001[Music] for e good evening Dr joh members of the board we have one of our students who' like to uh just say a few words of of Welcome rean come on down good evening Dr Jones Board of Education and guest every student at Hamilton Avenue School learns to play a string instrument on behalf of our entire school we thank the board for all the support you have given this program we'd like to thank Hamilton Avenue's principal Fox and vice principal simonelli for being here tonight as well as Laura new our music and arts coordinator we really appreciate how supportive you've been all over these years years on stage you will see students from hamf Western middle school and grenwich high school we began the performance of French folk song and would like to perform one
002more piece for you it is a variation on twinkle [Music] all [Music] than hell stand up please thank you thank you start all right start the meeting start the meeting can we all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of alance to United States of America to the for it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all well I think I share the sentiment of the of the board but that was really really nice and very pretty and a true Testament to greenwich's um uh support of the the Arts thank you sorry it's been a really long day um all right so let's get started before I Stumble over some more words um we have the Connecticut High School outstanding Arts award by Miss uh fuscaldo welcome hi good evening Dr Jones
003and members of the board my name is Bethany falo and I am the orchestra teacher at grenwich high school and I'm thrilled to be here to celebrate our amazing students this evening the Connecticut High School outstanding Arts award annually honor two seniors from each cast member High School who excel in the Performing or Visual Arts and possess qualities of leadership and scholarship this year's recipients from Greenwich High School are Jack glass and Luca doov Jack can't be here this evening because he is the lead in Oklahoma happening right now um but Jack has demonstrated a keen interest in a high level of excellence in all aspects of theater he has exemplified outstanding artistic commitment an impressive ability to work well with everyone a strong leadership style in mentoring other students and the personal depth to
004bring meaning and Humanity to his roles Jack has been an outstanding and prolific writer for three years in the production of original works for theater written by students called magic circle in addition he is a gifted and passionate improv performer next year Jack will be attending Dartmouth College Luca possesses the rare combination of innate Talent musical sensitivity and a tireless work ethic on the viola the dedication to his craft is evident in his willingness to go above and beyond to help others and contribute positively to the musical community in Greenwich while at ghs Luca was accepted into the western region all four years and all state Orchestra the past three years most notably this past January Luca was selected to serve as the principal violist in the western region Orchestra and in March his quartet
005made up of fellow ghs string players performed at Lincoln Center in New York City next year Luca will be attending Yale University please join me in congratulating these two exceptional young men all right and now we have all state musicians okay now you have all state musicians back for I wasn't sure why you sat down so it confused me for a minute sorry it's my pleasure to introduce to you for recognition the finest Young Musicians from the Greenwich high school music department this year more than 1,000 vocalists and instrumentalists from every public and private high school in Connecticut audition each year for the four Allstate performing ensembles band chorus jazz band and Orchestra this is a two-stage process with a first round of auditions in November and a second round in February the students honored
006here this evening have spent many years working hard to become fine musicians and although it is primarily their own passion and dedication that has led them to this impressive achievement their efforts have been well supported by their parents and families by our exceptionally strong K12 music faculty by our school administration and by our Board of Education all of which place a high priority on the Arts I'm pleased to present the 26 outstanding musicians who were selected to represent Greenwich High School in this year's All State Music Festival which took place in Hartford at the end of March as I call your name please come to the front to be congratulated by the superintendent and board chair and remain here until everyone has been called up please hold your applause until I've called everyone up thank
007you Angela Bay uh by on clarinet Greg bound voice Ethan Cooper voice Luca doov Viola Annabelle edel Boyce Thomas Aronson voice Avery Gary voice betus Healey voice muo voice Momo Kobayashi violin yunu cook voice Cindy Lee voice Joe nagai voice Sebastian OA voice Luke obag voice Alexis Palanka voice meline Phillips voice Alexander Ro voice Ian sham OBO hnan Stern OBO UTA Takahashi voice Benjamin Vargis Boyce Lydia Wang boce Kate Wick Viola and Jacob Winston voice and Harrison wolf tuba congratulations to you all good well congratulations to all that's outstanding uh now we have our uh comments can we have uh Caleb and Omar for the student government comments for the evening it's coming down to the wire you only have one more meeting after this good evening Dr Jones and members of the board my
008name is Omar galal and I'm the student body vice president at ghs um at long last the end of the school year is on the horizon and ghs students are working harder than ever advanced placement examinations began on May 6th and end tomorrow I have an exam tomorrow uh on May 17th these tests are kin to final exams for students enrolled in AP courses um also tomorrow is the last day of school for the majority of seniors uh starting next Monday May 20th most seniors will either work on internships or work on a senior project uh the senior options program ends right before graduation on June 14th Spring Athletics are in full swing the regular seasons are wrapping up but teams are now entering the postseason um most notably the boys tennis team is having
009a phenomenal season uh head coach Ray Marshall's boys are on a tear and have a 160 uh record this season which means they haven't lost a regular season match All Season uh but they actually haven't they also haven't lost a regular season match since 2022 so very impressive keep an eye out for their playoff run where they have the opportunity to win consecutive fcac chips and consecutive state championships I actually think they may have won the semi-final for the FC earlier today so that's we're all rooting for them uh I noticed that there's an action item on the agenda related to ghs is food options so it is important then that I reiterate the student government's stance on Food Services Paul uh we propose programs such as the national school lunch program that provides subsidies
010to schools that abide by nutritional requirements um this year we observed that the that nutritional requirements decrease portion sizes and limited the variety of options including the muffins uh the muffin Scandal they limited the variety of options the cafeteria could offer which in turn decreased increased the popularity of the cafeteria servings amongst the student water uh I cannot say for certain but the decrease in popularity may or may not have a correlation with food sales uh so please keep these implications in mind later tonight that's all I have for tonight uh thank you and have a a great evening good evening chair kski Dr Jones and members of the board I am Caleb kalind the student body president of grwi high school tonight I have some updates on senior events and student student government elections
011students at ghs have been studying hard for their recent AP exams as Omar has said these exams are important to many students as it allows them to have another source of the display of their academic strength as well as giving credit or allowing them to opt out at certain classes in college students generally seem to be taking these exams well and are well prepared by their teachers to succeed as some of you may know National College commitment day was yesterday and we were able to see the many of the decisions that our seniors have made for their postgraduate plans we've had a very strong class this year with many acceptances from top schools and a majority of people going to afford four year college or university next year before heading off for the summer the
012majority of our seniors will be beginning will be beginning an internship or project for the next four weeks and while many are saddened by the departure of our seniors this Friday we are preparing to embark on an internship or project that can be both impactful for our stories as well as experience in fields that we are interested in it serves as a great opportunity for many to confirm their interest in a certain area or in other cases help them realize that they may not be as interested as they thought they were pring graduation come after this internship or project and we are excited to bring ESPN journalist Zack low To Be our guest speaker to graduation this year prospective Student Government candidates have begun their campaigns as they begin to put out flyers and craft
013their speeches with 25 candidates across three grades we're confident that Student Government will continue to be in good hands and especially considering the change electoral process within uh for the next two weeks students will continue to campaign and following this there will be a virtual student body presidential debate during advisor base and Then followed by great specific speeches in our Performing Art Center I am excited to bring our new student body officers the next time we meet and though Omar and I will miss our fellow underclassman our teacher our teachers and student government in general we will still be around to give our final remarks to you at the next meeting that is all I have for now and I look for to look forward to sharing some updates on student government elections next month
014thank you all for your time and have a great evening thanks uh comments by GAA Lil Peron joh I have props you don't okay must have know are my okay Bad Teacher I passed out paper and props before my speech now no one's goingon to pay attention all right hello my name is lilan Peron in case you don't know president of the largest Union in Greenwich chairwoman uh walski superintendent my GAA friends and teachers Friends Community students in the audience thank you ham for that beautiful uh performance of the strings so here's the goodie bag so I was going over the board docks last night and I noticed there were four video presentations so quite long it was movie night so there is your snacks in case you didn't watch your videos you take that
015home with you you can trade them some are healthy some are not but enjoy all right so um in Reading uh this is a very large agenda so I'll get right to the point for tonight um two points of interest that I was interested in the seak report and uh preschool um although uh it refers to our special population I see that it fits in every body of our of our school there was a common theme that I found Staffing Staffing and Staffing because Staffing of all kinds teachers trained Paris qualified Subs psychologists SLP clld eval team and many other support staff impact all student learning in the classroom I've read the cak committee recommendation is very well-written detailed oriented Report with viable Solutions and action plans which GA has been advocating all this year
016four key points um Staffing model Paris support staff well-being and climate and real and relevant PD Staffing models are very important it's not one size fits all it's not workload but we have to pay attention in the report as it says to hours impact hours so for example if elementary teacher has 22.5 instructional hours and you have students that need support you have to look into their actual hours of services so if you have five or six students and their hours of service add up to more than 22.5 that could be a problem so it's it's not just one to one you really have to look at the the whole picture Paris support and training so important um they are with our most needed students with the needed support our parents need to be trained
017they need to be supportive they need to be treated like professionals and have time to collaborate staff well-being and climate across the different District it's not news we have a teacher shortage we have a sub shortage we have a parish shortage that's not going to get any better folks real and relevant PD so I'll address this the last one but I want to talk a little bit um I'll go back to that talk a little bit about preschool the same goes for preschool the Staffing model very important um well done presentation but I did notice in in the slide on where it states uh one certified staff and three Pas professional assistance I just want to clarify that want people to think that it's three full-time assistants it's it's one full-time and two part-time assistants
018so as I said before here's the challenge that I put out to the board of ed the Community this is not going to go away we have a very very business oriented community and I hope that we can come up with a a plan this is supply and demand every district is looking for substitutes for Paras for qualified teachers what can we come up with to attract them to come down to the farthest end of the state greenage from other areas we have to to be creative we have to be resilient we have to attract and retain so I put that challenge out to everyone we need to work together to come up with ways to attract and retain uh incentives anything that we could think of because um it's not going to get better
019and we need those supports we don't have the important supports in the classroom no matter what classroom General Ed special ed it impacts every student it impacts the well-being of the teachers it impacts the well-being of everyone thank you ta Council chair Kowalski Boe members superintendent Dr Jones everyone here everyone listening I'm John fiser the grenage PTA Council president and the parent of two of the 8,611 great kids in the Greenwich Public Schools uh I want to start by saying congratulations to those Arts Awards recipients earlier and the musicians and the ham have string uh on uh Ensemble I guess it is um what an amazing group of uh musicians the BDA Council also expresses hearty congratulations to all the great ghs seniors as they're finishing up their P testing this week and wrapping up
020their Greenwich Public Schools experience we couldn't be more amazed with what they've accomplished over the last 12 13 14 years and we wish them great success in their next adventure we also celebrate the eighth graders Washington DC field trips which come to a close this week a wonderful experience that marks a successful closing of their middle school years and the opening of their next great adventure at ghs the PTA council is pleased that the RTM ratified without contention the school budgets at the Boe and then the BET approved as you all know Pac advocated for slightly higher operating budget but we see this as a success for the town I'm sure I speak for all of us and especially for Mr KD when I say that we look forward to getting started on next year's
021budget we will be looking for a similar degree of success or perhaps more for the good of the students and the schools and perhaps so that we can continue to work on those staffing issues that Lil talked about we also want to thank the board members Miss Kowalski M hirsh and M Coston for speaking at the tree hearing yesterday and continuing to Advocate on behalf of the CMS building project and doing what needs to be done to keep that on time and on budget We'll add one more thank you to the Boe the administration and the teacher who Ste forward to make an in-person Latin class a reality at ghs for the next year tonight's agenda is full of interesting discussion items and we look forward to hearing those on the action items on behalf
022of hamv PTA we reiterate support for the approval of the St Rock's use of the hamv fields or school grounds um for the festival that the community loves and we also support the elimination of flex time and the ever so slightly longer instruction time in every class we recognize that the minutes do add up the school and District administration have work ahead of them uh with the elimination of flex time to address the the concerns that the student leaders have brought forward about ensuring students have time and access to extra help and to clubs and to other activities to address the concerns that have been raised about extra test time for the students that need it and to address the concerns about traffic impacts when all of the students especially the seniors leave all at
023once instead of sneaking out during Flex time and they all Stampede out of that parking lot turning onto Hillside and into the oncoming Stampede of parents who will all simultaneously be coming in to pick up their students we wish the administration good luck with that and with that thank you for this time to speak and thank you for your service to the community uh all right uh now we're starting our community comments for the evening uh first up we have Adrien no and the next is Jackie homman hello I'm I'm Adrien nobe and I'm a 10th grader here at ghs well not here I go to a lot of flex clubs and I use flex time to meet with teachers and to do homework nearly every day it's a really important time for me and
024my fellow students but this Flex proposal has a number of problems one of the things that this proposal doesn't really understand is why students leave Flex it provides a statistic for example that 955 students are excused from flex but many students need to participate in community service other extracurriculars and go to doctors especially when doctors aren't often not open on weekends or after school removing Flex times will for simply Force these students to Mis instructional time which will be a lot harder to make up for with the loss of a Time block at the end of the day it also doesn't really understand the traffic situation at ghs under this proposal ghs gcds G CMS brunwick and a lot of other schools will release at the same time creating congestion issues we were able to
025manage this in the past yes but in the past G says start time was earlier and this is no longer the case flux time is not the same as an noin since it's at the same time for everyone students can better leverage it to communicate with their instructors without it when students Miss test or assignments due to field trips illness or anything else these students simply won't be able to make up work without being forced to stay after school many without a ride home but the part of this proposal that least understands student needs especially students like me is a side part on clubs many clubs are simply unable to meet after school uh more casual clubs like chess club one of the most popular clubs at the school would have trouble finding both students
026and advisers willing to stay after school every Club requires a paid teacher adviser to run and while a club may fall under the 50-minute wraparound time this is firstly under the teachers discretion not the clubs and secondly conflicts with potential academic time for teachers this proposal suggests attending club meetings virtually but this is a misunderstanding of the purpose of a club would you ask the golf team or the swim team to meet virtually for practice of course not being together in a space provides a vital Place uh for Community to build trust and it's an integral part of this town's goals for students in essence this proposal would uh destroy a pretty vital part of the ghs student community in favor of two minutes expert class time per block if the bee really wants to
027solve the flex problem you should give students a place to go during Flex time the Student Center closes most days at 3:05 leaving students wandering the halls and like uh was said earlier simply leaving without GSS knowing where they are uh instead of costing the GSS Community their time their sense of unity we should simply uh we should simply focus on the root causes like the early closing of the student center and the difficult to manage Flex attendance system that's entirely separate from other attendance systems to make time more effective rather than making a school time worse thank you for your time Jackie homman and next up is uh Abby Clark good evening Board of Education and Dr Jones three years ago I came here with yellow posters showing examples of progressive curriculum found in
028Greenwich classrooms White Privilege systemic racism radical gender ideology and the library books at the time superintendent Jones had administrators participate in a guided reading of white fragility by a critical race theorist Robin D'Angelo and even told a group of student activists that she intended to make Greenwich an anti-racist School District anti-racism sounds nice to the untrained ear but it represents an ugly Insidious racist agenda that is a far cry from our Collective goal of embracing equality for all instead it calls for future discrimination to atone for past discrimination one of my posters warned about students being turned into social justice Warriors by Educators who follow the guidance of the teachers union in the district the National Education Association or Nea for short I've asked Dr Jones in the Boe how they intend to keep the
029nea's radical ideas out of the classroom for instance the nea's June conference is about racial and social justice where attendees can learn even more about incorporating anti-racist teaching equity and delivering social justice lessons in the classroom the Nea conference also has a session on how to decolonize the curriculum a revisionist history lesson from the 1619 project and it celebrates Brazilian Paulo ferreri a Marxist credited with redefining literacy through critical Consciousness that's also known as critical race Theory or CRT when I complain about GM GPS indoctrinating students with CRT superintendent Jones lies to me she tells me it's not happening in Greenwich despite the evidence that shows it is indeed happening in some cases these Equity initiatives are endorsed or even mandated by the state that's how I know they're happening now it seems you'll be
030using equity and social just justice as ways to measure the performance of Educators the documents in the meeting notice for tonight included the GPS reflection goal setting an action document this document shows the district plans to judge administrators on whether they collaborate to promote equity and to promote social justice and whether they all allocate resources to ensure educational Equity what do these loaded words even mean can any of you define them for me can't we just get back to academics actually teaching students how to think and not what to think and can we hire Educators with a demonstrated track record of academic excellence and not because they worked in a social justice School Grenich deserves better than this we deserve a place of academic Excellence not a social justice Training Center thank you thank you
