December 14, 2023 Board of Education Business Meeting

001okay I'm going to call this meeting to order at 7:05 if everybody can rise to say the Pledge of Allegiance that would be fantastic uh perfect so um I am hoping that I can get a motion to approve the uh meeting and consent agenda uh and a second okay perfect all in favor okay that's 80 perfect um where are we so uh the next item on our agenda is uh the election of officers at which point I will turn this over to M Stow okay thank you Miss HS um okay we'll do this again we will be electing officers in accordance with policy 9121 the floor is open for nominations for chair can I uh do I are there any other are there any nominations Michael Joseph oh can you hear me now okay thank

002you so the floor is open for nominations for chair thank you so I'd like to nominate d Karen Kowalski there doesn't need to be a second but if anyone wants a second it there you go Cody okay um are there any other nominations I'd like to nominate Karen hirch okay um would you like to say anything Michael Joseph okay I am this well okay but um I'm pleased to nominate Karen HS for chair since I didn't get to uh say anything last time and since I've had the pleasure I know Laura has spent a lot of time I won't go through Karen's resumee to your point Karen but there are few things I'd like to add since I've had the privilege of being both Vice chair and chair and what I especially came to appreciate

003as chair is that you need to set the right tone and be collaborative and as we all know the chair does not have more power than any other member but you do set the tone and tener of the board you need to be available to respond to our constituents our superintendent and meet with other Town bodies most importantly you need to be willing to find compromise and even if you're on the minority on the vote you need willingly advocate for the board vote while Karen has had dissenting votes she's willing to compromise after much analysis and questioning and more often votes with the majority furthermore and a Real Testament to her even when she descents she will positively advocate for the will of the board she has never and would never speak out against the

004board in any way Ken's been been a tireless advocate for our schools prior to her board service she led PC and that's a perfect example where you need to listen and consolidate various opinions and then serve with one voice furthermore in that role along with her other community board roles Karen's developed relationships with other Town leaders people like her while on this board she served on the executive committee for four years been a member of PGC District curriculum special ed and most recently the strategic planning committee that committee spent a lot of time working to find the best Direction forward for our district and she compromised and voted to bring that plan to light finally we have now seen her in action Karen's been our interm chair while staying on a secretary very impressive and

005she has certainly shown that she can respond diligently and thoughtfully to many emails meet with the students her favorite part engage and plan an agenda with Dr Jones meet with the legislators engage with the RTM and most importantly manage an efficient meeting we'd be lucky to have our lead us this year okay so now the process is assuming seeing no other nominations could you all please um pass your who you're voting for please say that it's for chair and then bring send it over to me Kathleen should I email my vote to you that would be great if you could send it to my board email let me um see if I received Laura's email first hold on a second there we go all right Laura C votes Karen hirs for chair Sophie coin votes

006Karen hirs for chair Karen HS votes Karen HH for chair Michael Joseph WS Karen Kowalski for chair Karen Kowalski votes Karen Kowalski for chair Kathleen St votes Karen H for chair Wendy viio Walsh votes Karen kski for chair and Cody KD votes Karen kski for chair so that is uh no no majority it's 44 um and that are the results of the election do we have any else we'd like to do Laura C I would like to nominate Cody KD for chair I'd second that you can you cannot accept it Laura you're so nice thank you but I uh politely pass I haven't even gotten to say my nice things about you that's okay okay I was gonna say that I enjoyed working with you so far on the budget but okay then we won't

007add that well thank you anyway all right are there any other anything else okay do we want to I think we just move on then we don't need a caucus or anything do we Karen we're good okay all right then I will pass it back over to you Karen okay uh nobody wants to try to revote just double checking no okay I just okay so any anyway um I think we should revote I if you may be the only one that would like to do that um the next item on our agenda then is a public hearing did nobody else wants to vote again right no just okay so uh public hearing um and I was going to say once we get to community comments I will remind everyone uh that you each have three

008minutes uh we have 31 speakers signed up tonight so so if you have someone that has come before you that has said the same thing that you're planning to say and you would like to just say you know support that and Seed your time that would that's wonderful uh we have an hour of public comment ahead at the start of the meeting so if we go over that time significantly we have to move the rest of the speakers to the end of our meeting uh after we're done with the actual business of uh the board so um I will just remind you of the rest of the rules when we get there but our first speaker is the high school student government is the mic on okay good evening members of the board my name

009is Omar galal I'm the student VI student body vice president at ghs and I will be sharing updates from ghs as well as speaking on a policy change that we've been working on the holidays are just one week away and the winter Spirits have crept up on ghs in sports news we have transitioned from The Fall season to the winter season in the fall postseason the girls swimming team and the girls cross country teams both won their state championships while several other varsity teams made deep runs in their state tournaments through November Greenwich students from the roots and shoots Club led a Thanksgiving food drive that collected over 2100 pieces of food and raised $10,000 that went towards grocery gift cards and as the holidays have been uh steadily approaching Student Activities hosted their annual

010uh gingerbread house competition which was great fun earlier this week um while the senior class have been planning a cozy movie night in the student Center two months ago Caleb and I shared our idea to implement barcode scanners at the Cardinal cafeteria today we have a better picture of what this would look like the cafeteria has 12 cash registers Each of which would need a one Barcode Scanner each scanner would cost approximately $300 and would be purchased from the same vendor which the media center and English Department already already used to purchase their scanners to check out books um in the near future food services will be equipped with new software which will allow students to scan their digital school ID barcodes at the registers to pay for food through uh my school books and

011once undertaken this initiative will accomplish two important objectives related to improving Student Life first the barcode scanners will expedite the process of purchasing food in turn giving students much more time to eat their lunches and relax second by requiring students uh digital IDs to purchase lunches barcode scanners would massively improve the efficacy of the MinGa app digital IDs are currently on the periphery of student life at ghs only used in particular circumstances such as entering and uh exit exiting the build building or checking out a book from the media center integrating digital IDs across the cafeteria using these barcode scanners will give a large part of the student body an essential reason to uh use their digital IDs or the MinGa app on a daily basis so if the digital IDs or the MinGa app

012are serious long-term objectives at ghs we urge the the Board of Ed and administration to prioritize integrating barcode scanners at the Cardinal cafeteria as soon as possible this is all I have for updates at ghs and I'm excited to share uh with all of you our continued success uh so thank you and enjoy the rest of your evening good evening members of the board I'm Caleb Kalin the student body president of Greenwich high school I'm here tonight to speak with you about recent student concerns and initiatives from our ghs students first I'd like to share some environmental updates from our ghs environmental action club during their recent meetings the environmental action club or the EAC has put together several initiatives and new plans for the future which include acting on issues that are prevalent not

013only to G s but to the town of Greenwich as a whole including cleanups and speaking at a meeting concerning gas powered leaf blowers I spoke to EAC leaders about the future of compost at our school which is something of concern as ghs students expect to see new garbage bins and stations in our student centers following the holiday break because of this we discussed how to educate students on Recycling and composting because these bins are being added to new St stationary was stations some great ideas have been brought up and we hope to launch them before the break to make sure that the transition to this new system is as smooth as possible in addition I've been working closely with the Diversity Awareness club and I've seen promising plans for the new year at a

014diversity Conference held at the YWCA that I and a few of other a few other students attended there were many powerful and productive discussions around diversity and how it affects us as students from seeing this the club leaders and I were inspired to bring something similar to our school A diversity day similar to our existing names day at the high school names day for our a day for our ninth graders centered on anti-bullying and anti-bias would serve as an example to follow with the creation of diversity day ideally diversity day would be organized for the junior class this way conversations can happen at a higher level of maturity with the support of student fa facilitators from the various various diversity clubs that exist at ghs I'm excited to continue working with them to bring this

015event along and along with other ideas to continue to properly recognize discuss and celebrate diversity within our student body the final point I wish to make is on our midterm and final exam policy I'm aware that this may be a topic of the of discussion for the board tonight so I'd like to preface it by relaying to the board what I have heard from students as my role entails me to do based on the co pandemic we have had a midterm policy for the past two school years that ease the stress on students while sorry ease the stress on our students while allowing them to continue to learn grow and succeed these policies allowed students to choose whether their midterms and finals were worth 10% or 20% of their overall grade for a semester course

016they have also included a full review day and requirements for review packets for each exam which has which have benefited the students greatly I want to briefly emphasize that the students at ghs want the option to lower exam percentages just as they have been able to do for the past two years students don't want to see return of pre-co waiting as it puts more stress on them unnecessarily hindering their potential to succeed in particular our junior class has felt very strongly this and Chloe the junior class vice president has more to say on this topic later on I'm excited to continue working on our future initiatives and goals at ghs thank you and have a good evening thanks guys um next up is GAA is Lil here she good evening Dr Jones Board of Ed

017members GA members PTA and our grenwich community well we have some new board members we have a new board meeting a new month some new BET RTM MERS an end of this year coming a new year around the corner but what has not changed well we have the same problems and same issues I'm getting tired of speaking the same speech and not seeing anything getting done not funding and supporting our superintendence budget our original budget so the public school can provide our students with the top level instruction and service that all children must have access to I feel like I'm stuck in the movie Groundhog Day over and over reliving every year about the budget and talking the same things and it gets cut all the time but there's a difference there's a huge difference

018between last year this year and the next year now this is hurting our students hurting our community hurting our teachers facts we had 189 students move into the community we have transitions in our community connections program facts utilities have increased substitute pay has increased still not enough very hard to compete when you have over just a line where they're getting paid 300 we have preschool legis legislation that has changed 24 four answers on the year 24 budget there are some staff reductions 25 it's even more severe not to identify all the Staffing changes because they're not in reality yet and to upset my staff and teachers um 10 positions but at the same time there's 10 positions added five sped two psych three social workers one speech One Financial Analyst or maybe they're going to

019find the money for us I don't know that could be a good thing it doesn't it doesn't equal out it doesn't match up you can't build up a program that need to be buil up at the cost of building something down these staff and changes affects what's happening in the classroom you've heard me for two years now and heard me first couple of months here the teachers are having it hard there's a shortage of Subs shortage of pairs teachers are covering there's stress within absenteeism is up there's got to be a stimulus response cause and change we can't keep doing this this community is better than this we need to fund the superintendent budget we need our community members to speak up our parents it it I I'm gonna hear this speech every time I'm

020gonna start talking about the positions in school that are going to be cut one of the first ones which is a very drastic cut only because it's kind of like the Forgotten child is our physical education and Health Department we have we haven't had a coordinator since 2018 and before that when I was Lead Teacher of the district I made sure that our lessons were updated were in compliance I cannot I cannot vouch to what's being taught and what's not being taught right now they're on the chopping block block for minutes now I already have the data I know in Fairfield County I already have it when and I was it every district has either a Content leader a coordinator or a team leader we greenage likes to compare herself to other districts we have

021nothing I take that back we not to insult the people that are doing it we have principles that are getting a stien their jobs to be a principal they're not a coordinator they don't guide the department they're not the voice of the department they don't understand the Ines and their specialities these Specialists teach every single child in the Greenwich Public Schools they do the health and wellness lessons and if you read anything in the news about social emotional learning disregulation problem solving critical thinking 21st skills teamwork that's all done at that level and we want to cut our hours to 60 I'll have all the data for my next speech to share with you because I know you don't want to miss out on that so I'm going to keep you in suspense on that

022but I know Westport has 80 hours 80 minutes sorry that would be a shock I apologize so on a positive note I'll leave you with this little poem when I first came to Greenwich um someone gave this to me um and I was I'm really into 21st skills and project adventure and critical thinking and problem solving so I always like to leave on a positive note I don't like to be Debbie Downer so I'm GNA read you a short little poem it's called come play with me I tried to teach my children with books they gave me only puzzled looks I tried to teach my children with words they passed them often unheard desperately I turned aside how shall I teach my children children I cried into my hand they reached out and put the

023key come they said come play with me thank you thanks Lil uh next up PTA Council I see John there come on up CH proam Hirsch uh Boe members superintendent Dr Jones everyone here everyone listening uh thank you for this opportunity to speak I'm John fiser the Greenwich PTA council president and the parent of two of the 8,611 great kids in the grage public schools for those who may need a reminder the PTA council is the umbrella organization made up by and for the 15 independent ptas in town if anyone still hasn't joined their PTA you need to do it tomorrow uh it's a short agenda tonight so let's talk about H the elephant in the room this elephant is a pinata it reflects what the BET has done to the Boe and to the

024administration the BET didn't give us budget guidance in September or October and like in a pinata party the administration and the Boe were left blindfolded and Swinging away and the administration made Solid contact delivering a lean I got you to jump delivering a lean focused budget that accurately and realistically reflects a higher con contracted obligations higher salaries higher utility costs higher inflation higher enrollments higher special education costs new State mandates expiring covid era grants and funding and more that realistic practical budget accurately reflects a 6.1% real increase in the operating costs and then like a pinata party the BET yanked away with guidance for a 4.3% increase and like the A Yank of the pinata at the pinata party it's deceptive it's 4.3% on the original budget allocation ignoring the 2.2% interim allocation for higher

025special ed costs as well as other interim Appropriations and another Yank on the pinata the BET doesn't acknowledge or credit the millions of dollars well more than three million of Revenue that the school district brings in which goes straight into the town's accounts the BET needs to be more intellectually honest about the real amount the town actually provides for school operations the 4.3 guidance would require about $3 million of reduction to the proposed budget 3 million is such a small amount for the town of Greenwich which has a grand list of with $29 billion doar in assessed value but it's a big amount for the schools it's teaching staff as Lil said it's class size it's the quality of the prek program which is a revenue generator it's Alp science its curriculum development and management

026its early years foreign language it's PE time to develop healthy minds and healthy bodies it's maintaining the grenwich public schools as an employer of choice for Education professionals at a time when it's harder and harder to attract and retain teachers $3 million is the difference between delivering the quality of Education that the children in the town of Greenwich need versus a school district that is hog tied or elephant tied uh and can't deliver on its potential or its strategic goals Pac urges the Boe to stand up stand firm and whack that bet pinata politics is all about expediency leadership is about what's doing right about doing what is right the leaders of our education system you as the leaders of our education system need to tell the bet that the proposed 6.1% budget is what

027the schools need and it's what the BET needs to approve and be sure to tell the board of Selectmen that as well thank you and if if you don't mind I'd like to give this to this elephant to Dr Jones she and her team may find that this is a very useful therapeutic device over the course of the budget process uh thanks John always good to have a nice uh chuckle before we get into to business so um next up is the community comments as I mentioned we have 31 speakers uh which will take us well over our hour of a lotted time so if people uh want to stand up and have heard somebody else say what they plan to say and you just want to say I I'd like to second that uh

028we would you know appreciate that as well uh just reminder again each PE person has a speak three minutes I'll call the name uh who to come up I'll call the next name after so if you could just be prepared to come up um when it's your turn no boisterous inappropriate or disrespectful conduct will be permitted and if you want to offer objective criticism of District operation and programs that's fine but please be civil uh respect us in a you know in a civil Manner and whatnot and don't uh denigrate the the staff so thank you and our first Speaker up is Jen Ben Sango followed by Pilar Lea Dr jeno sorry I just had said Jennifer is she online I'm not seeing her on online okay so we will if she shows up we'll

029come back to her next up is pillar leera followed by Doug fanton uh good evening thank you for uh receiving us today I wasn't expecting to be the first one here um I don't have numbers I that's not my specialty what I am is a mom I've got four children in the district I share classroom with uh Laura um what I come here to say is first of all I'm really sad that we had to Rally in this way um one would think the bard of Ed would be more more supportive and would have of um Dr Jones um that you guys would give the fight without needing us to step up in this way uh against the B Board of Ed Board of uh the BET um what can I say I've been talking

030to teachers the situation as it is even without the cuts we need more there's a lot of need I don't know like have you been going to schools talking to teachers one in one like they need more support the classrooms are too big the special a community we don't have enough we don't have what we need as it is the town is liable for I can't I have no idea how much money but I can assure you a lot more than what they're suggesting to cut you're not complying to federal laws children need a lot more and although Dr Jones and Dr Stacy and I'm sorry I can't pronounce her last name they're doing their best you only know that they're trying to do their best when you get a one-on-one meeting with them because

031otherwise you can't see that the system is rotten Everybody's scared to speak up teachers are afraid because someone has told them along the way that if they say something that they feel is wrong they're going to be sued personally so they're not just scared of losing their jobs they're scared that their lives are going to be turned upside down which is completely sad I think it's time for us parents the Board of Ed the administration and the teachers to remember that we are a team we're Partners in this children are the most important thing we all have their future just the fight that's what you're supposed to be doing that and you are our Representatives against the board the bet when they just just look at numbers which is isn't even smart if this keeps

032going we're GNA lose our teachers we're gonna the town is gonna get Su seconds okay and I mean just it's not financially smart and it's cruel and everybody should be ashamed of that thank you thank you next up is Doug Fenton and I know uh Dr Ben Sango has uh joined us online so she will follow Doug hi I'm uh forgive me if you're not having props um my name is Doug Fen I'm a parent of two at Riverside School and a rising member of the RTM as other people have touched on Dr Jones in the district and I've spoken to many of you Dr Jones in thect District have provided a budget that only covers the dollars needed to continue to provide our current Greenwich schools experience an experience which is already seeing growing

033class sizes and inflation adjusted spending per student at decade lows to meet the BET's Target I know you all are considering program Cuts if the bu is considering these Cuts with the belief that these changes will lead to better outcomes for our children I can respect that choice as long as it's explained to the parents in the school Community why however if these decisions are primarily or solely being made with the aim for bet budget guideline or lower cost for lower tax sake and I strongly urge you to reject them I do want to specifically ask you to vote against the elimination of alp science Alp science and its predecessor Al interdisciplinary Sciences has been a part of gish's curriculum for decades many of ghs has celebrated an awardwinning regener on Scholars started their scientific

034Journeys with Al science for the scarce amount of time dedicated to science instruction and Elementary Al science reduces classroom sizes so that teachers can most effectively provide both Alp and non- Alp students more space and attention to explore learn and grow I also believe that the elimination of alp science will harm the overall Alp program Alp cost effectively um sorry Alp cost effectively reduces class sizes and allows more targeted teaching for all of our third to fifth graders during essential instruction subjects finally and just finally a current ghs student who's competing for these awards for the district reached out to me and said I believe that Al science truly changed the trajectory of my life it taught me to ask questions about the world and how to improve it and I wholeheartedly believe that removing

035it would prevent the next generation of young scientists from finding what makes them excited about science I want to thank all of you for serving on the bee and I urge you to appropriately fund our schools thank you thank you uh next up will be uh Dr Ben Singo and followed by Trish Maguire why not sure if I see her but thank you can you hear me can you can hear me okay perfect my apologies I was at my daughter's Coral concert in Carol the bell's Rand long good evening everyone my name is Jennifer Bango I am the proud principal of of old grenwich school and tonight I'm speaking as the Gosa co-president David Waco and I as Gosa co-presidents would like to take a moment to speak on behalf of the recommended budget cuts

