move to the

135next um item. it's listed as an action item and I you know I sent an email just to the board and I'll just repeat it here saying that being that this is the first time a first opportunity for the board to have a public discussion um on some of the discussion I you know recommendations that the budget committee had sort of gone through. Um my guess is that we will not be voting on anything tonight because we really haven't even had one discussion on it yet. Um, and I had sent an email asking and I'm g again share this so that you know that uh for the board to be able to get together uh this coming Tuesday evening um in order to possibly vote because we want to make sure we get that before

136teacher contracts have to go out for next year and and before the RTM is starting their discussions and meetings although you know I guess what what we're looking at may not be you know that change their discussion but um and with that I'm going to just start hand this over to Dr. Jones. Thank you. Um the first thing that I want to say is that anything that we're really putting on on the table and in the discussion that we're having tonight is coming from our collective community. We have suggestions from GA suggestion from GOSA from PTA from our community at large from the board of ed. And so these items that we wanted input from you tonight are specifically because they're more I would say operational in nature and we would like to get a

137consensus of like what the board's thinking is. And those three items that we want to really focus on tonight um are the transportation scenarios um the advanced learning program and and high school athletics. And I already had somebody say to me, "What about middle school athletics?" So, we're prepared to talk about that if if you in fact want to. So, in order for us to actually have a discussion, I need to put the item on the table as it's an action item unless I'd like to actually move instead of making an action item like to move that we table the vote until Tuesday as opposed to making an action item to approve. Anybody else want to second that motion? Sophie. Um, so all in favor of at least tableabling the discussion, you know, and any

138action on these discussion items, uh, on the budget reductions till next Tuesday or this coming Tuesday, I should say. Uh, all in favor, can they raise their their hand? Okay. 80. Okay. Thank you. So discussing we're discussing we're just my motion was to table the action because this is our first I want to make sure that anything we're discussing here the public has an opportunity to opine and reach out to us on um as some of the discussion items may you know not be have you people didn't watch our budget meeting and some of these may not have come up during that discussion with the budget committee so I just want to make sure it's open and transparent. Back to you Dr. Jones. Sure. I Yep. is that we have this in front of us

139and I see it's up there. Can we post a record? Yes, it will be tonight after the meeting. We were still working and you'll see that especially on the transportation one. Um we're literally today we're still working. Um I'm going to start and kick it over to Ben for the overview of the adjustment and I think this is just really good for anybody in the public that's watching the budget to understand what the number is and how we got you know to this situation. So Ben, if you can just walk us through the numbers again. Yeah, Mike, can you advance to the next slide? This is the same same slide we saw at the April 9th budget committee meeting. And just want to hone in on line 9. Uh that's the adjustment we're working towards.

140So the budget gap we have is the 4,587962. And that uh is different from the BET adjustment which is line five which is a 4,048621. And again, that's because line seven and line eight, uh, we need to add. And so, in order to have a balanced budget beginning July 1 of 20 2025, we need to find 4,587 962 of budget adjustments, but exact same slide you saw on April 9th. And happy to answer any clarifying questions you may have on on this slide. Oh, I I have a quick question and I know Sophie does have as well. Um, did we just appear the need for the extra prek class section in September 2025? Was that in the original budget? I mean, I'm just double checking. I don't remember that section being in. So, if that

141wasn't accounted for, isn't that something that we could then ask for as an interim as opposed to having to reduce now even further? And again, the transfer of funds from BOE to Town Greenwich? Ben, feel free to talk. I mean, we could go for an interim, but it's we need it in September. And as you know, up to this point, any of the kind of accounts that we used to have for additional staff, I we used to have a line item that was about $200,000 and that was cut out. Like we don't have any I'm going to say contingency. That's not necessarily the word, but we don't have any and we we know we need this in September. So, we're trying to solve the problem now versus waiting and going for an interim and starting

142in the red. Sophie, I I guess my question is very closely related to that, which is, you know, if we think that we're going to have larger kindergarten class next year, which we didn't know at the time when we created the budget back in October, are we looking at potentially like a couple extra sections there? So, kindergarten is very different because we watch kindergarten now all the way through the summer. So I would not be ready to say that we couldn't for instance move a teacher on third grade where numbers are lower into kindergarten prek because we know the students that are by age are staying back because they're three, four and some of them will turn five. Um and then we know where we are right now on students who are qualifying between now.

143Um we know where we are and so it's just it's and we're already over this current year. So we know that we have to have that class. No, I'm not questioning that you know that you need the pre-K class. I'm just wondering, you know, we're tracking that sort of larger than expected kindergarten class, but it's still too soon to say it is still because people unfortunately don't always get their enrollments papers in. Like somebody may have signed up, but they just haven't finished yet. And we watch it literally all summer long. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Does anybody have any specific questions on slide two, overview of the adjustments? I think we can move to the next slide if you're ready on the transportation and I will turn it over to Ben. But I do want

144to say scenario four is exactly what several of you were asking about and it's looking at um changing a start time at the elementary level and leaving the secondary. Um and just a credit to Kayla Coker uh who coordinates all of our transportation. She worked non-stop on this because it was community input over the last since our last meeting. So Ben, do you want to walk them through the scenarios again? I just orient you on this slide. Uh this there's the five scenarios. We'll go into those quickly. Uh just the way we tried to show this slide as well is if you go to a left to right, the farther the scenario is on the to the right or the plus sign, it's more significant uh savings. However, the higher it is up in the

145page, it increases the schedule disruption. So, we just wanted to show it both from a a numbers perspective, but also just sort of that the quadrant perspective of the further up and right you go, the more disruption and savings, but there's essentially a correlation between budget savings and schedule disruption. I I think we've spoken to one, two, three, and five at the last meeting. But just very quickly, scenario one shows uh the current uh for middle school, the current start time 8 a.m. to 2:45. If you adjust that by 20 minutes earlier, you're able to have one bus reduction, which is 108,769. And so each one of those tables is set up sim similar. They're both the current and the proposed time. And just moving up to scenario two, doing the exact same thing with

146the middle schools. But if you add Parkway School from the current 8:45 start time to 9:00 a.m. start time, again, uh 15 minutes, you were able to reduce our current fleet by five buses and that becomes the 543 and change. Then moving up to scenario three, you still doing the middle schools, but in addition to park where you're adding ISD, Glennville, Costco, and Riverside, you're able to get to eight buses, and that gets you to the 870 and change. Uh, as again, the scenario five is what we talked about at the April 9th meeting. That's adjusting the school uh start time for the high school, which is currently 8:30. going back to the uh original time before the the adjustment going back to 7:30 and you make some minor adjustments at the middle school by

1475 minutes ham julen Curtis new lab by 15 minutes 10 minutes at uh the ele most of the elementary schools and then 15 minutes at parkway that gives you the largest budget savings at 23 buses which is two 2.5 million uh uh budget savings and then as Dr. Jones mentioned scenario four as based on the feedback from the August sorry the April 9th meeting we we tried to keep the secondary schools uh no change so there's no change in their schedule but you're moving uh the elementary schools Hamav Julen Curtis new lab you're moving them from a current start time of 8:15 to a new start time of 7:30 a.m. and all the balance of the elementary schools go from 8:45 to 7:45 a.m. That adjustment allows you to do 12 12 buses reduced, which

148is the 1.3 million and change. Um, and I I don't know if anybody else has a question, but I the one question I had was I know I've heard and had a lot of parents reach out and the elementary saying that it might might be beneficial to, you know, leave the high school later and move the elementary schools earlier. And I don't know if you guys worked through any of those the possibility of of that. That's four. That's four. That that is four. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not Oh, they are. Sorry. I was looking at the wrong number there. Yes. Never mind. Just kidding. Cody. Um I think the uh Tony, Ben, and Patrick have done a really great job working on building out um a which is still in progress, which

149is why we will address it next week, but building out a potential um budget in line with the BET guidelines. I think this particular issue is probably the single most important one to have a view from the board on because it is the largest dollar impact. And so it would I think be very helpful for getting to a finalized budget if we had uh a sense from everyone on how uh how folks felt about this. um you know recognizing that it's kind of you're just choosing between you know bad choices uh and everything has an opportunity cost um but understanding where people are on this particular one I think is uh is probably the single most impactful thing for advancing the rest of um the the budget work on that note I I would just

150like to add you know as an aside I wasn't on board when this change was made. I know Kathleen was Oh, you weren't. This was before you as well. Okay, just kidding then. Um, but I I was sitting in the audience through all of this and, you know, heading things up with PAC. So, and I was on a ton of the committees to study this and I know one of the decisions just to put this forward that we had ahead of us at that point was thinking that we were going to make this change. we were going to be leaders in the pack and that all of the other a lot of the other districts were reaching out to us and looking to do this and make this change. And as of now, I I

151think there may only be one or two other districts that have made the change and have kept with it. I know some were looking into it and never did it. Some were looking into doing it, did it, and then reversed it already. Um were the ones that have stuck with it. Um I know that the state they've been talking about at the state trying to make a a mandatory start time um in line with what we've done. Um it's come back and forth a few times. They quite literally just discussed at the very start of April and it failed um to have any forward move it. The state was looking to do a even just do studies to do it and almost every district had reached out to them begging them not to do it

