June 14, 2023 Board of Education Business Meeting

001that's okay I hereby call this meeting to order now a couple of a brief announcements first we have a lot of recognitions this evening please if you could stay while we recognize everybody else if you get recognized prior to somebody else uh then maybe stay and cheer for those that are being recognized I will let you know in the very boring part of the evening will be and that way you can all the kids can take off and go home and get ready for graduation or whatever they're doing tomorrow school whatever so okay now if I can then pass it off to Christina Downey for the beginning the Pledge of Allegiance Christina thank you Joe I'd like to call he's working I'd like to call up to the podium we have a couple of teachers

002and students from Riverside School from the Riverside Rangers program who are going to lead us in the pledge tonight and tell us a little bit about the Rangers program at Riverside thank you thank you very much my name is Allison Tepper and this is my colleague Rocio Montes Gonzalez Montes and we work at Riverside School as ell Specialists oh I'm sorry can you hear me now sorry about that so we work at Riverside School as ell Specialists and we also co-chair the Rangers program at Riverside School which is a leader development program leadership development program it's open to the fifth graders and we have two of our young ladies here today to tell you a little bit more about that program my name is Whitney martyr and my name is akari fukuda description we sometimes

003do have some volunteer things like pledge and some donations we help students we play games with them and we greet them at the doors most of when we play games with them we have a lot of fun and respect the norms and we ask questions about how we do what the Norms were in the games and it really helps them understand how to be respectful and how to be a role model and now please everybody rise to the Pledge of Allegiance our flag is over there I remind everyone today is Flag Day I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so much for having us thank you so much thank

004you so much thanks Christina that was great thanks girls that was fantastic we're gonna now go to the consent agenda we have three items on the consent agenda we have first item uh it's approved minutes uh as presented second item is authorized the Boe budget committee to approve all budget Appropriations transfers uh during a special board meeting date in July and the third approve the 2023-2024 Boe meeting agenda plan as presented uh I make that motion or those three motions on the consent agenda do I have a second okay uh any discussion all in favor against upstanding okay so that's seven oh no of course not here six zero one thank you now we have the uh students and staff recognitions first we're going to begin with the uh GPS representative for Connecticut teacher of

005the year Aaron John Tony Jones and I'm going to start it out um first of all Aaron I I think I whenever I had the opportunity to give you the award at the school I really truly meant what I said um it was one of the most amazing Early Childhood classrooms that I've had the pleasure um to be in a really watch for an entire hour and the children were so engaged and it was obvious that they absolutely love what you were doing and that you make them love learning and they were learning to read so and then I was really um I was so impressed when I was there for the first grade to watch them do their show and it was so it was wonderful how you were using the songs from the

006show for transitions in your class just really integrating not only what you do on a daily basis but just all the other things that happen in the school so congratulations and I'm just so thrilled to have you represent us as at the Connecticut state teacher of the year well just to follow with the enthusiastic support from the distinguished teacher award committee I'm Stacy Loveless and I have the privilege of getting to award her a wonderful check and wish her the best of luck going forward but I do want to say just a few words from her amazing nomination packet that um that were that was presented by her colleagues and parents and whatnot just a few words she's been with us for 11 years at New Lebanon teaching first grade right now she also taught

007kindergarten but in her own words which I think kind of summarizes her is to she feels each day with sunshine and positivity um and she served on the PTA curriculum account uh enrichment committee as a parent volunteer and on the safe School climate committee she's also been a part of the social committee and has was actually a part of the New Lebanon School feasibility committee when they were doing the plans for the new building she gets high praise for helping all the students build confidence self-esteem independence by guiding them to the best versions of themselves and her colleagues are inspired by her energy enthusiasm and general love for elevating New Lebanon School for the students for our district and we wish her all the best going forward as our representative at the state level so