036for the fiscal year 25 budget it's important to note Goa fully supports the superintendent's original proposed budget as written with no Cuts made to the budget particularly those most closely related to students in Staffing and programming in the event these budget cuts are inevitable we would request they are furthest from student contact time as possible the Greenwich public schools are not just an academic institution we are a district recognized on the national and international stage for our scientists athletes linguists artists musicians and Scholars we have produced Olympic level athletes internationally ranked scientists and endless other accolades worthy of note and as we recognize each year in our community service award ceremony our students are champions of service and philan anthropy as well the development of their character begins at the earliest ages in preschool and

037kindergarten with a foundation in social emotional learning compassion empathy and inclusivity there our teachers plant the seeds of scholarship Artistry athleticism and sportsmanship this continues throughout their time in Greenwich ensuring we are promoting the success of children fully embodying our grenwich public school's vision of The Graduate Goa requests you fully support the budget as it was originally submitted and advocate for the needs of our students without any further cuts and ensuring that any cuts that need to be made are as far from student and teacher contact time as possible thank you and again my apologies for being late thank you and uh congratulations on achieving your your doctorate thanks for letting us know that too it's great next up is another one of our fantastic principles is Trish Maguire and following her is L Ritz

038one of our students thank you and congratulations Jen good evening Dr Jones and members of the Board of Education buis Nores and bonso I want to start with a thank you for all you do and let you know that I have a deep understanding of the momentous job in front of you tonight our superintendent has put forth a budget that reflects the needs of students in the Greenwich public schools and now it must be re-evaluated adjusted and decreased with the hope to have the least possible impact on the quality of Education provided to our students it is not easy to sit in your seats I am here to express my deep concern regarding the potential elimination of the K through2 foreign language program at Julian Curtis and the impact it will have on our ability

039to maintain a robust magnet program we presently boast a magnet population of 29% of our school enrollment that is almost a third of our families who choose to come to Julian Curtis at Julian Curtis the foreign language program KY through 5 is the magnet the result of removing the program from K through two decreases the impact of the program overall in fact without it we will not have a magnet program last year's fifth grade class had 14 students placed into advanced Spanish classes out of 24 who continued Spanish there were also eight students who enrolled in Native Spanish classes in French nine students continued with French and six were placed into advanced classes of the fifth grade total World Language student enrollment 61% of language students went into the advanced Middle School language classes more

040importantly learning a foreign language at a young age promotes empathy and a deep understanding of different cultures in today's globalized society these skills are more valuable than ever and we must equip our children with with the tools to navigate an international landscape successfully Julian Curtis proudly boasts 60 countries 30 languages one great school each year we celebrate United Nations Day and the entire Community attends to celebrate the diversity of our population the United Nations Day parade is a celebration of what we stand for and what we build on all year long this is not a one-day exhibition but a salute to the development of cultural awareness diversity and language skills I urge you to reconsider this potential cut to the foreign language program instead let us work together to find Creative Solutions seek external funding

041sources or explore Partnerships with Community organizations to ensure the continuity and enhancement of these essential educational opportunities I appreciate your time and dedication to serving our community I trust that you will carefully consider the impact of any decisions regarding foreign language educ ation in our elementary schools and work towards finding Sustainable Solutions that prioritize the best interests of our students and I wish you a joyful holiday season thanks we wish you one as well next up is Flo rabinovitz followed by Morgan Mitchell hi board I'm clar benitz the vice president of the junior class and I'm gonna just uh continue what Caleb was saying about the midterms and finals we believe that going back to the original waiting of the midterms and finals is extremely detrimental to students mental health and well-being the Juniors specifically

042are very stressed about this as this year matters the most for all of us and we are returning back to such a heavy waiting which doesn't necessarily seem fair since freshman and sophomore year we had the covid waiting which was 10% with the stress of this as well as starting to pick colleges it has made School a rather unpleasant place to be because of the insane amount of pressure that being put on us these are just some quotes from students at the current midterm waiting which is 20% this is specifically the junior class it is super stressful to have to take a test on the full first semester while having it count towards so much especially when this year is all about focusing on College this one test shouldn't determine whether colleges would accept me

043or not I just don't understand why one test has to have such a big impact on my grade I've had an a both quarters but this one test can mess everything up because of how much it's weighted it is extremely stressful working a full semester to maintain good grades and the fact that there's a chance that your entire GPA gets dropped dramatically at the end of the semester because of a single test doesn't seem fair I feel like my mental health suffers more than it should because of how stressful this test is I suffer from super bad anxiety and knowing these tests are weighted so heavily has me already feeling so anxious about taking them and lastly I'll do so good during the first semester but I test this bigs just so hard not because

044I don't know the material but because it's half a year of work hitting me at once as you can see the midterm and Midterm waiting and final is already impacting students before we've even taken it so I hope you can acknowledge us and take this in consideration and help us thank you thanks Chloe uh next up is Morgan Mitchell to be followed by the Greenwich High School baseball team or representative thereof thank you all for allowing me to come something I've thought about for a long time because I love Greenwich uh I'm Morgan Mitchell my wife Betsy and I have in this town for 40 years we've had three children go through the school system we have one daughter who's actually a principal of a Brooklyn Public High School try that one on verze uh

045and I'm a retired real estate broker so I'm not a blank slate when it comes to Gran education to start with I'm astounded that we do even think of cutting because if you look at the last five years the amount of young couples that have come to Greenwich is just amazing in fact there are more strollers walking up and down the grenwich streets and those that's our future and here we're cutting there's really a mistake in that and I think that brings to the major problem we have in the hierarchy in Greenwich we don't really have an advocate for Education that just isn't one and I think that needs to be changed because I mean to for the BET to do a whole budget and not have an educational Advocate there when that 55% of

046the total grage Market business I mean that's just that seems to me a real mistake in an opportunity lost because by the time the budget gets down to wherever it comes down to um if you they've taken it knife and death now what came to my mind when I was writing this as I saw this big fat guy that was the picture I had this big fat guy and everybody was picking on him well it's like our budget you know we have 60 we have 55% of the budget and no one's there and everybody's picking up they could take a little bit here a little bit there because there's so much no one will notice it you know what's a million dollars out of you know whatever 22 million or whatever it'd be and they

047so they pick away just like they would on a kid and taking advantage of them that was the first thing I noticed then I tried to figure out what would be the answer well the answer would be you take something but somebody like the um the head of PTA or the person you heard earlier Doug Fenton who loves the school system and create a maybe a nonvoting person that goes to all the BET meetings something that keeps the education in the Forefront of what we're at I think it would be a tremendous help because we're really lacking that we're we're losing we have no power in the hierarchy 30 seconds I think the other thing I also found is there there are 4,000 kids in greenage that the P that the parents pay $50,000 a

048year to go to a private school $4,000 that is a lot of kids and you know what the savings is to that each kid costs about $25,000 in granch schools well if you take that 25,000 and a 4,000 there's hundred million doll that could go into benefit grage because it's being saved by us not thanks thank you next up is our uh benach High School baseball team to be followed by Caitlyn Wardell good evening Dr Jones and board members my name is Cody Baker and I'm a senior and one of the captains of the gr High School baseball team the other captains and I have been members of the varsity team for the past three years and I've been offered an opportunity to continue to play baseball at Emerson College next year I like most

049of the players on our team have been playing baseball since 5 years old it's what we love to do I'm here tonight on behalf of our ghs baseball team to share some of the thoughts and questions that have Arisen since the recent news that our home field will be unplayable we are grateful for the communication updates on field status from Dr Jones and Mr georgeu over the past two weeks their communication about the efforts to execute a plan PL in alternative field has been very helpful in understanding and managing expectations for the 2024 baseball season our purpose here tonight is to have a voice in the decision-making process and share some of our beliefs about what is essential to create an experience that we that would be comparable to the one we would have had

050at our home field Mr George Drew sent an email out today explaining that lower that the lower haire field would be used as an alternative field noting some of the items that he plans to provide for setfield including pitching Mounds dugouts and batting cages that sounds like a great start however there are additional things that are necessary to have for both performance and safety reasons the upgrades and additional equipment that we are asking for will not only benefit us this year but also be of great value in the future when the field here at Central is no longer usable first and foremost we need a temporary fence in the Outfield that could go up in March and come down in June in addition to the excitement and emotion that comes with hitting a home run

051off fens is essential as a line of demarcation a line of demarcation is also important as many of the juniors in the program are looking to get recruited which stats play a pivotal role in college coaches will likely ask how many home runs they hit or how many balls they hit to the fence umpires will not be able to see where a ball lands or rolls to from the infield defense would also be there to address certain safety concerns as there is nothing separating The Outfield grass from the gravel track surrounding it any player running to catch a ball in the Outfield faces a potential injury risk due to this sudden and unexpected change secondly we need to shed to house items such as a tarp rakes a pitching machine bases and baseballs it would

052be impractical to bring these items to and from school every day before and after every single practice or game lastly we are asking for adequate seating and parking for our fans as much as this season means to us it means equally as much to our parents and fans who make an effort to support us at any chance they get although it seems relatively minuscule the support of others goes a very long way and contributing to the morale and confidence of a team these are all requests that would be given if we were playing our season at ghs with that being said I want to emphasize that the players and parents in the program are deeply invested in helping as much as we can in any way that we can we began fundraising in the fall

053and plan on continuing that up to and through the start of our season we hope to be kept in the loop on any decisions made in the future as well again I would like to thank Dr Jones Mr georgeu and all members of the board for your continued support throughout this process and for listening to me tonight thank you thank you we always love to have students come and speak uh next up is Caitlyn Wardell followed by Janet McMahon good evening I'm Caitlyn Wardell I have two children in third and fifth grade at Riverside School I'm standing up tonight as a concerned parent about the Draconian Cuts proposed by to the school budget according to an article in the UCLA Health Website physical activity has been shown to improve students academic performance social emotional learning

054and mental health why reduce gym class time and create more hyperactivity CH hyperactive children in a crowded classroom that classroom is getting more crowded due to the potential Alp science cut which like all Alp classes takes Alp kids out of the class so the general education teacher can give more attention to the rest of the class crowded classrooms deter learning and let children fall through the cacks when that happens a few years later the district has to pay far more money than gym class and Alp science fees in academic remediation or hasn't the town already learned that with its past uh special education mistakes early intervention for academics and behavioral issues is always cheaper and easier than waiting and if the argument for cutting Alp science in elementary schools is that 70% of middle school

055students are in advanced science I say either raise your admittance standards at the middle school level or inrease Alp science at the elementary people buy houses in Greenwich and send their kids to GPS because they believe in the district's high standards don't prove us wrong here tonight um Sorry lastly cutting services to elementary schools does not sell houses it does not increase your tax base it signals a town in financial distress buyers will look to wealthier towns with richer and more robust academic offerings like Daran new Kanan and Westport a town that can afford to invest in its children is a town with its Financial house in order Greenwich can't afford to lose out to its neighboring towns thank you thank you next up Janet McMahon to be followed by Betsy McIntyre good evening and

056thank you members of the Board of Education Dr Jones and guests my name is Janet McMahon and tonight I'm speaking as a concerned parent of two Public grenage public school children I've lost count on how many Board of Ed budget meetings I've spoken at but suffice it to say that there have been many and my message is almost identical at all of them it goes something like this the superintendent submits a budget and then the BET imposes a completely unrealistic budget guideline then the board starts thinking of ways to cut the budget and teachers and parents like myself and everyone here before me say wait hold on please don't cut the budget alas I'm back again tonight to say please don't cut the budget ESP especially since some of the budget cutting measures that have

057been discussed include but are not limited to increasing class sizes reducing or eliminating intramural sports reducing funds for foreign language art music Etc and reducing or eliminating Alp science altogether please do not cave to the BET's unreasonable budget guideline of 4.3% that is simply out of touch with the reality of the economy today please also do not vote for any of the aforementioned cuts which will negatively impact the delivery of greenwich's Premier education for those of you who are not aware grenwich Public Schools is currently ranked number five in nich's best public school districts in Connecticut just behind Westport new Kanan Wilton and darianne grench high school is ranked ninth out of 206 high schools according to US News and World reports grench Public Schools is academically strong and competitive and students parents and teachers

058all want to keep it that way it's one of the top reasons young families moved to Greenwich and it is the main reason my husband and I chose to move to Greenwich almost 16 years ago please approve the superintendance operating budget as submitted the spend represents a carefully developed budget that is overwhelmingly all fixed overwhelmingly or all sorry overwhelmingly fixed costs and or mandated or contracted the budget is high but accurately reflects the inflationary economy of today salaries increase in the inflationary economy of today with increased salaries fixed costs transportation and utilities all increasing in the face of increased enrollment higher special education tuition new state mandates the expiration of covid error grants and Etc most important this budget represents the amount or students need to succeed and Thrive academically physically and emotionally please do

059not short change the students of GPS in order to fit the arbitrary and unrealistic budget guidelines of the bet on the other hand cuts to the operating budget will adversely affect academic outcomes and will negatively impact property values as we all know strong Public Schools equal strong property values please keep our property value strong and vote Yes to the operating budget as written thank you thank you next up is Betsy McIntyre to be followed by Julie fers good evening as co-president of the PTA at Riverside School a GPS parent and a concerned citizen I'm deeply invested in our town and our children's education my family chose to move to Greenwich because of the caliber of its public schools and the past six years as a g in the as part of the GPS system it's

060been phenomenal for my children however this year as our Town's inflation adjusted spend per student continues to decline this year the public school experience has felt different the class sizes have ballooned there are 26 students in my daughter's fourth grade classroom and we know this is a trend across the district with classroom sizes up 6% in K through 5 in just two years teacher morale is at dishearteningly low levels as they feel the impact of schools being underresourced and unsupported as parents like you heard from po earlier tonight it feels like we're fighting for reasonable resources at every turn parents showed up here tonight they wrote letters to all of you and are T tuning in from their homes United with a common concern if Dr Jones's essential needs driven budget is rejected we will

061enter another year of in inadequate funding for our schools our children's education will suffer with oversized classes becoming the new norm and beloved programs that are doing so well for our children such as PE and Alp and who knows what's next being reduced to Mere line item Cuts in an inadequate school budget moreover we're concerned about our teachers there's a real threat of losing our most talented Educators to neighboring towns like deran which has committed to budget increases in line with or even greater than Tony Jones request and we fear the further erosion of teacher morale as this spend per student continues to decline and unreasonable demands are asked of our Educators and School staff I urge the Board of Education to adopt Dr Jones's original budget this is more than a financial decision it

062reflects our community's commitment to our children's Future Let's prioritize their education thank you thank you next up Julie brers to be followed by Peter Sher good evening chair protm HS Dr Jones members of the Board of Education cabinet PTA and Community my name is Julie fenar and I am the executive director of the Greenwich Alliance For Education we are the only Education Foundation in Greenwich and are 100% focused on our public school students teachers families and alumni tonight it is important for all members the Boe elected as stewards of the schools to support the superintendent operating budget thoughtfully reflecting the needs of the district blae and Patrick's work on the budget demonstrates there is limited dis discretionary spending and that there are not many levers that can be moved without significant changes to educational programs

063and policy the Greenwich Alliance vision statement in partner with the Greenwich Public Schools the alliance drives Innovation opportunity and access and learning to empower all students to achieve academic personal and professional success we often say we are the R&D arm of the public schools giving Educators a chance to try new ideas to address the opportunity Gap and change up the educational experience for students we are not here to close budget gaps because the town is unwilling to properly fund the schools significant Grant dollars were spent last year for assured ex assured science experiences for all first and second grade students in at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich aabon it is important for students to have Equitable access to Hands-On learning experiences related to the curriculum to create the context for understanding while we were pleased

064that we could fund this grant proposal it clearly demonstrates the alliance filling in the gap on to other Alliance news congratulations to Parkway in North mananas for winning top prizes for turkey trop participation and to North Street Julian Curtis and Costco for being so close we raised over $80,000 beating our budget for our programs thanks to everyone who sponsored including GAA and Goa who registered volunteered and donated to the race a little Avid news we just returned from presenting at the Avid National Conference about our Avid success programming Avid is the is Best in Class teaching and we continue to Advocate to expanded here at the elementary level it meets three of the GPS strategic goals increase family and Community engagement increase student sense of belonging increase positive working environment for teachers and staff reaching

065out grants application will be available on the website next week application should foster educational success for under resource students and Innovative enrichment opportunities to elevate achievement for all students I'm available to speak to anyone interested who wants to vet an idea thank you for the opportunity to speak and enjoy the holiday season thank you Julie next up is Peter Sher followed by Rebecca Cooper ready tell me my kids have got an aming education in gr schools truly First Rate they attend and have attended the finest most itive universities in the country and I attribute that to the incredible teachers that they had in Gish Public Schools GL sadly the school system that educated my kids isn't the one educating grish kids today it's slowly being dumbed down parents need to get informed and stand up

066I want to give you five numbers to consider 300 19.6 3 567 and 33 10 years ago 300 Greenwich schools had 300 more students than they do today 19.6 the average Elementary class size 10 years ago the same today three there were three Out programs English Math and Science all in in all elementary schools fully staff fully uh with the amount of classroom time 567 it's the mean SAT score in 2015 guess what it's the mean SAT score now 33 the educational program that I described to you in 2014 was delivered with 33 less teachers than Dr Jones has proposed in this budget 39.7 3 33567 how did the 2014 team deliver all of this with 33 less certified teachers and 300 more kids anticipating the smoke machine that will start after I just put

067these numbers out uh I just want to make a couple points 2014 33% minority exact same percentage now 55.5% English language Learners exact percentage right now teacher pay then highest in Connecticut teacher pay today still the highest in Connecticut and you should continue that as a board sadly with all of this extra teachers that have been put in the system overall academic achievement is the exact same number that it was 10 years ago the only thing that's different is the central office is different leadership team is different and the board is different I'll let you try to figure that one out people parents should be upset I know I am as a taxpayer we're all being duped in this uh as Pawns in a silly political game Greenwich teachers and School staff have always been

068amazing and they are amazing now but if you're a parent you should pull out your pitchforks metaphorically speaking and demand from the superintendent and the board that your school system in Greenwich enjoyed what was done a decade ago and the school fabulous school system that my kids enjoy your kids who are in there now deserve better thank you Mr share uh next up is Rebecca Cooper followed by David Lavine good evening my name is Rebecca Cooper and I am the proud PTA president of Julian Curtis we implore you to retain the K through2 language program at Julian Curtis why we Julian Curtis are the magnet school of world language for the Greenwich Public Schools as defined in the bylaws of the Greenwich Public Schools procedure e 01515 a magnet school may choose a theme or