152um financially. it is almost impossible to do for a lot of communities, especially with the budget cuts that we're seeing. Um, and additionally there, and I'm sure you all know, transportation costs are rising because we just don't have enough in the state as many school buses and school bus drivers. Um, and you need more when they change the school start time. So, we may be one of the the only districts, I think, that still has uh has switched the start times to this. And I don't know if that just comes into play for anybody, but I did want you guys to be aware because it is something they've been discussing at the state and even there they cannot seem to make forward movement at this time to just even do a study on it. And

153Dr. Jones, I think could speak on that. Um, and they are looking at it at the state and I think right now it is on hold for that very reason. It's just so expensive. Um, I will say I went and looked at the start times today. Fairfield 7:30, Darriiana 7:40, New Kanan is 8:00, uh, Westport is 8:00. They used to be earlier. They did change to 8. Stanford 725, Weston 745, Wilton is 820. So the one that is kind of the closest to us is probably Wilton. Um and then they have grades three, four, and five also going at 740. Say it again. So what which ones of those are seven would be are at 7:30. You're talking about for high school. Yeah. Uh for high school, Fairfield is 7:30. Darianne is 740. Um, Stanford

154is 7:25, Weston is 7:45, and then we have a couple that are 8:00. New Kanan and Westport are 8:00. Um, and I know we discussed that at one point whenever the big discussion was happening. Um, and then Wilton is 8:20. Was it Ridgefield that changed it and then changed it back almost immediately? Oh, that was Norwok. I I that's I said I can't remember because so many districts had called us to ask how it was working and what unintended consequences we had and positives and negatives and so forth at the time. So it sounds like we would that would make us if we did option scenario five the second earliest on that list, right? Other than Stanford at 7:25, Fairfield 7:30. Okay. Same as Fairfield. Y and and you'll find I mean Fairfield probably deals

155with a lot of the same issues. They have 11 elementaryaries, three middle. they do have two high schools, so they they tend to mirror us a lot, you know, when we're comparing to other districts for physical size. Um, the other thing is most of the elementarymentaries are 810 9:00. They've pushed the other direction where our scenario in order to get, you know, cost savings and an effective schedule, we're pushing earlier, which is more like Wilton and Wilton is at 7:40 like for grades three, four, and five. a question. Yes. Sorry, Wendy. I didn't see your hand up. Oh, no. That's okay. Um, so are we allow would we be able to move the time to 7:40 instead of 7:30? Do we have any flexibility with the timing of of this the start time? Does it

156have to be 7:30 at the high school? Ben, you can probably chime in. Absolutely. Off the top of my head as we we sort of you can do a lot of different scenarios as I was talking with Kayla about this. It may it would likely reduce some of the savings uh simply because of you really trying to be as efficient as you can with the three- tier model of the of the of the schools even in the five 10 minutes really does have an impact is the ability to to uh clear the students and and do the next pickup. We can we can look at the 740, but I I my my initial reaction is you you won't see the 23 bus or the 2.5 that savings will go down due to the 10 minutes

157if you're going to keep everything else the same. Okay. I'm just thinking, wouldn't you have to change everything else by 10 minutes, I guess, for or it it doesn't work that way? Oh, yeah. If you wanted to change if you wanted to change everyone 10 minutes, then you likely could keep the same. But if you were just trying to just trying to solve for the high school and keep middle school and elementary schools as as proposed, then that would be uh you would likely uh chew into your your savings. But if you just did 10 minutes across for everybody, for example, looking at scenario five, it's proposed as parkway 9 9:00 a.m. that would move to 910. The 855 elementary schools would be to 9:05. And we can do the math for the other ones.

158If you did that across the board, you you would save your same savings. But if you start tweaking just one school or one one uh one segment, you're going to have an impact. No, I meant I meant all of them because I think for the savings, we would it would have to affect all of them. Understood. Thank you. And great job you guys. I can tell you did so much work on this and not such a in a very short period of time. So, thank you. I might just add having lived through start time before where we shift it even just 15 minutes when you start getting after nine o'clock for elementary it it's a big deal to parents. So I'm sure we would hear going in that direction. I did have uh Mr. Diamo

159just touch base with title one schools which would be our earliest ones in that scenario four because I thought do they see a big concern? Is there something we might not think about? and they actually felt good about it because a lot of kids need like before school care anyway. So it may mean that they would just go straight to school. We would have to adjust at the end of the day the afterare work with Boys and Girls Club, you know, those sorts of programs, right? We already have those in place already. So I I mean I think I think we have plenty of afterchool care, right? It's it's the morning and and I I do think there are a lot of people that have their children brought to school by other people because they

160have to go to work. You have that, but when you're working like with Boys and Girls Club, you have to remember we have we have high school students that actually work their program. So now if you're is if it's an hour earlier at the end of the day, you need to be able to get their workers to Boys and Girls Club before our kids get there. So that's just a bigger issue. We just needed to do a lot more followup just to make sure we were very thorough no matter what scenario we're looking at. Understood. Thank you. But I do know that that Cody well Sophie had her hand up, but I also know Sophie Cody had asked us to sort of take a straw poll so to speak on our thoughts on this. But

161I'll let Sophie Yeah. Um I guess just going back to the elementary thing, I agree. I think when you push it later, I can see that that would be very difficult for working parents and and really is also pushing a new cost on them because you you have to pay for the before school. I I know at le you know so it's not free if you're dropping your kid off at 8:00 in the morning. That's like a new cost that you're taking on if school doesn't start until 9:00. So probably the earlier start time if we're doing a straw pull like I think pushing elementary earlier probably makes more sense. Also, I'm mindful of like if you have a kindergartener and they're five and they get home by 4:00, they're kind of rolling straight into

162dinner and going to bed. Like it's a it's hard to push their day that late. Um, so that's kind of my thought on that. I'm like the other options better. In terms of high school, um, you know, I did a little quick math and I'm very mindful of the survey that we talked about earlier today about people not getting enough sleep and I've had a bunch of high schoolers myself and they don't get enough sleep. And when and I actually had someone who was in the high school and did two years at one time and two years at the next. So I feel like you you are losing an hour a night basically when you move the start time earlier. And you know when you look at that over the course of four years um

163roughly that means that you lose 98 hour nights of sleep in four years. That's what we're talking about because it's like one hour a night over the course of a school year. Someone can check my math. They want, you know, times four years, divide it by eight, and it's it's 90 nights of lost sleep. But you said if you move it earlier, you lose a night, an hour at night. That's what I'm just Yeah. Like I'm saying, if school start time is at 7:30 instead of 8:30 and most students are not going to go to bed an hour earlier because I just don't think they will. That's my experience, right? And then you play that out over the course of four complete school years. Like there is this really significant cumulative effect. And I think

164it's hard to measure what does that mean academically? Does that what does that mean in terms of your mental health? What does that mean in terms of your physical health? Um, but it is 90 full nights of sleep that you lose over those four years when kids are still growing, you know, a lot. Like those are big important years physiologically and mentally. And so I just I really have concerns about it. I appreciate that it was an expensive decision that we made to move the start time and I understand we're in a kind of horrible impossible situation of having to cut our budget now um in a way that we didn't want to but I think it would be a shame and I you know and I think if we do it we really have

165to be conscious of like that's what we're doing to our kids you know that's the number of nights of sleep that they miss over the course of high school as a result and that's three months of not sleeping. That's a lot of not sleeping. Colleen. Yeah. Cody, did you want to go or No, I sure. I was just going to add um I think to uh for anyone that doesn't have a strong opinion either way, if we do a straw poll or whatever, you could definitely be indifferent. Um but one helpful way to think about it is uh we're going to talk about the athletics next is to weigh it against an alternative. So um I don't want to off the top of my head I believe it was about 500 what's the um what

166was the number for doing 20% of the athletics 455. So just to put put it in perspective if we said that we were going to have um students it was a 220 per student per sport. So, uh, one thing that we contemplated, and I'm sure that this will be widely loved by everyone, um, is if we had a program where, uh, to do a high school sport, you'd have a $220 extra, um, cost per student, we'd have some kind of way to address it for students that were Sorry to take a so far field here, but, this relates to the bus thing. But um um uh you'd have uh if you said we're going to have 20 uh uh sorry have students pay for 15th of the sports budget. So it's still basically very heavily

167subsidized by the school, but you haven't paid for oneif of it. And then you evenly distribute that across sports. So that ends up being $220 per student per sport. And um that's about, you know, just short of 500,000 bucks. So when you think about like okay is it worth it to have um an incremental cost of uh 1.2 million for the uh later time you can think of that as like okay well you know I could half cover that with the sports thing and then presume there's something else like that there's other things that are being worked on these are just the ones that you know these were you know enough to talk about today I just wanted to recommend that as something to think about. So, since you were talking about paytoplay, I'm just

168going to toss this out there because we haven't started talking about it yet, but and I fan transportation because I haven't spoken about it. Okay. Yeah. No, no, no. I just could use it as a subtle because it is the big it is the elephant in the room. Um, and so yeah, I've been on the board now, my gosh, eight years, and this predates me. So, that I know some people think it was like yesterday. It's not, right? That's nearly a decade in the making. So people have adjusted their lives, their work schedules, their parenting style, their everything um to it. So I don't take this decision lightly, I think is what's really important to note. I also appreciate that Laura Ericen came out here tonight because she was a part of that board that