008thank you so much good evening my name is Christine Edwards I'm the president of the Kiwanis in Greenwich Connecticut and for over 30 years we have been presenting to the person who is our representative up to Hartford um a award from Joseph K who was the president of Kiwanis and also a superintendent of schools and he wanted to make sure that whoever was going to be our representative from Greenwich not only had the award from the Board of Ed and the distinguished teachers but also from his foundation so I'm presenting her the award for the Joseph K Joseph Mitchell K award let me put it this way and also and also a check another check and then Stacy you can help me with this this is a blanket if you will here with landmarks from

009Greenwich so I don't want to cover your head but this is but this way I said instead of flowers which will only last a while this is something that will cover you up keep you warm and remind you of Greenwich no matter where you wind up ever so thank you very much if I have to talk they told me there would be no speaking Mr soprano had said there would be no speaking I think he lied thank you so much is that him back there yep thank you so much it's really an honor to be up here um I feel like I've said so many words already I might be out of words but I'm really honored to represent our community up in Hartford and I really hope all of Connecticut and cross our fingers

010all of the United States can see how amazing our community is so thank you so much thank you Aaron a win by you is a win for all of us so we look forward to our success going forward thank you thank you very much that is great all great stuff now we're going to uh uh Student Government recognitions a Mitch and Isabella let's first have Mitch come walking up here and then Isabella to follow hello Mitch Mitch has served as the student body vice president you all recognize him from his wonderful presentations which he's given meeting after meeting and also he's brave enough to stay for many hours of the uh not so exciting stuff afterwards so thank you for doing that it's a pleasure working with Mitch in the actual Council uh where all

011the student government from all the grades get together and uh and they actually take Concepts and ideas and suggestions from the student body and they actually turn those into ideas and then they Implement those ideas into action it's really exciting watching that happen in the process uh watching Mitch sit in the room he's excited you could tell when everyone else is talking he's just dying to talk he doesn't want anyone else to say he lets everyone he's very polite of course but as he lets everyone talk you know he's just about to explode with some really exciting thing to say so Mitch thank you very much your presentations at these meetings and unfortunately for my colleagues here except for Karen of course they don't get to see you in the council meetings and in those

012meetings it's very exciting to get know you guys better if anyone wants to comment or say anything uh to Mitch please feel free he'll be back with a speech a little bit I'll just say it's been an incredible honor to have had the opportunity to work uh sort of alongside you get to know you over these past months I wish you all of the best uh going forward to uh an incredible uh college that you're going to be off to and in the Rolling Hills of Ithaca so um anyway I know you're going to give a speech later but I look forward to hearing um and seeing where you go from here with all the incredible ideas you've shared with us I know that the world is uh is certainly your oyster appreciate it yeah

013oh sorry I should know this by now right I think my I'm watching you guys touch it and I think oh maybe I have to touch it today um you'll hear in my speech later but you know those meetings that we have together have really become one of my favorite parts of student government I think it's always really interesting to be able to have discussions with the people who make the decisions and like are responsible for making change in the district so I really want to thank uh you know Miss so who was there at the beginning of the year and then of course uh chairman Kelly Miss Hirsch and Dr Jones for always attending those meetings and you know having a great discussion with you know Isabelle and I but also with the rest

014of the student government Representatives because I think it's really important for you know us to develop a relationship because like I said before but you guys are responsible for the changes in the community so thank you for everything thank you Mitch Isabella foreign I've known Isabella prior to this engagement I've known her for a few years now and uh the excitement she brings into a room is certainly very encouraging to all around watching her preside over those Council meetings was very exciting she had her gavel and she was not afraid to use it she'd slam that gavel down but yet have a chuckle or a giggle about it and you've noticed when she does her presentations here when she presents to the room there's always a smile on her face and she protects projects the

015happiness and and projects the positivity and personally I I relate to that I love the positivity side of it because that that's what I like to do and I see a lot of a lot of that in you and uh and when you take the uh the podium and when you present uh to the room you keep everyone's attention in a very unique way where you presented in a light sometimes people when they present in a light way you lose sometimes attention but you have a special gift to actually grab that attention and bring them in so thank you very much I really enjoyed working with View Karen I was going to say uh Joe stole my thunder but I was gonna say I have yet it's fine I've yet to one see you without