069specialty as a means of enhancing student achievement and of attracting other students to attend world's language has answered the call for Julian Curtis while this may seem like a small cut to you in the multiple line item agendas in your budget it will undoubtedly provide a ripple effect which will harm our core values spoken about earlier by principal Maguire and of enhancing student achievement and attracting others from coming to Julian Curtis do not deny this right to our our youngest Learners we live in one of the wealthiest school districts in the country to cut at the core value of our school language is to tell these children that they cannot begin to love a second language until they are halfway through their Elementary careers and that is unacceptable we can do better and we must

070do better and I ConEd the rest of my time to Samantha salale good evening my name is Samantha Malton salel I'm on the schedule for quite later here to advocate for the continuation of funding for the K through2 foreign language program at Julian Curtis I'm speaking this evening from both a personal and a professional perspective personally as one of the magnet families that principal Maguire referenced earlier the mother of a first and second grader at Julian Curtis who both participate in the French language program professionally as a CMO of Sesame Workshop the global impact educational organization behind Sesame Street the largest informal educator in the world first as parents my husband and I both fluent F French speakers we chose Julian Curtis as a magnet school specifically for the language program we deeply appreciate the

071global culture that principal Maguire and the JC staff have built within the school which represents over 60 countries from around the world our children love the French program and their first and second grade teachers have shared how much they're thriving in my time at Sesame Workshop our research and thirdparty brain science research Pro proves how critical it is to reach children in these early years when their brain is developing language learning during these formative years can help build a healthy sense of self-identity and understanding and appreciation of others a sense of belonging something I'm sure that we can all agree is becoming increasingly more important in our world today on behalf of all of our parents particularly magnet families who benefit from this incredible language program and choose it specifically we implore you to continue

072funding for the K through2 program thank you thank you next up is David LaVine to be followed by elth spransy I hope I got that for correct good evening everyone um Dr Jones bard of aded community uh my name is David LaVine I am on the executive committee of the jcpa I am the vice chairman the building committee for Julian Curtis recently elected to district one in the RTM where Julian Curtis is located but most importantly I'm the father of a fourth grader and a kindergartner at JC I also love Verde which is our school color as my kindergartner now knows how to say Julian Curtis is the school of world languages as you guys know it's the core mission of the magnet school and I was pretty shocked to see that you guys were

073considering cutting this core part of the curriculum to me I I know budget decisions are hard the way I like to think about it is cost and benefit the cost side of this is actually really simple the cost of this program is nine hours half of one teacher $30,000 in the context of $190 million budget it rounds basically to zero so the cost is zero but the benefits are huge Spanish and French reflect the kind of diversity and inclusion that we want to see in our schools it reflects the 60 countries that are represented in our schools it also is the reflection of the kinds of values of acceptance that we want our kids to learn at a young age and also research shows that early exposure to foreign language is good for cognitive development

074performance has been good in test as Trish has mentioned but lastly most importantly I think is that school school choice allowing parents to decide the kind of education they want it's a gift that we're giving to our families here in this district with magnet schools we have families in our neighborhood Who choose Public Schools rather than private schools they choose it for this reason and we've made a commitment to those parents the 29% of the parents that are in the school for that reason and probably more who are choosing Public Schools rather than private and I don't think we can take away that choice lightly that's why I think we should look at the the Minimus cost versus the very very strong benefits I know you guys won't make this decision lightly so I really

075appreciate you um not cutting this program and uh thank you very much um for your service I need to uh now get home to my kindergartener he likes to count to CN every night so I'll uh go let him do that thank thank you all Take Care thank you next up is eles Beth spransy and to be followed by Rachel GRE elsabeth here or online I'm not seeing a name like that uh in the attendees list if you are online can you just uh press a raise hand so we can see you okay I assume she's not online so we will move to our next speaker uh Rachel griak to be followed by Sarah hacker good evening Dr Jones and members of the board my name is Rachel grak and I'm one of the flood

076teachers at Julian Curtis and North Street schools I've been teaching both Spanish and English to students in grades prek to six for over 20 years tonight I would like to share three of the many research-based advantages for sustaining the K2 FES program at Julian Curtis in Hamilton Avenue schools the first reason is academic language researchers over the past 60 years have found that learning a second language from an early age boosts cognitive ability and critical thinking skills I have observe these benefits firsthand starting in kindergarten students notice differences in written and spoken text for example they ask why why does the J make the H sound in Spanish and not in English these connections in both languages strengthen and deepen literacy understanding in the upper grades students inquire when phrases are not direct translations and

077sentence structures differ these improvements have demonstrated quantitatively the strong correlation between foreign language learning and higher standardized test scores studies in Psychology has also found that bilingualism increased memory problem solving and concentration skills the second reason is for the Social and emotional learning and well-being of our students social emotional learning orell helps students to develop empathy for others and build relationship skills belonging in community recently at the aille conference in Chicago I saw a presentation by the World Language chairs from Wesley Massachusetts they explained how a K12 World language program not only met cell goals but led to higher academic sucess and the Seal of biliteracy for their students in magnet schools this is evident when you walk into a fles classroom you notice a sense of belonging in community you hear students in Spanish

078and French joyfully sharing about themselves and their feelings you hear third graders reading books they wrote in Spanish and French taking pride in who they are and their Heritage this level of proficiency that also builds community and grades three through five is not possible without a K2 foundational program thirdly numerous Studies have shown that children at younger ages have a greater ability to imitate pronunciation and acquire language their effective filter is low enabling them to take risks in a second language the benefit to starting young is evident daily is I teach in both a three5 FL school and a K5 FL School although I teach the same content to fifth graders in both schools the activities and conversations that the JC students do independently evinces their Advanced proficiency level and confidence covering another language I'm

079going to skip to the end finally Jing Curtis is a unique place where families from all socieconomic and cultural backgrounds come for the World Language magnet and ability to choose French or Spanish starting in kindergarten more and more Greenwich families are choosing private schools that boast having signature programs and experiences Greenwich Country Day School Brunswick school and granish Academy all include FES programs starting in prek andk because they see it as a worthy investment if we cut our signature programs from our school we risk of losing more families you can send us the rest of your comments as well thank you thank you next up is Sarah hacker to be followed by David Lancaster is Sarah here more online I don't don't see her online no okay next up is David Lancaster to be followed

080by Andrew soing evening everyone my name is Dave Lancaster I'm a fourth generation native of Greenwich uh my house is next door to North Maya school where my mother attended as did I and the rest of my family we're all products of Greenwich Public Schools although I have no longer have school AG children I'm a strong supporter of the school I recently was asked by some North May's families about the school budget I work in finance so I decided to check out the facts about school funding this is what I found out from audited published data from town State and and the federal government number one our town spends the most per student of any district and over two and with over 2,000 students in Connecticut by a lot $26,670 per child that's 7% higher

081than Westport 11% more than darianne 18% more than nanan and 19% more than Fairfield our teachers earn the most in Conneticut their top pay level is much higher than other comparable school districts in fact over the typical tenure of a teacher they are paid 356,000 more than a teacher working in the next highest Fairfield County District in the last reported data Grenich spends $4,660.00 it's 15% more than special education students in in the next highest Fairfield County District 15% more than Daran 177% more than Fairfield and 18% more than Westport I have worked in finance all my professional life and currently work for the London Stock Exchange I know numbers and budgets if these were the facts in the real world with 20% of our children not at a reading grade level which is the

082case you would conclude only one thing we don't have a money problem we have a management problem Board of Education you are on firm ground to send this budget back to your administrators for re-evaluation thank you thank you next up Andrew suing to be followed by Sandra grandinetti good evening my name is Andrew saing my wife and I are both graduates of grenwich public schools my 5-year-old son recently started kindergarten at Julian Curtis and we chose Julian Curtis specifically for its early second language curriculum and its cultural diversity my mother has been an ESL teacher in Stamford for the past 22 years and Witnesses day in and day out the cognitive benefits that come with introducing a second language to Children early in their learning career just today on our walk home from school I

083asked my son did you have a good day at school and he responded M Menos uh my daughter is starting kindergarten at Julian Curtis in a year and a half and we very much hope she'll have access to the same curriculum in summary we feel that the 30 grand annually that goes to support the K through2 foreign language program is a tiny drop in the bucket and we hope you'll reconsider cutting this important program thank you thank you next up Sandra grandinetti to follow be to be followed by Bjorn pansky good evening Dr Jones and members of the board I am Sandra grandinetti a resident of COV the parent of three adult children who are educated in Greenwich public schools and a proud teacher at Julian Curtis School the little United Nations School of Greenwich

084I'm speaking tonight to Advocate on behalf of the world language program at Julian Curtis we are the magnet school of world languages offering students the choice of either Spanish or French instruction from kindergarten through fifth grade there is ample research that demonstrates the cognitive benefits of learning a second language from an early age such as increased executive functioning skills improved problem solving abilities and enhanced lengthening skills and memory more importantly foreign language instruction positive positively contributes to the cultural diversity of our school and fosters acceptance amongst our student population I have seen firsthand how empowered our ESL students feel when their native language is spoken and taught in every grade level in our Global Community cultural diversity and acceptance is necess Neary in order to live peacefully and harmoniously our magnet program was created in

085part to address racial imbalance in our elementary schools removing fles in K2 would likely decrease our magnet enrollment and further contribute to overall declining enrollment I understand the budget is complex and decisions are not made lightly however please reconsider this decision and is not in the best interest of our school Community please support the superintendent's budget as originally submitted I appreciate all of your efforts and thank you for consideration now I would like to read a letter uh the speech my colleague Samantha Schuster was here to give but had to go home with her two young children my name is Samantha Schuster and I'm a second grade teacher at Julian Curtis school we have been made aware that due to budget cuts there are plans to eliminate foreign language for our K2 students at our

086and other schools in the district I've been fortunate enough to teach both first and second grade at Julian Curtis to those closely for the past 12 years when I began I was immediately struck by the wonderful diversity of of our student body in fact this diversity I quickly learned Learned was the Cornerstone of Cornerstone of the school culture openly celebrated in our very own United Nations Day Parade I will mirror what many others in support of continuing our language program for the K2 population will share that there is no shortage of data and research suggesting the importance and lifelong benefits of learning a second language in the early Elementary years these benefits include but are not limited to improvements in executive attention ability to attend to important details interpersonal communication skills as well as stronger

087memory abilities 30s these are just a few benefits that strengthen our students ability to effectively function in and out of school there is also concern regarding our Magnet School status as this program supports our mission of exposing our students to World Language beginning in kindergarten what would this cut mean for our students families and future of our lovely School Community thank you for your consideration of this man matter Samantha Schuster thank you thank you uh the next speaker is Bjorn Pensky and uh we may have time for one more speaker after that who would be Jenny Jones good evening Mort and thank you for the time I'm beon Piner and I am the parent of one of the students at Julian Curtis and it was with um great disain and I read them the email

088that informed us that the foreign language program will be could potentially be cut from the budget could potentially be cut from the scope um having grown up myself in a multilingual country multilingual school um and moving to the USA fairly recently um I know the benefits of um language acquisition and language attention at an early age um I a language professional um Linguistics being my specific area of expertise and for any learning environment multilingualism is not only language based but learning based any multilingual speaker develops the skills to learn efficiently effectively and more efficiently and cutting anything that would relate to multilingual development for kids especially at this grade level ages when would have such great impacts that it it is really a disservice to the the children it's a disservice to the community and

089it's a disservice to our great school system which you so wonderfully have developed and supported in this extremely um privileged and um fortunate community that we live in I think we should remember why we do what we do who we do it for and what that advantages are and I believe language cuts for students at this level would be detrimental and it's something that we can absolutely not do so please keep it in the budget we have written a budget for a reason let's stick to that budget let's keep let's give our kids the foundation and the strength that they deserve to build a future that they can be proud of thank you thank you um this will be our last speaker prior to um having to to go to our business portion of our

090meeting is Jenny Jones here no Jenny Jones is not here is she online I don't see her online either okay um we can move to the next speaker then that's Sue Wilmont and that will be our last speaker before we have to move on to our uh business meeting uh there are eight or nine left I have to go check which would be another half an hour hi um I'll keep this quite short um as you can hear I'm not a Native American um I'm English um we have three children my husband I have three children in the grenage public school system and over the past 12 years um we've experienced both public and private both in Europe in the UK and in um grenage in the area and I have to say I've been

091blown away by the experience of the teachers in the greenage public school system their dedication their passion for learning um and generally just how they bring the kids up to a point where they really want to learn um it's been quite inspirational as a parent to watch that and it's quite sad then to see that that's put at risk with the budget cuts that have been proposed I think the two areas that raise alarm for my husband and myself are in the areas of the Alp science program and also in phys um physical education so for Alp science um I'm person is a bit concerned because everything we seem to be hearing is focused on stem and the importance of stem in our children um we hear about it my husband here about here's about

092it at the mobile World Conference it's one of the keynote speakers who came and actually gave a talk um and this is a conference that's attended by Facebook by Google by um all the social media platforms and Technology platforms out there um it's also spoken about a conferences such as Davos which is the political and economic World Forum the importance of stem so it feels a shame that we're putting that risk in uh in our brage Public School Systems when it's such recognized as being such an important subject um the other area that for concern is around physical education and that's purely well for me it's more around the mental health of our children again this is an area that we know is a big concern depression anxiety learning disabilities all growing across children and

093the one thing that we know from all the speakers that we hear that are given across different schools is that physical education can make a difference we don't need medication necessarily but physical education can make a difference for all of those children and I think there are two areas that if we can protect those in the budget cuts that are being proposed would have a massive impact on the future of our children on the reputation of the grenage public school systems and the ability for Gren to still be very reputable when our children apply to college and Beyond thank you for listening good night thank you um in Cody the answer to that is I I think there's seven so that's just under 30 minutes but I would still in a 20 some odd I

094mean if if if it's the if it the board's will to to allow the rest of the speakers that's fine I'm I'm fine with that so I'll make a motion to allow the remaining speakers to go now before we start our business meeting well I was say we just have a sense of the board's fine too everybody's fine okay yeah I know okay so the next up would be Melinda olafin to follow to be followed by Shawn Mayer hello oh cool my name is Melinda Laughlin um thank you very much for allowing me to speak even though it's past the time I'm a proud mom of a sixth grader at EMS a fourth and second grader at Riverside and I have a four-year-old about to enter k um I just wanted to quickly mention some

095numbers since our friend up there liked a lot of numbers um 8,605 that's how many students are in the GPS systems according to Niche uh West Port schools have 5,33 and Daran school district is 4724 he talked about how the budget was greater than other districts uh by 15% or a little bit more in derian and Westport um but given Greenwich public schools number of students is almost double that of the deran district schools how is it that our numbers are not double that of the the budget how come it's not double the budget of the derans um so please consider keeping Tony Jones's budget as previously proposed um I'm here to voice that I have a second grader who's in a class of 24 students he's relegated to his desk when it's rug time

096because there aren't enough seats or space on the rug I have a fourth grader who's in a class of 26 students and I went in there and the PT of the parent teacher conference and I couldn't imagine I couldn't imagine how many students are like crammed into that one room that it looked like a hodg podge of I don't know what was going on there um please don't make any Cuts uh secondly I stand in support of the out program um as a whole and specifically the out Science Program which has been flagged to be cut my sixth grader was and my fourth graders are in the science math and Ela Out programs finding the right school for our children has been a challenge I had a vice principal in a popular New York City

097public school laugh in my face when I shared with her my daughter's reading levels um that had been assessed independently saying I find that very hard to believe there was no out equivalent at that school and looking back I felt that the huge class sizes of 28 students left no room 30 seconds the best and brightest to be nurtured please don't let that happen at our schools um our teachers deserve better our students deserve better please keep the originally proposed budget that Atty Jones had proposed thank you thank you so much next up is Sean mayor to be followed by Jennifer Marie Taylor is Sean here I just need to see I don't see him online okay so next up is Jennifer Marie Taylor I just want to see if she's here okay that's who's

098walking up and then following Jennifer Marie is Kim neelsen can you hear me okay well first of all thank you so much for taking the time to let us stay here and talk today so my daughter didn't make me wait an hour later she's very excited to be here and share with you guys why we believe um that we need to keep the foreign language at Julian Curtis for kindergarten through second grade we currently have two children at JC and first and fifth grade with our youngest entering kindergarten in 2024 research has shown that learning another language improves students Reading Writing and math skills and that there is a strong correlation between foreign language study and higher standardized test skills scores learning languages at an early age also enhances core cognitive skills including reasoning problem

099solving and memory along with improving communication and Intercultural skills early Spanish instruction also enabled one of my children to communicate with another JC family whose first language is not English another demonstration of how Linguistics promotes inclusion JC is the flagship school for cultural diversity in GPS and frankly defunding Early Education uh early language education devalues the powerful mission of diversity equity and inclusion we aspire to I implore you to assess closely the detrimental effects that are sure to result from such a myopic approach focused on dollars and cents budget cuts like this harm our children in the GPS's Legacy as a leader in education thank you and now I'm going to have my daughter Hana say a couple words who's at JC currently as a fifth grader Ola wait is it on yes ol May

100Taylor so julan Curtis I'm currently in fifth grade I love my school and the diversity that it brings to our community and I love learning Spanish my aunt Rosanne used to teach Spanish and my dad uses Spanish to communicate with some of his patients which he learned as a GPS student a long time ago so I understand the value of language education language is a very important life skill that our school Julian Curtis provides us with since I have exposure to different languages like French and Spanish I have an easier time with English because it is a mixture of lots of different languages this is why I find it so crucial to keep teaching K through second students a new language as we say at JC 60 countries 30 languages and one big Community let's

101continue to show the world that we V value diversity gracias thank you so much for getting up and speaking to us Hannah next up is Kim neelen to be followed by AR Angie hard ailis hi can you hear me all right this is Kim neelsen perfect yep great thank you so much for your time and for extending our ability to speak to you um I'm here Kim neelen as a Greenwich mother of two and former Greenwich high school graduate to urge and even demand that the Board of Education moves forward with a budget that meets superintendent Tony Jones's proposal for 6% increase and not the lower recently announced bet budget guideline which creates a $3 million budget Gap failing to meet our superintendent's proposal as many have mentioned here could mean severe Cuts in Alps

102Alps science Alps head count and significantly cutting weekly PE time that is essential for so many students against an overall Town budget of roughly half a billion dollars it makes no sense to nickel and dime the children of this town and our valued teachers to the contrary we actually need to invest in our Town's education simply to accommodate the cost of increased enrollment higher utility costs increase St State mandated special education needs and also to provide those competitive teacher salaries in the face of significant cost of living increases as a product of actually Central Middle School and the Greenwich public school system and being a first generation college graduate I urge you to consider our students first especially since Cuts tend to disproportionately hurt students from underserved backgrounds as John Dewey the American philosopher and