169made that decision. I don't know honestly if she was in the five or the three, but um that does say a lot that it was that close of a vote. I do remember running at the time. It was pretty much 50% of our debate conversation. Um, and then when I did join the board, there was a recommendation at one point to just move it to 8:15. I'll never forget it because I think Chris Winters pretty much left over it. Um, because the reaction to it was so negative. Like, you can't possibly do that. So, I I just I mean, you know, maybe 8 years makes a difference, but um people are still people. 24 hours are still 24 hours. Um, I'm not, you know, has has life gotten better or worse, the same? I don't

170know. Um, but I think that we really need to think about like if we go right back to 7:30, it's not like everything's just going to go back, right? So, we have to think about the trickle down effect. And there are things like I mean, you mentioned the Boys and Girls Club. It's a it's a small point. Um, not something that one's probably thinking about, but that eliminates block zero, I assume, right? And um you know that that doesn't matter to a lot of people but it m does matter to my student right. So um I mean I'll be clear about that. So and that I happen to know that because I'm a parent of that right? There are probably like 15 other things that we've realigned our lives around as a result which I'm

171not aware of but you're now going to have to go off and do that analysis and we're probably not even going to figure it out until we do it. And then we're going to be like oh man okay we're going to have to pick that and that. So um it's it's an attractive number. I have to admit I have to admit that, you know, you always have to do something personal. I mean, my kid went to practice at 5:00 this morning, so like getting up early in my house is really like this is kind of late. Um, but so this isn't going to like impact me personally, but I do have a kid that also probably goes to bed around 5:00. So, everyone is different and there are families that are going to be drastically

172impacted by this. I'll get off my soap box for scenario five for a second. I'm gonna go to scenario four because I actually really think this is the one thing that in this short time frame the community responded to us on and that's actually really nice because it's a thoughtful new idea that actually yields more than I thought. I was kind of I I thought that since the high school is the hub, you know, you're going to really not get much out of moving um not moving that piece. Um so it is interesting. I like it. I really think we need to pull the elementary schools though on it because man that's a big difference. It could be awesome for working parents actually when I think about it, right? Because you can um drop your

173kids off at school and go to work. Obviously I can go to work now and my high school kids can get to school on their own, right? So it is the inverse and in a lot of ways that might be super attractive to working parents. So um I do like that. And then I'm going to end with one question. I'm obviously not showing my hand yet on where I am on this because I don't really know, but um why does the Greenwich High School in scenario 5 not move to 155 departure? Am I doing the math wrong? You're doing the math right. uh we put it back to the exact same bell time that was before. But when we were doing the math uh before we checked the bell time in the uh prior, we

174had we had uh the exact math you were doing, but the ex the bell time that was before the change, it was 7:30 to 2:15. Then we had more instructional time. That's not a bad thing, is it? the the more the the blocks were longer and those were reduced by a certain you know certain percentage of every block time because the athletes would have had to leave so you know early and then you they would miss academic time and so they were trying to shorten that and then they put in then f the next year when they realized that was an issue that students were missing too many academic blocks to leave for you know away games and whatnot that was when opportunity block was put in I think and that was the meeting when

175Chris Winters and I was standing next to him had suggested because the high school had been pulled and they had suggested 8:15 and opportunity block was put forward voted on in the same meeting it was nobody know had heard about it beforehand and yes the two of us walked out um but the one thing I would love to see is I mean is a poll of current parents from elementary through high school to see what their thought might be because I think I think it does impact there were so many unintended consequences when we first made the change and it was I mean it was Julie is shaking her head. I mean, it was truly dreadful. And I don't remember how many people here remember that, but it was a year or two of a

176lot of struggle, a lot of stress. And it's very easy to forget that now because we've gone, you know, we've worked worked through it. But it was two or three years of of of real struggle for parents, for students, for traffic um issues and and and working with other districts because we're, you know, at the very bottom of Fairfield and everything is is far away. What happens to all the private school buses if we're changing our bus schedule? Because we're required to give those buses. They have their own. Wait, what? Oh, no. They have their completely own buses. So, it's No, but we pay for the buses. Doesn't matter. It's a different line. They're doing different things. They're going different places. All five scenarios maintain the existing bell time for the private schools and then

177so that's the math in front of you shows no change to private schools. The reason this drive savings is because it allows us to basically use one bus multiple times which is why in case the kid from the high school is listening that's why we can't move it in small increments because then you it's a it's a um step change. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say I didn't know if anybody else Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. to Cody So Cody's straw pole. Um I'm I'm personally a bit loathed to approach scenario five for all the reasons Sophie mentioned and things like that. Um um I do think but to Karen's point I like Kathleen you Kathleen to Kathleen's point I really think um we have to think about um if we're polling parents obviously we have

178to poll parents because the eight of us shouldn't be making this kind of crazy decision for the whole community but I think we have to think about how we ask the question because nobody likes change and if we we can't just if we just ask hey are you interested in starting an hour early um you're going to get one set of responses. So I think we have to be obvious you know in in current budget climate you know we we we have discovered that we could realize 1.3 million in savings if elementary schools if your elementary school starts at 745 how would this affect you know you know on you know on a liker scale you know um how how would this affect your your family life or something like that you know I think

179I think we have to be very honest about how we ask the questions I think we can't just say do you are you in favor of a 7:45 start time because that's not going to get us good data Yeah, I agree. And I'm happy to go back through I mean I reams and reams of documents from all of the committees and all of the stuff that we discussed way back when and all of the different scenarios that we looked at and all the unintended consequences that had occurred. just if you want any of that data. My husband loves the fact that I have bookcases filled with all of the PTA like all the board of ed you know materials from I don't know over a decade and some odd of doing this. So happy to

180pull stuff if you you know if anybody else wants to look at some of those things. Um but yeah Dr. Jones. Yeah, I just want to keep in mind that, you know, when you're when we're trying to solve for such a big number and this is part of it and we have to move quickly because we need to know what it is we're doing and especially with teacher contracts coming up, we, you know, we we need some solid decisions pretty fast. So, we don't have, you know, two weeks to create some survey. Yeah. And we also survey our staff because it does impact them as well. If they a if they have children, they have to drop off either here or in other districts in order and then have to be able to get to

181their to their jobs. It may be an overly simplistic assumption, but I think you have to you probably want to buy into the idea that something is going to change either the elementary schools or the high schools. There will be unintended consequences. A poll will not prevent us from anticipating. we will we we will still not be able to fully anticipate all of those. That's fine. I treat them in my head as a wash and it's more of a question of is the the elementary school thing makes sense to me and it's really like if they were the same cost I would do the elementary school one and they're a different cost and so that's the thing I'm kind of weighing. But I I would to Tony's point, I really would not get caught up

182and we should do a poll and a survey and this and that cuz it's we we just don't have that practical uh con we we we have too many constraints that don't really allow us to do it. And uh I believe in representative government enough to think that we can just take the leap on behalf of all the parents that elected us or some of us. I don't know this impacts 8,000 plus students. I mean we haven't even looked at preschool hours here. if that makes any difference. But um a lot of those you know a lot of those students have families that have students at multiple schools. It impacts so much more than just I mean look I walked in here saying let's switch everything in my brain. I was like let's switch everything

183back. That's $2.5 million right there. And you know it's going to be hard. It's going to be painful, but it's unfortunately, you know, the biggest bang for the buck and it's hopefully not going to have such an im, you know, negative impact on, you know, the academics and sports and and arts and other programs that we have. And I think we're having much more thoughtful look at it than just budgetary numbers. And I think that's exceptionally important. I think it's really really important for us to consider the issues that may crop up so that we can try to figure out how to navigate those before they occur. Um, which is not what we did the last time. Um, which is why asking parents like you we're looking at either scenario four or five per se,

184right? So, you know, if you have students in the how would you know this is one of the things we're considering. How would this impact you? those are ways we can hear about what issues may crop up and if if there's ways for us to you know circumvent those before they happen. I I don't I don't know but it impacts so many people in our in our you know community parents staff and beyond that I I think it would be and I was going to say it was like two years of discussion and months and months and months of board of ed discussions and debates. They had meetings with community members. They had a transportation study done. There were I mean pediatricians like and and doctors had come in and spoke like for us to

185just willy-nilly change it back. I I think we really need to just get that input even if it's just a quick survey just I I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it just looking at a bottom line without speaking to the people that it impacts you know but everything we do in the budget will impact everyone. So, I don't know if it's uh we just have to pick which impact we want and we have probably till Tuesday. I I get it. If you tell parents that we may be moving your school start time, this is an you know, we're sending out an email. Please respond by sun, you know, Sunday night or whatever it may be. And parents like this, this impacts people's jobs. And I know we're talking about that for everybody, but this is this

186is people that didn't necessarily think that, you know, may change their child care options. It may change. I I I think we just need to at least ask. We may be surprised by the results, Laura. So, I mean, here's an a thought. Um, what if we don't do anything because we're we're being asked to either diminish our program to save money. We're being asked to um change, you know, a massive change that affects people's quality of life and probably their their jobs. And what are what is what is the option of doing none of these horrible things and and going for an interim and and just saying we we don't want any of these. We don't want to do this to our community. We're being forced to do this by, you know, a few people