031next is Abby Clark and then Jessica Von brle on Deck thank you guys for having us at the start of the Year Pac Green School shared our annual districtwide goals with you our efforts focused on strengthening the existing zero waste program expanding the roll out of food scrap recycling program as well as increasing awareness of environmental issues and local initiatives tonight we would like to mention a few highlights all made possible by our green school's volunteers at each School our p tech leadership and John fiser School administration facilities Department waste free grenwich especially Julie desams the Conservation Commission in Rebecca poier and our students so our first goal was to hold Green Team meetings at all our schools to strengthen the existing lunch recycling program SO meetings were held in all 11 elementary schools three
032middle schools and GS and in these meetings we agreed to provide training update signage and focus on continual Improvement all elementary schools are set up with liquids blue been Recycling and trash nine of these schools have share tables and two have Food donation programs so this approach alone results in about 48% of materials being diverted away from trash our second goal was to roll out food scrap food scrap collection at all elementary schools to expand on last year's pilot food scrap collection is now weapon running in six of the elementary schools so in the School lunchroom food is actually the heaviest component in the waste so by collecting food scraps for recycling on top of the liquids and the blue bin recycling these six elementary schools are diverting an average of 74% of materials away
033from trash in the lunchroom so this program saves Our Town tipping fees our schools can get Compass back for their Gardens and students are learning about environmental stewardship and life cycles the third goal was for each school to host an earth month event to raise awareness and celebrate Environmental Conservation so Earth day occurs in April but the truth is that our green reps are working on initiative all year so for example collection drives for markers pens crayons batteries Beauty packaging film sneakers cleats solar eclipse glasses plastic yard signs book swaps Halloween costume swaps and texile and boot drives there have been tree planting ceremonies promotion of local parks walk and bike to schools cleaned up spaces planting bows and seeds and learned about pollinators and life cycles we've promoted waste-free lunches played games and composted
034on site for school Gardens schools have also brought in lots of external speakers held morning announcements and made beautiful bulletin Awards and made Earth month resolutions and hosted poster competitions and then finally our fourth goal was to promote monthly themes to raise awareness and connect with the local initiatives that are going on monthly Flyers were promoted October through January we hosted a free public seminar for the holidays and promoted a very full Earth month calendar of local events this April so in conclusion we've really enjoyed an incredible year which could not have been achieved without the time many many hours effort and support from many many people and finally I'd like to thank Angie for her incredible contribution inspiring collaborative approach and infinite supply of positive energy Angie is transitioning out of her role um
035but we welcome Hillary Harper who is joining me as P co-chair next year thank you next up is Jessica V good evening everyone I'm Jessica V brle I'm a teacher at grenwich high school but tonight I'm here as the parent of a Greenwich High School varsity baseball player I'm also the big sister of a former ghs uh baseball Captain I just thought I should disclose that information um I'm here to keep the baseball field on your radar I know you recall hearing from The Amazing team C Cody Baker back in December because it was evident that GPS had the boys in mind and wanted to give them the best season possible given the circumstances so first thanks to all who helped get hav ready for play it is a beautiful setting and the boys appreciate
036the work that was done to make the field not just playable but home and thank you to Mr Georgio for getting the boys the equipment they needed the team has been a total Joy eny to watch and if you haven't come to a game the first fcac playoff game is tomorrow and it might be our last home game it's going to be nice out I think and so you should come and cheer on the boys it's really beautiful um but I'm here because it's easy to enjoy the beautiful spring season and forget that having a tight uh plan for the ghs field is crucial to getting the team back to the ghs campus next spring it's easy to forget that havm is an alternative and not the imate goal we all know how construction projects
037and these field Renovations can go and I've heard there's a lot to do at ghs this summer so we just want to make sure that GPS will keep an eye on the ball and make sure the field is solder seed ready by the end of the summer we also want to keep on top of plans for the jvn Freshman teams uh and contingencies for circumstances like the ones that we face this school year given that Central wasn't really playable and isn't likely to be we hope you'll maintain havam a playable field and keep the fence and figure out a solution to getting dugouts to the field whatever can be done to avoid a scramble at this start of the next season so let's hope for the best but plan for the worst and please get
038the uh field finished early and maintain havm and I'm just speaking for myself not for the team by the way go cards Amy thank you good evening GPS Dr Jones and esteemed board I speak tonight in my public capacity as the PAC committee co-chair for diversity equity and inclusion and inextricably linked to that in my private capacity as a resident of Greenwich a parent of children in the public school system and as an Engaged citizen who's always concerned about how our kids who are least advantaged and most vulnerable vulnerable are getting the support they need as we approach the month of June we look to honor two important designations lgbtq pride in juneth we are celebrating Pride at Town Hall on June 2nd at 1M with our elected officials religious and Civic leaders families and
039neighbors many lgbtq students in our middle schools and high school are eager to get engaged the first first selectman's diversity advisory committee has organized a juneth event on June 19th with speakers in a special performance the first selectman's diversity advisory committee has also partnered with the Greenwich Historical Society in hosting another juneth event on Saturday June 22nd from 11: to 2 that promises to be truly special and geared towards the entire family volunteers are needed for its success we are hopeful our students and their parents are able to participate this year and celebrate their families culture and allyship and we appreciate the district stepping up to help get the word out about these significant events that is a most welcome and important development from past years and helps resolve concerns which we've raised at Boe
040in the past two years we know that somewhere between one and three and one in four young adults now identify as lgbtq and we know that they continue to face disproportionally High rates of bullying discrimination and violence a report just out from the Trevor Project a nonprofit focused on anti-bullying and suicide prevention showed that a heartbreaking 39% of lgbtq Youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year and nearly half of those aged 13 to 17 experienced bullying in the pasture we have an opportunity to counter these negative Trends with affirmative ones as Leaders we must lean in as a community and support our students who are navigating an environment that isn't always safe or welcoming for them we are excited by the students who expressed interest in these events and in having safe spaces
041where they can be themselves see themselves reflected and where all can learn more about the history and diversity that makes this town and country special sorry it's been my pleasure to co-chair the PAC Dei committee from its founding three years ago working together with representatives from the neighborhood schools we recognize and advocate for all our students thank you for letting us highlight these two events at this meeting and we look forward to 2024 and 25 and thank you for doing your part to help thank you uh thank you that concludes our community comments for the evening we'll now move on to monthly reports uh Dr Jones can you uh your superintendent report is up next thank you I have just a couple of items um obviously the end of the year is coming very quickly
042um and you know we're excited for all of the events that are going to happen in and around the district so be sure when that Friday note comes out we try to list everything that we can um from the moving up ceremonies that are all across the district as well as graduation I also want to say congratulations to Mary Dolan Colette who was named yesterday as the new assistant principal at Riverside and that Community was very excited very well received um also just a very special thank you for everybody that works with our staff our students but SBA ngss our AP testing it is a tremendous amount of organization uh that has to take place not just from the schedule itself but just managing that and having done that in one of my prior roles
043it was probably one of the most stressful things because in your mind you're thinking there's some like jail you go to if you mess up on a state test and it's um it's really stressful and so thank you to everybody that works with that um I also want to say a very special thanks to our legislators who worked incredibly hard uh for us this year in Hartford and and you know I probably you know since I've been in Connecticut I guess this would be probably nine years this has to be one of the strongest groups where not a week went by where I wasn't getting a call uh connecting okay where where's the district on this issue and just a couple of things that they really stayed connected uh science of reading was a big
044discussion through legislation this year um also I think the CMS project literally weekly calls making sure all the right paperwork you know what's turned in um and then to get the 20% reimbursement I think it was like it was pretty amazing so we're just very happy about that the other thing was um the racial balance and pausing that I did send a board I believe a note yesterday so we were going to have to do an amendment uh you know by the end of summer now that's on pause for at least a year and um and that's very helpful for us as well and last but not least we will also be having our seniors uh when they start their intern internships um and they'll be all over our schools all out in their schools
045and a lot of them actually go back to their Elementary School uh where they went as a child and it's wonderful to see him out in the school so uh we can't wait until that starts so that's all for me um I just I want to Echo all the comments regarding our um state representatives and uh obviously our our state senator regarding both the racial imbalance and the 20% component that's um on recovery for CMS and for those that haven't heard it's 20% on 112 million that we will be getting back which is something that's phenomenal and never happened before so that's um really really helpful that that money will be coming back to the town um so that's that's great great news so we should not delay in CMS at all um and I
046just want also want to add on the comment of racial imbalance piece um I've also asked our state reps and our Senator to start working since we have this year to um just get rid of the statute in general uh as opposed to uh having it just redo it or have us having to start this process again back in July in July of 2025 but to figure out a way to just to to get rid of it it's it's old it's doesn't need to be on the books anymore okay with that we'll move on to our unless anyone had any questions sorry yeah I was going to go to you next Laura uh well you've already heard about the um State reimbursement uh exciting news so I'll gloss over that um the distinguished teacher ceremony
047was Thursday last week and it was a lovely event here um some of you were in attendance some of you were not but it was a great event Miss Kowalski Dr Jones Karen all there I'd have to say Laura that was tremendous work that you did with respect to that committee and I'd have to say that um those the six teachers speeches were some of the most inspirational speeches I've heard in a very long time and it's truly a just it's remarkable the the the talent of uh Educators that we have here at Greenwich and it really shined through that night so thanks for your hard work Laura and making sure that that happened I can't take credit for planning the ceremony I can only take credit for being on the committee but it was
048really nice um uh as for Central Middle School uh some of you may have tuned in to the hearing with the tree Warden on Wednesday uh that took place at 11:00 a.m. and uh we will hopefully know his determination on uh removing the trees that need to be removed as well as The Rock outcropping um within days hopefully by Monday last night if you tuned in to The Bitter End around 11 or so when uh Architectural Review took up the CMS design um they passed us and we are on to Planning and Zoning on May 29th so that's all I've got L I had I had a question for you Laura if that's okay um I understand that um I actually sat in on your on the building committee meeting this past Tuesday uh at
0498: am which by the way is the witching hour so that's tremendous that you do it at 8: am um when all everyone has to get to school but um I I had a question regarding I understand that um the chair Tony Turner is going to be stepping down and it's a little uncertain as to the timing as to which that would happen and a transition plan and when a new chair would be stepping in place and I was wondering if you could provide some commentary on that for the board so uh uh chair Turner announced he would be leaving the position on May 1st uh he said he would stay on for more than 30 but less than 60 days um we have hope we have tried to get some clarity on on when
050exactly um we would need to have a new leadership team in place we have not really been successful on seeking on receiving any Clarity um so I have no news unfortunately to share on on that front but we do have very talented members on the committee chair Turner intends to stay on as a member so there won't be any loss of institutional knowledge for lack of a better term and the transition would theoretically not be terribly tricky um but we are sort of in limbo um on that same front I you know I I know um you just mentioned that uh chair Turner had said that he was uh stepping down from that position as of May 1 but within 30 to 60 days from that so I mean I know we're you know two
051weeks into May um but you know I know with the board having uh we have a retreat in two weeks in the ne our last board meeting of the year uh in a month so I don't know you know if it would be helpful if we did a sense of the meeting or something to ask for that information I know you guys are meeting coming up soon um just because I assume there's going to be a lot of work by Central Middle School building committee over the summer and we may not be meeting so I don't know if there's any information that they would need um whoever the new individual is I I mean we have some candidates I have nominated some candidates um it was too apparently too soon for nominations um but I
052know that um the sentiment of many of you is that more certainty is better particularly on a project of this size and importance um I would tend to agree and I I don't really know how to expedite this process or that I alone can expedite it myself yeah I mean I think it's in all of our best interests obviously this is probably the most important project we're running right now and I suspect we'll keep meeting over the summer so I think um certainty um knowing that he's no longer going to be the chair it's important that the certainty is clear and so um I'd hope that you know we could he would be willing to tell us in the short term especially because I guess I would be concerned if he were leaving but now
053that you tell me that he's staying on the committee then the transition part isn't so such a concern so I would think he'd be comfortable giving us a a date certain that we could all plan accordingly right he has not anybody else no I'll just add and I I said it at the meeting and I've said it before but um I do think a date certain is really is exceptionally important as well as a the transition plan to me I think the best thing that makes sense is to have a new chair elected by the committee and the transition go forward and they can obviously Shadow each other because Mr Turner is not leaving and I do think that's important given that it is our biggest and most expensive Capital project uh on our agenda
054I would not want anything to impact our ability to put a shovel in the ground by the end of this year uh particularly now that we have the blessing of the state and um 20% coming back I think that there should be no impediment to moving forward and I really do hope that we can just move the committee can move forward and contining with its good work and uh Move Along expeditiously we are hard at work every almost every day but definitely on Tuesdays um at 800 am always a lively meeting please feel free to join us as you as you can Lord do you meet every Tuesday at 8: am we sure do okay that's good to know thank you uh any other committee comments such all right perfect uh moving on to the
055next agenda item Dr Jones the uh Western Middle School soil update um I'll just remind the community that we had a full presentation on this just over a month ago so if you have an interest to go back into that previous uh board agenda and you can watch the full presentation uh project is going great um man managing it very very well uh both of our contractors it's mainly aeom who's on site now but again uh everything's still moving forward uh fantastic comments questions moving right along great that's always good news I know that we're excited to get that done and unfortunately it won't be done in time for fall sports but it will be ready for spring Sports which is really important um moving on we have Dr Heen thaler and Mr Baines regarding
056the prek update so good evening we sub can you hear me um we submitted a presentation on the update of prek um looking at the goals within prek um the new curriculum that's been implemented this year as well as um just some general information about the prek programs the schools that they're at and um that we keep finding these little munchkins and our numbers keep growing in prek as do the classes and we continue to open sections as um as we need to with uh in order to support the needs for the students so we're open to questions you guys may have Karen hello um thank you for that update it really was lovely to to see what's happening with our youngest Learners um so I you know I just wanted to ask uh well
057I have two different sets of questions one is on the new curriculum because I know this is our first year with that um I think it's wonderful that we're having that opportunity so that all of the pre schools uh are running the same curriculum and these students will be kindergarten ready when they well hopefully that's the plan kindergarten ready when they step out the door um I just didn't know if you've uh you know I know professional development was part of that that program and I didn't know if you've surveyed the teachers to see how they felt that professional development went uh through the program if it met their needs um and if they felt that they were able to really get through the meet of the curriculum this year with the students um I
058know it's a lot to do in a short window of time with individuals who um it's like hurting cats scatter in every direction you know so not as focused always yep so yeah we I have started that process of surveying our teachers and how they felt um I just had a one of my started the end of year meetings with um our groups this week and I met with um the team at hamv and they they were talking about how they felt really good about the implementation of creative curriculum um they had opportunities with live training with teaching strategies first in the summer um or or in the spring last year and then we waited a month or so so they can get get their feet on the ground and then we had teaching strategies
059come in again um it's been successful to have our instructional coaches go through and do walkthroughs themed walkthroughs we're we're telling them what we're look we're going to look for and we're going to provide them feedback on specific areas um and that's been helpful as well and then we've we've also had monthly team meetings um to talk about the creative curriculum so uh feel like the implementation the first year implementation has gone really well yeah so and we'll also be working on the summer curriculum work which is finding ways to make sure that we're implementing it efficiently with the other curriculums that we're providing to our students such as fundations um and second step and we're also looking at um ways that we're assessing the students to make sure that we're getting the most accurate
060information moving forward with this new curriculum uh there's so much to unpack there's so many Rich learning experiences within the curriculum and we want to make sure that where using it to its entirety I'd love to be there as a fly on the wall the day you give assessments to preschoolers just to see how that goes um but you know and I'd love to see if you know or just make a comment that I I hope that you know next year that this is the first uh group of preschoolers I mean they've granted had one year of the curriculum but moving into pre uh from preschool to kindergarten if we could just we have the opportunity to follow them to sort of see how that you know this new program if it really gave them
061the proper tools that met the students needs to be kindergarten ready I think that would be very helpful for us to know um especially if we are you know considering uh reducing that uh you know uh academic uh Cliff that we're where always talking about or you know I agree um and then one other question for you um you know I know one of our goals uh was to um enhance the support for early intervention um within preschool and I didn't I I don't remember hearing a lot about that in the presentation so I was just sort of wondering um you know how we're bringing that you know enhancing that support for early intervention in the preschool program um if it's part of the new curriculum or if it's something that we're doing in addition