103psychologist famously said education is not preparation for for Life Education is life itself let's invest in Greenwich public schools and therefore our community thank you thank you so much next up is Andie hard ailis uh to be followed by our final speaker Jackie homman good evening Dr Jones and Board of Ed members thank you so much for the extended time I know tonight is hugely important to the budget conversation and I don't mean to undermine its significance but I need to speak on behalf of baseball as it it's time sensitive if we're to get things together before the start of the spring season my name is Angie har ailis and tonight I'm speaking as a parent of three baseball players as well as a volunteer baseball coach in our community um Captain Baker along with

104the Greenwich High School baseball players you heard earlier did a great job articulating specific needs the baseball Community is advocating for at Havier field as they stated Dr Jones we are so grateful for your communication already regarding the baseball field situation and we hope that you'll be able to work work with parks and wreck to help get the necessary items for our baseball players at the hav field two factors that could provide additional incentive is that all the efforts that are made for this spring will definitely extend into the future um as everyone here is well aware we have some big projects coming up in the town um that will actually both impact two of the 6090 Field baseball fields in town um being Central Middle School project as well as the Dorothy Hamilton skating

105rank project which would affect straza field um the havay field is also used by the entire Town's baseball community Through the travel summer and fall programs such as grenwich Canyons cannons and the Greenwich Babe Ruth and I brought somebody else with me tonight you got it yeah hi my name is Mikey hard ailis and my older brothers that go to Greenwich High School could not be here tonight I just wanted to say that right now I'm in my 12 you baseball season and once I turn 13 I'll also be playing on The Big Field players from the age of 13 Ed the 6090 field so I know all the help and effort made this spring will be super appreciated not only by this year's high school team but all of us in baseball also I

106hope you can get the budget past how you wrote it so we do not need to sacrifice our educational experience wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year thank you thank you guys thanks for coming and sharing your thoughts with us Mikey and our final speaker for the night is Miss Jackie H good evening Board of Education members new members and Dr Jones I'm not sure if you are aware of this but this past weekend an organization called people's World held an annual Amistad Awards in New Haven the award recipients were being recognized for their commitments organizing priorities that address racial Equity climate change voting rights and the common good people's world was founded by Communists in 1924 and it continues to feature Marxist analysis and opinion developed by the Communist Party

107according to its website the event honored Connecticut state senator Gary winfelder his acceptance speech Winfield specifically stated that he's aware that there's a relationship between the Amistad Awards and the Communist Party he said I know who's in the room with me and I'm happy to be here Winfield did that because a couple years ago Senator Richard Blumenthal spoke at the Amistad Awards and when he got called out in the press for speaking at the Communist event he denied all knowledge of the organizations ties to the Communist Party why am I bringing all of this up well first of all it's undeniable that the Amistad awards are directly tied to the Communist party and second of all the teachers union that operates in Greenwich either knowingly or unknowingly helped to fund the Amistad Awards through Union

108du's money money that was used to purchase an ad in the awards ad book in case you didn't see it the ca ads said in large tight face at the top Unity diversity Equity solidarity and then the text below read the Connecticut Education Association congratulates all of the people's award Amistad winners so there you have it the teachers union knowingly provided financial support to a communist run awards ceremony demonstrating that they are in solidarity with their comrades at the people's world most parents I know were shocked to hear that the teachers union openly supported communism like this parents definitely do not want the principles of Communism in the schools the struggle of the oppressed class against the oppressors critical race Theory critical social social justice theory we don't want that to be taught as if

109communism were a good thing and embrac the way that the union has embraced it it's clearly not a good thing it's never worked and it's the antithesis of the capitalism on which our country has been founded and thrives superintendent Jones and Board of Education members can you please help me understand what you're doing in terms of policy to make absolutely sure that the teachers especially those who are members of GAA and who support the communism awards that just took place in New Haven understand that their personal Politics as well as the radical communist embracing politics of the Union end at the threshold of the school thank you thank you um as that was our last speaker um I am going to move on to our monthly reports uh starting thank you um starting with the

110superintendent report and I will turn this over to Dr Jones and um perfect thank you thank you excuse me thank you Miss HS um just as a reminder it's hard to believe that next week uh is our last week before we go to December break I don't know where the year went uh we will have an early release next Friday and that'll be a reminder in our note tomorrow um I also want to take the opportunity this time of the year just to say congratulations to all of our musicians across the district Laura nle and her team do so many concerts you know from um Elementary all the way through high school and just a phenomenal job one of the best music uh obviously programs in the country um I also want to mention that

111our curriculum team held a very informative um overview for the community which PTA hosted I know they had over 60 people uh that uh watched that meeting or participated in that meeting it was also recorded we will push that recording out again um tomorrow for people who missed it and it really does a great job of giving an overview of the curriculum uh we have told the community we were doing a deeper dive especially our our Jewish Community he would ask when where the Holocaust is actually taught in our curriculum and other questions and so we've updated all the forward- facing documents and um also just gone back in and looked at the curriculum and really help the community understand better um where those where those components fall so I encourage you to watch that

112if you have an interest um you know in the curriculum from that lens um also I just want to add that um why why WCA has really become even more of a partner they've always been a partner with us um but you know this year they partnered with the swim program I think I mentioned that last month and that's just going it's just fantastic the kids are loving it um it's just been a terrific program and implementation but in January when we come back from the break they've also seen that we have a huge need for more after school care um as most of our community is aware boys and girls club is under construction and so we lost a lot of seats um and parents were really challenged trying to find what to do

113after school with their children and they're starting they they recognize that and they're partnering in starting a brand new program in January and they've already got you know families enrolling and I want to say thank you to the YWCA because that was a real need in our community so I think that's all well let me mention one more thing I do know the board is fully aware that we had the SAT issue um at the high school and um I do want to just if any body happens to be watching and you were one of those 17 students that were impacted by that and um where tests were invalidated um we're still digging in with college board to make sure that we communicate exactly how it happened um but of those 17 students they're have

114they're retesting on Saturday that's unanticipated and it's a really difficult time of the year for students to be um having to go through that again I do want to say college board has been extremely Cooperative in trying to help us problem solve exactly what happened um it looks like um which I had mentioned in a note to the families that um there were test from October of 21 where they took an old version and for the Integrity of the test sat never repeats a test so it invalidated all the scores um but again just on behalf of the district it's a college board day the SAT is college board but there are children there are students so I just want to apologize on behalf of the district that they're having to go through that thank

115you Miss Stow so I'm sure Dr Jones was expecting a question on this since I am my son is one of the lucky 70 students I guess um who is retaking a test on Saturday as a result of this debacle um and I speak for him and the junior that very thoughtfully put together an email today the the mistake needs to be investigated and that's disturbing of itself um I know that you and Ralph were only made aware of the situation um I think by May um and um the fact that there were someone it seems that there was knowledge of it um prior to you I think is something that really needs to be looked into because the uh you know I think this junior that sent an email today expressed it he would

116have been taking practicing last weekend um and the fact that now they only have three days to sort of get themselves both prepared but even mentally prepared for this is uh really upsetting and I totally agree with you and I think the students email was right on point yeah um I don't know if anybody else is going to bring it up but I know um both of our uh student government leaders and uh our Junior representative had uh come to us talking about the midterm and finals policy um and I would like to I I mean I don't know if you want to address that I you know I know that that's something in the past that we've that's come here and we we've discussed it and I you know you know I don't know

117if this has been brought to your attention that there's been some concern shared with us I I mean I don't know if you want to bring It Forward also um but I I you know I I know that I've heard from many students who weren't aware that this was happening until all of a sudden uh you know closer to to midterm time and the stress and anxiety level for these students is is through the roof um so yeah I'm I'm happy to add to that I I think the junior class president framed it really well but just to give a little bit more perspective um what I believe has happened the past few years first so we go back to covid right whether we're at midterms or finals we brought it back and there was

118this concept which my understanding is a lot of school districts and colleges do um that it's the better of it's not you know 10 it's basically if the if it's going to impact your grade you know say you have one really bad day and you had four strong quarters it's is going to have a 10% effect um but say you had a bad quarter and the midterm could make up for it then it goes to 20% so I like the idea that there's um flexibility um and that it gives a child a chance to either recover or not to not to suffer because of one sort of big day it so I think it's it's thoughtful it was a great idea and I'm not sure why we just sort of scrapped it as a result

119did Cody have did you have something to say are are they graded on curves so is it is it like effectively a grade inflation technique the system that we have and we're going because otherwise there would be like the same amount of winners and losers depending on whatever the the grading system is but if you have a midterm grading system that just adds free optionality to increase your grades then it's inflationary for grades right is that why all the kids seem to like the co no or I just don't understand this I don't think it's necessary inflation area could be less deflationary I guess is if you're so if you had like two a and all of a sudden failed right you're I mean it's you're going to choose 10% rather than 20% right so

120then it is infl because because if you failed and it's on a curve if it's not on a curve then just giving people optionality just allows everyone's grades to be slightly higher right it has to be mathematically well we have at least uh one former teacher and well one two former teachers from the high school sitting here we can see I don't know if there's grade grade curving but I can say I know that the the change in Waiting is not it's not intended to specifically I don't know exactly how to explain what I was trying to say but you were talking about boosting the score it's not necessarily about boosting the score it's that as I'm sure you know every student that can come in and have one really bad day who get sick

121and that's a huge percentage of their grade but they balance it between midterm and the final so it's not so you know right it's from what I remember it was one or the other it wasn't you just get to cut it so don't we need to prepare them for college I just have a question though so when was who who made the decision and when was it made and when was it communicated it was made by the high school who generally you know has weighed in um and I think they messaged before the year started um and then it was um Student Government talked about it actually just this this last week in student government so you know I think it's I think it's always been an issue for the students they were advocating last

122year and student government was talking about it and I do think it is high stress when it comes to to curving what I would say is that unless you have any assessment that is absolutely automated you push out the score and that's what goes in the grade book been that way forever so unless it's absolutely standardized you know there's it depends on who you have as a teacher I mean I'm happy to make a motion to get a sense of the meeting because I do think that I mean hearing from these students and hearing more and more about the stress levels um and the fact that other school systems are doing this I think that it's um I don't see really the downside so go oh sorry go ahead no I just wanted to add

123something which is just um because my for those attendees watching at home there is some technical difficulties at Central Middle School they are being addressed and the board will be back shortly for just to update those watching at home there seems to be a Wi-Fi outage at Central Middle School we are looking to address it and get back online as soon as possible thank you may may want to weigh in at some point I'm going to let BL can just I'm gonna let please speak first begin 4 uh there was 411,000 uh dollars in change I don't have it either in front of me but that was approved by the bet that was intended to cover this unit that's there now so hopefully if the issue comes back up it was postponed in January and

124if there's a clarifying sense of the meeting resolution they can reduce the the appropriation by the other amount and hopefully just appropriate the 411 that'll cover the emergency unit that we're currently carrying the cost on we then ask the we then ask formally uh which we're working on now we're just we're finalizing the language but I met with the chair yesterday and the vice chair uh that the energy management advisory committee kind of takes lead on the next steps of the community conversation they representatives from the Board of Ed to the committee so they really are the entity that can kind of navigate the conversation put together the analysis go for the other pieces and come back well I was say I think we can add that as possible agenda item for our next meeting

125because I mean this is just I was just we had a long way to go yeah well I was just bringing this up as being the liaison that I had gone you know for uh board to the uh RTM and just the feedback that I we had gotten was that we would just need a sense of the meeting in order to at the very least say that we would like to support the 4011 and change uh to be you know moved forward even if the rest of the proposal is uh post if you want to give me a couple minutes I'll give you the exact dollar amount I have it or if you want to just pass it as past I can well I was going to go back and look up at my notes

126but um well let me go grab it I'll it take me one minute I have it right on my computer sorry being having the internet down is uh is is not is not easy acting chair HS I the audience at home is back online is there a document that needs to be shared is that an issue that you're dealing with no no we were just didn't have access to notes because it was you know in the cloud but they're back we is Wi-Fi back on no oh fine okay I was say we can in in in essence we have a lot going on we can I can make that sense of the meeting motion later um so let's move along so we'll come back to that Dr Jones you want to do the Western Middle

127School soil update yeah I I don't have a whole lot today other than because it's been in the Press we've talked about it it's mobilized we're just so excited everything's full steam ahead uh when we come back from the break uh we will get another start working on a capital update newsletter that I'll have very detailed but there's a lot of stuff online if anybody has a real interest well I'm thrilled to see that the shovel is in the ground there something we've been waiting for for a long time next up well when he comes back was uh is Blaze with budget transfers yes well then he moves to that yeah do you want to present or do you want does anybody have any specific questions or I know I don't I went through it

128and I don't there it's kind of impressive as to how Reliant we are on that this sort of technology did anybody have any questions on they are in informational only uh transfers um fairly straightforward it's largely a lot of the work that Patrick and Kim are doing on account cleanup uh so the salary adjustments that's what you see here we're just cleaning up uh what we've put in place are definitions uh for what different accounts are used for different scenarios and so that first transfer is we we put a definition of where Schedule C should always be charged uh it was being charged kind of all over the place the next thing is is on nursing this impacts what you see in the budget too we've consolidated nurs ing from being split all over the

129district into a centralized District account uh our nursing director Jessica uh she is really on top of everything now her budget is in one spot she can manage the districtwide program and a single account so all the staff are in that account too so those are those are uh just informational only transfers but they both impact the budget you'll see a lot of transfer a lot of dollars moving around because we're moving them in 24 and we also moved it in 25 does anybody have questions Okay then if not we can move on to the monthly financial report you're still up please yes yeah so monthly I'll just kind of run through uh right now fiscal year uh 24 November 30 ending uh revenue is uh cominging in stronger than budgeted a lot of that

130is work uh thanks to the work again like we say every uh every month almost that Dr H is doing um to capture more cost on a side note her and I uh actually met I think it was yesterday to uh come up with uh some resources in how we can capture additional um additional revenue for special ed excess cost because she's really done a good job in going after Revenue uh for a district and which she had brought up is kind of how do we use resources to to start capturing some some of the IND District cost to drive Revenue up further so we're working on something we might come back to you with like another resolution that would allow us to access some of the revenue funds to collect even more Revenue um

131which might be a good idea uh operating expenditure uh the interim for special ed was critical and it was funded through the RTM on Monday night um that should cover the projected uh deficit that we've been running for uh special education um utilities know continue to place pressure on the budget one of the reasons for that is because uh we are paying back uh Energy Efficiency upgrade loans through the electric bill um those loans I think when they were put in place at the time the thought was probably that they would pay for themselves through the savings but they don't actually do that the underlying assumptions that were used uh were was a not the kilowatt hour that we pay so that's putting additional pressure on the uh the utility operating budget and then you've

132heard a lot about Subs um I won't run through everything since we have a long agenda so unless anybody has questions I'll I'll take questions anybody have questions Cody looks like he's leaning ahead can you email me the details on that environmental loan thing yeah it's the it's the energized CT loan just for my own enjoyment yeah and and the program is you can get a lot of cash through the program but one of the things that they did is used like a standard utility hour uh kilowatt not what we were paying it's like double what we were paying so the payback time on the financing model is two to three times longer than when they were running the scenarios for the savings they're using 15 cents a kilowatt hour assumption at the time we

133were only paying seven even after the 30% increase we're paying 10 so the payback time that was assumed for the coverage you know I'll I'll send you the spreadsheet but that's the summary of why it's not covering itself anybody else have anybody else have questions no well then I'm going to move on to the uh big excitement for the night which is our operating budget Dr Jones I I think Mr KD did you want to start with the update from the committee work yeah um think of it a chance to talk with some of you about this uh I think that um blae and Patrick and Kimberly have done a fantastic job um assembling information that's been extremely helpful for going through the budget um just also to say it I I know a lot

134of people were talking about the budget guidelines tonight I know this might get me in trouble but I don't care about the budget guidelines I've just found the budget process to be extremely use useful for bringing up important policy questions for us and kind of a good healthy um process in general for managing the schools um I'd say the the consensus among the folks on the budget committee uh is that we're still in the middle of that process and we think that it might be um premature to vote on the budget tonight as we continue some of the work um there's been a lot of uh work happening on it and I think it's been very productive um and so you know I think uh the thought was to delay the vote be able to

135complete a few more of the projects um that we have underway and then and then bring it back uh in early um so just and I know I made every aware um I had spoken with um Ben Bron on on the town side and as long as we and we can when we get to the very end of agenda planning as long as we can meet uh to actually make a final vote by January 3rd or 4th and get that to him first thing by the 5th uh it will not uh negatively impact the town's side of the process in order to present the budget to the bet on a time so we can get to that when we get to agenda planning and I'm optimistic we can push it even more well I made

136a promise but you know then I'll I'll let you know leave that to you so Cody from a budget committee standpoint I mean given the holidays and the timing is it the intent to meet sometime between now and then and provide additional recommendations and do you think that that's feasible with scheduling yes please tell me he's free on the 24th yeah no I think we'll get some additional time set up uh we also can do it you know a few shorter meetings um and some of the analys a lot of it is analysis your team is doing that's sort that you know we're still in the middle of and um yeah yeah the timeline the timeline is obviously tight and and like Cody said it'll kind of depend on what we we what we look

137like the town if they're going to make the presentation the first selectman's office can't project the mill rate increase of the first selectman's budget without having what the Board of Ed budget will be so that it's really I don't know I'm not going to speak to the legal piece of it because I have no idea I think we'd have to probably reach out also to the Law Department to find out but I know that like what Karen's talking about to get the books printed and to do the mill rate calculation that's the timing for the January 4th they can't do it they can't they run the mill rate calculation without the the board budget I I'm no lawyer nor do I play one on TV but I did read through the charter which points to

138the BET guidelines and the I mean I can read present it but the BET guidelines they they didn't follow their own guidelines because they were supposed to present and uh their budget guidelines to all Town departments in October and vote on the budget their guidelines in October and they didn't do that until uh I believe uh just start of December so it's push everything back but I I don't want to uh cause more delay for the town but I also feel like we are a large percentage of the budget and it's really important for us to do our due diligence um before we make any big decisions that may have a serious consequence to our students and in other ways I mean and and I think that that was the feeling of the board but

139I still and I can pass that back over I'd love for you to share what the budget committee's uh thoughts were were on the presentation from Dr Jones for reductions and then I I think as the board we can sort of discuss that I don't know if you want to go line by line or at least because some of the things I think we can make decisions on tonight yeah I'm interested in folks opinions on this we can we did a line by line vote in the budget committee uh to give the um uh Administration some guidance just from a policy standpoint if um if people want to revisit some of those items uh and do it at a you know informal kind of all of this is effectively guidance when it comes to policy

140because it's actually it's not setting of policy it's just saying hey here's what we think we're going to like plug a number in on the spreadsheet for so we um I'm fine either way I I think that uh we can um we can do it in the you know making a motion for adjustments to the budget uh at the meeting where we approve the budget or if it how many of you think that it's would it is it helpful for you if we do a few more of these now or if you just work off of the existing budget committee guidelines I'm open-minded to actually have another budget committee meeting oh no no I think Karen was your question if we just should do votes do what are they called again the sense of the