187on the BET who hold the power. But what if we do absolutely nothing and then come back for an interim? And I just I have to I have to say it out loud because it's going to bug the hell out of me. Um, on page 23 of our budget book, we are giving the BET 4.2197 to 1 19750 four over $4 million in our operating revenue that they take from us and then they're asking us to come back to them with another 4 million in savings because they take all of our tuition from prek. They take our grant money. that the town takes it all and then they're telling us you have to cut this money to save $130 per person in town and then we're asking the other pet taxpayers with kids in the

188schools to pay for their sports and their activities. It just it's mindblowingly stupid. So I think we should just say no. So, so I I So, look, we I voted for the budget. I I hear you. They um um But no one has said to them, we are giving you billion, but play play that play this out because I think that's an important question. What if we just say no? So, let's play that out because this is the I think it's unresponsible because let's play that out. Well, let's say we just continue with our budget, right? And then we run out of money and we ask for an interim and that interim is turned down. At that point, we're stuck trying to find in the middle of the year $4.5 million and we have Don't

189ask for permission. No, no, but it's not a matter of asking for permission. Don't I I'm talking Let me finish my point. It's not a matter of that. We just don't transfer the money and at that point we're looking at massive layoffs because we have not been able to do that. How has it never happened? How how do we know we're going to get you? There's there's there's it's not it's just simply not a responsible way. To cut our substitute budget so that if a teacher is sick, what do we call the parents and say everybody stay home today? You know, I mean, we're being asked to do the most ridiculous things by people I wouldn't put in charge of my goldfish. I agree. But that's why we should go on. I'm I'm not talking

190about the substitute. Let's go on with the the the other things. The board you don't like your goldfish. Um just saying we lost our fish. Laura, I like your revolutionary attitude. And um I actually think that the appropriate time for that discussion would or what I would recommend is considering having that argument when we have the best version of the budget we can make in line with the uh the numbers that we're trying to solve for because at that point I think it is a valid argument to say hey let's not vote for this but I think as an interim step along the way just trying to come up with what the best alternative is and then we as a board I'm not saying that I will vote with you but I do respect the

191thought process behind it. I think it's quite creative. Um I think at that point we can say okay uh we have this budget we have an alternative option of just saying no let's debate that but to help the team who's really working hard trying to finalize it just get to the finish line on on that alternative for us. I think any guidance we can give around this question is helpful and maybe the guidance is we're relatively indifferent and if we're relatively indifferent uh between you know what we view as two bad choices I actually think the elementary one is probably a net positive but um but regardless if if we're relatively indifferent on those then maybe that is the easiest way to get to that number and then if we still hate it we can

192you know uh a majority of us can vote it down but I I just want to advocate for at least helping the team get to a final uh uh proposal proposed budget for us to consider. I mean I I can't speak for everybody else but I mean this tonight's discussion and the the things that we are facing now I I have been dreading this. I have been up nights I will be up nights continuously just like high schoolers. Um I I have dreaded this discussion and and the decisions that we have to make. But the unfortunate piece of that is that we've been elected by our peers in our community to make some of these decisions. One of the biggest responsibilities the board has by state statute is to put forward and discuss, you know,

193is a budget. Um, we did and that's correct. I mean, I wrote out a whole thing. I just But it would also be irresponsible of us to not have these discussions because it's true the whatif scenario. Personally, I'd rather, you know, have these discussions and say we can't. There's nothing we can cut. And but I also don't want to just force that back onto our superintendent and and it's our responsibility as well. So, thank you. I just I agree we should have a productive conversation tonight and and be serious um about doing a real analysis. I do want to make two points. One is um per state statute, the town finance board is supposed to respond within 10 days in writing to the board of eds budget, which most certainly the BET did not do

194that. And I don't think they historically have ever done that in that town in our town, but I really look forward next year to reminding them that they have 10 days um to come back to us with non-educational efficiency recommendations. So, I assume that they will do that next year. Um, why don't we just tell them they're late? Well, I think we should remind them that they're late. Yeah. Um, and secondly, you know, I just I echo your frustration, Laura, because I think, you know, maybe we should cut $1.3 million in the budget of the substitute teaching, you know, if if that's what the BET budget committee, you know, they did their six months of analysis of our budget and that's what they decided is the appropriate thing to cut, you know. Did they though?

195Well, that's what they said. I mean, that's what it was in writing. That's what it was, you know, in their motion. So, I just, you know, I think it's worth noting that that they had ample time to do analysis and that's what they came back with. And how much was that again? I believe it was a $1.3 million cut. So, in theory, you could add that to scenario four and be in the same place as scenario five. Yes. Except that we'd have no substitutes. No, I mean, it's hysterical. That's I mean, well, no, they just can't get sick. It's very clear. I'm sure there's some actuary out there that's like blowing their mind right now. I see Lil shaking her head. But I I also would go out on a limb and say the one

196thing that they may not have looked at is the teacher the GEA contract, which I know is coming up for discussion this summer. Um, but I'm pretty sure that there are contractual obligations that teachers have to only have a certain number of students that they teach per certain number of days or, you know, sections and things like that. I I know I I know it's not it can't just be at the high school level. Am I wrong that there's class? Well, we have classified guidelines, but I'm saying in the GEA contract, I don't have it in front of me at the moment. Like there are contractual obligations that we have as to the number of students that each teacher is required, you know, can teach up to. So, if you switch that and we get

197rid of, you know, we get rid of subs and you have somebody who's out on paternity leave or you have somebody who's who's out sick for a period of time, you're going to take a third section of an elementary school and then instead of having 20 kids per class having 30, you know, I I don't think we can even do that contractually, right? I mean, I just want to put that out there for six months of supposed Yes. Well, they did six months of study, somebody just said, so I wonder if they studied the the actual contract. Go to the second. We have the second slide. Yeah. And again, if um on the next page is the advanced learning program. Did you want to take your straw poll first or No. Okay. Perfect. I I

198did I just wanted to respond that. Now we move on to and again I want to remind people this is um in front of you from a collective group across the community. So you know we've heard from lots of different people um and this one is really it was we were being asked to calculate what is the savings. So if we eliminated second grade ALP enrichment um that the equivalent is a 2.2 FTE which is 171,000. Um and then the next uh area that we were asked to calculate was looking at what if we took out uh grade three through five science. Many of you will remember the very first year that I was here science had changed and then it went back in again. Um so we have had changes through the years with

199science but that would eliminating science would be 257,000. So both of those together it's right at 429,000. It's the equivalent of 5.5 FTE. Now that doesn't mean five full people. What it means is you have 22 ALP teachers out across 11 buildings. Um depending on which way you go, they would either go several of them rather half of them or all of them. A 0.1 would be reduced um across you know all the teachers or a 2. And some of you will remember even precoid all of our elementarymentaries had 1.7. So, you had a full-time ALP teacher and a 7 ALP teacher. The challenge with that is they also had no writing. They now have a writing block and that's one of the reasons we made that adjustment. Um, so this is just the numbers.

200That's the money that goes with it. Um, so if you have questions, we're happy to answer that. I did just want to point out because it is very easy for us to look at the bottom line. The last one was at least just buses, right? This is just when you're looking at the bottom line, just remember FTE isn't just a fun little number. These are these are actual people we're talking about. These are our educators and and other staff members. So, I just wanted to point that out because I know the people up here understand that, but you know, parents and and other members of the community who are looking at this, just know FTE is people. Just, you know, no matter how many ways you'd want to divide it up, Do you guys have

201specific questions? So make sure we understand here. So in this scenario, um, Alp would continue grade three of five in science, math, I mean in math, in math, literacy, and writing. Is that what it is? In three three subjects. And how much of the school day is that? Three hours. Three hours. I'm sorry. Two and a half hours because the science says so. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, you Cath you. Yeah. I was just going to say, um, again, this is just a lots, this was mentioned, uh, and actually we had a lively commentary on this in the public forum. The point of bringing this up just like the buses is these are some of the bigger blocks that we already have clear understanding of of what the spending associated with them are and taking

202a sense uh just from everyone here if this is a direction we want to explore more or if it's something we want to steer clearly away from. Um that's really all we're looking for here. And on some of these lower dollar cost items, uh it is certainly a lot easier uh to say, hey, steer far away from this. With the bus one, if we said scenario one, that probably would be a little harder. But um that's the point of bringing this up as well as the next topic that we'll discuss, which I already sort of previewed. But if anyone has any strong feelings one way or another or if you said for example, I would never vote for a budget that cuts this or something like that, that's a very helpful thing to know as

203the team crafts a final budget. I would never vote for a budget that supports this. Um like period the end. And um I think that beyond the fact of what we heard tonight from parents and students, I mean, my god, um it's it's an amazing program. It and I actually liked what some parents said that not only does it help the ALP students, it helps the students in the general education classroom with the teachers having more time to give them personalized instruction as well. So to me, this is so short-sighted. Um I know that this was not something at all that Dr. Jones supported. And I know this was put together by um I'm I guess a couple unions, maybe some board of ed members. I'm not sure how it got on here, but um

204it's not something at all I support. Um frankly disappointed that it's even been suggested. And um this is a really really important program. And not only is it important to our current schools, but I can tell you that people move to Greenwich because we're different for the fact that we actually educate gifted students. That is um the only requirement under Connecticut state law, which I'm sure Cody will love, is to identify students that are accelerated or gifted. I'm sorry if I'm getting the terminology wrong. And um but not to have to do anything about it. and uh Greenidge is one of the few districts left in the state that's actually doing something about it. And so I think it would be a real shame if we lost that that edge. Um I I when I