062um you know just wanted to make sure we know that how we're meeting the needs of our youngest uh students there yeah so the curriculum really dives into what is developmentally appropriate for our youngest Learners so the teachers have a set list of Milestones based on the curriculum lessons to where where our students should be based on um what they're what they're doing in class so they're able to do that as well we also have requests for assistance so that we see that us our students are struggling you know our teachers can fill out our families can fill out a request for assistance and then we can have um someone go in and take a look at the student help provide strategies um to for early intervention like you said so yep I I just
063have a question of I see that you're adding one section at Cost cob and I was curious if you could talk about just it it seems like just having one class alone is that challenging in terms of not having colleagues in the building well it there's always it could be but you also have your your related service providers you have your other special education teachers in the building um and I know the team is really supportive so um you know you have you have that aspect as well um you know we'll we'll continue to evaluate that as as we move forward and just to just to add on we've had to do this in the past with where we start with one class and then in moving forward sometimes we have to add a second
064class or we're always looking for space um I think that's one of our most challenging aspects for prek um is growing so um hopefully there there would be space at sometime but sometimes we have to have start with one class and we're trying to also not overload any one particular school which is why that particular class is actually coming from North Street over to uh cost cob so again we're trying to give parents more options too so that we're not busing our our our littlest ones we have three-year-olds who are on buses going all over town so trying to to mitigate that as well um it says in the next school year that you anticipate adding another program but that location is to be determined do you have views on where that might sit given
065current spatial issues or does that to be determined means we need to see how everything else plays out yes so Dr Jones and I will start in September um looking and um at the numbers across the schools because we know we're going to have to open a class so we start looking at where that could we um start talking to principles we start looking at space um because not just any classroom can be used as a prequel preschool classroom so those conversations take um a lot of time um so we start that discussion at the very early end of the year once we know where the classes are where the sections are um and then again trying to look at where our students are and where their um where their where their homeschool is too
066got it okay any other questions yep sorry Laura has one um just wondering what is uh I know that you know we changed the the side okay how do I say this correctly we let the size um be somewhat squishy so ouro the ratio of um IEP students to um their typical peers so I'm just wondering are we um are we expecting uniformity among class sizes are some classes smaller some classes larger I just wondered what um what we're sort of targeting as far as an ideal class size for the prek so our our goal is still nine typical students and six special education students the squish comes at this point in the year because we still have students because students as soon as they turn three come into the program and so um you
067know we have students turning three like right now with four weeks left of school so it is a little bit squishy right now um and it is a good word Laura um and so we do have in our in our classes and um the 15 uh classes that we've had that have run year do have a seventh special education student and our newer class that we just opened uh mid year has six um I think we have some openings in some of the typical peers so they're not all have nine um nine classes with nine typical peers right now and then four classes with eight that helps thank you and just one last question um with regards to the projected growth do you feel that we've that you're sufficiently budgeted for the right Staffing uh
068for all of the incoming classes and expected classes and how you would juggle that I think we're appropriately budgeted based on the historic Trends I think what we're going to have to see is in September with the whole kindergarten age thing where we actually fall um so if we've been monitoring and asking our parents you know are you staying in preschool or going to kindergarten and we're pretty firm on most of those um but that doesn't mean we're not going to have parents who might change their mind this summer or a new students who move in who decide to you know they want the preschool So based on all things being kind of equal and stable from our historic Trends were good but we're still going to have to monitor that and uh you just
069prompted another question which is what is what do you think the trend is for parents in that they because of that age differential by when you can enter kindergarten do you view that the parents are making a is the decision greater to keep them in preschool for another year or is it to go ahead and just send them to kindergarten so I can answer that we had this year we had 129 families that fell into that range where they they had to make that decision um 83 Jed and 43 sped families and we actually had a even split there's 30 30 students that are staying with us in preschool and 15 are special education 15 are Genet so Mo most of the families chose to go to kindergarten but we still had a quite you
070know a nice amount that stayed in preschool okay great thank you any other questions all right perfect thank you very much guys appreciate it um all right thank you and now we have um the seak report we have uh Jen and Jenny and Audra sorry hold on I told you I'm operating on very little sleep tonight I apologize okay that was a test run you guys did great good job proud of you all right so actually what I really want to have come up is Mr Deo and miss new which I wouldn't want to miss for on the Hamilton Avenue string program so sorry guys Madam chair thank you so much good evening members of the board superintendent Jones uh my remarks tonight are a little bit Bittersweet um the sweet part certainly was listening
071to the wonderful musicianship that kicked off our evening but that doesn't happen by accident it happens because of fine leadership and standing next to me I'm proud to uh turn the podium over to miss Laura N but it's bittersweet because this is the last time I'm going to turn the podium over to miss Laura Nell so publicly I'd like to thank her for her years of service with the Greenwich public schools and uh to that end um maybe have her tenure here end with um some easy questions this evening that's that's one introduction thanks Mark good evening members of the board thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to share a little bit about our special program over at Hamilton Avenue School hope you had the chance to uh take a look at
072the video that our team put together but this magic actually really doesn't happen without the teachers and I think it's really important that you get to meet each one of them I'm going to first call up Lisa Wolf who is one of our Orchestra teachers at Hamilton Avenue we have Dr Daniel hopark who is our Suzuki director at Hamilton Avenue School we have Jillian Corey who is our Western Middle School orchestra director we have Bethany fuscaldo who is who you met earlier she is our Orchestra director at GS and we have Megan deona who is our learning facilitator for the string program so she's the teacher leader for the string program K through 12 she has such an important role as she helps plan people PD for the staff she helps collect data and revise
073assessments and curriculum work so I thought it was really important to recognize these folks because it really takes a village to do some special things in the music department so if you could let's recognize them for their outstanding work and with that I'm going to open the floor for any questions that you might have regarding the presentation any questions Karen I don't have a question I simply have a comment and especially as I know this may be this probably will be the last time you're standing in front of us I just wanted to say thank you and I I I'm not I can probably speak for the board I know Karen and I have had a continued Focus for many many years on ensuring our students have the opportunity to have an incredible education in
074the Arts uh as well as just academics um and arts is academics in many ways and I have seen the incredible things that you have done within our schools and woken the spirit up within our many of our students um have heard from countless students over the years I remember at one point we talked about music it's some for some students that's the one reason they get up in the morning and go to school that's their safe space that's the thing that makes them want to be at school and so to see the students the age range and the fact that we are introducing students to the Suzuki program in kindergarten in first grade and they're continuing all the way through high school and Beyond is absolutely fantastic and I just wanted to thank you
075for sharing sharing that with us as a community and and a board and for all the other incredible things that you've done and the focuses that you've had on the Arts and what you've brought into our schools in our district for so many years so thank you thank you you know gr grenwich is a very very special place it's a very special place because of programs that you guys support you guys really make it a safe space for people who like Karen said may not want to come to school until they have that that touch point with that arts teacher that art teacher or that music teacher I really hope to see that continue and I hope to be in the audience after you know my time is completed here but thank you so much
076for the tremendous support you've had for the program over the years and I'm going to finish with a snippet of one of our proudest moments in the district the string Festival finale and um our co-director for the string festivals here actually Jillian Corey is one of our directors and Aron Aaron far who happened to be a distinguished teacher last year is the other co-director um I hope that this also speaks to you as to why these programs are just so super important for building the music community in Greenwich so good it's on the screen behind you [Music] the suspense is what builds all the imagination um actually if Mike is on board I believe there is another copy that I can share if you don't have it there should be another copy that says Board
077of Ed 516 maybe that one will be better me one moment to pull it up thank you we usually have a backup just in case and if for some reason you can't find it Mike I can certainly share it with the board that's not a problem and even post it to our website for the community to take a look um while we're waiting I just wanted to make a comment about the video I really appreciated so much um the older kids talking about how they learned about collab operation and teamwork from music because I think that's something that we don't often talk about and there's I love that we're Sports town but we are a sports town and music is also a really great way to learn how to work with other people yeah I
078actually think you're a String Town the other [Laughter] s yeah it it was really nice to have some of our alumni come out and talk about how music has really touched their lives even though they're not continuing as professional musicians and I can speak for everyone here that that's kind like our main goal is exposing them to music at an early age so that they will sing to their children whether they think they sing beautifully or not that they will give the similar opportunities to their children or to their community and then give back to the community what you saw up there on the string Festival that was a community and the Suzuki program in itself just the philosophy and the pedagogy talks about music being a community and the way that it's designed in
079that in that you could see even before the meeting had started we had the littlest players playing with the older kids and it scaffolded so that they all have a part and they all have an important part to make it all work together so I'm I'm assuming my can't find the other video if not maybe we can at least uh post it on so that one Laura is that okay great yes play it let's see [Music] hi I'm Joe and I'm an engineer in Boston last year I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania I was a salutatorian of the ghs class of 2019 and I graduated from hamv and all the way back in 2011 uh I was violin at other non-m musical benefits too especially in the areas of discipline and focus uh and
080if you want to get good at anything um it's just as Dr Suzuki says which is practice practice practice and I always like to imagine a world in which everyone could play music and I think HF is a great Testament to how that can be possible and over the course of my Elementary School experience I think both my talent and love for the instrument grew rapidly and I think these early experiences from childhood started the foundation I had with confidence and Poise uh which later translated into being being able to find ease in performing solos later on in middle school and high school or playing in orchestral auditions or playing in um me personally my involvement in music didn't stop either After High School um I continue to play the viola while studying at Boston
081College and their Orchestra and chamber ensembles and although I'm not continuing music professionally now um I can see how studying music and playing the violin have several parallels to my chosen career path in dental school every day uh with finger and hand dexterity and posture and pers persistence and practice I find music to still be very relevant to my life today and I know that my life would be very different had I never started playing violin in elementary school hello my name is Charles and Miranda and I'm alus of the granch Public School's district I'm making this video today to express my gratitude and to thank those who supported the Suzuki program at my Elementary School hamf growing up in a low-income household I didn't have the opportunities to explore many extracurricular activities however thanks
082to H Suzuki program I was exposed to music at an early age having weekly lessons both in the classroom and outside the classroom due to hamas's partnership with the granch alliance I was also inspired by hamf Suzuki program in high school where I have served as a private lesson teacher for eight elementary and middle school students I've also decided to take this passion with me to my first year at the University of Pennsylvania where I volunteer at local westly elementary schools supporting strings teachers in their classrooms I'm so grateful for the opportunities that the granch public school district has provided me and I'm excited to give back in the future thank you thanks Laura you will be missed okay now we're ready for the real thing do you have our slides um I was at
083the strings festival and it was amazing so um thank you um I'm Jenny Reynolds and this is audro Donovan and we're um the chair and vice chair of uh seak this here and we're very happy to be here tonight thank you for having us um to uh provide our report um next slide just as a reminder of CX missions um we're looking to educate and inform promote understanding and respect around neurodiversity advise and ensure equity for our special education students and monitor and Report um as we're doing tonight um what we typically report on is what our committees do each year and um this year we chose two working committees as a council um Staffing and inclusion so Audrey is going to talk to you about Staffing so our committees are made up of parents
084staff and administrators so for our staffing committee we chose the cak chose this topic to work together on because it came up in every single committee we've ever had it we have the GAA speaking about it PC speaking about it so we thought it was important and we needed to focus on it the committee decided on six topics to focus on every single meeting we had we chose one of those topics so the first one was the refinement of the Staffing model what we learned while we were on the committee is that everyone has a different idea of how we staff we've had presentations on it and the staff still doesn't know some buildings do it some way some buildings do the other way now it it does we are told that it's done by
085case load but as you heard the ga said it's so much more important than just a case load of a student we have to look at their indirect hours their direct hours some students have all different classifications and different needs some students have crisises every week we have our psychologist our social workers being pulled from therapy of other students to service these kids and those indirect hours are not counted so we don't know if that data is being collected at every building some our staff our committee was made up of teachers throughout the district parents throughout the district so some staff said oh no I keep track of that and I and I do hand it to the assistant principal some buildings said it's not we really need our staffing models to look at direct
086Services as well as indirect Services also we had staff at different levels so we had elementary school middle school and high school who would share that the staff is different we understand it's a different you get probably more intervention in the lower levels but they again did not know where the data was coming from that shows our staffing model and how it was being fully implemented it's not clear to any of the staff that was in our committee of how the indirect and the Direct Services and the level our need of need of each student is being considered in the Staffing model we do believe the data is being tracked in each building so that we're not saying we don't have the data we're just asking if that data can be used when we're Staffing
087our buildings so at the special education report did say that each child is every case load is there is a cap on what the special ed teachers can get per case load though again it's not the indirect services that are counted we don't know if the co- talk classrooms are they getting the same case load as someone without a case load I'm obviously a little nervous now so now I'm I'm used to just talking to everybody you're doing great doing just fine we're also discussing when the students are being pulled out of the classroom so some staff report that when they're doing their planning their meeting is captured in the I AP and they're advise they have to plan for our most intensive class students they're not getting that time that's in the IP at
088least half of our staff that were in our committee shared that they are not meeting the I AP required and mandated hours and services for each child that they service so can I stop you there and just ask a question on that point sure so if there if so they're they're being those staff that should that are that are scheduled to be providing Services um as required by the IEP they're being pulled out to do what other things if there's a crisis in the building so just say the social work of the psychologist is in a PPT so they're being pulled out from Intervention you know or if a parent comes in and they need a team meeting like there's stuff that comes up every day or if they're having an assembly and one of
089the assemblies are planned you know just randomly if that if one of our children required to have a psychologist a power or somebody with them at that time they have to pull from someplace else so is it a has cak talked about how to rectify like we we do have many one of our recommendations is is that you hear about we have Paras we have building Subs special education does not so if we have uh just say a speech therapist that someone a family member is sick and she's out for a week or two those students do not get those service for a week or two we don't have another speech therapist in the building we do not have a fluid or speech therapist that's in the district that can service those if the special
090ed teacher just say broke her leg and she is not coming you know we and again where Staffing is limited you know it's hard to hire them we do not have any substitutes for special education every building had a sub has a general ed teacher substitute they have other people who can be plugged in when there's a crisis or when they need special education does not have that are you aware of any other districts that do have floaters going around for special ed and I mean I I do I don't know yes I don't know if they're called floaters or if they're called they have them that I'm using the term Flo but I understand what you're saying yeah to know I don't know so but also when we're saying when we have an assembly
091when we have we know we have these team meetings when we have other people who are there's some special teachers who went on maternity leave they were out of the building for 6 months that school did not have a replacement we we're asking to be proactive we know when they things are coming up we know our population deals with change and especially schedule changes and new people very it's very difficult on our children we're asking to be very proactive in the way it seems we we feel the committee not Jenny and I that we're we're working under reactive this happened let's throw them in we have one in here you'll see we have a par who said she did 20,000 steps in a day because something was going on she was running around the building
092we also have staff that are moving from the building so during the year some staff just moved from maybe the high school to an elementary school because the elementary school needed them and we're underst staffed so we really have to see what is prompting that and no one knows we're on our committee they said they don't know why they just we don't have a power in this building anymore other buildings received a par so absenteeism is a big thing we do know it's a school policy to inform the parents when their staff is not there parents have repeatedly stated they do not know their child didn't get services for two to three weeks and it was caused legitimate absent maybe somebody was out they were sick the parent did not know the staff was not
093in the building and again we're saying this we know it's a policy for grenage public school so we're not saying that it's not in the it's just not being followed our second committee our second second meeting discuss co- teing so we are bringing co- teing into the district it wasn't very prominent a few years ago it's great that we're having it everybody in our sub committ it did not they were not clear on what is co-teaching they didn't know how they could implement it some thought it was for children who had attention issu some thought it was to have a seamless code talk classroom where you wouldn't know who the teacher and who isn't every building had a different description of what they're supposed to do in the C- teing class it was a different