141meeting I I I have just my thought would be depend depends what our time's going to look like so the budget committee May has recommendations to the full board uh some of those were unanimous so maybe those are easier ones to to maybe get done what I think if we're going to really extend it to like the midnight deadline of the Town let's just say we still think we might submit on January 5th we as staff still have to make all these changes in munus for then the town to be able to do this so let's say tonight we get full board buying on consensus on let's the the items that the budget committee did 4 Z they did all the analysis you want to take them if you vote on those tonight we'll basically

142just go in and munice now and start making all the changes now so that it's just less work the night before in case we come up with another 15 20 more changes um one way to do that is we could start by just seeing if we could do a vote or collectively all of the say um sorry do a vote for everything that was a 40 so we don't have to go through and if that fails then we could go through each on line item how would uh how would folks feel about that well I think the board hasn't had an opportunity to weigh in so if you do it all as one motion then we can't we'd have to vote no if we had questions on something no that's fine you could vote no

143it just if if five of us were on board with all of the 40's then it just saves the time I think given the community interest in things I think you know we have to do this still do deals of going line by line and and and explaining the rationale around um these decisions that's pain okay sure well I just you know we were presented with these reductions at our last meeting in the board although the budget committee has had discussions the board has not and the public has not had the opportunity to really hear where we're we're thinking and so well the budget meetings are public right I do think the first one can be more expeditious I think some of these can be yeah um okay maybe Mike uh can you share not

144you Mike Mike can you share your uh your screen I think you have everything too so people know what we're talking about the recommendations from the budget committee yeah that's the document yep we actually did to at your request uh the budget committee's request we kind of did I guess what we're calling a pro fora uh quick analysis on what the numbers look like and then we answered a few more of the questions in here U this is a PowerPoint that Patrick whipped up but this first slide just so people know what we're talking about these are the budget committee uh recommendations and votes this was what was in the packet and posted online this slide right here yeah and if you actually go to the next slide Mike real quick uh we did a

145quick analysis basically on the the net impact to the taxpayer um and this was something we talked about a lot at the budget committee we just reformatted it in a way that aligns with also uh the recommendations of the uh Boe budget committee um you know so if you really think we heard I think a number of community members talk about looking at Apples to Apples so we also would look at the net impact of the revenue just as a reminder year toe revenu is going up about a a quarter of a million dollars year-over-year so that's in your mill rate calculation your impact to the taxpayer and and out of all of the interim I think the fair one Patrick and I were looking at the fair one to really use for a revised

146budget to new budget is the uh interim fra of District tuition that's tied to the law change um and that's really just this is adjusting it so if you look at the uh impact of the taxpayer those unanimous uh and then the majority votes you can see what that looks like year over-year um and if you also look at it Kathleen to use your word proforma um you see it like for a you can see 6% is the impact on the year year increase 5.2% would be what what we're calling the proor the the impact to the taxpayer uh budget to budget same thing with the B uh the majority supported items 5.4% 4.6 so I think it's important to convey the impact both year-over-year on budget and then also specifically the the net impact

147to the taxpayer but something that that Cody pointed out that the budget committee's been doing is like we have on the bottom here the be guideline but some the all of the conversations have really focused on here is the impact that's important because we have a finite amount of resources but let's stick to conversations that you know Tony started out with a budget that everything behind the 6.5 there's logic driven decisions to get to 6.5 and then further through the budget committee we're looking at maintaining logic driven decision making um you know rather than kind of just putting up random numbers or setting random targets and I think that that's been a really important part of the conversation for the full board to know that it's it's not like we're just sitting here and picking

148one of these percentage numbers on the side and and the meetings haven't been just sitting there and seeing if we can hit that Target it's been this is good context for us to have because this is the impact to our community but specifically let's make sure we're talking about conversations that are still driven in some type of logic behind what we're doing Cody if I kind of summarized that accurately yeah um yeah Prof for away I mean again why did we choose the 1.15 versus the 2.1 I'm using 1.15 here because some of the some of the pieces are we did add uh positions um some of those required maybe all of them required some of the positions don't exist yet Law Department piece the discrepancy on the Law Department uh that will we didn't

149budget for that this year either that will go back to the town uh ideally as if we get through the budget process that stays with the law Department this one was one that I think you could logically it's just directly tied to the law change um there's no policy decision in that there's no Staffing decision it's just literally tied to the age change in the law and the and the increase in the population we could debate uh that um approach and I'm and I'm open to a different approach this would be I think a very conservative way to look at it I mean you're also just I mean this to me you should be going off of actuals but um well it depends what you're looking at so if we're looking at the impact to

150the the taxpayer and I don't think this is worth talking about now but we could talk about two things uh we could talk about the mill rate impact like the interim is funded out of fund balance uh cash on hand of the town it's why I kind of would prefer to do more analysis at the budget committee level so that we come up with what we we want our logic to be um it's the same thing with what are we going to Define as mill rate impact to the taxpayer if we're going to look at year-over-year budget to budget I mean we could also look at actual but that's not going to be the mill rate calculation change change on the percentage so I would say that we should come up with what we want

151the logic to be at the budget committee level um that we all agree on and then go from there me just make sure we're all clear on what this is saying right so in 2024 the original budget was on 182 million in change the um the uh the superintendent's proposed budget for this year the original proposed budget was an increase of 6 and A5 %c correct um since our original budget last year we went out and we had to ask for an interim from the RTM and the bet because of a change to state law which increased our state education uh special education costs by over a million so so the 2024 budget is really now 183 million so the when you calculate the actual increase of the projected Bu from the actual budget we're

152at 5.7% um in increase um if we're looking at what the actual budget ended up being this year yes and I think what Kathleen's saying is the the total interim cost was 2.1 million what what I'm using is the direct out of District tuition cost because I think it's one that's unanimously agreed upon the rest of it I think we could we could talk about Aon if we're looking at it that way would we also add in the interim cost of what we needed for Hamilton Avenue no that would that's out of oh that's out of capital operating only yeah Parkway the two two other interms Parkway and ham a were Capital we're capital okay yeah yeah so I think to keep the conversation focused Mike I would really go back one slide uh so

153that the chair could could give an overview of the conversation that we've kind of had so far and so this will just be sense of the meeting uh just so that you guys have the Comfort level to go and enter whatever you need to enter into the system so it's less work later on right you can make a motion to make the these individual reductions we're just not g we if we want to take a motion to to postpone the vote on the actual overall budget that's separate you can make a motion per line item but then this is an action item so you can make a motion for a line item but then when we have the line item changes when it comes back to us in January will we then work off of

154that new cool so then um it's a good approach let's make a motion to uh use the ARP for curriculum investment as a change to the well do you want to just point out you know that it was discussed at the budget committee and so just anybody that can't see is 40 right that the budget committee supported it yep the motion is just to incorporate that into the budget so you'd like to make a motion to use the ARP uh funding the rest of the ARP funding for uh towards and curriculum investment yes for 799 799,000 [Music] I do not want to do that because we do this extensively at the budget committee and if we're just going to repeat what we do at the budget committee we shouldn't have budget committee meetings so if

155one of you wants to go ahead but we have $800,000 uh in ARP set aside for curriculum it was intentionally it was originally being held for the waiver um we are uh here proposing to accelerate the fiscal year 20 5 curriculum program uh partially into 2024 this would zero out the curriculum uh districtwide curriculum budget in 25 uh push it to ARP but allow us to also simultaneously accelerate the investment and Mark's team uh really put together a comprehensive plan for the 800,000 and they'd be ready to start executing it now instead of waiting until July 1 so it reduces your next year budget by 800,000 uh allows the team to start executing the funds earlier the risk we discussed was that it uh zeros out part of the budget um and put we'll put

156a pressure point on 26 it's government money federal government money on textbooks which is one reason why all those emails we're getting from parents are so silly it's like how many of them are opposed to this because if they're saying that we shouldn't make a single change to the budget then that means they're opposed to this people ready to vote yet okay yes ready to vote okay all in favor I okay that's an 80 the next I'll make a motion to increase summer school fees 10% plus and the amount of $20,000 change to the budget discussion I don't know maybe Mike thinks that this requires explanation I just have a question how did you arrive at 20% versus any other number I'm glad you asked that and we're actually part of the ongoing work in

157the budget committee is actually taking a deeper look at all of the random percentages uh and all the random pricing that we have on everything and so that's a work in progress so the short answer is I don't think in any particularly thoughtful way it's just starting with a number and we'll be back with more when we're done with our next round of budget Committee Fund but I asked the same question and that's why we have more followup actually can I ask a quick question it points to the fact that we um we were presented with fees uh tuition and fees rental fees uh I think the first look that we had at rental fees was in September and it didn't come back to us yet for um approval and then we had a look

158at uh tuition um in November but we withdrew the motion so we didn't vote on that either uh because you know it was part of the budget development process so I don't know if the budget committee are you looking at at those costs as well because they're not really in line with actually the increase in costs in those two departments and I think that's another area that we can look for not not that anybody wants to raise fees and tuitions but I think increasing our Revenue will also sort of help offset some of these costs because our we haven't changed those in a while so are you looking at those as well oh yeah that's some of the really good stuff that we're getting into yeah Mike okay that's not specific to this this motion

159right here which is just specific the summer school which should be noted that um we have things in place for students that can't can't can't afford in scholarship so this is a right these are for tuition only classes yep and we have summer school rates for people on free and reduced lunches which are usually like 10% of what the costs are they're quite low it's like $50 or something so I call a question yep call a question oh that's I was to say but ready to vote anybody else okay all in favor Laura yes okay 80 next well now I'm glad we're moving on to one that will be easy and noncontroversial um I'll make a motion to uh adjust the budget for reduction in World Language and K2 uh for the amount of 200,000

160I got a question you don't even want to hear me Force BLS to give a summary sure no I was kidding pleas do you want to say anything I I think that it might be uh best to ask questions and I also might just turn this one over to Dr Jones um to talk about it uh I'm happy to be the bad guy on this one too if you want well I think we have some data uh do we have some data to show about the the different programming through well we started we started pulling that today so if we don't approve the budget tonight I'll have more data because every time I ask a question I would get you know another question um because as I would look at the data and what we're

161trying to look at is is there a difference in um schools that have it in K2 in performance going into sixth grade versus the schools that don't and then it ALS Al and I want to be you know respectful to obviously JC Community as part of their magnet school um you know if we need to look at um looking at it even differently and splitting like even JC and HEV HEV when we talk to the principal was very supportive of this move but that's not part of their magnet school and she um is desperately looking for more instructional time especially in early childhood because every you know every minute takes away from something else um but being in a magnet school versus not so we've had really good conversations this week about it um so

162I I will say I think on the number side too just I think the committee had a really good discussion and thank you Patrick for the analysis you did that showed us our average teacher salary is 110,000 and almost everybody in the district is at top scale so I when somebody mentioned what the teacher salaries were they might have been looking at just kind of the mid-range but we just termined on this committee with the good work you got some done that that's not actually what it we look like anymore the budget assumption here that we're using because really what we're doing is budget assumptions but budget translates budget is a policy document would be basically the elimination of two FTE at an assumption of $100,000 per possession there's a it's it's really ISD um

163and um New Lebanon have it as required as part of their you know Charter to to their school um so this is Hamilton Avenue and Julian Curtis that's what those two positions are for the two programs out of the four schools that have it two are required to keep it to eliminate to FTE so so I have a question I think this is for Dr Jones which is obviously hearing a lot of the Julian Curtis parents here this evening is that being a magnet school what does that look like next year for them and will parents then have an option to magnet somewhere else to ISD or um or or new lab that will still have the program wish I had my computer and I'd have my numbers in front of me but uh one

164of the one of the things I was looking at today is what's really interesting is a large portion of their magnet comes from new lab and Hamilton Avenue who both have K2 as well so it's just interesting why people choose to go to a certain school um like cost I think has like literally less than five it might be like two or three students so we're trying to go in and really do all of that analysis what it would mean for next year is you just wouldn't start it in K12 you would still have a very robust 3 four five because they do two languages which is French and Spanish our other schools don't do that I was just going to say this was a 40 vote in the committee but I do think that

165the um some of the questions that came up afterwards uh are pretty interesting and it's what part of the reason why we want to delay it broadly so even though I have an inclination on how I feel about this I would like to see some of the additional information myself um so you know just I don't think anyone I think it's this some of these I think we fully fleshed out at the committee level and some maybe weren't like closer examination um and as someone who voted in favor of this at the committee um you know probably would maybe abstain to just to see plays even if that adds a little bit of work for you guys and um by delaying whatever computer things you do uh it it I think it's fully warranted based

166on the feedback we have you know I think we reached a good consensus on some instructional pieces when we had the conversation in the budget committee about the increase that it would provide but however with all the questions we've been getting uh Dr Jones actually already is really has a lot of data she's put together with the team that I think will help this board make a message a decision that can also be messaged well to the community and you can all can feel confident in we we can handle it on our end so it's okay could I make an amended motion well Kathleen had a question first unless you have an amended motion I mean it it was maybe where Laura is going just that maybe we should do it for Hamilton Avenue right

167that's I think we're all agreeing on that right yeah I I will withdraw my motion and I'll make a new motion to uh for reduction of world language in K2 Plus for 100,000 change to the budget um so you are with Cody I I I'm saying this aloud because uh our clerk said that with the video down can't see who's uh making motions and seconding them so Cody you withdrawing and you've made a second motion and you've seconded it correct thank you video is running all I know is he asked me to say it aloud because he doesn't have access okay it's just that you typically the chair would say out loud who the secondary is because I'm sharing my screen I only have you guys in a very small window so I can't physically

168see who's seconding so that's the reason behind that thank you very much no problem come on Mike and and just to reiterate I think um just on the last point we can go back and with the new information we'll do a deep dive at the budget committee level on the question for JC but with him have especially given that has the support of the principal and I think the original rationale for why we did a 40 vote on this probably still sticks um but yeah does anybody have any com okay Sophie I just just in terms of um JC and I I love having the data and all of that but I I think one of the things that I heard several times tonight from the JC amilies is is parents that have children in

169the school already who have gone through and now they have younger kids coming in and I think you know as a parent I appreciate that like if you chose that school and you've had one or two older children go through and now you're having a kindergartner come in and there would be this sort of pretty dramatic change in the curriculum how um difficult that is as a family I mean because even if you could choose like okay well now we'll send our kindergartener to another school that has the program but you don't necessarily want to split your kids up so I just think I don't know that everything can get captured in the data that sort of qualitative issue and I that will be captured because we don't even know yet how many parents are

170magneting in and what we we can look at how many kids are there that are magneting in how many students in the district are magneting out how many of the ones that are magnet it in have older siblings there some of the other really important data by the way is uh 34% of fifth graders at JC are math proficient so when we talk about it's not to me the budget cutting has nothing to do with any of this it's not it's just the real questions we have to ask are when we look at our strategic priorities and goals that this board spent a lot of time on and set math and reading feature very prominently and what do we do about a school where hours of instructional time are being devoted to something that isn't

171at the top of our list for strategic goals that to me is the main focus and what we'll dig into from a data standpoint Karen yeah I just wna reiterate that point but I want to tie it and I agree with you completely Cody and that would be very important for that data but I think it's I want to direct that point to Hamilton Avenue and the fact that principal fox has said that this is a she has no problem with this adjustment with respect to her school and I respect that oversight and thoughtfulness in that given where the academics are overall at Hamilton Avenue that we've seen and her Direction and taking it which I think feeds right into the Strategic priorities that we've set so I compliment her for making that decision I

172think it's a good one she wanted to focus I think more on their L their Ela which is a strategic goal correct yeah so uh does anybody else have comments I don't know if Laura did you still want to say anything if not I'm happy to call the question on I think um I think the motion as amended is acceptable thank thank you it it's what I would have made okay perfect so does anybody else have a comment otherwise I'm calling the question uh the motion to reduce uh K2 Plus at Hamilton Avenue all in favor yes okay okay that passes unanimously Cody were there any others that you wanted to bring forward from the budget committee specifically [Music] um how do folks feel about the other three I mean I'd interested in uh I

173we should the reduct the the ghs scheduling one we probably can do because that was an abstention I feel like no I think we need more well I mean I can't speak to think you need more data yeah might be helpful because the um we there were a lot of comments tonight and we got a lot of emails about things were actually not talking about like intermural sports and things like that so I do think it is help if not to vote on it at least to talk through a little just uh even if Dr Jones it's a brief summary about what the the thinking is around um um the majority ones and and whatnot because um I think the clear clearing up of misconceptions I think is helpful I think there were a lot

174of people got very very worried um about things that were not necessarily on The Chopping Block we still have the three others we adjust prek ratio right reduce physical education so if you want to do those first I'd go through each one yeah just go through each one okay make motion pull it off the table sure let's do the I'll make a motion to change the budget to adjust pre prek ratio the amount of [Music] 184,000 Kathleen seconds I just have a comment on that discussion um my understanding is that making that adjustment with the ratio actually brings us in alignment with our surrounding districts which include and please correct me if I'm wrong I believe it's new Canan Daran Westport and Wilton is that right it's pretty much everybody in southern ffield County we

175were we were the outlier and can I adding something else what's cool about this one is again going against the false narrative that all this is just some crazy set of cuts or whatever this is actually an expansion of operational control for Dr Jones and the administrators because currently they have situations you know each setting these classes can be very situation specific and they only currently are allowed to go with a specific ratio and a tight Max class size and what we're doing is these are not when we say class size 17 that's just a Max so they can still do 12 or it doesn't matter it's just lifting and adding more flexibility for them and that added flexibility is what creates the efficiency that drives the savings but uh it doesn't necessarily mean that

176the class sizes go up or that the RTI and actually we're doing the same thing with the ratio where instead of being fixed at a certain ratio we're banding it where where we say actually you can be anywhere in this range and so the idea was to give more operational flexibility to the folks that are closest to the situation I thought it was not changing class sizes for pre I thought it was just adjusting the ratios to the state required 5050 as opposed to what we have which is 6040 this will actually allow them to go between 50 and 60 and just the way that the math works is that has the Practical impact of in some cases depending on what ratio they decide the class could go up to 17 did I get that

177right you did yes but it's their it's their call like based on what they think this specific situation might you know warrant well I was just going to say that especially when it comes to preschool these are you know especially students with need at that age these are some of our you know neediest students and need oftentimes really need the the direct attention I mean I would love more a little bit more information as to how that change might impact you know students as they move forward because the earlier we provide intervention and support for these students the better their success usually is when they enter Elementary and going forward with needing less Services uh not all certainly but there might be some correlation so I don't know if we have any of that information

178as to how that might you know or how we've seen it in surrounding communities that have made changes yeah I mean I because we are so much lower we have more staff in our prek classes we have a lower number a lower ratio um this is not something that we would have even discussed if Dr holikan toer had you know concerns and I think that out of the budget committee the great thing was the flexibility discussion and especially going into next year with the legislative change it would be very helpful because we still don't even know how many parents are going to request to stay in prek versus going to kindergarten with the September one versus the December you know age cut off change and I don't know Mike if you can bring up the