205was talking about can't not being able to sleep, this particular pro thought was, you know, this particular discussion was was top of mind. I have two students, one who started in ALP in second grade when it was more than just enrichment in second grade and one who didn't start until like you know third and beyond and and I know many kids who didn't start until fifth grade in ALP or middle school. Um I am exceptionally aware of how necessary and important it is for our students who move quicker who you know sit in class you know bored and are just being asked to teach other kids in the class because they've already done this work important and I I'll never forgive myself for saying this but I if second grade ALP is simply enrichment and

206it's pushed in it's something I mean I I hate to say it, but I still think it's something we might have to consider. I wouldn't want to get rid of science, and I'm not even sure 171 gets us anywhere, but you know, I still think it's something that we need to possibly consider if if we have to get somewhere. I I I'm loathed to even say that. But if it's just enrichment, I I because they're not it's not pull out anymore. Correct. And second, well, like they're not not acceleration. They're not doing their core acceleration which is yeah because I know before it was the when when second grade for alp enrichment when we moved to to enrichment is instead of it was pushing at that point. So that's why I wasn't sure it's still

207pull out but I I'm loathed to even re to suggest it but I still think at this point unfortunately we have to consider everything that's on the table. But I you know it kills me to say something I think we still need to discuss. I just think that this number, you know, I think the kids did a wonderful job tonight talking about how important that program is. And so I'm not going to repeat that, but I would say like these these are relatively small numbers compared to what we actually have to get to. And this just feels like death by a thousand cuts or path to mediocrity or whatever. You know, like we just we're supposed to be striving for excellence. So why would we be getting rid of programs that everybody thinks are amazing?

208The students testify to how important they are and I fully agree that they're important to the students who are in the program and then the the students who remain in the classroom I think benefit as much. So I would not be supportive of this. I I have to agree. I would absolutely not be supportive of cutting any instruction um any advanced learning program by any stretch. We want our kids to be the best learners. I think one of the parents said it great with keeping the vision um and the mission of the board and cutting instruction and cutting potential for students. I I don't agree with that at all. Wendy, you did any of you had discussion? I Yeah, I'm I mean, I'm not really in favor of cutting an advanced learning program. I think

209that it it helps set our our school up to be to be great. I think we we have our honors programs and our and our um AP classes because we need to have these kids go into something. Um and I think it kind of protects those programs to make sure those don't go away. Um so I would not be in favor of of of cutting help. Well, I think we have an answer there that nobody wants to do that. That's great. This is exactly the sort of feedback we are looking for to help drive this process. All right. Can I can I can I just say I have a small a small um item that um the um iPads that K through2 uses. Um, I think that kindergarten I I was talking to a teacher

210about this and and teachers have assured me that they only need three to five iPads in their classroom because they feel that they can do what they need to do using the Smartboard. Um, and and they're only on the iPads for very for like one hour a week anyway. So they feel like they could share them rather than having each child have their individual own iPad. So and that would solve a little bit of our of our screen time dilemma that you know we want to take kids away from screens. So is that something that any of you could get behind? Wendy, let me just say I I can certainly go back and check, but I don't even think it's in our budget this year. The replacement we were talking about was the teacher laptops

211earlier that Mike Ting has in the budget because they're all on a cycle just like our curriculum management is. Okay. Well, maybe you could take it out of the next one or reduce it. Not take it out, but reduce it. We still need them. Don't you need to get new I new iPads every year for the kindergarteners though? No, because they actually we moved um the older Chromebooks down um during COVID when we had to get faster Chromebooks for the upper grades and then so you've shuffled those down to the lower lower grades so they move into we use we're very savvy in how we utilize the devices and move them across the district but we do not have to buy like brand new every year. Okay. Okay. Okay. Uh does anybody want to anything

212else to to have there? I mean I I I had some other thoughts but I'm happy to wait till the you know after we go through these slides. Um so the next uh slide is the high school athletics and basically when we first started looking at it the athletic budget for high school is you know over $2 million. So it's a big number. We have a large athletics program. We're a large high school. Um, and Ben, I'm gonna let you just talk about how we backed into the 20%. We were trying to, I guess, get a fee that was even more reasonable for families. And before you start, Ben, I'll just share that um Pete um helped me today by looking at, you know, in our region where they have um paytoplay. Uh Ridgefield has

213it. They charge $150 per store, uh per sport, per season. Trumbull is 165 except ice hockey is 365. Uh Wilton is 125, but our number even trying to back into 20% as you'll see is higher than that. And those are the only three that we're aware of. So this is what I was going to jump in when we talked about this and this was in a policy discussion. So Kathleen may remember this. It was you and I and um remember who else was on policy at the time? No. No, no, I think it was just maybe it was you and I and Christina, but whatever it was, we had talked about pay I don't know if Tony remembers this. We had talked about paytoplay. We had talked about a whole bunch of other other things

214and I had done a bunch of research which I'm happy to go revi revise but that's why I was just say I have a whole chart because I had done a bunch of research of all of the districts around us. This was in 2020 I think that I had done this. So, I'd have to I'd have to go back through the districts that had pay to, you know, payto-play athletics and or had alternatively had a student activity fee um and and how they handled it and what they did and for parents that have multiple students. Some of them just had a had a cap on a family fees to do anyway fees for specific activities. Ice hockey was always more um some of them also charged fees at the middle school level. Um, and I'm

215happy to go back and in the next couple of days at least just review if I can update this for you guys if you want to take a look. Yeah. Well, I had a lot more. That's why I was saying and it may have changed in the past few years. Yeah. And they're not the closest ones because at that time it was Darien Newan Westport, Stanford, Nor, Fairfield, Danbury, Bridgeport. None of them had payto-play. I I think that's that's part of the whole big discussion about the situation we're in. So we will sit at the beginning of the year and compare oursel to Durge because that's who we feel like our our families when they're looking for a school district, they're looking for a Durge school district. That's Derenne, that's New Kanan. Um it's not

216some of the other districts that are in Connecticut. And I think that it's important to remind ourselves that. And so I think Cody said it earlier, it's none of these decisions are great. They're they're they're bad decisions. um if we're really a top quality, highquality school district. Well, that's why I was that's why I was saying the research shows that that I did then is none of the districts that we compare ourselves to except Ridgefield and possibly, you know, Wilton Weston also had them at the time um had paytoplay or student activity fees. Um I just I want to you know well first of all I just you know most of our sports at the high school are already a little bit paytoplay because we all you know anyone who's had a student participate in

217sports in the high school that we have booster clubs for most of the sports and you know we need to raise additional money and of course you know the way that it is is not a requirement to give to the booster club. So the families that can give to the booster club do. So there is no barrier to entry to playing on a sports team if you are not able to contribute to the booster club. But to be clear, like this isn't it's not like this would be the first dollar that you're spending to play lacrosse, right? This would be on top of the amount that you already that many families already pay to the booster clubs. And just, you know, let's assume you have two sporty kids at the high school and they do

218say they do three sports a year. We're talking about $660 a year per kid, $1,300 a year to have two kids playing three sports a year at the high school. It's a lot of money and I think that's going to be really limit the participation of some families in this town to be able to play sports. So, I you know, I really do think it's a shame and I think we need to play it out that way and really think about what the impact is on the families. I I understand why we're considering this, but it, you know, it's it's really expensive. That's why I said well that's the only reason why I was saying I'd share because the research I done because back then it was they had caps for you know per year

219per family or whatever so that you weren't paying for three kids with three sports a season. Yeah. And I appreciate it's something that people wanted to look into. I just think then it becomes you know for for the athletic department it's really complicated figuring out how many kids and you know who has the ability to pay and all of that kind of stuff if we're going to try to do that. Michael right I I hear you in in the spirit of the better worst options um I don't hate this one as much as the others though in all honesty because this is not touching academics and um um for um this is something that many of families you know will be able to do not not happy about it but I think this is something

220we have to consider um obviously we have to To Sophie's point, we have to just like we do for free and reduced lunch, we have to we'd have to build in some kind of safety net and waiver for certain families because we can't have it be a barrier for entry. Um I do know that, you know, back in my um hometown of New Jersey when I was on the board of ed there back in 2007, we had to go to pay to play because that was a very different tax environment. So it's not uncommon in much of the country. doesn't make it a good thing, but it might make it, you know, as far as things that we have to swallow. Um, I would do this over ALP or some of the other things in

221honesty. Um, Tony, you were the superintendent in a district where they had this back in 2011 when the economy was challenging, I was in a district where we had to go to pay for play for that very reason. Um, and it stayed in for a while. you can manage it. But, you know, there's there's sure there's pros in that you're generating revenue and offsetting your athletics. To me, the con is that, you know, it's hard when you're a high school student to have to go to your coach or go to your athletic director and say, "My family can't afford it." Or, "Your dad just lost their job." And you don't really want all your friends to know that your family is really struggling. And now you're putting a 16 or 17 year old in a

222situation where now they're going to have to go ask and some of them quite frankly won't ask their parents. They'll make the decision not to play. And it's not any different with free and reduced. If you look at high schools, especially large high schools, there are students who could qualify for free. They won't turn in the paperwork in high schools. And some of them just don't eat because if they always get the same tray, other ch other young people may know that they're on free and reduced. And that's just the reality. It it has a lot of complexity to it. It's not as easy as it is to look at it on a slide. Kathleen, I was say, did you have a program at the school uh the district you were in to accommodate? Uh