094delivery and the different we as parents we were asking what would be the benefit not every teacher could explain to us what would be the benefit for our children so we don't know how the roll out is going to be effective if the people who are doing Cod teing can't even explain it to the parents they want to do it but they're not sure what they're doing they also didn't know what the case load is some Co some teachers who were doing the case load had smaller case loads other people who were co-teachers had larger case loads power professionals this is the big one that the parents and our staff that were in it spoke about if a child needs a power professional it's the committee at the PBT discusses it they make a joint
095decision no one knows really how that some teachers have said this child needs a par it was denied now I think there they shared there was a seven page document they had to fill out then to recommend a parah that's new teachers don't know why they have to do that some of them do invest the the time to do that and still at the end of the day after the teacher said that they need it it's still denied our powers have expressed that the sport the support is made available from whoever is free in the building and they're asked to help other children other students just when they're on break so again one of the P who said 20,000 steps she was running around to serve anyone who's free again I go back to our
096our population deals with change and New People's it's so difficult on their Central system so when you're just throwing people in to fill a break it it's not going to end well you are going to have behaviors we see it every day in the buildings and then their the behavior is blamed on the student when if again we are just proactive to address this beforehand we might not have had those behaviors and again when we were talking about the mandated Services if we are pulling staff to service the other students they're not where their mandated Services there should be I'm on on that point where students are not being serviced is anyone keeping track of that within the schools we have been told that they've been keeping track of that when parents ask for it
097they're not provided it sometimes they're told they are getting them you know they might have missed one or two so I do believe we we hope I think every related service provider and every teacher in the building is keeping track of what they're doing is that being shared with the administrators and the parents at this time no should we wait for the end to ask questions okay we actually when we were hearing about the music and our great music program they said there's a learning facilitator Miss devona who was at North May when my children were there and learned under her and she keeps track of you know the professional development and she keeps track of all the data so I don't I don't think special ed has a learning facilitator who keeps track of
098the data or a special ed professional development so maybe how we're saying we want to be proactive and we want to make sure that all this is going on maybe that would be great to have someone a learning facility for special education uh the other thing is our related service providers we don't know how they're being tracked the psychologists the bcbas the speech therapist the mental health staff especially our mental health staff especially you know it's starting we're seeing our children struggle in elementary school not just middle school and high school and our psychologists and social workers are being called out of meetings all the time being called out of intervention it we we want to make sure that is being tracked those indirect hours and those children that data is being kept so we
099know how many hours they're actually servicing children and not just the IEP hours because our staff is above and beyond servicing our children we hear it every day and we appreciate when you uh our teachers who were nominated for the distinguished teacher award we do have great staff but the prominent thing we heard through all our committees is they lost hope like I've been doing this for 10 years I've never seen so many teachers upset and crying saying they lost hope they don't know if they can do it and in that this committee that was that was pervasive with everybody that came I love our children I love our our community but I'm not sure if I can stay so we we really again have to be proactive to hear our teachers work with our
100teachers sorry that was our power professionals and a so again we went over the building Subs we don't have a building Subs to assist our teachers the professional assistant service time is sometimes included in the service page sometimes not again we want data to make sure every service hour that our staff is working with our children the powers in team collaboration a lot of times our powers are with our most intensive and most needy of students a lot of times they're not included in the PBT meetings they are not they're I think they are they read the iips we want them to have specialized training for the children that they're working with a lot of behavior training we did ask for behavior training training last year for the seak and I do believe they gave
101behavior training to the special ed teachers and some of the Paras but then the General Ed teachers as Jenny's going to go into inclusion like we're all in one like we need to all work together so our general teachers also need this behavior training they need to know how to work with all of the students so we can't just have that professional training and development just for special ed students I mean special ed teachers the resources for the staff well-being and staff climate across the district I mean that's that is really what we got out of the Staffing committee is we have to work with our teachers we have to hear our teachers I mean they're again I've never I've been doing this for 10 years now and I I really appreciate I have three
102kids with I p 504s and shockingly but I've spoken here many times before and I've never ever felt that I don't know where we're going because our teachers are just overwhelmed they're say we have on paper saying it's the lowest case load they've ever had and every single teacher in our committee said it is one of the highest the highest number of students they are servicing and they've never had this many hours I don't know where the disconnect is but we can't just say that's not true there is a just connect and we have to find out where it is because we are going to lose our teachers they I mean they are just burnt out their morale is gone they don't feel heard I know we have some committees and I know our teachers
103have volunteered I mean we had 26 that came to almost every meeting so 26 parents and teachers that's a lot of time to dedicate to read this report to help us write this report they are dedicated but they're not feeling heard we they say they volunteer to be on committees but then at the end of the day day any of their comments they don't feel are heard they don't feel any of the recommendations any of the input that they shared was followed up with now there might be reasons for that but there's no communication to share there is no they feel that there is no appreciation to say this was really great we can't do that now but this is what we're going to do they just a lot of them Shar they felt it
104was a waste of time going to these committees because their voices were not heard again when we when we have meetings with District staff they do tell us we have the our staff is the professionals and we should be listening to their opinion so I I do believe that the district wants that but it just it's the the outplay it's just not happening so again we have to find out where this disconnect is before it gets worse we need all the stakeholders to be at the table and again what we keep hearing that there's public praise for our teachers but they don't feel it we we really need the communication to step up and to include them in it I don't know if we give them Anonymous Outlets I don't know when the recommendations when
105we're having these committees and you're making those decisions please provide data to everybody the parents the staff that are on those committees about why their voice was wasn't heard and budget I mean we talk about budget all the time like we know we you know again it was a great year compared to others but we're we our sped staff our sped numbers are going up we need our St staff to go up with it we we again the substitutes the Paras the the we talked about the prek now we're uh another idea was to have building subs and also if we could have a different a new a power that's going into the kindergarten building so and we want them to evaluate the cost effectiveness of it we can't just say we want more money
106like evaluate evaluate the unique learner program are we using that like I think there was one to three students are we gaining more students in that program or are we putting resources there where they can be better used in another part of our district we really need to know the effectiveness of the program and the cost Effectiveness and staff development and staff development was what students I mean the staff talked about all the time please include them in staff development sometimes they're sent to mandatory staff development where they've done that training before our staff go outside and do training additionally for themselves then they have to come back and do another mandatory staff development please make sure that our staff is included in it and it's a better model for implementation maybe we just look
107at the home a home model also they had learning facilitator maybe the learning facilitator could work with the PD for our special education staff we need behavior training for all I mean you we can look at the numbers for the crisis intervention it's not just special edit General ed students when our special ed students aren't serviced it affects everybody in the building we were asked to only keep it to two recommendations so that's what we're trying to do we just want to give information of everybody that everyone shared in our committee so our first recommendation is to create a clear and consistent Staffing model for all special staff our teachers related service providers power professionals our bcbas our mental health staff students Focus looking at individual needs service hours and planning time required they cannot
108Implement something if they do not have the planning time to do it when our staff is stressed our students are stressed it relates back to our special ed kids our kids are never going to make progress if our staff are not there and present to assist them informed through data collection we need to use the data to do it track indirect service hours create a rubric for buildings to easily access staff need consider floating staff or District to cover midyear additions and absences and our second is to involve staff meaningfully create transparency around Staffing decisions include specialed staff on District committees and take action on committee input share those surveys results be transparent conduct exit interviews and cultivate a culture of respect it's this is the first time I can honestly say it's not us
109first them when I first started in this it was the T the parents would not want to talk to the staff the parents would not want to work with the staff we're not there like we are one team and I appreciate every administrator every staff member who came to our subcommittee we still have a long way to go but we are on the T team together where we want you at the table with us and to work through this because we do have a great staff and we want to keep them do you want us to ask questions about staff you know that part of your report now or wait till the very end I think we can do it after the conclusion because I think again it's all connected you move forward two slides
110please um so the second committee uh working committee was the inclusion committee which I was one of the chairs of um and we started our conversation in the committee by just realizing that there was a big um discrepancy in how people defined inclusion throughout the district so we sought um experts in the field uh leading researchers um and teachers um of inclusion and and looked for uh defining it for you and for this report and so for our committee um we defined it as inclusion uh is an approach that extends Beyond just access to physical spaces or curricular content it's a responsive and flexible approach that Fosters a sense of belonging respect and acceptance through shared ownership between general education and special education teachers um this uh chart is by Shelley Moore who's kind of
111the queen of udl Universal Design for Learning and this is from um one of her books and um I think it's a really good diagram to just highlight um the different um variations of classrooms that you might see or even schools so exclusion and segregation are pretty clear in these pictures the first four the green dots are representing um the non kids and the colorful dots the other colored dots are representing our various neurodiverse Learners um and I just want to highlight because I'm going to kind of call back to it the integration one which is right there in the middle all of if you look at that all the students are in the same classroom but the um the neurodiverse Learners are kids with IEPs are kind of clumped together within that we're seeing
112this as a model of inclusion in this District a lot we're seeing it in Co talk classrooms where the the kids are grouped by ability and even by teacher in some cases and we're seeing it in um gened classrooms where their gened teacher is teaching primarily to uh the green students and the the others are getting you know a lesson over to the side either with their par professional or working on modified content so that's just something that um does happen it's not all across the board but that's that's one thing that we were seeing and then um in the past Shelley Moore and other um inclusion Specialists kind of stopped at that fourth one inclusion where you know they're all in the same room together and they're um they're they're working together um and
113she changed it in 2016 because as the more work that she did with udl the more she realized that the idea whole idea of Universal Design for Learning is having access points for all Learners and our non-ep students are not all the same learning profile um just like our IEP students are not all the same learning profile so it's really important to um consider that there's variety and when you use something like Universal Design for Learning where you create a foundation and you build upon that foundation for each learner then you're teaching to diversity you're teaching to all kids in each kid um excels even more next slide please we looked at the research um and um there's 40 Years of research that is overwhelmingly supportive of inclusive education um the benefits for kids with
114disabilities are improved academic achievement better communication skills wider social networks fewer behavior problems higher graduation rates and improved options After High School benefits for kids without disabilities are increased creativity communication Innovation collaboration empathy and patience all things that if I were an employer I might be looking for and on top of that there's lots of evidence of recorded higher academic achievement for the kids without IEPs um these two graphs we included because we felt that they were um a really good representation of what can happen in a district when you really commit to inclusive teaching practices so the one on the left is from a district in Oregon that um really embraced inclusion and over a five-year period you can see that yellow line is um the percentage of IEP students that are in the
115classroom more than 80% which is kind of the gold standard in research is that for it to be called inclusion they're in the classroom the general education classroom at least 80% of the day so that yellow line is the increase from 60% um of students with IEPs were included 80% or more of the day and it went up in 5 years to 88% of them were in the classroom 80% or more um of the day and you can see that their graduation rates the orange represents their special ed students the the graduation rates in five years went from 60% graduation rate to 81.5 and for all students it went up 4.5% so um so it's pretty telling that that approach is very successful and then on the chart on the right is from inclusive schooling
116which is um uh Consulting Group and educating group on inclusive um education and they did a consultation and kept data themselves on an elementary school in the Midwest and this was just reading data after three years of inclusive classrooms 80% or more in um a general education environment and um this is really telling the the reading test scores for the special education students went from um 13 % proficient or Advanced to 60% proficient or advanced in just three years and the percentage of all students went from 50% proficient or Advanced to 86% next slide um and then we asked what does the law say and I'm not going to um educate you a ton on Ida because I assume that you all know but the Ida is very clear that students are to be educated
117in the least restrict least restrictive environment um and that means that they students with disabilities are in regular classrooms with non-disabled peers in their neighborhood schools to the maximum maximum extent possible removal can only occur if education in regular classes with the use of supplementary AIDS and services with Fidelity cannot be achieved next slide so in our inclusion committee we had four areas of focus um our first area of focus was just a lack of consensus of definition which I already kind of alluded to and a lack of guidance on inclusion so there's no real shared language some people are using the words mainstream and inclusion interchangeably um mainstream is really kind of the first foray into inclusion back in the 1980s when students had to earn their right into the general education classroom as
118opposed to inclusion which it is their right to be in the general education classroom um there's a lot of um interchangeability between collab Cod te udl modification accommodation differentiation um and there's just not a clear shared definition of these things no clear stance or guidance um for staff or publicly on the website and our question was with so much um La so much that is unclear in the mere understanding of inclusion how can we determine if practices are effective or if the least restrictive environment is even being properly assessed um our second area focus is just established systems and mindsets regarding placements of students with disabilities um we recognize that there are longstanding um issues in just public education as a whole nothing to do with greenage um kids with um some kids with disabilities
119like 40 or 50 years ago wouldn't have even been going to school so um so the system has changed and when IEPs were first developed they were developed without inclusive practices on the table so the whole system of I p s and and even really special education was developed at a time when segregation was the norm um so that kind of medical model of looking at remediating kids as opposed to fixing environments um it still exists and so that's that's something that we're up against um hurdles that we see particularly in the district um are things such as lack of consistency of practices across schools and school levels mindsets in general around inclusive practices inclusion being placed under the office of special education and student supports rather than general education or at least a collaboration
120between the two and lack of planning and shared learning between um special ed and gen Ed staff um and last uh rostering um we notice a lot of times that um inadvertently or intentionally we're not sure but there's a lot of clustering of students of high needs um together which makes um for a a harder classroom to teach and um diversity within the classroom our third area of focus was looking at training um and and collaboration so um this is kind of something that uh audre talked about and we hear time and time again in our committees is that we that a lot of Staff feel like there's a lot of training and it gets watered down because there's not a lot of followup and so it starts to all kind of blend together and
121none of it gets implemented in classroom so if you're looking at something like udl um a districtwide roll out um continuing to work on that um with coaching and looking at small groups and real case problem solving is what teachers are um crying out for um they also said that often gened and special ed teachers um are siloed um in their meetings in their professional development um and um uh and they they think that there could be benefit for learning each other's um domains especially if you're teaching classroom together um paraprofessionals and related service providers um also need training and inclusive practices um we have just as uh we're primarily reporting to you the things that we can see that could use help um but we do want to just acknowledge that we're getting good
122feedback on the pine program in the elementary schools um but some people do say that they wish they had more time to explore it and some people say they didn't know some of the great benefits that are available there so we hope that that becomes more clear and another thing that kept um coming up as a positive was the addition of an inclusion facilitator in the district um but I just want to highlight um uh on behalf of the district that there's one person um doing this role and our district has 8,600 students and over 1,200 with IEPs so that makes it pretty hard to um Implement inclusion uh AC uh efficiently um and then the last area was implementation and we just um kept Hearing in our committee the implementation is really varied um
123and partly probably because the understanding of what inclusion is is really varied in the district so it becomes um confusing um on what what it should look like so a lot of people in the district already think we do inclusion um despite the fact that we use um we heavily use resource rooms we have a lot of skills classrooms we have imbalanced co- talk classrooms and a lot of related service pullouts so um are we doing inclusion or are we not doing inclusion and the the misperceptions about the effectiveness of inclusion by both parents and staff um are are could easily be based on a lack of clarity and a wide variety of implementation rather than the actual approach so um looking at implementation is really important the areas that we found um were uh
124problems in consistency with implementation is that General education teachers don't always have a strong knowledge of students disabilities or their IEPs special educators are lacking knowledge and curricular content um there's a lack of consistent high expectations for special ed students particularly in gen Ed classrooms there's a lack of natural proportions um meaning that the percentage of students with disabilities in a classroom should um should kind of flow with the natural proportions of disabilities in the community so you know the the disabilities within the community is 15 to 20% and our um our classrooms have much higher percentages of students with disabilities the research that we talked about that was so overwhelming is based on natural proportions um and we also saw that there was a lack of time to connect with Paras so audre talked