179Q&A chart might be helpful just as a refresher uh and that may be hard for you to do but you know it is online and there's the chart it's the very last question on the Q&A um where it actually has the chart and they can refresh everybody yeah I think I think we consulted while he's doing that to fill the space we consulted with um Dr H and and Joe Baines the preschool director extensively who also pulled their colleagues um and to just kind of keep reiterating the point that I think the budget committee's made uh the chair Cody um in his own way making it um it's that we are really focusing on pieces that aren't just cutting for the sake of like cutting something it's trying to look at operational pieces and leverage

180um you know you put a lot of investment in your strategic plan for example uh the whole kind of District did and so now uh we we didn't have a lot of time with that document kind of being finalized when we get to the budget but it's really kind of starting to go through one of the benefits of having more time is trying to align the investments in our budget something the budget committee I think is doing um aligning our budget with the Strategic plan with the recommendations of the administrators and anything that an administr Ator uh you know was kind of like if if I think if Dr H came and said this was a terrible idea um the budget committee with the way they're doing it wouldn't have said well we just want

181to cut it for the sake of of cutting it or changing the ratio I think it was a very thoughtful discussion Karen so if I can summarize this correctly what we're saying is that this budgetary change is a positive piece that the Administration has agreed will have most likely a net positive impact in education in our prek giving them the flexibility to adjust the classes as necessary without so therefore not impacting education in our prek in a negative way yeah I think the number itself just so you know the 184 is a section so I think that that's some I think that's an important point to remember the 184 we're being concerned conservative I I think too on that to be safe what we're really doing here this is indicating to us that your budget

182is your policy document so there's corresponding policy that still needs to be actually changed um based on your budget assumptions we're assuming here the reduction of that this will basically reduce one section we built in an extra section anticipating the growing prek uh actually a section and a half um again adding in January what we're doing here is thinking that this will very conservatively help offset the growth of that program so really the 184 is a reduction of one section and and Dr Jones Mike was able to pull up the data that that the team collected um to share well so if you're bringing that up the from there I just um my question is I mean we're we're missing some some big compe comparison points which was Daran Westport and Stanford um I assume

183they must also have prek because it's mandated but so we don't have that there and those are the ones we often uh also compare ourselves to yeah it it all it's all dependent on our colleagues and when they respond and uh we start our budget so early it's a little bit harder but I can tell you like the PE minutes I was able to add pretty fast because they're all in the middle of a budget now it's just starting for them so I can certainly try to get more information on this but we are ex we are low and we have been for decades here has this information at all been shared with preschool parents because we haven't that's one area we haven't I haven't heard from peer's preschool parents on this and I don't

184know if they get our newsletters or this is something they might even be aware of yet well everything that was posted online um it was posted online for everybody so that's why we're discussing it tonight because we want and that's why we put this stuff online so we would be transparent that's why he started getting all those emails and this is the beauty of representative democracy leave the pitchforks at home let us do the work I say we I believe they were metaphorical pit pitchforks IE in I have my hand up I'm sorry sorry yeah I'm are we back on okay so go Laura so a few years ago um we had a ratio of four children with needs to 11 typical peers and to keep our sections um from growing um we changed the

185ratio to 96 and now we're changing it to 50/50 and I will tell you you know preschool parents are are only in the program for two years they're there for the threes and the fours so it's not a change that would systemically impact their children for multiple years of elementary school but so I think it's hard to really gauge how preschool parents feel about that unless you're a firsttime parent with one kid going through like another one coming along long as a sibling um so I would say that um if I were told that you know my child is going to be in a 5050 classroom with the same number of adults who are you know giving instruction and it's one teacher to three Paras um I think that that is a tough cell honestly

186I don't know that um I would be jumping at the choing at the bit to register my child for that kind of a program because it doesn't seem like it would serve either the kids with needs or the kids who are typical peers so I am wholeheartedly against this change even before I was on the board you'll recall I was not in favor of changing the ratio we had a really wonderful preschool program that I really believe prepared all children children in the program for academic success and I just do not feel that um this is a change for the better I just don't so that's my piece and I would not vote in favor of that Dr Jones I know this seems like it's it's on the capital side but I do just want

187to point out that we're going to 16 sections so when you talk about where we've added staff prek has doubled more than doubled and I don't even know right now and it's already December if we have to add this class in January February we're trying to figure out where it's going to go I mean people think our buildings are empty they are not and for prek you need to have restrooms available it's either got to be in the classroom or you have to be right across the hall and it it's challenging with our facilities and so trying to also slow the growth a little bit because when you think when you have 16 sections you go up by one student that means you're add you can add another 16 students so that's a whole another

188section that you're absorbing just one little body at a time so I just I put that out there because I don't think it's palatable in to this community that we would want to go and start talking about building An Early Childhood Center like they've done in Norwalk like they've done in Fairfield I mean because we have so many capital needs here so I'm happy to call does anybody else have a comment if not oh Wendy but isn't it only this I don't maybe you can explain why are we growing the preschool program because isn't it only it's not really mandated except for the specialed children so the program is not growing because of our general education it's growing in special needs children and they actually so I know we have to do it for the

189special head kids but but so by this so the state says where where they sit their limit is 5050 so you're expected to have our special needs children in a least restrictive environment which more emulates a regular classroom so every time we reach a certain amount in each section then you have to add another section because you're trying to keep that balance and again that's required and special education is required by by our special ed prek is required by federal law so what we're seeing is a significant increase and children who are qualifying for services that are little that are three and four years old um and it's a child find process again that we're required to I understand that part I'm wondering about the the typical peers we have do we have to put

190typical peers in that yes that's why we were talking about the ratio of students with needs to the typical peers because they have to have by state and and federal law has to be a mixed but that's why like changing the ratio actually slows the growth growth is the point okay does that make sense yes okay does anybody else have a comment or can we call the question calling the question all in favor no we know where you stand Laura okay sorry I just want to make sure I understand what the motion is so I vote the motion would be to adjust the budget adjust the prek ratio um with with a $184,000 change to the budget based on a Max class size of 17 and the flexibility for the administration to use between a

1915050 and a 6040 ratio okay all in favor all abstaining all knows okay 62 that passes uh next one Cody um did you all say that you wanted to wait on the ghs scheduling is that yeah sure yes I have two questions so during the committee the the discussion really was can we reduce that 4.0 remember we already have built in 2.0 AT ghs this would reduce another 4.0 positions and we could still discuss if we wanted to are we going to look at the master schedule but during the committee we discussed looking at it this year not with anticipation that we'd be on Fast Pace to change in September but also going into next year to really excuse me to be thoughtful with the community but it really is making the commitment to go

192down another 4.0 well there's no you didn't put the motion on the table C I don't know if you need to put you know just to have a discussion on it okay I make a motion to adjust the budget uh according to a reduction of four ghs positions uh based on a study of the master schedule to drive efficiencies beginning uh 2023 through 2025 and that would be an amount of 400,000 does Karen Kowalski seconds um discussion I have questions but can I make one comment on this one sure um the logic here is uh basically that I think the view and um Tony you you should wait on this is that the way that the schedule is currently set up is not totally optimal and basically if you looked at the allocation of time

193and teachers you would need to have an increase in efficiency by changing the schedule of about 1.4% and the in the budget committee when we went through um uh when we went through this it seemed that I think the reason this was a 301 vote was the belief was that um there's more than enough uh room for improving scheduling efficiencies uh to for for the budget to incorporate this as a conservative Baseline assumption um and that that's really all this is remember this is just a line item that helps guide policy and so this the administration WI actually work on that and the only reason it would become an issue for the budget is if the uh there's you know not even 1% of efficiency in the schedule well I was to say I know

194when it was first presented it was presented as a look at changing the schedule um not necessarily as a reduction to Staffing specifics so my point in saying this is and and I know we won't have answers tonight in some of this you know to me I sort of we need to have a little more information on like which classes are undersubscribed um which teacher not not a specific teacher but you know in which areas are we looking to make you know what's the criteria you're going to be using to make the reductions in staff at the high school um just in generally you know I know we've talked about and they have uh certain open blocks and things like that where they're uh maybe not being used as efficiently but you know I'd like

195to just sort of see what classes are unders subscribed and in what areas you're sort of looking to make these reductions because I I do think that will possibly have an impact um just just having students at that school and knowing how many times it student is trying to transfer from one class to another they can't because teachers have hit their their limits um not not every teacher I'm sure but it it fluctuates there may be classes that are undersubscribed and not being run and that may be a different way to do it but I I'd like to have a better understanding of what criteria you're looking at when you're making these decisions because you know yeah the what one thing that we said that we talked a lot about in the Tony should talk

196about this but is the answer to that question will come about as a result of actually studying it there's just a practical implication from a budgeting standpoint of if we know we are going to study something and we suspect that something is off how much and basically we POS the question to um blaz and team of how much are you willing to bet that you're going to at least discover a c C amount of efficiencies because it's ultimately on them if they say hey we think we can achieve this and they don't and so I think it's probably a conservative number um that's just my take on it but the idea here is we won't be able to answer a lot of those questions in the next two or three weeks it's really putting trust

197in the administration and saying okay you know we believe you that there's some inefficiencies here and maybe well I'm not willing to place a bet on our students education that way so I'd like some more information even if it's we're talking about cutting staff I'd like to have a better understanding of what that criteria is other than I bet you can find efficiency well I didn't talk about education I talked about efficiency those are different things right but if you're removing if you're you're talking about reducing staff that's student education that's why I'm saying it's not just about an efficiency efficiency was when we let me it might actually be helpful for me to define the word because I think it's getting Lost in Translation we talk about efficiency we're talking about the amount of

198time that we that teachers are available to teach versus the amount of time that they're actually teaching right and so the idea is that if a schedule is not set up correctly you can have a class that is too small or you can have too much time available for certain people and as was pointed out earlier by saying we have an Administration that's high highly competent and has advised us that they think there are improvements to be made here and they think that it's potentially prudent to account for those in the way that we budget if I might just add to this is the way that we approached it for this current year and it worked really well because instead of going out and trying to analyze oh we're going to cut two Math teachers

199and social studies that may not until kids enroll that may not be the best place and so what we did this year and we did it with the middle school as well is we said here's where we need we know we can go down in FTE we are several hundred you know students less at the high school now than we were just a few years ago we hadn't cut any staff until this current year so we knew that we have efficiencies within the schedule we look for natural attrition the high school's a big staff so you do get people that retire that leave and then you go into the master schedule in that department and you start looking at okay where are we under where are we over and the other thing they did a

200really good job of this year it's not not necessarily one whole body I'm going to go down3 here 04 here like we have teachers on the high school that only work for 04 or 0.5 and if someone's retiring you just may not replace that and then you take it and you spread it out again but that it worked really well for them and I think they liked it because it gives the principles more control over how they're going to actually build their Master schedules and staff so it is the way we did it this year well I'm happy to send my questions over on that so to to Karen's concern it based on what you're saying Tony it doesn't sound like you're going to have a lot more of that information in the next three

201weeks that's that's when students pick their schedules and things like that that's a spring analysis yes and it's more than that too so if we take it back to the budget committee conversation then also the extensive conversation that cabinet had about how we kind of came to some of these these these these ideas it is originally as as Karen pointed out it the original concept was we're going to change the actual ghs the structure of the ghs schedule and then what we kind of determined is that we don't know we and and in that budget assumption from changing the schedule bringing in an outside consultant we talked about uh Dr Jones got a consultant for another company that has worked with other districts in Fairfield County to come in and do that analysis there was

202a conservative assumption here of of 4.0 FTE in that and we think we still had thought at cabinet level that that was a conservative assumption if we were going to do a fundamental change to the structure of the schedule what we broadened the concept here at the at the budget committee level is to not necessarily just say we are changing the structure of the schedule what we're doing here is that we're going to go down the road of extensively studying both the structure of the schedule as well as the the schedule in its entirety our program offerings and do do a really deep dive that that probably hasn't been done for a long time um at that level of analysis and what you would be voting on in this piece would be what is there

203a budget assumption in that that we would want to make I do not think to be clear that we will have any capacity to have like specifically we're going to we're gonna eliminate math uh by the fourth for example and there's there's a helpful there's a very helpful analogy in our budget that is also worth considering which is what we budget for um uh what the ter I'm G get the term wrong but the teacher the yeah the attrition so basically we we have a natural assumption which is effectively a bet in our budget that um uh when we're going to have a certain amount of higher cost teachers leave and we'll replace them with a certain amount of lower cost previously we've budgeted 1.5 million we thought that was irresponsible so we actually what

204would look like an increase in spending but as is really just a more realistic assumption we've changed that to 1.1 million right 1.0 1.0 right and so that was a a responsible change this is very similar to that in that we're we're saying we expect something like this to happen given what we're seeing at a high you know at a high level and uh or we expect at the very least something like this to happen and so it's not uncommon for us in the budget to have some of these assumption line items given that we're doing it so far out I also know Laura has her hand up so I don't know if you have anything to say before I call on her she was waiting to ask question Laura uh mine is not a

205question it's just more of a statement of background because in the last budget there were 6. high school full-time equivalents that were re reduced or eliminated um there was a reduction of 7.7 non-certified positions across prek to 12 um it's not like we haven't seen this you know a reduction at the high school before and in the current budget as it is if I'm reading the budget book correctly um there's a reduction of two sections at ghs and um I just think that if we're going to talk about the schedule I if we want to optimize the schedule that's one thing if we're using the schedule to reduce positions that's another and I just think that those two functions should probably be separate I abstained on this vote for that very reason I think we've

206already seen some reductions at the high school and I don't want to do anything arbitrary so my um my preference would be that we look at the high school for um scheduling efficiency and however however that happens but that not be done with a budget approval you know sort of hanging over our heads so I I'm all for finding efficiencies if it's what's best for our students in their education but I think that this discussion um really is one that transcends the budget and I I don't feel comfortable um voting on it tonight and as I said I did abstain but for yep c yeah I mean I think that Laur you're right it evolved and so and that's why I think we sort of changed the language and perhaps we should just strike it

207because they are sort of two separate things really um and so this schedule just generally it's not a topic for tonight because it's not on the agenda although I would say that it's something I always believe in analysis I'm not sure I'm going to be for it or against it I need to know more about it so um but if the fact that we haven't analyzed it in you know recent memory is something we therefore should be doing however if you're confident that there is and using your word efficiency carefully um that there is room to save $400,000 at the high school not directly correlated with four positions it is actually just saving 400,000 at the high school through maybe just more um a higher utilization rate basically is what you're telling me in each

208class um then that's probably something I'm going to get comfortable with but if people feel that there needs to be more analysis then I'm also happy to bring this back to the budget committee I mean I I personally think that a few of us have additional questions um before we have can wrap our brains around this as a comfort level is what how you know what this means but I can't speak for everybody I just question how much more analysis we're going to have in three weeks yeah can we call it a question I mean I I we're not either we going to call the question and vote on it or we're going to ask to hold this off for when we you know for the next discussion let's call it to question we can

209always bring it back in the next discussion well if you vote on it now then that's the vote yeah that's why I'm saying some of additional we can always make a moe there won't but you you already heard the answer there's not going to be new information it's basically when Tony and blae say hey we think that this makes sense do you trust them or not if some of our colleagues um are uncomfortable the um instead of forcing the issue right now it might make sense to wait a couple weeks the El going have that question there have this vote this particular issue there will be no new information I I hear you but I believe that I'm hearing that there there's a um there's a there's a comfort level that we have to get

210to I don't understand I what some of the questions that some of us may have may not B be based on that specific data that you are supposing it is that's why I'm saying we've I I I would say from a process standpoint this was passed in budget committee meeting there will be we all agree there will be no new information we should vote on this if people don't feel comfortable voting on it they should abstain if everybody I can call the question but you know that was the it didn't didn't look like I didn't think this said passed oh I guess it was a 3-1 no I had voted for it but recognizing that you guys are uncomfortable I am going to say no at this point but I would really like us to

211get up to speed on this quickly because I am truly a believer in it but I'm going to let you guys have a moment to think about it further well we can just put it to I'm calling the question if that's the case wait wait wait can we make a motion to have a consultant look at the high school schedule as Dr Jones is that suggesting um well I don't know she's separating the two she's separating the two things that's that's that was what that this entire discussion was about was that the master schedule will not have any appreciable changes before the start of next school year she's looking at matter but I'm saying if we are fine with looking at the schedule for efficiency why do we have to ascribe a budgetary number to

212that why can't we can I respond Laura it's it's I know we've confused things by labeling in this way but you really just eliminate that idea this is really about 400,000 being saved at the high school and it's not about four people again it's increased utilization of like a 0 four to a seven and you could have a few of those because you know you're not going to run a section because there are now eight kids in it so it really is about increased efficiency it has nothing to do with the schedule and that's something that we can talk about at a later time but let's just remove it because it's obviously confusing people I think we can I think it's I'm from what I'm hearing I think we might be a we can get

213there the um and find consensus around this issue the um probably not this evening I am sad for all of you this is the point of our budget committee it seems that enough people on here know what the right answer is and we're choosing to take up future time which will come at the expense of talking about other things so I think that is uh just not good point point of order is just that the the Committees make recommendations to the board as the whole the board as the whole makes the decision and so people who made a decision on the budget committee may have gotten more information and decided to change their vote as a as a board committee isn't making the vote it's you're making a recommendation that's all I'm saying just withdraw

214the motion change do yeah I get that the point is is that we all know what's happening here and it's we're going to have to do this whole dance again and waste time to end up where we all know we're going to end up which is just embarrassing for us and it's why these boards often don't operate at the level that they should I'll withdraw my motion on that okay did you want to talk about reducing physical education hours at K5 no so you don't want to make a motion that that was a 211 I right I don't I I actually don't see the purpose in going through this exercise at this point should I make the motion I'll make a motion to reduce physical education hours K through five for in the amount of

215400,000 yes Dr Jones okay my colleagues were were fairly responsive in Fairfield County so you did get a document later tonight they were still helping today to populate it so this just gives you an idea of what the minutes look like the top portion is the all the public school districts um and I will draw your attention on the far right some of them that are 90 minutes but they're on a six day rotation so they actually go Monday through the next Monday um what we were talking about and what we were we were proposing if this was going to be considered at the budget committee was instead of uh 120 minutes which is um 60 and 60 we were looking at 40 and 40 so it still be 80 minutes which is very competitive

216here in the region when you look at all of the other districts the one thing the committee asked for was to also look at private schools and we spent quite a bit of time talking about that um you'll see like at Greenwich Academy kindergarten is 80 minutes but when you get to 1 to5 it jumps to 135 and 180 um at Greenwich Country Day they're 90 minutes K2 um and then 35 is 160 what you don't know and this just comes from my own experience in a private school is when I was in a private school as an administrator we actually had the end of the day was like sports and PE but it's in a private school you can do whatever you want so you extend the day for the teachers every teacher on