223I I I understand your point that it doesn't catch everybody, but was it were you able to come up with some sort of mechanism for um and if you could just comment on what that was. Uh well, you're really looking at like your free and reduced list and I would say in Greenwich, especially in Greenwich, you would almost have to have a new threshold with Alice and in my district, we actually put that in for the mills program. So, um, and we were at the time using Alaska and Hawaii guidelines because it actually takes into consideration cost of living that is more similar to Greenwich. So, if you were doing that, the problem is you have to be able to have paperwork to be able to validate that a family's in that situation. And that's

224when it gets really difficult. A lot of families, even with free and reduced, as you know, every year during the budget, we say we're still trying to get the forms. You have to say how much your income is. A lot of private information. So it is hard to catch all of the students and if students really want to play then absolutely but it does hurt a certain demographic of students. We have a lot of students sure that could pay and it wouldn't be an issue but you know we have between 20 and 30% of our students uh who are in that kind of threshold and if you probably added Alice it's definitely 30%. You know, it's a lot more than a lot of people think in Greenwich. Do we know um I know we we

225know our free and reduced lunch population at the school. Do we know what is that the same mix for the 2,000 students that are athletes or maybe we don't have that data? We wouldn't have that data because free and reduced is um for each individual child is something we're not supposed to share openly for privacy reasons. So it's not like a coach would have a list and just look at the students. has to be managed very carefully for privacy reasons. So I I don't know for the athletes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean it could change. Kathleen. Yeah. Um um I mean I I understand how it's a thoughtful idea and when we're stuck in a situation like this that this is often the topic that is gone to. Um and it seems like you know

226some school districts have had had to do that. But I just this is kind of in the other cate this is a different category and out but man does that stand out when you're moving to Greenidge like oh you know what oh I guess they can't afford sports these are like we're we're winning state championships left and right and um then it's like yeah but you need to pay to play here. I mean it just doesn't feel right. And I do have to say that there was a family last night that I they said, you know, we probably that I was speaking to and they sort of said we probably would be one of those families that would basically say, well, we're making a choice between our travel program and then playing at the high

227school. And that is that's not a family that I would have thought would have said something like that. So I I I take that as um and confidence. Um, but it was a, you know, for a lot of people, they're they're budgeting everything and then this kind of just knocks them one way and and you're right. I think some kids then probably don't know that their parents are in that precarious situation and therefore don't even approach the topic and that's just a bad feeling that I'd hate to put on anyone. So, no thank you on this one. Yeah. Um, I saw Wendy had her hand up and I so Wendy and then Jen, but I right before Wendy said something to me, this is I loathe to do this specifically because so many of our

228students are recruited to college based on the sports. So many students and especially these kids who don't have the opportunity in the middle school to go out and do sports in private leagues train and learn how to play the sports so that they can make it onto the teams in the high school and they're getting schol like scholarship funding even if they don't aren't necessarily being recruited but they're getting scholarships for some of this. It's takes away their opportunity. It's beyond Greenwich takes away their college opportunities for some I I would you know same same kind of thing Wendy. Uh yeah, I'm not in favor of this one either. Um it I I think it it just creates a really uncomfortable situation with um with with the children being embarrassed and no one wants that.

229Um however, if we are considering doing this, then we shouldn't just limit it to athletes. We should look at other afterchool programs, too. Um I don't know, like the theater production. I I'm not I I don't want all the theater people to write me emails. That was just an example. But um like are there any other programs that that are school funded after school? Are you trying to get more emails, Wendy? No, I don't. But you know, I don't think it should be limited to athletes. Um so then all the NIL money is going to go away. Yeah. Um, I did I did see though that Darienne does charge $100. I was trying to find um on the website they they do pay to play as well there. It's $100. Um I I was shocked

230to see that. Yeah. Well, that's changed since I did my research. So there you go. Um, Jen and then Cody. Yeah, just a kind of along the lines of what Wendy was saying. Um, and not to, you know, pick out a particular afterchool club or other thing that uh the students can get involved in. But these become extensions of our day. You know, they become extensions of the school day. And to, as Wendy said, to single out athletics for something like this. Uh, not that I'm in favor of charging for athletics or for theater or whatever other programs there are. Um, but I think, you know, we can't single out athletes. I I do not agree with that. Cody, I think one thing that's interesting about Wendy and Jen's comments is it's the question would

231be why single out athletes and I was just asking myself that I was thinking it is does seem sort of arbitrary but in one sense part of the reason is because you know there it's a big group that's easy to single out but when I you think a layer deeper there's a lot of cost associated with the athletic programs but the cost varies dramatically by sport and I think you just mentioned that one of the schools had a hockey program where they charge more but otherwise didn't I was on the ski team at Greenwich High School and I would imagine that that is a much more expensive program than the track and field program. Um and uh uh maybe one thing to consider and I would just offer this up as to the extent that

232anyone on the board has creative ideas around this Karen made the point about five and a half FTEEs was basically the same cost as this. So when we're playing a like thinking about a world of tradeoffs, it's is there something that could be assembled in this category that would be a more desirable tradeoff uh than you know full-time equivalents or something like that. And so I I'm very intrigued by this subject or by this this category even though I know everybody will hate it. Um, I think it's actually nice to kind of assuming you can have a mechanism to help people that need the help to localize costs, especially costs that don't align with kind of the broader strategic objectives and all stuff. I understand the opposing arguments I'm trying to offer, just a different

233way to think about it. Um, and so one thing to think about is you you don't have to say $220 for every sport for every athlete. You could say let's look at do we is there an 8020 where there's some programs that are just very expensive? And if it's a very expensive program, maybe you have some uh extra pay to play on it and only for those programs and we're picking on them because they're expensive. And if we have a theater program that costs as much as the hockey program, then treat it equally that way. So you have kind of a unifying principle that treats those similarly. Um I think that would be an interesting thing to consider and maybe that gets you substantially less money. But if you can get two or 300,000 that

234is the you know then you have the question of well if you can keep three you know uh people uh in a in a job that we think is important is it desirable to have that trade-off. So just something for everybody to think about and if anyone has any creative ideas or is amendable to that that's helpful to know as we try to craft some of the solutions here. Well, since we're talking about changing school start times because of the cost of busing, the question is is I was thinking about this because elementary kids would do field trips, we would have to, you know, we had to sign a form for permission and then send in a couple dollars to pay for the buses. Do we pay for the buses, the transportation for away games?

235So maybe we could look at the costs instead of paytoplay. What's the cost of busing for away games? And that's something that I mean the booster clubs raise a ton of money. I was just curious if I can just say it would take a little bit of um maneuvering because as somebody pointed out earlier all the revenue goes to the town. I I think we we I am totally going on a limb here without having any validation for this, but to Laura's point about being a little uh um you know uh creative and revolutionary. If we if part the way we got to the budget number was including some revenue and we sent that back, I would be blown away if that was rejected. But I would stand on that hill with you, Laura, if

236that was not approved. Um uh so but we can hopefully if any of the BET members are listening if they could send us an email saying that they would view revenue increases and cost reductions is the same that would be very helpful to understand. Well we have revenue that comes back to us from you know preschool you know and school they take it goes back to the town fund. Oh yeah I'm saying change a change an in change. saying there's other things like ECE funding and and other things that are specifically supposed to go directly to the board of ed and they goes to the town instead. I mean, I've asked for years Ben Ben is sitting back there and he could probably even when I was on PTA, I was like, why aren't those

237funds going directly to the board of ed? Why do they go to the town and then we have to ask for them? Like, so I I still wonder that because I believe, you know, stat I don't know if it's statutoily, but it's supposed to go to the the board. just on the uh when I said, "Oh, maybe there's some creative other ways to do revenue." Someone just sent me the idea or they noted that the theater performances charge for admission, but our sports games don't charge for admission. Just throwing it out there. They do. We weren't charging at least at like they weren't charging at they were charging for football once we've got the new stadium up because they finally we had the kiosk. That was what the kiosk is there for. I think the

238students get in for free with their student ID and then everybody else is supposed to pay. Pete, I'm like I'm like I know somebody's Yeah. When we Yeah. When we go to 40 night games a year, we'll have a ton of revenue. We're not talking about that right now. Please God. Did So, are we charging? So, what we're doing is we're getting donations that are going to student activity funds. I'm sorry. Yeah. Sure. We are not charging. That's another I believe that was another uh discussion back with Bla1 that that money that we were charging was going to the town, not to the schools, but we were paying for crowd control and police and everyone through our our budget, one of my budget lines. So, we weren't re getting that back. So we're talk Blaze

239at that point was trying to figure out how we could offset our budget of paying for police officers for football games and such and crowd control people without collecting the money back. So we coming out of CO we decided not to charge. Um and at that point if I'm not mistaken uh were just collecting donations that was going back into student activities funds for athletics that we're using to try to give back to the kids on stuff that wouldn't come out of our budget. I'm gonna say what everybody else hears. I've said quietly. I'll say it into the mic. H I think I literally heard it from almost everybody sitting at this table. You look like you have something to say. That is a possible revenue source if the town doesn't take it. Well, no.