125about how Paras don't always um get included or very rarely get included in team meetings or PPT meetings um we're also hearing that Paris are not even getting time FaceTime with the sped case managers so they're just pretty much um you know flying and hoping and getting support when there's crisis and um they're doing an amazing job but they need support and they need training and they need time um to connect with their sped case managers and and we're also seeing an overreliance on Paras that sometimes spills into an instructional role um in general education um inclusive classrooms or the attempted inclusive classrooms in the district we see that udl is um more often being um used when there's a kid in need rather than as a foundational approach for lesson planning um this often
126results in different tracks of teaching so there's kind of the teacher that's teaching to them the whole and then there's a kid doing a little bit of a modified work to the side um there's little to no sped pushing in secondary while it's common in elementary so those kids that have success in elementary with that no longer get that option in secondary um with our co- talk classrooms we also see a lot of variations no clear guidelines on when schools can do this um there's issues um seen when um where the work and the kids are split by um discipline so like I said in that um integration model and and those um dot charts um that's happening a lot in our code talk classrooms particularly in secondary the best practices in co- teing um
127according to the research and the leading inclusion um leaders that are are teaching um and doing research in in this um approach so that the best practices are centered around collaborative lesson planning and shared seamless teaching um small groups can be utilized but not always on ability um uh or should not always be based on ability in in this ideal environment and there should be natural proportions um Greenwich proportions in these classrooms is still very high um and even um more so when you consider that a lot of the um non kids that are put in the co talk classrooms are often kind of on the cusp of having high needs um which is not really the intention of what a co- talk classroom is and across the board we keep hearing that there's not
128a lot of time for special ed and gen Ed to collaborate and plan for these um lessons so uh next slide so Jenny do you have I real you're almost up to an hour here oh gosh okay I have two more recommendations I have just the recommendations so yeah could we jump to the recommendations anyone has any questions I appreciate it okay so um so our recommendations um are to provide direction through unifying message and definitive stance that's going to help change mindsets it's going to help provide Clarity um it's going to give a road map um and um educate the public so um we have lots of examples of how to do that in our report um and uh and this will just help um establish a good clear foundation and vision our second
129recommendation um which is on the next slide is to establish clear protocols for implementation and consistency um this includes collaborative planning an essentializing curriculum training and coaching um um looking carefully at rostering and um using flexible and responsive models it shouldn't just be one model um our kids are different and they need to be um uh have given a variety so general education with and without sped pushing um co- teing um especially the co- teaching that's coming up in ccob has gotten a lot of good um feedback and um and then using udl as the foundational um aspect you know kind of thinking about making a salad you want to start the lesson plan with the lettuce and then you add in for each student from there um okay next slide our St one of
130our standing committee is the enrichment committee we had a great presentation in the fall with Dan and Samuel Habib who had recently I think in that week before they presented to us had just won an Emmy Award um for their documentary about um Samuel's uh transition into adulthood and um and his preparation for adulthood and um they they gave a really great presentation we also screened um one of Dan's earlier documentaries including Samuel to kind of see Samuel in his young life and then into his older older years is Jenny is this part of that second recommendation that you had you said you want you to we did I did them both I did them quick so perfect can we we just need to we have a long list of other things I just need
131to wrap up perfect so does anyone have any questions Laura I just have one um you know the St in part is concerning to me um you know obviously there are no substitutes for specialed students when they have a provider that is absent um you know and I I wish that um we did have the ability to have building Subs who could um who could be there so that children don't miss instructional time um so that's one very important part of the the piece for helping our um special education Learners really realize their potential so I just I really want to thank you for highlighting that particular issue um my other um remark or question really is um was there have you found a change to how Paras are being deployed and maybe this is
132a question for Dr H but um you know something about the seven-page report and and I just wonder was is there a change in how we're deploying Paras to the buildings and and um are they now being utilized only for one to one or are they um are they fulfilling roles of that we've traditionally thought of them like if child's working on their goals are they working with that child to help them achieve their goals and documenting whether they are making them or not so I I just I have that glaring question I think I I I can let um Dr H talk um but what we hear in the committee is that CTS which is the new IEP system um kind of changed where uh Paras go so in the um IEP direct it
133used to be on the service grid and there was specific hours and in CT saids there isn't that that placment of putting specific hours um but we were hearing that they were being directed um buildings were being directed to only um put it in the IEP if it was a one-on-one um and so that led to a lot of buildings losing Paras that had been providing shared support so um I think that has been changed re recently and um they're starting to put into IEPs now the shared support um so uh so we hope that that will increase but the problem was is that none of all the kids that needed partial part-time Paras were um weren't getting them this year and that um created a real problem um so so buildings do have a
134combination of oneto ones and shared but as Jenny shared when the system switched there wasn't a place to put it and we've finally been able to like figure out where where we can do it where one to ones are delineated in one spot shared pairs are delineated in a second spot and actually indirect services are then able to for services for peras or teachers are in another so part of this has been a switch in systems and where things are documented we're working on it it's not the easiest system to I I had somebody ask me why are the Paras disappearing and I'm like I don't know so I just didn't know if there was some kind of change in how we're deploying them so now I'm clear I think thank you in the interest
135of time I have a bunch of questions and comments which I know we have already scheduled time well we're looking to schedule a time to sit down so I can share those with you but I before I say anything I just uh as one of the board uh Liaisons to C cak I wanted to thank you and the entire seak committee and uh members for all of the hard work the time the effort that you guys have put in throughout this year and the years prior um you know it is really important for us to see from a parent perspective from an educator perspective um the fact that everybody's working together to share some of this feedback with us on how things are working within the schools within the program and What needs there are
136uh that are still not being met and and areas that we are actually um doing well and so forth um you know I know we've talked about Staffing uh formulas for what feels like a millennium um and I I agree I know that's a an area where there's always been questions um and I wanted to thank you most importantly for bringing up the issue with Paris um you know I I think that's something certainly that we should take a deeper dive into looking to who can come in and who can't I don't know what the rules are if there's hippo violations or what there might be maybe it's not Hippa but sharing uh an IEP or something with um you know a sub or parah or sub not a parah but a sub who's coming
137in um you know I don't know what what privacy laws there are around that but I I think that these that's a really important area to look at that who's coming in to cover those students when uh there's absences known known about at least in advance so um I really appreciate you bringing that to our attention um and inclusion I think is another area that's exceptionally important I know um since I see him sitting well he was sitting in the back uh our first selectman who uh put together you know A diversity a committee on uh you know anti-hate and diversity and inclusion and I think it's so important for us to make sure that we model that for our youngest students all the way up through um and it's an area I'd love to
138to dig in deeper with you I know uh we had a Amy M came up earlier was talking about that as well it's something that we really do need to to do throughout um in so many different areas so thank you guys for highlighting um some areas for which we can do a better job and and also sharing some of the positives with us on that note I think that we have to with the inclusion we're the special educ advisory Council but we're inclusion so it's General Ed so often times we're told to stay in our lane with special ed and we we can't be told that anymore not I'm not saying by anyone up here but by you know General Ed and staff members don't think they have to adhere to any of our
139regulations or work with our students and we have to stop that and everybody has to be at the table because especially with our special department they can only do so much it has to be with the whole entire department so we ask you to make sure inclusion is throughout our district with staff students as well yeah I you you you properly address that too in the changing of the culture um and how we look at things in your report and I and I I would say there is so much overlap and I know we're constantly asked about budget questions about how much we're spending in special education I know you guys went through budget here too um and there is so much overlap there's so many programs that uh we have as listed as general
140education that serve students with special education and learning difference and other needs as well as in the general education population and are often listed there so I I understand where you're where you're coming from I often get uh similar uh comments but that was a lovely little dance um so anyway I just wanted to thank you for all the hard work effort and you put in then this is something I'd like to take a deeper dive into with you guys at least you know we have a couple of months before the start of next school year so we can really get some stuff lined up thank you yeah thank you uh next up we have uh Dr carabillo with the gr High School Wellness Center good evening before we start with uh Mr Pereira I
141just want to say something about the arts department as a former musician and music teacher when I hear the students that have graduated and when I see our students performing up on stage I do have to say that what they have shared with you is exactly what I took with me as I go through my career so it was just outstanding so thank you uh you have seen the video that Mr Pereira made about the wellness center and we are ready to take any questions that you have questions comments okay but first I would want to say thank you for the report um it was uh very informative and I you know one of the things that I think need you that we should be addressing is obviously understanding what you think your biggest challenge
142is and where that and how to solve that challenge for with respect to the Wellness Center thank you Mrs quals a question I think it's meeting the diverse needs of our students uh the wellness center has a plethora of individuals that have very unique needs many of the students are not successful within the larger high school that is why they are in the smaller setting with more supportive environment so it really is dialing in on what that child needs to be supported to make sure that they are successful our goal is to make sure that they are transitioned back into the larger part of the high school for that going with the fluidity with uh the houses so it's certainly giving our staff um the time and the training to make sure that we are
143able to support that diverse learner that we see in front of us which has certainly changed throughout the years okay well thank you guys for all the work that you're doing in the wellness center I've had the opportunity when we when I toured the high school recently I mean I've been in and out uh and but I really had got to have the opportunity to to take a deeper look into the Wellness Center while we were there on a tour and it was it was really wonderful to see you know how many you know students were clearly like that you see the in the posture right of these students when they're in there they're more comfortable they're they're clearly not getting over stimulated and overwhelmed by all of the hustle and bustle throughout the student
144center and the larger classes so I really appreciate that um and also the incredible work we do with and and to thank Our Community Partners I really should say for all the incredible work they do they come in and provide all of these wonderful services to our students and to their families um and I appreciate you know we don't often share that information here at the board meetings uh to with the general public of how much support um and how much connection we have with those Community Partners so I think it's really really lovely to see how we we you know are part of the community in that regards um I had a quick question when you were talking about there was a slide in in the presentation about what and what makes the center
145special um and you were talking about students who meet with their case managers when there's concerns and there's issues and how to address those um and I was just I don't know how often students tend to meet uh and you know with their case managers is that somebody that takes place of their guidance counselor so oh didn't mean to cut you off M sorry before I lose my train of thought uh the case manager is their academic lad teacher so the case man I mean the thing that makes them unique and what makes the center so special is those individuals in that building so Jen Lee Angela tury P Cronin and Ashley Riley who are currently within there they're the ones who build that connection with those kids to make them feel supported and it
146is like an extension of their family for that I think that's why there's that comfortability with the kids in there so depending on how the student's doing whether it's positive or negative because we have our es and flows too those level reviews that we talked about we try to include everybody within that so that would be the teacher myself as the administrator helps to oversee that their their guidance counselor we invite their parents and anybody else who is significant within their life too or that's a coach somebody out in the community so we really try to support the child that way and that is that is what we talk about with that lower review piece of it that we're still fine-tuning that's fantastic I mean you know it's it's nice for them to we always
147talk about the importance of of a student having a connection that that personal connection with someone in the building um and that that can make or break an entire academic career for a student so it's nice to hear that that's something that's really uh positive about the wellness center um and I know you also talked about seat time and work days um and I was just wondering if you could explain a little bit more about what seat time and work days are and how they support the academic and social emotional needs of the students in the program um and then maybe a little bit more about you were talking about the foundations class internship I'd love to hear a little bit more about that I don't know like I know our seniors do an internship
148I don't know if this is just for seniors or for students at all levels in the in the W Center so we'll start with the first piece was the um the SE time and the work time so many of our students have not been successful so because of that sometimes we need to kind of bring them back into the fold so that would be perhaps on a day we kind of take them out of their academic classes we put them in a nice quiet space we push in with their case manager we push in with their teachers we push in with their mental health staff too to kind of catch them back up to make sure so we really do try to use that part to fit the flexibility for them so they can see
149that they can be successful and help to to facilitate them back into the classes that they sometimes maybe not have a connection with that to help facilitate the connection relationship with if it's not their case manager perhaps that general education teacher is pushing into the center too so that's kind of how we utilize our work and our seat times for that we let the parents know we let the teachers know ahead of time too that hey we're going to take a work day or a seat day for the child so that way they can get the work done because sometimes they are significantly behind you know so we want to make sure that they're keeping up with their academics and as piece of it because when you take math as an example as a building
150block if they miss one or two lessons and that might compound where they'll have some further frustration and may not access that again so that's how we utilize that and in terms of the foundations class uh that was something that was put together two years ago um we kind of um piggybacked off what when R was kind of doing for that so it's a unique opportunity for some of our students who are seniors and juniors too to have an internship not in the traditional sense of what we do as the larger high school because again some of these students may not want to access that um for that so that's something that we've been working on and we're we're nice to we've grown that now to our n9th and 10th grade and we're really focusing
151on our nth and 10th grade to because we recognize that some of these kids may not have the smoothest transition to the high school into working with mental health staff and our case managers to kind of develop that skill set for the kids to be successful for that so that's going to be a new new um addition to what we offer in the center starting next year yeah I saw that was on your list of things to focus on next year to expand upon that which is why I was I was asking so this brings me to my I last question for the moment because I'm sure others have it um you know I know you mentioned something it's funny because we just heard about this uh from our prev presentation um Staffing um that
152you had gone from five special education teachers and now you're down to is it three uh special education teachers or like 2.7 uh because you have at least one that does a three billets over yeah a community connections so and I know you have general education teachers as well in there as well as social workers and other support staff um I know we need more social workers throughout the district fulltime and that's something that someday hopefully we'll have enough budget for but um I just really wanted to see you know for the students there do you feel that you have enough support um and you know how these how our Educators in that program are feeling if they feel that there's a if there were more teachers we' be able to have more students access
153the program obviously or whatever I mean listen i' certainly always welcome more staff never gonna say no to it you know but I understand that we have constraints that we have to abide to so we certainly look at how can we utilize what we have currently in terms of resources our with the push in general and things of that nature for that so we do try to do our best with what we have to make it work for our children um I've been working with our scheduling how to schedule a little bit differently moving forward for that so it's going to be interesting to see how that scheduling model that we're going to look at next year with the foundations class with we're looking at additional Support classes for some of our general education teachers
154with our case managers Works um for that so certainly yes we will welcome more staff but we're we're utilizing what we have in front of us but we don't turn away students if they need this program the only reason why I'm asking is because in 2021 you said that what other than janed you said there were 42 students with special educational needs in the program and then the year after that it went down a little bit and now it's been pretty consistent the past three years with lower staff so I just want to make sure that that's not hindering a student who might need the support there correct I think part of that is our better job with our mtss process right so we we do not turn away our students but we do make
155sure that when we the houses we're looking at and we have an excellent um team that really thinks outside the box so when a student is brought to us we try to also say hey have we tried X Y and Z as well back to the house for that as well and once we've utilized those then a lot of times that child then does either find some success within back in the house or we're going to have them down up in the center so I think it's we finding our our process for that well thank you this is a really helpful update that we're hearing because I know the board has been really asking for this and I guess my last comment and question is it at some point I'd love to talk to you
156about we're not talking about graduation rates but maybe it's you know whether they have somebody specifically in their guidance to talk about what what they're looking for post post college and how we can support that transition as well but that's not for tonight right anything else cool thank you thank you guys uh so the next uh on the list is with respect to the my property so I've asked um our first selectman Fred cimo to come down and present to the board some information regarding a uh potential move of the Board of Ed Administration out of the HM building and into other property it's been being looked at it gives us an opportunity to ask some questions so welcome thank you for coming good evening thank you Madame chair members of the board and guests