217our staff had to be at Sports and it was mandatory for the students I don't know enough about the structure and how the private schools are structured you it's very difficult to compare private and public we just very were different entities um and then Eagle Hill was 60 Minutes for K5 so that's just this is coming and my colleagues did check all their numbers today so the suggestion here is to go to 80 minutes a week um on a fay schedule Fay rotation right that's correct and so that would look like so in like in elementary that would look like two 40 minute PE sessions a week or is is that what you're saying that's correct so in elementary we'd probably go from right now most Elementary I think it's four days a week for

21830 minutes is that only the littlest ones I think it's our kindergarten has like is broken up a little differently but um most of the grades are 6060 60 Minutes they go for an hour they go for an hour twice a week and the reduction um um in PE then would mean more instructional time it would and I think that that's you know that's been discussed obviously at the administrative level um and it is every time you take kids you know to an elective you're taking away from instruction and and you know the one the one data point that really struck me when we were doing the student achievement this year you saw like even in science we're last in this whole dur region that we don't have enough minutes to get everything in but

219you know where those minutes Fall Would it be more numeracy would it be uh more literacy I mean that's it's instructional time that you're gaining back but again this is just more than anything it's we're just trying to provide the data for the board so you can make a good decision if this is something you want to consider so my qu question is is I mean have you spoken to not just the those in PE but our gen Ed teachers because I know often times especially well besides all of the positive impacts that PE can have for our students because it's not just about physical movement there's a lot that they actually learn in those PE classes they have a really rigorous curriculum honestly it's not just kickball um have we spoken our gen Ed

220teachers because oftentimes those are the breaks that they have to do instructional planning and looking through uh data to see which students in their classes need which support in which areas that they use a lot of that time when they have specials and it's it may be taking away from that so I just I know our teachers are always begging us for more planning time so we're taking that away from that not that I'm saying that it's a instruction shouldn't come first but in order to have instruction proper instruction we have planning time so so I would say that we're actually doing a deep dive on all their planning time as well it's not equal across positions um at all it it is it's very different and we've had a couple of issues we've been

221dealing with just in the last month or to on this whole planning time issue by contract they have to have 150 minutes they're all and that's truly not enough that just happens to be sitting in their contract but um but we have plenty of planning time and the other thing is we have traditionally they're supposed to sit through the fles class which is your world language so if we really didn't even want to lose minutes you would say you don't need to sit through that anymore you could actually have that as planning time um instead of that you know that losing that 20 minutes so pardon right it's another it would be another efficiency Cody um these are the moments where I think it's very good to remember what the whole point of the Strategic

222plan exercise was is that we set priorities so that we can then direct the other choices we make towards those priorities question for anyone who is on the strategic planning committee where what do you think is uh most consistent with the Strategic objectives we laid out I think you're setting me up but I can tell you the um this has been a spirited conversation in my house with my first grader the um um who and we we we have a disag we have a difference of opinion the um quite obviously I think you have to look at um the the found instructional time very seriously especially considering how we're trying to meet certain metrics and support certain reading and literacy levels where we haven't um and if we're saying here that we're aligning our PE

223program with to make it more consistent with our neighboring schools and other districts in the state while also increasing instructional time I don't think you have here a paradigm um that was um maybe misconceived by some of the comments tonight about us taking away from kids I think this is this is actually strengthening it sounds like this recommendation Administration is actually strengthening the program and supporting the work of the Strategic plan I agree I'm sorry soie okay um I disagree I think PE is really really really important and I you know I say that first as a mother that I know that my kids really benefit from doing sports um that they need time to get away from from screens and the difference between my 22-year-old and now my 9-year-old going through school the amount

224of time my 9-year-old spends on screens it's exponential compared to what kids did when when my 22y old was nine right so I think PE is that much more important and that's not I'm not that's not a fault of the district that's a situation of our world right like kids are in front of screens all the time so I think any opportunity for them to get up and move um and I think you do learn in gy I mean you learn about teamwork you learn about problem solving you learn about setting goals for yourself you learn about challenging yourself um you know even we're talking about stem there's certain amount of like physics that you're learning when you're doing PE there's a lot of you know challenging your brain there's a huge amount of science

225that correlates you know physical activity with brain development and you know I haven't had the opportunity to have a discussion with the whole board about this but I think that there's a huge amount of science that says that you know more physical activity is highly correlated with academic achievement and I recognize that some of our public school peers have less PE but I think in this case I would look at what gcds and GA and Brunswick do and they do all have gym and I've talked to a bunch of parents in those schools and they have gym every day Monday through Thursday and then Friday is the day that sometimes they don't have gym because they get out at 12 and then they go and play sports all afternoon so you know sometimes it's worth

226it to look at see what people do have the freedom to make these choices which is what the private schools are doing so I I would be very opposed and I think I've heard from a lot of parents about it and you know to your point I think it's worth it to think about what the kids think right and it's interesting that your first graders is like of course I want my PE and you know and I talked to my high school about and he's like you no one should ever cut pee you know and he's now he's a sophomore and he's he's a mature kid and can think about like academics versus p and he's like P is a huge thing you also interact with your peers in a way like we were talking

227about Alp and all of that like P is an opportunity for maybe the kids who are not as academically gifted but they're really physically gifted right and so they get to be a leader in a different um realm in school and I think that really matters so I would not be in favor of cutting pee okay so I think your point on scree time is well taken but I think that's a different issue that's not associated with PE it's just the way we're educating our children these days and the question should be if we want our kids off of more screen time it should be how we're educating our children in what ways as opposed to compensating that from a physical education standpoint look I agree with Mike and I'm you know I would be

228supportive of this because if I look at that chart that was up there before four in comparison to the hours of numbers of PE and then I look at the number of schools that are ahead of us in academic achievement they have less PE than we do currently so I not really buying into the theory that it makes that big of a difference if we're cutting 20 minutes out of time the next point is that and I know that this is outside of school and it's not associated with every kid but I I think you know the number of activities that kids are in after school from an after school standpoint and what they're doing they are moving um and I don't think you know that we need to decide from an education standpoint whether

229or not an additional 20 minutes versus all the other activities that our kids are overly scheduled for versus turning that into more on an academic standpoint is the way to go um so I would be completely in favor of uh cutting PE and also on a side note re-evaluating how much use we use of screens in our education process but that's a different note Kathleen did you head up I mean I made the motion I'm likely to withdraw it however I wanted to again talk about um physical education more in the high school because that's really more where I have my concerns than the elementary school and so can someone confirm if that's state law because otherwise it is so I looked at that my first year um my first year here and because it

230was weird to me that students were in athletic I grew up in Oklahoma you know so I know um football well and and there if you are an athlete it's actually during the school day so you can take PE or you can take you know your sport and you actually don't have a lot of the issues that we do like after school where we're trying to compress everything and we're running flex which is really not great the where we get into it for sports every state is different but here a lot of our uh coaches who are outstanding are not certified teachers so you can't have anything credit bearing if they're not they're not certified teachers and we don't have enough um of our staff that could actually do that that's that's the tricky part

231here and and we and PE is mandated in health is mandated in Connecticut well I think that's something we can certainly take up on another day but we're talking about K5 so so no no it's fine I'm gonna withraw my motion because it seems that people need more data we're just scared to vote on anything okay well the motion on that is withdrawn so um if anybody does have can put it back on the table but I you know I think it seems like there's some people that want uh more information I don't know another choice we can make is putting the vote up and losing or revisiting it later right that's the choice to be fair I feel like I am deeper in this because I've been on the budget committee so if my

232colleagues feel like they need to spend a little more time looking at the data I've been looking at then I'm comfortable with that yeah that sheet was really hard to look at I sopie I I just you know we could talk about this for a long time and we don't need to but I think looking at those towns is not necessarily a fair comparison because a lot of the towns that were listed are are wealthier towns that don't have the same um low-income population that we do so saying like oh they have less p and they have higher academic achievement like that seems like a false equivalence to me I don't know that I would draw you know make that assumption looking at that we can look at our strategic objectives I would ask you

233do you want to increase the amount of PE time we have I'm not saying that we should increase the PE time but but I think that we should keep it the way that it is should we call the question and I mean Kathleen withdrew the motion oh I mean I think we should do an analysis I think we should do a test R for this year and see if academic achievement increases over the next year and then you can do a true correlation between whether or not PE has a changed yeah much as I love that one year it's on a trend right no it's just this is another example of we're hearing from the Administration changes policy changes we can make that will support instructional learning in reading and math which are core strategic

234objectives and we are ignoring that because somehow we think that 120 Minutes is exactly right it doesn't need to be any more doesn't need to be any less it's shocking agreed well I mean just just to make a point we're we're hearing that and science is one of our strategic goals and there was a discussion the next motion motion which didn't pass the budget committee was to reduce Alp science in in K5 so let's actually put that motion I'll make that motion because we should talk about that one well I know but I'm just saying so I take your argument and all I'm pointing out I I was I I wasn't sure whether I was Voting or not but the point is is when students are in PE they're not just running around and kicking

235a ball it is a very wellth thought out curriculum and it does tie into a lot of the other pieces of what they're doing in the school also makes students you know more available to get their you know wiggles out and go sit down and focus in math class I I just that's just there's a lot of studies for that so anyway but if the motion's been withdrawn if anybody else wants to put it back on the table that's fine if not we can move on to the next I'll make a new motion to uh change the budget uh for the I didn't I didn't like the way this was titled reduced Alp hours for science in the amount of for 4 4,759 I'll second um so Karen seconded that Karen kski just well the

236I'll just make a quick comment the reason I don't like the title of it is because we could have just as easily titled it to preco normalization of this program this program as we discussed in budget committee only exists because of covid the qu to the question of uh would this have ever been put in place without covid the answer was no and to the question of what is best for operational flexibility for the administration in terms of scheduling um and being able to focus on the core of our strategic objectives maybe I would you know uh turn that over to uh Dr Jones so so the real change is not just cutting Alp science and I think that that's probably the way that we worded it could have been worded better as well I

237mean as we're going through the budget and we listen to all the questions we are going from we we have had for decades 1.7 at all 11 elementary schools and we went through several different iterations with that 1.7 uh we had a year where they had taken science out it was the first year I was starting and then the board said what in the world did you do put it back in so we put it back in with the 1.7 and Mr Deo I don't want to put you on the spot but could you because I know you have a lot of familiarity would you mind speaking to what it looked like with the 1.7 and I think it was his first year maybe we had to put it back in or the second um

238now I will say the principles that have reached out on this issue they would rather dial back a little bit on second grade this week as they've shared because they don't feel like that's highly effective um in that they don't even really look at second grade until the second semester and then it's kind of a push-in model so it doesn't necessarily mean we couldn't have science it just might look different than having the 2.0 don't push it the 1.7 model was a 60 Minute reading block and a 60-minute math block and then we had an interdisciplinary block which is also known as the science block that was when we had 1.7 when we evolved because of covid we built out larger blocks of time so that the students weren't transitioning back and forth throughout the

239day we were trying to minimize cross-contamination against cohorts um to go back to a 1.7 model doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to lose science what it does mean however is that we would lose the writing block which is uh attached to the 60-minute reading block currently so what never seemed to make sense to me was why are we having students uh learn at the advanced reading level and then sending them back for onlevel writing instruction because the reading and writing are paired together and so they're missing the reading instruction that is coupled with the writing so that's why it made more sense to build out the block so that the students stay for reading and writing together so when we go back to 1.7 it's really not a loss of science it would be

240a loss of the writing block um potentially there there's all sorts of ways we could reschedule it like we could look at the grade two again remember grade two isn't Advanced it's just an enrichment experience and and again my opinion and I was a former second grade uh enrichment math teacher having the students two or three days a week um and teaching them in the third grade curriculum doesn't seem to make a lot of sense if you have kids who are ready for the third grade curriculum then you should receive them every single day I would send kids back for two days for second grade math instruction but I was teaching them three days in third grade math instruction didn't make a lot of sense sense so you might want to take that up and

241and and examine that process a little bit more in terms of efficiencies as well happy to take questions well so when you were uh prior to all after your second grade and then when you were running an an elementary school um I know we had science the students had in second grade I don't remember them having science all and then the advanced science started with third grade with the inis unit and so they had all three uh well you had to you had to test into each one individually um going forward so you know that would be sort of my question are we looking at maybe R removing the second grade portion or second grade portion and leaving the upper portions because again it is in our strategic plan that you looking at science we

242seem to be having such you know high levels of achievement in the science area so I don't know you know or you're saying you just replaced it with additional the writing section for language again it's what is the goal you're trying to achieve if your your goal is to try to get to a certain number in terms of reduction then I would I would present different options I might just speak just very quickly that just as a reminder the reason this is on here is part of the direction the board previous board but um and really the town as a whole was things that were on ARP just for covid from a position standpoint we knew we're supposed to go away and this is one that you know it's been great uh but it was

243not normal for us to have a 2.0 what was normal was to have a 1.7 so and and to Mark's point we could go back and look at all right when we go back to 1.7 we could look at it five different ways like what would be the best way and then make sure the board is well informed about this is the way we would implement the 1.7 but again it it really is because it was on covid Grant Kleen yeah I mean uh this is where I'm staying solid on my vote in the committee I am all things the advanced learning program and um I especially the reading to writing thing I've had was lucky enough to have three children go through all of this and that change was massive because it made no

244sense to learn reading and then go back to the general education classroom and learn writing um those should go together um and I also think that it's the enrichment program in the second grade in science is fantastic and I am all in on keeping this as is and I will will not votee for reducing this in any manner I just want to clarify because I know we have people listening and we do not have an enrichment science in in grade two no no we that's why I said science I don't think it was ever in in second grade always math oring Michael um um the second grade um this is this is it sounds like there's there's some interest in from building administrators and looking at how we're applying things in second grade is that

245is that what we're is that what you're saying and the second grade and as a two-part question that's a more recent change too in certain ways isn't it didn't we Evol do that evolve recently to be honest I mean this is my fifth year I think it's looked different all five years just because in covid things were were different you know each year we were adjusting um so I think it would be a matter of going back and looking at okay what what could the 1.7 look like and Mark could meet with his Elementary team to get input from all the principles and I will say in most uh school districts across the country um you don't qualify until the end of second that's really more typical because then they're reading you know you're not

246qualifying somebody um earlier who just happen to have language acquisition a lot faster um so usually it is the end of second grade and then you formally start going into third are you talking about all of the program when you said you typically don't go in until after at the end end of after second you talking about language arts and math as well as science most gifted programs across the country start in third grade that is way more typical than to start in second grade I'm not saying places don't do it but that's what's typical well we know we're not typical here Cody Mark before Co was this a program that you would have advocated to put in place what portion the existing program we have now I would have advocated for an extended literacy

247block yes sorry that's not I don't think that's the question I asked you would have so so that's in essence that's what we added during covid was we added an opportunity for for students who were receiving reading instruction to stay with their advanced learning teacher for writing as well again the purpose it was a covid strategy was to minimize cross-contamination amongst cohorts keeping kids in for longer periods of time with one teacher and were you working here before Co started I've been working here for 21 years so if we go back to the meetings from Boe meetings preco are there examples of you or the administration coming forward and asking for this program no so can you reconcile those two statements we've never form recommended additional time for the advanced learning program it would have

248it would have meant adding money to the budget when again for the 21 years I've been here we've been reducing money in the budget uh sorry has the budget grown every single year you've been here you just said that it's been reduced grown in terms of the amount is the amount of money spent every year more than the previous year yes okay thanks I just the way you said I understand what you're saying yeah it's important to be clear about stuff the last thing I'd say is this is a good example of the statement that nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program if no one was in favor of this before it existed it existed on the premise that it would be temporary and it existed as a result of a need for

249an emergency State the logical thing to do is to undo it and then to start go back to the beginning and say what is the most important thing we should do next because the whole idea is that resour Es are not infinite and that there this may be a perfectly good program but it should stand on its own in comparison to the other options we have for the budget and if we just say that well because we have it in place we can't touch it then we're doing everyone a disservice by not comparing it to the other things that we could be allocating spending towards it's a very inefficient way to to spend money I I'd like to respond to two points one is whether or not the budget actually dollar figures have gone up

250it's dimin you're ignoring the fact that we've every year we've had requirements to for salaries that have gone up and and other things and in contractual responsibilities and requirements so oftentimes even when our budget has gone up 2% it's actually been not even a flat budget we've had to cut and cut and cut simply to meet you know contractual responsibility so that I think is what principal former principal Deo is saying um you know because he has him been here for many years and run School building um so I that's what I'm saying so when you're talking about the numbers going up we still have had to cut to meet those numbers because there are things you can't that are un you know not flexible you can't cut from um and secondarily just because something

251was put look I'm a big fan of you just saying just because we've always done it this way doesn't mean we can't look at change right change can be great I mean change is hard people push back against change but the change that was made and I and I'm not speaking for or against this the change that was made during covid to add the writing block is not something we've actually looked at data on to see if it had a positive impact on those students or not and I think before we make that decision just to cut it to a budgetary number you'd want I mean we're a budget a board that consistently asked about data so I don't know if we have that information to look at because we've had two three years of

252it no I mean so just because it was brought up because of Co doesn't mean that it wasn't a good idea and now I'm not saying one way or the other I'm just pointing fact Mike so so so to your point I think maybe um this might be something for the budget committee to to to look at if there is something here if there is another recommendation coming forth around second grade or if there's some some a different recommendation in the Upper Elementary that continues the writing block and um it doesn't have the full covid um ENT um I think it's something that on the data wise there might be some analysis here worth look worth looking at so if you hit your hand up yeah I just I mean we were talking about the

253importance of stem and now we're talking about cutting stem and so it's just hard for me to understand why we would be considering cutting the AL science program that's been successful and is beloved by teachers and students and I I will say like you know Co did force people to inov and and make changes and some of those changes are positive ones and and I think we should consider that and this sounds like it works well um both parents teachers students and even you know some of the remarks tonight like it sounds like it was a positive change so to me it seems like we're cutting it to try to get to the BET number which they provided because we're just looking for things to cut and this to me feels like real program like

254we're where're this is not to the benefit of the students I mean it wasn't something that we would have cut unless the bat had come in with their lower guideline number right we wouldn't be considering it otherwise and just in terms of doing an analysis to think about how beneficial this has been or hasn't been I just think one of the things we have to keep in mind is nationally there's major learning losses because of the pandemic so anything that we look at and we try to judge how effective has this change been post 2020 we also have to keep in mind that students nationally have all suffered you know academically regardless of our best efforts so it's a little bit tricky to look at that data and say you know how do students do