240I mean, well, this is what this is what code to Cody's point is suggesting the um additional sources of revenue. So this is that is an additional source of revenue. Take all our but that's what we're talking about as far as packaging it in the budget. Instead of talking about what it is that we can cut from our budget instead maybe we reopen the discussion as to rental fees that we're charging for things and even if the money is going back to the town we're like all right well we're going to you know we make X right now on rental fees. If we increase those again by another whatever then we would be budgeting e you know x plus whatever y and here's z. So we're not cutting this. How many people come? Uh it

241varies. Uh this year we had a um we didn't have much towards the end of the season. Uh but for certain games you could get a lot. I mean, uh, coming up in our next season, we're playing some pretty big games. We're, uh, scheduled to play New Kadan, Darianne, and Staples, which are usually big games. So, it depends on, um, depends on the weather, the day, the time, you know, that we're playing. Is it a Friday night game? Is it a Saturday game? Are there other stuff going on uh, in the school? Is it an earlier game, a later game? So, it does it does vary. What if we just charge the out oftowners like the the people who come? So it's like a toll. Yeah. It's like pay to see your kid play. Um

242and maybe just uh it's tell me someone tell me if this is wrong, but are the is it fair to say that we feel like we're open-minded to some creative andor fair revenue opportunities in this department? Or are there any things like I'm just trying to get the guidelines because that's the single most helpful thing for the team. I'm not I I would not Oh, Ben. Oh, sorry. I didn't see Ben's hand. You go first, Ben. I just wanted to put the uh admissions in perspective. Looking into fiscal year fiscal year on 2018, uh the town had 14,180,000 uh 14,180 revenue collected. Uh that is a far cry from the $4.6 million gap that we're trying to settle uh settle for for just to put admissions in perspective. Precoid 14,180. But you just mean that's

243just from all all receipts. So I was going to say I just leaned over to Dr. Jones. I'm like since you're talking about creative things and I know we I'm loathed to even suggest this but I just said I was like I wonder has any you know if other districts do this where you offer the opportunity you know we we talked about this when we were doing naming right naming rights but the wonder is if you choose certain types of local businesses that have to conform to whatever it is right like this game sponsored by I'm going to go with you I'll just chicken Joe's because I know that they sponsor a lot of teams like would they you know if you're looking to create revenue streams would be Greenwich High School football brought to

244you by Budweiser. I'm not No, no, no, no, no, no. That's why I said it has to be very specific list of things. No, I like I like I was not going with Budweiser. I was going with Poland Springs because I'm still on my I have to have 64 ounces of water a day discussion. But yes, I think it's important to note too that we really do have I mean 4.6 Six is a big number and it's difficult to be working on that issue if we're talking about revenue that you have no idea if it's really going to eventuate. You don't know what number to plug in the budget. Is it going to be 10,000? Is it going to be like this pay to play is 455,000. That's a lot of gate receipts. I mean

245I you know it's just we're talking about it. These are big numbers. So I think we have to really look at what is it we're actually reducing even though we don't want to have the conversation because of that reason and maybe this next year as we prepare for FY27 we're looking you know may get a committee to work on it how could we generate more revenue and how could we get language with the BET so we can keep our revenue that is generated but I don't think it's going to solve this problem. That's a good point. Now, do you mind if I just ask everybody if the discussion on these other two has that influence the way anyone thinks about the trade-off between scenario four and scenario five for the buses? Just having a sense

246more of like when we talk about the magnitude of the numbers involved. For me, I I was going to say I I truly I I think it's inevitable that we're going to have to look at star time because it's such a big number. It's really something we can't ignore. It's not like we're saying, you know, $100,000 here, $200,000. Small drop in the bucket, you know, when you're talking about looking at $4 million, right? And so I I think it's inevitable that we're you know if that's the largest thing because of transportation that maybe you know it's truly something we have to I mean really say that's what we that's the biggest bang for our buck there so to speak. But to me it's I would it doesn't change my looking at scenario four versus five.

247I think to me it's also and you've even said this before when you're talking about budget. It's what makes the most sense for our community, right? what what makes the most sense and you know we were not gonna have time to do transportation studies but again I think a quick poll of parents to see you know which work which is going to you know less impact their not just their students lives but their their home life making sure they have time with their kids at home or you know making sure they don't have to pay for a nanny from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. because they have to be at work or whatever it might be. You know, is it fair to just say that is everyone imagine being when you think about the four

248like getting to the four and a half, does everyone imagine either having scenario four or five in their buildup or is anyone adamantly opposed to both of those? So it's a good So it's at least we have the baseline of it should be four or five and then does anyone have particularly strong opinions one way or the other with those? M I I I like your framing picking at all three because I think it's really hard to do to get to four and a half million with if you're using scenario five and pay to play the um now you're you're hitting the high school twice in in many ways. Um, you know, I think it's so I think so I think you got to realize that, you know, if we're getting the four four and

249a half and you have to make tough decisions and if we have to go back and consider pay to play, that might bring us a scenario four. I wish we had the high school class president here. We could say, would you rather get to school an hour earlier or pay $220? He's going to tell you he's got how many was it 23 days left? He doesn't care. He I doubt that he would say that actually. He's very thoughtful and but I mean I I prefer scenario 4 both because it you know doesn't impact the high school but also because I think the earlier if we're going to go earlier or later in elementary I would rather go earlier. I just think the later is really hard on working parents and 9:00 start is so late.

250Does anyone else have strong views between four and five? I I philosophically agree with you um Sophie. I'm just worried that we need a bigger number. It's that simple. Yeah, I'm I'm more in favor of scenario four. I think it just makes sense. Little kids get up earlier than older children. So, um and yeah, so that's I think it makes the most sense. So, here's, you know, since we're I'm going to put myself out there as the most unpopular on the board today since I'm like, well, I guess we have to look at Karen, that's my job. Good. Well, then I'll give it back to you. But, so here's another question. We talked about advanced learning, right? The elementary level. And I know we've had discussions at the beginning of this school year in regards

251to or some changes in flesh, right? Foreign language. How many foreign languages do we offer at elementary? Just Spanish. I I know there's one or two schools that offer offer more because it's part of their only JC. So, okay, let's just So, JC is the only one that offers more than Spanish. Okay. And then at the high school, at the middle school, we offer at least three, right? Two. Is it just French and Spanish? Okay. I thought for some reason I thought we had So, then it's more at the high school. All right. Because I was going to say, you know, we talked about the reduction there. Not that I want to reduce again. And then last last year we talked about changing the amount of hours we did for PE. You know when we

252talked about this was before I was on the board. It was when Ralph was the interim superintendent. He talked about and and it didn't it did not fly. Nobody liked any of them. But it was yes reducing inter getting rid of intramural sports or sports at the middle school. It was changing and increasing class sizes. It was a reduction of uh offerings at the elementary and middle elementary excuse me not elementary middle and high school right so some of the classes that weren't as what much you know as subscribed to um you know we we offered you know for offering busing for zero hour classes depending on what we're doing here so we don't do busing for zero hour okay the bus picks them up and drops them when they're going past the school okay

253sorry I I feel like we should just hone in on what we have in front of us and we have a lot work to do after that. So, um I think that Cody, I think we kind of have some thoughts here, right? It seems very clear that we're I I don't know is scenario four. Sorry, we're doing a straw poll. Was that kind of rising to the top or I didn't really give you a view. I kind of said I I philosophically like scenario four, but I'm worried about the number. Did anyone else have a strong view? Is anyone in favor of scenario five? I'm in the just say no camp. I I'm not in favor of anything we've discussed, but you know, in the exercise we're doing and since we have to, I'm still

254open to a discussion on scenario five. It's not my preference certainly, but if we if it's a, you know, it's it's more it's over a million dollars more. Would Yeah. Would it I'm not in favor of any of this. Would you all humor me with you don't have to answer this but it would be helpful if you had to pick between scenario 4 and the pay to play as we outlined or scenario five? Scenario five. Scenario four pay to play is not participating which I respect. Laura is like I I'm not voting for any of this. I mean I don't know. I I suggested getting rid of the library books. I love it. Not buying more, just selling the ones we have. We should have them. We have a big book sale. There you go.

255Revenue generating. Um, who needs books? Just to be clear, I'm not in favor of any of these, but we do have we our our budget is $12 million over last year's budget. So, I I'm confident that we can find some efficiencies somewhere that maybe aren't these. Can Can you guys Can we go back to the drawing board? Oh, I I do aside from the um I I do like not like I do I do if we have to pick one of these these um one of these choices then I think the early school start time for elementary is what I would look at. But let's look at some other things aside from everything else. So I'm just going to add in for earlier start times for elementary. Somebody just reminded me one of the big

256issues and the reason that we didn't do it back in the day is because you have to remember in daylight savings times like in the winter when it's cold it's dark and it stays dark much earlier and you have the youngest of our students standing outside waiting for the buses in the cold in the dark and it's a major safety issue. So just I'm putting that out there because it was one of the somebody just reminded me that's one of the things I had forgotten. That's why I said I'm happy to go back through all those other things but that was just something to put out there. And speaking of lights, I think Wendy made a good point that the whole ex it's all an exercise in trade-offs. It's not being in favor of them.