157for all the hockey fans the Rangers are down three to2 in case you're wondering um eight minutes left I know um thank you for this time I know it's a long night for you um Andy Duce here former bet member uh who uh led a committee uh that I put together a while ago to look into this uh to gather details and to bring us to this point brief history before I turn it over to Andy um this is at least the third attempt in the last 24 years to Rel relocate the Board of Education out of a property that is worth anywhere from 74 to $100 million we own the building the first uh attempt was led by Peter Malin and B crumbine who you all may know and uh they had $35 million
158pledged in I believe 2001 the then administration at the time did not want to move and we lost that money then there was another attempt about eight years later now this is the third attempt the difference is the building has deteriorated even more and the difference is this time the administration is willing to go they're they're eager to go uh it's not healthy for them to stay in there with a condition where there's mold and other things going on there um and it's it's going to be costing us a lot of money taxpayers money uh to to stay there and to redo it to to again how a government entity in the mid in the heart of our business Commercial and Entertainment District uh when people hear about that they ask why are we why
159have we done why have we been doing that for years now we've heard from some members of the board that well they want them in a they have to be in a government building and no one else does that well that's not true Fairfield and new Canan are two that we spoken to I think Ben Branan may have spoken to them and um and they're quite happy with their rental long-term rentals now it doesn't have to stay that way forever but right now there is no other space in in grenage as far as public buildings I'll have I'll repeat they are going to have to move at some point uh we do have a place that fits perfectly we looked at a couple one required about $7 million just to retrofit it which I think
160was was ridiculous and I thought would have been a waste of of money one we've looked at now that would fit perfectly um you know we could look at other ones but time is running out uh or running out a runway on this this one right now um but again this is something that's uh the timing is perfect this is the first time in memory that the administration would love to relocate um we've heard lots of things you know maybe we'll build on top of the in back of town hall well that was a gym years ago and they tore it down 40 years ago or 45 years ago um when it reopened in 1980 so again I'll before I turn it over to Andy I'm happy to answer any questions but a lot of
161work has gone into this and this is something that should be returned to the people of Greenwich it's a beautiful 1892 building um the first iteration of this attempt to reclaim the building for for the public would have included a public farming Art Center blackbox theater in the basement a cafe and some other space I think on top rented out there's we would like we are now assembling a new task force and I already have I think five people ready to go but there's a few more that I haven't contacted yet that are ready to go to look at what we would want this RFP to look like for the town uh there's lots of people coming forward with um great ideas but there may be some things we haven't even thought of yet but
162it's exciting it's an exciting town it's a game a time for the town it's a game Cher for us but again the first step was to find something for the administration that they could that would they would function in better much better than they are right now and I think if you talk to people that work in the building they'll tell you the same thing so with that I'll turn it over to Andy Deuce thanks Fred I think we some of us have some questions before you turn it over sure sure enough sure fire away what's the approximate worth of town hall if you're saying that we can't be in a building that has the worth that it has when it was deeded to the board what is the value of town hall that I
163don't know but it's town hall is not on grenage Avenue and it's not in the heart of the commercial and the entertainment and the business district what now what difference does that make big difference big it's it's in the center of town which is great but it's on Greenwich Avenue there's much more worth on Greenwich Avenue but again this was a high school that was built in 1925 our 100th anniversary is next year it closed in 1970 and it reopened as a town hall in 1980 um you know the this building where they're in now is falling apart it's not fully used people know that um people can't access it it's our building but you can't access the building unless you have business with the of Education doesn't make sense town hall is fully used
164right so there there's not a to me it's not a comparable comparison I would say that um I have a lot of questions on the finances and I find it um slightly I I find it a little bit offensive when you say that like we don't have the right to be there when it was deeded to the board I didn't say you didn't have the right to be there implication no don't put words in my mouth I did not say that I said it it's something that's baffling that you think seem to think that you've told me out of your own mouth the words out of your own mouth that they have to be in a government building that's absurd I I said that was my preference but I can only speak for myself okay
165so the other question is what is the cost of the lease that is being proposed for a long-term rental so again the I don't know if I want to go through the whole details of it I know they've offered six months free rent and they've waved the first three years rent increases now again if that is if this is something that this board says well you know we don't want to pay that much money fine we're going to lose this deal um but certainly we will continue to look but we don't want to keep H hitting roadblocks and having things thrown against the the wall to see what sticks to slow walk this because again I've heard that it's got to be in the government building and that's just not the case Kathleen hi hi
166um so I this is definitely you're right something I remember talking to Peter Tessy about this and years ago because I was um and Rick crra and we sat together and thought about this so um there's definitely something we've been talking about for a long time and so I think it's great that we're having this conversation honestly um I wish we' had a little bit more preparation and information ahead of time but I did tour the space at Railroad Avenue and look it's gorgeous it's Class A Space frankly I want to put my company in it because because it's a little bit too pricey and I argue that my company probably could go in a nicer place no offense than our government employees um so I would say that I sort of did some back
167of the envelope math because at the time I was able to get some of the conversation around the rates and Cody follow me with follow me here but um it was about 24,000 square feet at $108 plus utilities um yes you might have six months free but you're looking about $3 million a year 2.8 yeah um that's well 2.8 without the utilities um and so I mean I just think it's physically irresponsible to um spend $3 million a year for government employees I'm sorry to to my staff but as a taxpayer that just kind of freaks me out um however I'd like to respond to that when you're done okay however um I think we do need to think about where we can go in terms of the government building because again I just sort
168of did some of the back the envelope math and um you know Workforce and how we're how we're working in buildings now is quite different right um a lot of us are going hybrid I suspect you know we're not in I know the Board of Ed is in the staff full time I don't know if every want a town hall is so if we could rethink how we're using the space of town hall hey like why are we not having that conversation right there's 130,000 square feet at town hall there's 300 someone employees if you look at the average sare foot you need per person nowadays frankly like 175 sare feet I mean there's so much simple math that when I started to do it I was like frankly it would be like luxurious for
169our employees to also be in town hall so I just wanted to think about that because as a taxpayer that's fantastic yeah that was brought up in 2002 and the Board of Ed at that point did not want to be in town hall with to Under the Umbrella of town government that may have changed now um I do think it's fiscally irresponsible to just keep throwing money into a building that's falling apart that's only going to get worse and again the estimate that I think the board the Boe had of $20 million well I took somebody in there that is well known around the world and he's lives in town and he said this is $50 million all day long to renovate it again we chased away to $35 million 24 years ago it's I'm
170going to be on the taxpayer are we going to spend $50 million or even if it was 20 million which is not but if it was um just to put a government entity back on in the middle of grenage Avenue now you talked about the town hall yes we've had those conversations um and we do work um we have uh people can work from home we talked about this prior to the pandemic North Carolina and New Jersey were allowing state workers to work two days a week from remotely the ones that didn't have to be on site kind of thought how could they be more productive and how could it be more efficient but we found out during the pandemic it was the case so a lot doe work and you know again um I'm
171happy to look into continue and and maybe even you know have the task force delve into with all of the Departments to see but again this is up to the this is the board of educ administration's call on that I don't know how many could work remotely maybe a lot I just don't know um that's that's a question better that we could maybe sit down and and and go over but that's and again certainly I the 2.8 million to three yeah that's a lot of money I I agree uh I don't like spending that either but we don't have much more choice I mean the building is deteriorating so we are looking at every other you know spot around I know the the board pref the administration prefers to be downtown we could find a
172lot space a lot cheaper in other parts of town we know that but um we're trying to accommodate the board uh as best we can um we're still looking and we're we've talked to commercial brokers they're keeping their eye out there um so we could do definitely do that and again I don't know as far as how many we could you know I would love to share town hall with you and and you know take another look at that but again you the board have to be comfortable doing something like that they were not in 2002 or three Sophie yeah I just um I I want to say so I agree you know it having having uh the board ofet on grenage Avenue has always struck me as being strange ever since I moved here
173um in the center of business district um but I I would like to see sort of a building utilization study for the town of grwi um and thinking about how we're using the space and not just that some people work remote now both people in town hall and Board of Ed people but also that so much has been digitized um since you were saying like the looking at at Town Hall in 2002 right that was before email and you know we do a lot of stuff online now I mean I don't I used to go into town hall to get my beach path and things like that you know now that's all online so I wonder if there's an opportunity to go through the building and think about the real estate that's being taken up
174by filing cabinets and things like that right and so because it was a high school for 1900 kids so there were a lot of people in there to do a deeper dive yeah yeah to do a deeper dive because I think um you know frankly yeah the same thing with the the lease when I think I I agree you think oh it's expensive to renovate hav Aire building which certainly will be regardless of who renovates it and for what purpose but to spend upwards of $50 million for a 15year lease for the Board of Ed like I agree as a taxpayer I don't I don't want to do that it's a lot it's a lot yeah I know and this again this one lined up um the board went in there I offered to trade
175town hall and we we would go in there but um it's beautiful and it's but again we're looking we're continuing to look to see if we can get something better um but if this one if there's not you know a fifth vote on this one for this then this will die in you know the coming weeks but again we're not going away on this one and I I like your idea about a deeper dive I think that's smart um certainly we can collaborate um I think we know somebody in common that uh knows both uh organiz both entities so uh I think we can definitely do that I don't know if we can get to where they could fit in town hall comfortably but I'm happy to look at that I don't know if we're
176going to you know if we propose to the BET to build the the section back off that they tore off 44 years ago I I don't know how it be received but I I'm look I'm willing to ask for anything I think it's um it would be great to have you in a better space that it's functioning better for you and that's healthier but also it' be great for the town of grenage to get something back I mean that was that's transformational there to do something with that beautiful building and return it to you know not to its former glorify Glory past but I think really maybe even something better because again it was it was a school in 1892 um but we had that little that Auditorium which was really nice but there's a
177lot of ideas out there some that we probably have not even thought of so I'm glad to see that 's there's some you know enthusiasm for an acknowledgement that we really should be the time has come and again the building if we're here in in 12 months discussing it that means the building's gotten even worse and then you may have a problem on our hands as far as with the employees so but I'm I think you're right and we'll definitely take a deeper dive and I will turn it over Andy before I I one question and maybe it's a question for Andy I'm not quite sure but to Kathleen's point on on doing the math at 2.8 a year and obviously assuming it would increase over time as all things do has the town thought
178of a way or has your office thought of a way that it would somehow be um you could use whatever you're doing or your ideas with respect to hav meire that would offset that cost from a taxpayer perspective as far as like what what would be right now with them still in there or if we were no if we were to if if if the Board of Ed is to move to another location and to incur a $2.8 million a year lease which will as I said eventually go up the question is the plans you're looking at for what you want to do with the hav Meer building is that is there an ability that would offset the expense of the board of end being relocated someplace else yeah so um we had a commercial
179broker looking at this uh and telling us because there's a lot more space there than he thought and he thinks that we now could um if you whether we gave them different scenarios right if you rented the cut you know for retail space um for office space top two floors downstairs we could get another 50 to 75 spaces without putting parking spaces for everybody without putting much money into it the cleanest thing to do were uh would be a retail to go into the take most of the building what they retailers will do is they'll go in there and they will actually renovate we've seen this millions of dollars and pay a pretty good price per square foot um that's the that's the way we actually would make more money um but still to try
180and keep some part of the building open for the public and with some public use Office Space won't bring as much um and certainly they're not usually an office a company's not going to go in there and spend a couple million dollars just renovating retailers seem to will do that more often but he uh he's running numbers right now different scenarios and that's why this new group we're putting together wanted to look at some different scenarios whether what we would like to see there in whether it's a Performing Art Center as part of it um we uh Wei Works was also uh a um a preference by one of the developers who looked at it right one week before the pandemic uh a resident uh went by there with me and he had an Italian
181opera company uh that he was in contact with that wanted to come in and renovate it and pay us rent and they I think they said that 25% of the space they didn't need for what they and they were willing to let the town do it now they were willing to pay for it all themselves but again if you're it's different scenarios if you're going to do a a public private partnership and a and a company's going to go in there for office space and renovate it you're not going to get top dollar uh per square foot retailers you'll get a better price I don't know maybe up to 65 maybe um I don't think it would be that much with a uh with the office but these are all different scenarios that you know
182it's above me right now because I I think we need to have a group looking at it just similar to the task force we put together not only for this building but also what we did at grenwich Plaza which saved a we were debating whether it was worth the air right because it was tied to these air rights whether were worth 10 15 million well we found out they were worth $600 million in the year 2057 that all parties agree now that it was so putting a task force together I think is the answer and I've already started to do that because they're going to uncover a lot more things and maybe a lot of different scenarios Revenue will come back to the town but again I I agree the one thing I will agree
183with is the the price tag for this other one which is a beautiful space it's expensive right and so if we can find something better and have the money rent this out have money coming in and also have it returned to the public where it's not costing it's a wash or even you know uh northward you know north of what we're we're paying in rent that's great but again other towns have done it and they've you I don't know what they're paying we can look into that maybe Andy has that numbers those numbers I don't know but I think um looking into all of this will and and doing it quick I mean I'm not talking about dragging this out for two or three years I think it's time is of the Essence right now
184Karen well I was going to say I I know this has been a discussion topic on and off for years throughout town for multiple different reasons and ways and I know that this is something that you know was discussed when uh you put together the first committee um thank you uh Mr Duce for being here but I don't know if you're presenting part of that report I think we've all probably read it um and I were certainly in early stages there were a lot of recommendations that were in that report that you know haven't been been addressed and definitely think if you're putting together another uh committee obviously besides having one of us I'd like think maybe discussion we could have and having a say also in some individuals who are being put on it
185but um you know I there's some more I know you and I have talked about this many a time and I'd love to be able to have an opportunity I still think that there's so many ways that that to do some of the work on that building and have shared use going forward um you know I I know recently sitting through all the r meetings um that for instance the senior center which is across the way uh I've heard about the creaky elevator and many other uh you know concerns within that building you know we have adult education courses there is there a way for us to do some of the renovations on haire and return the you know the the main floor and the um theater to to use and bring the senior center
186over to Shared space and then you have another facility across the way I just you know I look across at the for former uh you know a post office that's been sold for you know to you know retail space and it it's it makes me a little sad when I've gone back and read all the meetings and the town discussions in the 1800s for that building and the the you know the history behind it um you know it's interesting you brought up the the train station which I know was a long discussion and it's open there's nothing there now because it was going you know everybody moved out and then we haven't sold it so it's sitting empty which you know so I my two comments one is you know I it's a lot to
187ask taxpayers to spend this kind of money every single year to house us for at you know long long after this board is is no longer seated uh long after you are no longer seated I mean this is a forever sort of situation if what you're possibly discussing I'd still think I'd love to have the opportunity to see what we can do as a shared use I know we've talked about it before um I don't know if any's consideration has been work has been done to see what the true cost of repairs uh bringing the building up to code and ada8 compliance is I'd like to have a real understanding of that um you know and have we also looked at any cost comparisons on rental space I just know it's a lot to ask
188I mean I'm open to ideas and suggestions I know we've talked about many of them um and I truly think it it's it is a gem of a space um and and I think there's so many ways that we can utilize that space to to share with members of the community but um you know I'd love to have that opportunity to talk about it with you um but you know have we done any of that other work sure yeah and I'll turn it over to Andy in a second um you said the the the railroad station is empty now it's been sold no the it hasn't been sold it's the same person it's the only privately owned railroad station in the state oh I didn't say the train station was I just meant all of
189the retail spaces are there that are empty it's the same owner yeah no no but I'm saying without a plan to have every I'm just saying for instance if we have the Mo move out and that building is sitting there empty there's plans for a long period of time there's plans they're what they're going to do is they're going to have a couple restaurants in there they're they have I'm not talking about the train station saying you use that as an example so I'm saying it's no it's been sitting there empty for so long that's my concern without having a true plan for what we would do with that space and then asking taxpayers we just passed the largest budget in the history of Greenwich which is clearly something that was needed um you know
190we've the board has asked for repairs to be done to the hav facility and building for many years and every year even long before you were uh SE seated in as a selectman and long before I was on this board uh and they've been turned down repeatedly so you know the town has also allowed some of that deterioration to occur so all I'm asking is you talk have we considered or done any work to see what the true cost of those repairs would be to bring the building back to code and ADA compliance um like I said I hesitate to leave that building empty without knowing all of the other options and then asking the taxpayers to spend this kind of money every single year and we know the costs will only go up um