255an Alp science now as opposed to what it was in 2017 18 19 because that was just a completely different learning environment um so that's I'm just to be mindful of that generally across all of the academic analysis that we're doing anybody else [Music] Karen yeah I have a two questions one how many and I don't know how if somebody has this today but how many kids does this impact in second grade for Al like how many kids are in the program okay so that that's one question and the second one is with respect to the the out program which by the way I don't buy into it at all um it's particularly in elementary school because I haven't I've seen a number of kids that don't get into out program in the two through

256five uh part of their education and then are in all advanced classes in middle school because their teachers had made that recommendation and then continue on so I'm not sure exactly how much of a difference it makes because there are kids that don't ever test into Alp for one reason or another and do perfectly fine on in middle school and and Beyond so the question I have is what data do we have to show the success of this program and how it's making a difference between those kids that don't test in at the early age versus in in middle school and Beyond because if the program is having some astronomical effects even a minor impact on education we should know that but how can you test the difference of the success of this program particularly

257when so many kids don't test into Alp but then go on to have a very successful uh academic uh a career in the stem in both middle school and Beyond which is where we do clearly offer Advanced programs and we put in the advanced program in science back into the middle school because for a while they were doing it together so I'd just be curious if we're actually seeing any difference in running this program um I I would just say having had students that have gone through that program one who had to uh Advocate her way in uh because of whatever the reasons I I can see the I look at this the advanced learning program in the same way same way I look at special education because it it is and it should be

258covered under the same thing there are students who have special learning needs who need to catch up to some of their peers and then there are students who move at a much quicker Pace um and absorb information in a different Manner and so that you know that's typically how people when they go look at gifted and if you go to any of the gifted conferences or Advanced conferences that's how typically people look into look at this um we are required by the state to acknowledge uh and test for giftedness we we don't have to provide a program um legally by the you know State uh statutes but this is something that is considered and has been for years as a gem of our program and one of the highlights of having you know our Public

259School and so you know while I know we can discuss if there may be changes that may be needed but I I I would hesitate to you know question the entire program um they've made a lot of incredible advances in the years and I know we've do have things that have uh shown the the difference that it can make for a student Cody can I just a question it seems like the conversation shifted to if the out program should exist or not but that seems to be different than what the actual budget assumption is could could someone make a clarifying comment on what the budget assumption is versus this Al destruction Boogeyman well you're talking about making reductions or changes to the program so in one way or the other because it was originally science

260yeah I'm not talking about cutting the entire program I'm advocating that I'm fine with making the modification we are here because I'm not sure of the value that it actually adds overall and no one can say that it does add value um particularly going on forward so I think what I'm hearing is you know what I'm saying is I'm for um making the modification because I'm not quite sure what advantage the out program has in those early years as comparison to on BL can you comment can you just comment on what what ex the exact changes are here the Assumption the Assumption you're voting on right now and Tony will correct but it's 3.3 FTE it's not positions it's it's additional uh FTE .3 right that was added to a number of teachers to make

261schedule adjustments 11 elementaries three was added to go from 1.7 to 2.0 yep and so this is on actually we have a we have a chart of the migration from ARP um but it's 3.3 FTE that's the salary calculation for those people that's the only budget assumption that's being changed is the three addition so point3 isn't going to cut the entire science the advanced Science Program out from third fourth and fifth grade is it so then but so then that's what we were presented no but that's what we were presented as a board was would you the initial one was to cut the science here's our it never was that it it's it's been and maybe maybe it's wording but at the budget Committee just for for clarity Cody I'll I'll add it's the we're

262talking in context of the ARP migration to the operating budget only um and so this is not reducing Alp science we're talking about are we going to migrate there's uh you will you just close your laptop we've got the chart of what we moved from ARP all of the positions almost all the positions are special Leed positions on ARP that are being migrated outside there's two areas that weren't ARP one of them was the financial analyst and the other one is the 3.3 Al P um out of the 11.8 positions funding that we moved into the operating budget for this reason to have the conversation so it's at the budget committee and Kathleen can maybe articulate it better than me it's not reducing Alp science it's the0 three that we added in ARP and we

263built it into the superintendent's operating uh budget when we migrated 11.8 positions so that we could have this conversation with the board so it's. 3 FTE at each Elementary School I if I can say I think the science came out of um you can't have a 1.7 and run the 2.0 program so if you're going to keep the writing you're going to have to adjust something and I think that that's why that whole discussion was happening so it it's just being aware that we can't run the program we have right now with 2.0 that we ran during Co if we cut back to the 1.7 and in it's been uh it's been referred to as science for that reason but it's not necessarily D the ARP documentation says Alp science but so it's just been

264referred that way so but that's very correct and just to help really clarify it you're a student going through the day we go from the covid program to poent to this change implemented how would your time allocation in the day be changed yeah so pre-co reset you go back to 60 Minutes of math 60 Minutes of reading and then you'd have the science block which is 30 minutes which is uh unit by unit we alternate between science and social studies so where is the writing block the writing block is absent pre-co reset but what does the writing block come at the expense of if we if we the point three the reduction in0 three okay wait so sorry currently right now the amount of there right now there is how much time in the reading

265block 90 minutes and that because it's a Reading Writing block and that replaced time that was previously devoted to science no no what what is what is the so the best way to look at it is pre-co versus covid preco there was a 60-minute Alp reading class A 60-minute Alp math class and then a 30 minute in disc otherwise known as science in covid we added an additional 30 minutes to the blocks so we had a 90 minute stem block Math and Science and a 90-minute Humanities block reading and writing and so my question is you added that time but the school day didn't get longer and we know PE didn't get shorter no that the advanced learning students just stayed in their Advanced learning class so so but it it's just shifting time I'm

266just trying to get it to be really clear the time in the students day pre and post change it went from they had time in a non- Alp science class that's down an Alp science class is that the change or no they added the writing block right they added the writing block that's the only change they took they had Alp science already and then when we went into covid to make sure that the students could be within their own uh little cohort they added the writing section and students used to have reading Alp and then they would go back to their traditional classroom and with J the gened teacher would te the writing portion so they merg those two together in a longer block does that make sense I think so but so we're so

267reading and writing were separately taught they merged reading and writing so that the advanced you know the Alp students had those together with their Alp teacher and the Gen ed students had it with their gened teacher which also helps reduce the class size for there and more one-on-one attention to the students and you know I think that that was the intention in a lot of you know and also keeping them as a cohort so the impact of having point three less Alp teacher would be that there wouldn't be the dedicated Alp writing and the writing would be done by The Home Room teacher and is that for all grades or only one grade that'd be for grades three four and five grades three four and five okay so it's interesting that I mean I don't

268know about your guys' inboxes got a lot of emails about don't cut the science program don't cut the science program well that's why we're asking questions because that's how it was positioned which was a reduction to science so that's what we're learning tonight I I think on the PDF I think the PDF it's worded incorrectly I wanted to word it covid normalization yeah but but I think it still goes back to if you go from 2.0 to 1.7 something has to go you can't fit the same things in so if we want to keep math Ela and writing you are not going to have that 30 minute inner disc or science and that's where it originally was an outgrowth of something has to go and maybe it would be better to actually have math Ela

269and writing than to have that 30 minute science because we're also U we've updated our whole media programming this year to add more stem I know when Tera fogal comes back they have all new equipment from robotics to all kinds of stuff they're doing in media that's new and I'm not saying it's the same but all I just want to be really clear you go from 2.0 to 1.7 something has to change my point is I think we marketed this the wrong way so to speak right we're talking about a reduction but it's not it's right it's normalizing it back to pre-co time and instead of saying that you're reducing science they've gained writing right so it's not it's not that we're cutting from the program we we modified and we add something we made

270a we made a revision they have something else that has come in in place of science yeah and that's why people are frustrated and unhappy because it just sounded to to parents that we were cutting science but there was not the lack of understanding is that something was added during Co so they've gotten something more it's not that we're reducing we're just normalizing that's correct right sizing I I think there another way to look at it is you know there were some good things that came out of covid and what we learned was having the kids together for reading and writing made sense and although I understand your point of well we wouldn't have advocated for it um we had midterms before covid we've learned through Co that maybe midterms aren't the best thing and

271now they're advocating for uh you know reconsideration of that so again fair point we never brought it up that we should have a longer block um but has there been benefit to it yes um can we put a metrics on it at this point no um in terms of putting a metric on are the students in the out program um accelerating at a faster Pace than their their peers the metric we would have to look at is our standard achievement results this sounds like a great this one sounds like one of the reasons why we wanted to do extend more time for the budget committee so yeah I was going to say maybe that's something that we so we didn't make the motion for that well Kathleen you did make I made it oh Cody

272made I withdraw my motion so if we withdraw the motion I think this is something if we have questions we can certainly send those in and and this time I withraw it with a good attitude though I can't say for everybody else but I appreciate that uh are there any other motion that you'd like to make on the budget from the budget committee okay it's more of a general question um and it's sort of what you triggered it when you said we have to like analyze some of the positions that are coming back in from the America rescue plan and I feel like there hasn't been I know that special education is mandated but that is a bulk of what's coming back and frankly that's driving the biggest increase in this budget um and to

273the extent that we don't increase the piie what this is starting to show you is that all of the programs will be cut um and and I really think that we need to do that analysis then to understand like all this additional special education cause which again I know are mandated to an extent so I need to understand the effectiveness of what we're bringing back in because we do really need to look at it versus the other things that we're questioning then at this point unless we are all willing to increase the pirate its entirety we are just going to keep chopping away at the at the rest of the of the budget is the reality yeah I and and I think that's a good uh coming up with what we're going to determine that

274Effectiveness measurement and how we want to evaluate some of those positions and programs is another good task also for the budget committee to help come up with what we want that migration to to kind of look like because it's a it's a hard program at the moment with how we're migrating to measure I think Kathleen brings up an excellent point one of the things that we've talked about one of our goals from the budget committee standpoint is to work on like a multi-year forecast which it will just be more or less an extrapolation but we we do know a lot of information that can help us kind of shape shape this and I think it will show a degree of that but it'll help inform the decisions we make year to year because we'll be

275able to have a better sense of what to also expect and it's a really uh it should lead to some Lively debate in town and I think it might be good to point out too that we did talk a lot about like programs tonight that the budget committee reviewed for cutting um and since we are extending the time one of the benefits of this is the the budget before the board today is not uh I think simp there was a lot of logic that went into Dr Jones budget we we met extensively with cabinet for months on program evaluation to keep things logic driven we're continuing that conversation some of the some of the things we leave that that Dr Jones left in in the budget are really good policy level considerations that come before

276the board like the out conversation about moving it from ARP to have this conversation something that I think we also need to remember is in the operating budget that's before you we are also making significant Investments and chronic pressures that have resulted in freezes for almost every year uh in the operating budget so tonight you know we are talking a lot about you know pressure points and programs and and items that we're cutting but there's still hasn't been at least at least so far at the budget level committee since a lot of half the board hasn't been there this notion of like cutting things to hit 4.3% for example we are we' we've also talked Cody pointed out something and it's it's why we need some more time on analysis Patrick just did this really

277comprehensive analysis on teacher salaries to show um just how uh topheavy of the salary range we are we do not have churn like we might have assumed churn in Prior years the Churn number that's been in the operating budget um is is a meaningless number at this point um and so we are making a significant investment and looking at phasing that out Cody pointed out we're adding $550,000 back in just to salaries um in in the budget because of the analysis we may find out from doing more topheavy analysis that churn as we call it is an area that we might even need to make even more investment because the number we have in there right now A Million Dollars is not tied to anything at the moment and that's a conversation it's not just

278this conversation of cutting to hit a number for the sake of hitting a number it's been how are we going to make logical Investments of our resources on on both sides of the on the coin and there's some areas that we've also talked about do they need to be increased to keep in line with the Strategic plan that the board passed as well as you know some of the other areas that we have better data on on areas that we just haven't had good data because we had some messy uh underlying you know information that's why I said I think this discussion tonight and I support exactly what Cody was saying is it has been very enlightening for not just us but for general public as well because it is not just we're not just

279looking at a bottom number right and that's what Cody was saying right you weren't looking just at a number to cut you guys are looking at this in a much deeper dive in ways that you know make sense logically for the program for the students as well yeah it doesn't make me any friends with the bet but I don't care about their guidelines number that's the nice thing about not participating in local politics ever again well so I don't know if anybody else has specific questions on the budget in front of us since we've asked to for a little bit more time to give our Administration a deeper dive does anybody else have any other questions before we move to the next item yes sorry the only thing I would ask is if we still

280stay under a tight timeline is to submit specific questions that you still think you have as early as possible so that we we have the holidays coming up a lot of St staff are going to be gone on the winter break that puts a lot of there's not a lot of time between now and what we're looking at for us to do analysis so if you have questions if you could send them to Dr Jones as fast as possible uh or to your colleagues on the budget committee to help direct what the next couple of meetings might look like in a short time period and wait can I add one more thing just you guys have done such an amazing job with all the analysis it's like just supremely good it's not just questions but

281also ideas because if you have the coolest thing about your team is that when someone has an idea like the next day you're like here's all the data about it and so ideas can really be helpful and um yeah no but it was great um so yeah just to give you guys a little bit of a plug but also encourage folks to email ideas including the Pitchfork public instead of just sending like copy and paste emails send us an interesting idea we'll read it um well I was asked uh if we could take a 10-second pause between now and our next subject so we can move ourselves back to Wi-Fi so that would give me my phone back yes so I'm taking a pause now Now's the Time to stretch I think somebody has to

282make a motion to get to go on my fight um because the budget is on as an action item and so yeah I think we just forine procedural purposes we have to make a motion to postpone it I will will happily make a motion to postpone our vote on the budget uh food we have to do the Food Services or that be going with the that goes in with the regular budget yeah it's fine well no are we back on it's not okay we're back online so your audio is very choppy and now you're Frozen well we still have progress here so we'll you know putting it on the table okay I'll make a motion uh to approve the proposed fiscal year 2025 Food Services budget as present presented on page 190 of the superintendent's

283fiscal year 25 budget discussion any discussion going once going twice okay I will happily call the question all those in favor favor I Laura I okay so that passes 8 zero okay perfect so then we can move on to the jchb Ed specs um I'm happy to make the motion to approve a second okay thank you Karen is there anybody that wants a is there a discussion does anybody have questions no questions okay Laura nothing okay um happy to call the question then all those in favor Laura sounds good okay I'm gonna move okay so that's eight Zer our next agenda item is the Board of Ed Board of Education meeting calendar I know we've been presented this before were there any changes Dr Jones before I put a motion do you want to put

284a motion on the table I make a motion to approve the 2024 2025 Board of Education meeting calendar as presented I'll happily second that I don't know if you want to point out if there's any changes from the last time we saw no changes the one the one thing I am skeptical of is the budget hearing meeting um the last few been that has not been very well attended I do wonder I don't think we necessarily need to change anything on this document but I do think it's worth rethinking how how we do that maybe because there was nobody here this time they um um so how we present the budget might be something to think about it's a weird november-ish time frame is it a policy I think we're required to present have the

285are you talking about what the date that was presented yeah yeah not the hearing the presentation that initial present yeah I mean that has that has to do with the whole timeline of when we have to get it to the first selectman so it always falls within that same area when we presented operating and capital at the same time it was a much more well attended meeting I can say that for sure but I think if you look at tonight's meeting it was very well attended so once you start talking about it and people know what I think that very first one people a lot of people still watched it from home um but unless they hear something scary they're they don't show up does anybody else have any questions or comments me in the

286back I would say um tonight was maybe not a full house in the room from what I could see but there was over a hundred people attending the meeting listening in while we were discussing the public comment and other aspects of the budget yes well now we've gone virtual we get a lot a lot of people who uh log on to listen over a hundred is pretty cool just okay does anybody else have a a question or comment or would can I can call the question I'd be happy to call the question all in favor Laura no her hands up okay 80 uh the next item uh of forther discussion is our agenda plan and I know we need to talk about when we're going to vote on the budget so I'm hoping people can

287take a look at uh maybe Thursday the 4th or Wednesday the 3 but is there anything else we need to add does anybody else have anything we need to add to the calendar that we can for agenda planning purposes no I notice it's still not on there but I know we talked about having an academic update in that February Retreat yeah I thought that had been added so I we'll make sure make not that you wanted to add an academic update to February 8's board retreat correct that's one yeah I know we've talked about that before and that academic update should not only should include the special ed report that we asked for previous viously to right yeah which is not supposed to be where we stand on implementing our it's where we are with

288also cak and other things so instead of just the executive session we'll add a discussion yeah I mean it's the and I you know if Dr H needs some more guidance on that I think the entire part of that is to see the academic Trends year-over-year with respect to our children in special ed to make sure that they are achieving their academic goals irrespective of I don't want to see the checklist of we've implemented this we've implemented that as we as they go through the special Leed um program and all of the goals that they were supposed to reach I what I think the focus should be on and what we talked about before and I think what Dr Stacy agreed on is we want to see from an academic achievement with respect to special

289ed oh yeah I me I'm what I had asked for and what we had spoken about I think last time was doing it what we used to have with we had a much thicker review of the entire special education program um which we had put to the side when we were doing stuff on the audit but we're mostly completed there so we do need to have a much more in-depth data driven report Mike the um in our board goals we have um the review of um Community connections and um um I'm blanking on the other one um Windrose Windrose yeah I'm not sure that's on the agenda plan is that something you would want to okay because it could be something we can at least have a start of a discussion because it would tie

290into that sub the same subject on February 8th but let us know if that date works for you yeah I need to space them M I need to work with senior team and even on the academic update I'm not really I'm not really sure what you're actually wanting that night that was different than what they just presented a while ago so I'll need more clarity um we can we'll happily we can send that to you be email Mike and I can always meet with sty also academic team update I'm thinking less about the achievement data and more on um what different buildings are doing in response to that like the the how the current action plans are are being implemented um the sit plans action plans wait where that's what the SI is school yeah

291okay we can work on that I do want to point out that on January 18th I may be pulling off the K12 Ela just so you know and that's simply because right now we're doing a lot of work um it's the same person Kim Paladino with the waiver we were all in a a very long meeting today and um we are we will be requesting additional meeting with the state um so she she may be inundated um so did you guys have an opportunity to take a look at your uh calendars January 4th is we do January 4th I don't think so okay well we'll be back in time whomever it may be okay um all right well does anybody else have anything else they need to add to the agenda uh planning nope well

292then since Laura's not here I'm not going to let her call the question who else who would like to call the question would one of our new board members like the the honor of a joury whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa no nope please s in the meeting we got lost the internet that's right we lost it sense to the meeting sorry just kidding we're going back to sens of meeting for just a sens meeting of the HVAC for the RTM that got cut real quick it's $ 41,5 yes I had pulled it up and it was been sitting here in my background yes so I'd like to just take sort of we could just take a sense of the meeting that should the uh entire interim appropriation not pass that the board would support

293a reduction to have to 411,000 Z $411,500 can't see behind all the stuff on here my hand is up okay does who wants a second Wendy all right all those in favor of adjourning