257That's why I think the thought experiment of paytoplay plus scenario 4 or scenario 5 is a good one. Scenario 5 is 55% of the way there. Scenario 4 is 28%. But if you do pay to play, then it kind of it's not quite all the way. But that's a big chunk. And so that obviously helps then clarify what the remaining pieces should be. But I would expect that there's not going to be any magical cut, right? There's nothing that is going to come forward that everyone's going to go, "Oh, this is so great. I'm so excited this is here. I'm glad we said no to everything else." It's all going to be a set of choices between things that people will find not super desirable. So, I just want to, you know, being the bearer

258of bad news, like thinking about these trade-offs is a uh helpful exercise at least for guiding um Tony and Ben and Patrick who are doing really thoughtful work on all this. Yeah. And sorry, can I just add one thing just to sort of put the numbers again? Um, and correct me Ben if I'm wrong, but we're basically now only going to have since with a four and a half reduction, it's like a 5.5 million year-over-year increase. Our teacher salaries went up 5.8 um under contract. I forget what the administration salaries are going up. And then buses are another million. So year-over-year, oh 5.8 million. I'm talking absolute dollars. So, so 5.8 million of the Now, we only can increase the budget five and a half million, but I need everyone to appreciate that. I while

259that sounds like a big number, it's not. Okay? Because your teacher contracted salaries are going up 5.8 million as well. They should, that's actually not a very big number in the overall scheme of things. And then your buses are going up another well over a million. Um so you are cutting a lot from other things. Okay? Because your contracted costs are well over 7 million. Okay? So as a result you have to do this. You have to do transportation effectively. You're effectively making the trade in transportation right for the increase. And now you're looking at reducing heads. Okay? It's that simple. So I don't want to keep like moving like you have to sort of think about the absolute figures just for a second. Stop like let me just lay it out for you clearly.

260Well, you brought up an important point that our finance board, those crack individuals who are supposed to be at the top of their game, forgot to include our contractual obligations when they were doing our guidelines. So that's where we are because addition is and subtraction is really difficult for some of them. Well, I wouldn't say it that way. I was going to say that you know look when we do these contract you know contractual negotiations and you know the bet has a member there at the table. They are part of it. They vote on approve these contract. Yes. they made a mistake and did you know they also forgot $1.7 million uh I believe right of our of you know of contractual salaries right so you definitely think about the fact that part of the

261flawed process you know comes from just last year last year the BET decided to approve the consolidation of several board of ed departments with town departments right there were two things and then they eliminated not you know they eliminated those things so that was over $313,000 from our budget and discovered afterwards that uh the decision was made without really you know there was no adequate debate on that feasibility and it later emerged that the consolidation was impractical and didn't work and then it's forcing the board back to we had to somehow figure out to where to find that $313,000 this year because they didn't think about that and they just made the decision without actually reaching out to us. And it's well after the fact no during them the day the the day that they

262were making that decision Mr. Brandon still worked for the town. He was head of the town. I work for the schools. We had a meeting with them and said we both had concerns that it was not going to work. I mean the school does a tremendous amount of purchasing. And the idea that you think the town is going to be able to manage all the purchasing that that happens for the school. We both knew it wasn't going to work and it was a decision that was made with, you know, without a discussion uh during the budget process at all. But now we we are just over that 300,000. We have a hole because the BET doesn't really have the authority to tell us what, you know, we can do from a line item perspective. They've

263just removed the money from our budget. And so now that's why we're trying to plug that hole. I mean, it just hearkens back to the fact that our budget isn't created and pulled out of thin air. It's developed through a collaborative, thoughtful, and exhaustive budget process. Dr. Jones and the administration have dedicated months to developing a budget. And it's that's critical for running our schools efficiently and ensuring outstanding academic experiences for our students. And then it comes to us and the board spends weeks and weeks examining the budget and looking for potential reductions. We cut already half a million dollars before we, you know, gave the budget back to the town. Um, which is consistently overlooked. You know, this year we approved this book, you know, the proposed budget by 7 to1 confident that it

264was tailored to support our mission without any extras, right? Any covered contractual costs and did not have any fluff. We've gone through this exercise year in and year out and gotten rid of almost every efficiency we could, you know, that. And so, you know, now we're talking about the impossible. I just want to answer um Cody's question about if it was four or five, including pay for play. And I would go with five over doing four combined with paid for play because I feel like pay for play is putting a burden on our, you know, neediest families. And that's just what it is. and the idea of the cut to the budget that the cut that the BET made. They said they were doing that because they want to keep Greenwich affordable and making a

265cut and then saying, "Hey, families struggling now you have to pay $220 a season for your student to participate in sports." Like that is making living in Greenwich much less affordable for all of those families in a really significant way. And it's a lot more costly than just than actually paying for the increase, you know, per h on a per household basis. This is a much more expensive for those families. And so I'm totally opposed to it. And I would rather go as much as I don't think we should do the early bus. If that's what we have to do for the high school, I would do that because at least it it impacts everyone the same regardless of, you know, what your family circumstances are. I feel like we've gotten some helpful guidance for

266the budget work. Does any if anyone else does anyone else have any other commentary or Thank you all. I was actually going to say thank thank you to to you and to to Kathleen and other members of our budget committee. I Laura and Michael Joseph and you know our administration for really taking I just said Michael Joseph for taking the the crack at this. It's nobody wants to do this. It's painful. It's something that we're we we're all dreading and you know I appreciate the the the way that you are trying to go about this um to try to find things that might be the least impactful for our classrooms you know and and our and our staff um but you know it's not a fun exercise which we will continue I guess on Tuesday.

267Next on so no no other it's okay so the next next item on our agenda is to consider the superintendent's contract extension and to put this on the table I will make a motion well we we I'm going to make a motion and then if you want to do that that's fine but to have a discussion even right so I was going to make a motion to extend Dr. Jones contract to two additional years through June 30th, 2028. I don't know if there's a second or if somebody wants to table, but okay, Sophie seconded it. Um, discussion. This is so awkward that we talk about this like Tony is not here. Well, no, no, no. So, that's why I'm saying I, you know, I know we put this on. Dr. Jones is following the the

268information that's, you know, the process that's outlined in her contract and and there's specific timing involved in there as to when she asks for a contract extension which is what she did and it is our responsibility to follow that as well. So I we put it on the on the agenda and I know in the past you know last year when we did this um you know was two or three like three or four meetings and then we had to do something at the start of the school year with with other parts of it and I just don't want this to drag on. Um I know that we have not had an executive session to have a discussion about this and you know if you guys would prefer cuz it looks like you guys are

269all fading. Um you know if you would like to table this and we can add an executive session on Tuesday. Um I would like to table this and do an executive session on Tuesday. I agree. Cody Wendy don't know what your thoughts are on that. I know you're you will not have an objection for me on tableabling this given that it's almost 11. So that at which the at which point I said I had to make a motion in order to get this on the table to have a discussion. I will withdraw my motion and we will table this and I will look to add this as an executive session for uh discussion on Tuesday. Um no we're not there yet. Um we have agenda plan discussions. My agenda plan is to No, that was

270next year. That was next year's this year we're talking about. So, uh, clearly we need to add a meeting with an executive session for Tuesday. I I'd heard from everybody. I know Cody had said he has uh something so he'll have to dial in for PO, you know, if and when you can. Yeah, I'm just in DC. Uh, but I will I can work around it once I have the schedule. And then I I wasn't sure about Wendy and Michael Joseph. I can I might need to join late because I think my son has a trackmate. Okay, that sounds fine. Certainly, we have to put our families first here. Um, okay. So, is there anything else we need to discuss in regarding this year's agenda? Yes, we have to add policy. The policy. Well, I

271would put it as policy items, but um I don't think we have to put that on the agenda plan. One thing though we um talked about last time is remember we had the STEM uh update and one of the things we said is we have a STEM update, but why why don't we do that? Why do we STEM? Why don't we do that for um um literacy and and and and social studies? Um, so it would make sense to have a a similar thing to the STEM update, you know, in in the spring, right? Exactly. Exactly. We we do at, you know, we rotate and we we No, we have the STEM and and obviously literacy is our lagging indicator uh particularly in middle school. So, it' be good to it would be good to

272be good to Yeah, we have that coming. I was going to say also be good to add we, you know, discuss it especially when we're talking about literacy and and math and so forth regards to uh strategic plan goals. So maybe want to wrap it in as a strategic plan update and then we can have an update on those. What are your thoughts? We have that we have the Yeah. Oh, it's already being planned. She said it's just not on the Yeah. You know, since Cody said it was 11 and he's very happy to move forward, unless anybody else says for the agenda planning for this year, I'm going to let you be the proud Motion maker. I've never done that before, so I'm kind of nervous. Do you have a motion, Cody? I guess

273I'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting. Who wants to second? Laura. Wendy. I'll give it to Wendy. Wendy never gets to second that. Sorry. All in favor of adjourning. Dang, almost eight. Okay, perfect. Now we have unanimous 8-0. Um, I know we've adjourned, but I would also say to the public who's maybe still awake and listening, um, please do reach out to us. We do want to hear bots. Um, I'm sorry to flood everybody's inboxes, but I think it's exceptionally important that we're transparent. Um, I'd love to, but anyway, thank you guys for tuning in and staying with us so late. Um, and please do share your thoughts with us because we are you're open to every, you know, well, almost any idea, I'd say. Thank you and good night.