191and I don't ever want to position I think a lot of us were concerned about making sure it has a we have a home as a board you don't want a transient Board of Education moving all over you know yeah no and I agree I think we're we're on the same page the uh we want to have a plan that's why I want to get a group together to go over what do you want the RFP to look like do you you know we had lots of great ideas in the past but I think maybe there's some other things out there that we haven't thought about so I I agree um there's so much potential with that building it really it's the more I think about it the more excited I get so I um
192but again we we are uh fighting the clock on this one as far as the deterioration of it so I agree you know I think there's some agreement on the price of this the building that we found there but if that's not going to work we'll continue to to look and maybe we'll also you know do the Deep dive like you're saying and maybe work together and see what we can do as far as possibility of of sharing the town hall but we'd have to really move around a lot of uh a lot of parts but I'm happy to to to look I offer myself a question I was actually just gonna make a comment just because Fe seems fitting um I would just encourage my colleagues to think about the uh it's been 23
193years years I guess since this first attempt to redo this building this is a tricky one because it's the intersection of a lot of different government approvals is required to make this happen including the buyin from the administration and uh I don't want to let the great be the enemy of the good here in the sense that um if we lose the opportunity it could be another 20 years and it seems um very suboptimal to have a lot of Administrators to Sophie's point it's you would never you would never design it this way if you were building it from scratch nor if we were sitting in I guarantee you if we had the office space that Tony wants to get we wouldn't be sitting here going this doesn't make sense let's move into the building
194on the Avenue um and so uh you know it's a good it's it's a a good way to get out of the inertia of the status quo to kind of reverse the situation I do think that um a hundred 8 or $16 a square foot that's like premium you know um commercial real estate my company we pay 60 bucks a square foot in cost cob so like maybe you're overpaying a million bucks a year okay would I be okay overpaying a million bucks a year to avoid um going another 20 years of this kind of suboptimal situation yeah and one way I would think about the math is you can't only count the new rent you have to consider what the economic cost of sitting in this building is so you know pick a number
195say the building's worth 50 million bucks or whatever it is that rent that we're paying is sort of there's an implied cap rate in the real estate world and if it's 2.8 million you're talking about a four or 5% rate which is really low it in in other words that would be a economically positive trade overall for taxpayers by doing that and that's acknowledging that I think the rent 1008 is that's like what fancy hedge funds would pay in grage so you could probably do better but I would take it over the status quo and so the one thing I would you know I've I think I have some Street credit on being tight on the budget and I just I think if we have the opportunity especially if we have to buy in from
196um uh you know the administration it it would be a shame to miss that window uh and and you know have everybody kind of coordinate the last thing I'd say is it's it's really hard for any government body to relinquish control of something especially something that's so beautiful but real estate is not part of our mission as a board of ed and so as hard as it is to say well this is kind of ours right now and we want to do special things with it I think it would be prudent to consider saying you know what we will hand it over because we want to be focused on student outcomes and this doesn't relate to that that's all my thoughts thank you Cody okay before I turn over to Andy Rangers W five to3
197wow okay Dr Jones and Madam chair and the rest of the board thank you for uh for your questions by the way great questions I think Fred to come every month your meetings is is my recommendation anyway sorry anyway uh I assume everyone's read our report uh the one we submitted last November uh we spent about a year on the report and our goal is really to frame the opportunity not answer every question and it's kind of like a simultaneous equation because we don't know what the cost will be to to put the staff in we don't know what the return will be on the property we just feel there's an opportunity given to this disperate values let me correct a few misconceptions um it it wasn't deed to the schools it was the money
198was given to the town in 1892 1891 actually and uh and by state law it was formally given to the municipality back in 19155 or so but the schools do have squatter's rights and as long as you want to occupy the building for the for the Board of Education and staff you're welcome to stay there that that that's fine uh what's the confusion I think arises is from the maintenance fund and that was set up by the son of Henry havm back in 1909 and the monies were set aside uh to maintain the building so long it was used for educational purposes and that's that's been true ever since it was set up it's it's the fund's kind of low these days so it's really not much of an issue anymore the uh the second
199misconception U is the ability to do Renovations in the building and and the first like mention some some mold or some term we had an engineer working with our committee very closely and we found no overt issues uh but he did not do any invasive investigations we did not want to open up anything and our concern is if you open up stuff and again we found nothing we did not find anything there but if you open up stuff there's a chance of asbest lead paint mold you you never know and our concern is looking forward what needs to be done over the next decade in that building is you can't have staff remain in the building and do some repairs it's just that simple U safety-wise so that was one of the reasons why we
200we thought let's look at alternative space and and it was our surprise because when we started this committee Co impact didn't quite fully manifest itself but we soon discovered there's lots of alternatives to to town hall to town space and we kept finding more and more tracks of private office space here in town and about a year ago the town of Kanan found private office space for some of its School staff and I guess ffield did about a year ago as well uh no not quite okay well anyway uh anyway so so we we we we did the research we work close with Council we we uh we did the investigation with the the uh the historic uh Landmark commission we U and we said here's the process and the committee members by the way
201I should mention them I should thank them uh Christina Downey who you know and and Joe Kelly were on the on on our team along with Bill Drake and Miriam Cruzer from the bet uh very helpful but we're not real estate experts we're we're Town Geeks so to speak and U and that's one reason why this this perspective of of RFP request for proposals is so important because we don't know everything and we're going to get a lot of good information sent to us and we're going to have it evaluated by real pros who who know real estate here in the town and that hopefully will be done over the next few months uh the current opportunities to to move the staff into local office space there's some great opportunities now that may change in
202a month uh you know we'll see what we have but as I said this is like a simultaneous equation we can't solve everything at once or we can but it's tough uh but hopefully over the next few months we'll have a lot more information and we'll be working very close with you guys to make sure we do the right thing for everyone uh whether it's going to be retail retail space a mixed use Office property I don't know but one last thing uh uh the efforts to the school staff has been here for about 75 years a little bit more uh efforts to move the staff out of the building have gone on for five decades not since 2001 and uh and this is really the first time where we actually have some Traction in
203terms of an alternative space and a more of a compelling need safety of the staff to to move it along anyway U your questions are great if you have more questions I'm ready to answer them but go ahead so I'm gonna be very direct um you're a me former member of the Bett the finance board um and you know because it was a taxpayer funded project to go through all of our school buildings including having Meer for our facilities master plan and I hear 2.8 million 10 years that's that's that and maybe then some that's a renovation of habam so I think it's shortsighted I've heard Fred say want to return it to the people blackbox theater Cafe I've heard retailers um I mean I know we have a black box theater at the library
204that was just renovated for millions of dollars it also has a I don't know that we need another one down the street but I'm not the one to answer whether that property is utilized for the purpose that you're proposing another one but um so the use of the space I just don't understand the financials I I would I have no comfortability going before your current colleagues and some of your former ones to say please give us this money I mean they'll laugh at us so I I mean I I know that you're coming to us because we have the vote um however this is a a kind of a Pandora's Box so you know I I have a big problem privatizing a public asset right now it's a public asset for every parent and every
205kid who comes to have a meeting and conduct their school business because it is a school building so I I don't understand the notion of returning it to the people when I believe everybody should be able to go upstairs and see what school was like in the 1800s and I know the Havier family was very committed to keeping this building utilized the way it is now and not being a Restoration Hardware does that make sense yeah 2.8 million where's that figure from I'm not Fred just said 2.8 million oh oh oh sorry the rent sorry yeah yeah I I we have any sense for how much it'll cost to renovate the building I mean basically they'll cut the inside possibly if it proves I was just quoting from the facilities master plan right which was
206you know five years ago okay so that was a quote for renovating haire uh yeah it was about 25 yeah that that understates everything it's it's that was not a detailed study frankly on the havar but it's a data point uh look we're going to be learning a lot of information over the next few months as as the uh responses to the RP come in and we'll learn and we'll make decisions when we get the more information right now we don't know enough to make a good decision all we're trying to do is get approval to go to the next step yes what approval for the next step do you need from us that's I'm unclear on that I think we well according to uh uh Town Council we need approval of the board to
207to allow us to consider the the new space for the staff I think that's right right yeah yeah but I'm hearing two things like if you you're wanting to do an RFP to see what you could do with the half meire building right I don't know I don't know if we can circulate that without the approval of the board well that's what I'm asking that that's because I'm I'm hearing two things I'm hearing one approval from the board to find a new place and and agree to that or to and to the RFP process to see what you would do with the havm building and what that would elicit yeah I mean I don't believe we need approval from you to have an RFP but I certainly will talk with the town attorney tomorrow uh
208and get back to you as far as that goes uh but again um there's some of us have a very clear uh difference of opinion on on public buildings and uh you know I remember my father went to that he's not with us anymore but he went to that school in the 1930s and he used to laugh and say I don't know why he was on on the Avenue so uh but it was it wasn't the only one there was another there was another school up the on the Avenue on the same side back in in the 30s and 40s and 50s so um but times have times you know times change and you know land becomes more valuable we didn't we put a you know a sewer plant on the water in the 50s
209because they thought it had to be in the water we found out it doesn't have to be on the water um we've done a lot we found out a lot of things that just aren't so today so and this is what this is a shining example of something that just didn't have to be so we'd like to correct that and and yes return it to the people so can I just sort of bring a few things in conclusion so you don't need a board of ed vote to go do an RFP so have at it um number one two I just think that um you know Town Hall was also a high school so I think in some ways I really would love to analyze this I'm really excited about the concept of all of
210us I remember during um I don't know something Tony even Chief heee said oh you know if you ever need to use our facilities for conference rooms we have a lot of conference room space so I think we need to be really strategic here we're you know happy to sort of analyze what happens at havam but I would love at the same time for your committee to be looking at I mean I just started to do some back of the envelope math on the square footage between town hall and the police Center just in terms of the conference rooms they have there and there's so much potential for us to use the current assets we have and redeploying our employees and I know this is just out of nowhere but I just I think it
211would be so wonderful for the taxpayer it'd be a win-win right if we actually if you find something for hav and you can actually bring our government employees to be in other already town-owned assets how is that not a great thing so um I mean in terms of fiscal responsibility that would be a win so I think we should look at that okay okay and I'll tell the chief that you're taking part of his building remember him saying he actually right during during something I don't remember what he said but he was like if you ever need our our classrooms for conference we' had you guys have had meetings before I was on the board fre to it used their space for meetings I just throwing other I mean as far as I mean permanently
212that may be more of an issue there with them permanent but certainly yeah and we we just like our but I do like the the deeper dive as far as remote and again I don't know who has to be on site and the administration that's something that maybe we could work together on and if we can come to some realization of who can be remote we can measure work performance we know that now um maybe we could do that but a former bet member um wanted them just two years ago but um he had he had yall in the basement so because he thought we could Rec you know reconfigure but it just at that point we just it wouldn't have worked but again we really didn't do a deeper dive as far as far
213as the whole building we toss things around but maybe we can uh we could have this uh committee also look into it but thank you for your time I just wanted to add um like I think doing the RFP is really important and that should be the next step and actually to Cody's point in order to do the math and to sort of understand it we need to do the RFP because we need to know what is the value of the building because it be very expensive to renovate and um and we we didn't say it it's going to be a Le not a sale town okay and pres there'll be some sort of return rent paid to the Town based on on the performance of the oh it's not yeah I just I mean
214I would assume that they would want you know if they're going to put $40 million into renovating the building they're probably going to want a bunch of free rent for a long time we structure it so that they get a disproportionate return until they get to Capital back and then we'll have more Echo dispersement to the town we'll find examples because the the commer commerci broker did tell us about examples where between difference between retail and office and what they're what they're willing to pay retail seems to be able to to absorb the cost of of renovating and then still pay a very decent price but there was also against on the bottom floor there where there's so many possibilities that he was throwing out there I don't want to confuse everybody but there was
215extra parking there was that wasn't even that much of an outlay of money um anywhere from 50 to 75 spaces without even doing what I talked about was going into the grade where the ball field is um which would get a lot more which is more expensive but certainly you could do it and it wouldn't be a standalone parking structure but he said there's easily 50 to 75 spaces there if the buildings redone and that would help everybody okay think could they stay in the building while it's being renovated like we are doing with OG I mean we're keeping children in that building ripping it out I don't know I don't think be safe to have any employees remain in hav Aire hav Aire building right uh am it's an old building I mean olding
216it need be we're doing this in Old Greenwich well I think the difference between Old Greenwich is not that one it's um the way the school is structured and the way it's being added on it's being done one in phases and two it's not impacting where the students are that when the construction is happening and I because havar is so small in comparison to Old Grand and it's on top of each other I don't think it's possible to do that in stages in a way that you could um relocate that many staff to one different or administrators to one different floor while you do it I just it it's an entirely different project and also be riskier and less and more expensive to try to peace meal basically it's an historic district the sh remain
217reforced but the whole inside would be re re redone the whole thing by the way speaking of old Grand I don't know if you know this Henry havm also donated the funds for old grenwich he I was he built that school too I've done a lot of research it's gonna say you're not taking Old Greenwich school from us because that's also in the center of the commercial District Tak this from the school you guys should rename old gr to the havm school but that's an aside well the havm building used to be called the havm school so it's I just had a question I thought it might be interesting for Tony to weigh in on this just to your objectives and how you think about this topic yeah who doesn't want to move to some
218shiny new jewelry well you know let me just clarify a couple of things first of all the way it it's been we've been working together the town and the schools and so the first thing we had to do was go in and analyze um how much space we actually needed so when you think about like the edpc how many offices how big do they need to be what's reasonable so we did all that first um the first building that we actually looked at was close to town hall and um their staff I think from Public Works um is their home but they were helping try to do a test fit and we just couldn't get it to work we know that we need just for uh office type space it's more than 20,000 square feet
219so between 20 25,000 depending on the layout of the building but you also have to really remember that the lower level for us right now is also the warehouse we have large trucks that come in and out so you know what we do with that piece may be different than what we would do for the other components but you have to think about that because it is the delivery for the entire District um and when we talk about being like downtown um the last well the last property that we looked at is is one that that I searched for because I went out to do a search and we're pretty much looking up and down sort of putham you know not too far uh from the center of town and the big reason for that
220is were're open 12 months a year we have a lot of families people that come to our building to enroll their children and they need to be we need to be accessible by like public transport and and probably one of the first buildings I actually drove past was one Fred that it was up in Glenville and um and it was just too small we wouldn't even have a quarter of the parking there and it wouldn't be accessible for families so that's that's part of the issue but we're trying to just work together look at you know what are the options um and if some body who's gone through a P3 before uh when I was in Virginia we worked on one for over five years um because we needed a new high school because it
221looked like camire does right now and it was falling down and so it was looking at how do you capitalize on part of the land and then get the developer to actually build a brand new high school and that's what we ended up doing and so there I think there are lots of Creative Solutions and when you start looking at an RFP we may very well get an unsolicited RFP that comes well before an RFP because we've talked about this publicly um that could happen and then that has to go through the legal office but it it is complex but I just I share that and that it's 20 to 30,000 square feet and that's the challenge you can find a big office building but they may only have 4,000 square feet available it's a
222lot of space for people if we if if we aren't near public transport the money we save on rent we could probably just use it an Uber fund for anyone that needs to get a ride there I'm like not even really that not even kidding you'd be surprised how many times like I'll be leaving at night you know it's seven or 8 o'clock I'm leaving the office and somebody doesn't realize we're not open and they're coming for an E class and like they perhaps don't really speak English and they're trying to figure out how to get in the class and they've you know they walked a distance or they've taken public transport so I mean from that perspective yeah our adult education that happens right there so doesn't have to be in the center of
223town but it just needs to be accessible for families I was say I know that there have been a lot of good ideas and suggestions uh shared this evening and I know you know we had read through the report um there's a lot of work that needs to be done I I for one I'm I'm I'm open to ideas and suggestions I don't want to leave that building empty uh and then ask the taxpayers like I said to fund rent for for a long uh period of time for you know ever at that point um but I was going to say I think one of the most important things is we as a board need our own Council which we've already discussed and we still in the process of trying to find someone um you
224know uh know as Kathleen mentioned before you don't need an approval to to consider an RFP but I think we should be sort of also having the opportunity to weigh in on what's included in there um again I I still think there's a lot of opportunity for mixed and shared usage um and I really would love to I know somebody asked about space utilization for all Town facilities I'd also really love to get an understanding of the true cost uh of renovation what needs to happen because I know when we've done reviews and I know when you guys had a review also there weren't issues I think it's really we need to be very careful about the words we use when we're describing that building it's not deteriorating yes it needs work doesn't have mold
225um you know we've had issues in in tons of our town facilities and they're not you know it's so my point is I think we just need to be CAU but I would differ but yeah I we understand and I think I know it's late and I know other people are here and Pete's gonna kill me back there so no I look I appreciate you both coming in and I think this is a good opportunity um and something that needs to be looked at seriously and um no one should drag their feet on this I I would really like to see the Board of Education in a state-of-the-art educational space for which is um accessible to all and is uh the right fit and designed for our administrators to collaborate and brainstorm and do the
226work that they do in a in a fitting space that works I think you the havm building has served its purpose for a period of time but like all old buildings you know the the rooms are small they don't flow it's not uh it doesn't Prov the function and accessibility that I think the modernday education system and for what we use that building for with our administrators is now designed for and and we we see saw that with the building and Renovations of Central Middle School and how we've completely revamped that and made it for the education system that it provides today and I think that's the type of building that we should be looking or the type of space we should be looking for for our uh administrators in the work that they do
227and I think we should do it sooner rather than later I do think that there is some additional work to do but I do think if we are committed to get doing this and getting it done we can do it quickly thank you oh one more question for Andy before he leaves thank you have you have you evaluated as a committee I know it wasn't in in the report that you had sent but um have you evaluated acquiring property for the for if we're handing over an asset that is estimated at $100 million uh the short answer is no that was beyond our capabilities uh you know the Mandate was to see what we do with the current asset and and look at alternative space for rent not not not to buy another property might
228be another suggestion okay thank you appreciate it thank you appreciate it all right uh Miss Castoro um because it's not Mr Levitan uh for the monthly financial report good evening so um we took this opportunity with Ben bran joining to update the financial report so you'll definitely see some changes we're looking to continue to make updates to the report for the June meeting so if you have any feedback please let us know um just a couple of points to make this evening so for our operating fund we're continuing to stay in alignment with prior year spending through April um just want to continue to highlight the great work across the district that's prevented uh districtwide freeze including work with principes coordinators and administration and although it's pretty early we're projecting about a 99% spend rate
229for this year and our requisition entry process uh closes tomorrow afternoon um scss continues to remain our largest budget pressure through year end and and then the last point I want to make is we're in the process of requesting an interim appropriation which really is no impact to the general fund it's a separate fund with the town we're heading to the full bet on Monday and the request includes uh a point of sale system replacement food and paper supplies through year end a capital request for ghs oven and the total is about 502,000 all in which is within our fund balance we just need to request uh to use it essentially so with that I'll take any questions I have one question um so because it's within our fund balance it didn't need to come
230to the board for a vote on that because it AO because um is that correct uh yeah it's and a lot of the fund Bal well the fund balance is really due to the excess funds during Co we received a lot of State uh funding and our participation our participation rate was really high during covid so we the town hadn't budgeted a town contribution for this year so it's just requesting the excess funds within that uh balance so it's fully covered okay understood thank you any other questions all right perfect having none well why don't we go to the budget transfers then yeah yes so um pretty routine these are all informational only over $10,000 but between the same major object codes so um just let me know if there's any questions any questions all
231right great perfect good job thank you thank you all right uh op to our action items the first one being havm I'm sorry havm we've been talking way too much havm too many hes Hamilton Avenue School um I will um make a motion for the havm uh sorry Hamilton Avenue School field use request uh as presented second I'll second it okay perfect uh would you like me to read the motion into the record Karen or I think it probably just be helpful yeah so the motion um as stated is the Greenwich Board of Education recognizes the value of the St Rock annual Feast for Hamilton Avenue School Community the board hereby agrees that St Rock Church is permitted to use the Hamilton Avenue school property Field Court and playing facilities for anal fees to be
232held August 7th through 10th 2024 St Rock Church shall one seek and receive an event permit from Parks and Rec Recreation to proactively begin to work with tog risk manager 30 days in advance of annual Feast three retain it or hire Granite Police Department for event security and any additional security subject to Greenwich Police Department's official request and four it should be noted that this is an annual approval and August of 2025 is not expected to be available for use given the work which will be ongoing to repair the Hamilton Avenue garage comment questions please so just one uh quick comment because I have had um members of the Community Reach Out on here it does say school property filled court and parking facilities just to reiterate that on the court we can't have the
233carnival rides or restrooms is that the year before last uh the asphalt is not thick enough and we ended up having to come back in and repair the asphalt and much of that was paid for by some donors and so they have reached out just to make sure we're very clear about that that's fine and I think that um working with st rocks that's an easy make make sure that they understand and I'm sure they did and last year they didn't they were not on the the um the court so that's fine I was going to say I believe the town when in the meeting we had the town laid out the entire process and I believe part of that is that they have to submit a plan as to where they plan to put
234things I'm assuming the town will uh ensure that you know they're put in the proper location great perfect anyone else okay call the question all in favor great 70 perfect moving on uh the Greenwich High School Flex proposal uh Dr Jones Mr Mayo we have to put the motion on the table do you want me to make it sure that'd be great uh so I'd like to make a motion uh that the Greenwich High sorry that the Board of Education approved the Greenwich High School's Flex proposal plan as presented I'll second um and Dana if you feel like you need to jump in please feel free because Ralph is not here tonight but we're just asking for your support for this we think it is going to be a win for the high school uh
235students and staff and um we think it's a great proposal and of course we have listened to our student government and we'll make sure that any of those issues that they have brought up will be addressed M yeah I mean I think that let's give it a guess College try I guess is the way I'd put it but um I do hope that we um think about some of the things yeah I just want to reiterate that the students brought up tonight because I know clubs especially the clubs that were not as well marketed um they made some excellent points so I hope that we have found a way to do it Beyond virtual in the evening maybe during Home Room whatever I'd like that to continue to be analyzed but like I said I
236think that we should give it a shot at this point I I also agree with the children that have spoken I um I I am worried that they're going to be doing clubs over zoom and I think that they really need to see each other and um and I know that that a lot of kids do find it really valuable to make up their tests during Flex block and um so I don't know I'm not support of this Laura so I went to uh Air Academy High School in Colorado Springs Colorado we had what was called Academy during the day and it was like Flex block but it was in the middle of the day so if so it wasn't like kids could leave I mean if you didn't need help or you didn't have
237extra work you would just eat more french fries in the cafeteria but um you know or you'd go to we had a interior Courtyard but um you know I I think I think we're getting rid of it but it could be re reimagined in um in a different period in the middle of the day I mean look nothing is forever we're making a change we could easily change it back but I will say I don't want kids meeting over Zoom or Google I want them with their peers where they belong um but I do think having a period during the day where nobody's leaving um does make sense for logistical purposes but I'm happy to give it a try and see how it goes I was going to say I love I mean the idea
238of having a flex period in the middle of the day is is wonderful that's how they usually work but it would defeat the entire purpose of why we had it which before it was Flex time it was opportunity block um I have been on quite literally every single committee looking how to revamp opportunity block Flex time to make it productive for the students um the when people were coming up to speak and mentioning something about clubs being run during that time it's the first I'd heard of it because we were always told that clubs could not run during that period of time because those teachers need to be in the classrooms available to students who might come for extra help and support so that was a new one on me but uh clubs before Flex
239time always ran after school um and were well attended um I know that this generation of high schoolers probably doesn't remember it because it was before the their uh four years at the high school um you know teachers are still going to be in the building um I like the fact that you guys revised the way the timing for the late bus um which would help students who want to stay after um and as I said you know opportunity block at one point they offered you know I don't know they had offerings during that period of time for students to go to and attend I think and that didn't work um it was you know there's a hundred different ways we've looked at at this and aund different and since 2017 we've been trying to
240find a way to make this work I think it's time to just say you know it it was it was a good idea to try to solve an unintended you know consequence of changing the school start time but it has never worked the way it should uh should work um and I'm sure once if if we vote to remove it we will find some unintended consequences of that and we'll have to address that but adding I know it sounds ridiculous but adding two more minutes of academic time for Block to students actually is beneficial I know it doesn't sound like it but kids start to pack up five it's early but they'll still have that opportunity for the extra two minutes which adds up over a week over a month over the course of you
241know the school year um and and I think that that's far more beneficial than most of the students who try to find a way to exit at 245 as it is so that's just my 10 cents opinion anyone else um I'll be the last person to stand in the way you guys have looked at this for a very very long time and the teachers that have reached out to me have suggested that this is a a good thing I do share some of the same concerns that were raised by students but also um the additional time that um certain that students with the EPS that have additional time for test taking and when that happens and how they're impacted if they have to come before or after school it just puts an additional burden on
242not only the students but the parents so I do worry about that but I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you've thought about how all of that will work um I am a little nervous about the departure time all at two uh 50 which is you know five minutes after CMS gets out and you have all of that additional traffic with parents and buses but um if all of us know that have uh Hillside at any at any point when you release the kids is just a nightmare so a different traffic study is going to have to be done in order to figure that out so I while School impa while the timing is going to have an impact we deal with that traffic every day and that's never going to go
243away unless we do a different traffic study to figure this out um which I'm also in fully support of so those are my comments good good let's vote uh all in favor opposed okay it passes one can I just make one 10-cent comment um can you just make sure I know you're going to put this probably in your Friday email but I think it's exceptionally important that we also uh have our high school administration reach out to parents specifically with an indiv you know emails or or guidance counselors uh so that they're aware going forward that the the school time will be ending earlier um and they'll have plenty of time to adjust uh or figure out what needs to be done for their families all right next up is the new state required update
244to the evaluation system uh PK to 12 uh Dr Janes oh yes you want me to do it I'll make a motion to approve the uh new state required update to the evaluation system pekk through 12 plus as presented a second any discussion Jones would you like to say a few words again we're just looking for your support for this um you heard the teachers that were here at our last meeting some of the best teachers in our district they're all supportive of this and the components that are in the program there are there are areas that are called non-negotiables by the state and they must be in here um so that the state will actually sign off on our plan I have a comment I'm just a little concerned when I look through the
245part with the administrators it looks it it it says collaborates with all stakeholders to promote educational Equity dignity and Social Justice by ensuring all students have access to educational opportunities why are we um I'm on page 62 so I'm just a little concerned why are why are we having our administrators being evaluated on social justice I mean I feel like we should just be they should be evaluating them on improving academic achievement yeah Ann I don't know if you can answer that better than me is that a non-negotiable do you know yeah because usually that language comes direct direct from the state yeah um I had a question T what is um so this is required by the state and you had just I think mentioned that the state needs to sign off on this
246so can you just elaborate a little bit more on the process of what's being required by the state and what we need to have in place so we uh pedc is brand new for the state of Connecticut um they have a a document that we must submit to the state to show that we have met the standards of expectation which our plan does we've made sure it has all the non negotiables in it um and the policy committee will also be taking up you know the policy that actually says You must follow uh follow the law and then basically the plan is the regulation because that's what we have to do um and so I mean it's it's a requirement it just seems like we're codifying uh wokeness into Teaching Standards and practices in all
247honesty and you'd have to take that up with the state um they you they do use language that we don't generally use in our curriculum documents um and and you see it in in the state require requirements like we talked about this last year in the board and I'm sure you'll remember on uh like our black and Latino studies was a very different approach than the way the district actually approaches curriculum um but again there's non-negotiables that are in here for the state in order to get it approved so Cody are you going to give your speech about the state involvement well I'm I always vote against things that the state requires us to do that it seems redundant if we're required to do it why do we have to vote on it it should
248just happen yeah and not only that I think that the the one thing I did like about this evaluation program that I thought was different from the past was the opportunity where there was the back and forth where there was the evaluation component and then there was the opportunity for the teacher to respond back back in in connection with their evaluation so that there was more of a a a a give and take it was more of a a learning and an educational experience for the teacher I think that's the only good thing out of this because I do believe that um we as an institution and that's what I'm going to call an institution have the wherewithal to uh provide the right uh oversight and um commentary back to our teachers than having it
249dictated To Us by the state personally oh I was just going to say you know it would be interesting because I can't imagine that we've if this was given to us that we've really gone through and and word Smith a lot of it and I was say I don't think I've ever seen anything in our district with words social justice written in by us so I would assume that was from the state but uh I I do understand the concern of having a teacher evaluated on that just by the basis of the term but um you know from our teachers when who presented this last time they all seemed in favor they liked the opportunity that it had more uh you know opportunity for reflection and Improvement um and growth for them as teachers so
250I mean to me that that was uh you know positive any other comments yep you know just on the state thing I'm very optimistic that um with this this whole muffin gate issue at the high school that some of these kids maybe the next time they speak they'll start expanding the scope of uh federal and state mandates that they're U bothered by so this would this would no I'm saying but it it it it enlightened them so so maybe they'll come back next time uh you know focus on this this one all right anything else call the question all in FA favor one two three four all against okay passes 43 um I know the next item on our agenda is healthy food cert certification but I'd like to make a I assume we need
251to make a motion if we're not going to do it because uh so I'm going to make a motion to remove that uh from the agenda for tonight and then I would ask Dr Jones to explain why we're not going to vote on it but I'll I'll second the motion Dr Jones can you explain why we're making a motion to remove this from our agenda sure very quickly um so we just went through a food audit um which is required you know every so many years with the state and one of the elements that came out of this food audit now uh is that they're telling us that they changed the language in their regulations at the state level in 2017 our last audit was 2016 and now you cannot opt a school out of
252the National School lunch program unless we opt every school out um and there's no way we could we would want to do that however we want to do some more checking and make sure because it is a USDA Federal program so uh we just want to take due diligence since we have another Retreat and then we have another meeting we need to get some more answers and we do want to check with the attorney that they in fact at the state have the authority to do that for a federal program yeah I'd love to do that because I can't imagine telling the students that they're never getting those again and that they can only have like two nuggets for lunch I know our kids are going to start I would argue we do fake sale
253every day with muffins that's the mean the way around it or we line up the food trucks no that's what we should do we should line up food trucks on Hillside because you know who doesn't need more traffic ex exactly only at 255 though all right uh I'm calling the question all in favor of taking this off of the motion great so 70 passes all right so I'm going to make a motion to hold on where's the piece of paper uh yes I'd like to make a motion to approve the 2024 2025 agenda plan as presented do I have a second Wendy uh discussion call a question all in favor 70 great thank you that marks the conclusion of our action items Now we move to the agenda plan discussion Dr Jones would you like
254to lead this off so we will need to add uh just on the May 30th we'll need to add the food the food item again perfect and um it's board goals yeah so we can take the self- evalu um it's the the current board goals and our own self evaluation is the way I read that yeah well then then there was the discussion I guess of first read for next set of goals that's the part I would take off because we are technically supposed to do self- evaluation all right so we're taking off the 2024 25 Boe goals first read that's what you're take we're taking off why are we taking it off I would assume we haven't met as a policy to you know Group Policy you governance hasn't met in order to start
255working on those we can always put those forward at the start this next school year that's that's what we did last year so last year we approved them at the start of the school year I mean granted we'd gone back and forth but I think once we if we do a self-evaluation even within that discussion we may find that we don't have to do a lot of work to come up with goals for next year so I think we may just not want to have it as a first read on that night I think once we do the self- evaluation it might lead us to having renewed go goals based on what we already have so we could always put on after that for you know well can we have on there a discussion item
256or I guess it's info but a discussion item on what our goals should be as a board well if we're talking about current board goals and self- evaluation I mean you can it can seep into what we think the go maybe just want to read remove first read because we won't have anything to present yeah I think we just remove first read gives us the opportunity to discuss them um also do we need um it's it's listed as a retreat um we need to add an executive session we do need to add an executive time you want to do that um want to start the executive session at 7 yes first two items would be that's fine executive session let's do that and then on the June 13th we would I guess you would mark
257off action board go goals CU you wouldn't be at that point correct I don't think we need to talk about the agenda plan being that it's the last meeting for 2324 and we just did cak tonight so that can come off I like it already it's already a shorter meeting okay I it anybody got a motion to make do it second all in favor 70