016a beaming smile across your face the enthusiasm that you bring to every meeting to every discussion really helps to energize the room and the space around you and you can see it in all of those that work with you on XCOM and uh also on the rugby pitch and so I have to say that honestly it's been a pleasure to have the opportunity to get to know you uh well I you know I've gotten to watch a couple games but seeing you off the pitch and knowing that uh you have great things ahead of you as well as uh you know you may not be going up north to the cold but you know I do know it snows often in Virginia so you'll have a great experience and I can't wait to see I

017can't wait to see what uh what you do going forward as well so thank you you know that uh that excitement that we talked about that you encourage uh uh or people to do I don't see that in the opposition player on the Rugby field where you're about to crush them so I see little of that but please well you guys are obviously flattering me right now I can't thank you all enough it's been such a pleasure speaking every month getting to know all of you and just for you all being very receptive to what we have to say and as I said it's absolutely a pleasure to speak on behalf of our student body and I've I've had honestly the time of my life being student body president and class present before that I

018love hearing what the students have to say I love bringing it here and I'm glad you guys like the smile on my face because it will continue to be there as I go into higher education so I cannot thank you all enough thank you for listening to what we have to say and thank you for always being ones to put the smile on my face so once I once again thank you problem nails Isabella will be back um now we have the uh spring state championships uh for Greenwich High School athletics Pete Giorgio our athletic director will come up and speak on their behalf thank you Pete you've got a whole lot of Champions this year it's unprecedented amount of Champions so I'll leave it to you thank you good evening superintendent Jones chairperson Kelly

019Board of Education members and everyone here and at home I'm pleased to be standing before you once again uh celebrating our outstanding student athletes and teams here at ghs thank you all for taking the time to recognize our spring athletes the all-state high school student uh student athlete Association has picked the following student athletes in their respective Sports as I mentioned their names please stand up and come to the front of the room and we'll recognize you all at the end so this year for our spring All-State athletes we have for boys lacrosse Matthew trimmer and Colin Zeller unfortunate some of our kids are home because we still have one more day of finals girls lacrosse we have CeCe Tauber and MK Savio I know MK Sierra from our girls golf team We Have Allison

020Bauer Charlotte Langhorne and Caroline McShay from our boys tennis team we have Dylan Atkinson Vladimir Dombrowski Kai Jan Rohan matal Nicholas O'Brien and Harrison wolf they could be at home too as well and last but not least we also have from our boys track and field John Luca Bianchi and Antonio ciccarelli and I think Antonio is here folks these are your All-State Spring sport athletes one more round of applause for them please we are also going to recognize two more state champions this year to add to our list we just had a wonderful parade of Champions brought To Us by chairperson Kelly and uh for selectman um Fred Camillo first we'll recognize our girls golf team these are the girls that won state champions they were also runner-ups in the FC act so it was

021Alison Bauer Madeleine Driscoll Zara Hillman Charlotte Langhorne and Caroline McShay and then for our boys tennis team who also won FCX and States we have ishan ambushta Dylan Atkinson Vladimir Dombrowski Nicholas frumin Manuel agalli speccos Matthew hunt kaijan David koresky Daniel Lee Bruce lunder Rohan matal Ellie Norton or Eli Norton excuse me Nicholas O'Brien Alexander saleeb Tristan solar Zachary tovac and Harrison wolf those are your state champions this spring thank you all and we have a long traditional hold up for next year the bar is set pretty high thank you our interim A.D is doing a great job thank you keep up the good work now Andy bramante pleased for the 2023 science fair award Andy my friend how are you sir great I feel so tall when Joe stands up no touch right is

022that what I was told is it working oh it is okay good I'm Andy bermonte I'm the science research teacher at Greenwich High School uh so I thank you for the opportunity Board of Ed uh chairman Kelly um Dr Jones um so let me just read a little Preamble for you guys it was another fantastic year uh I understand by the way that a lot of the a lot of the high schoolers are home uh some of my middle schoolers are here which we'll talk about so that's exciting so anyway uh there's another fantastic year in the research program for the 14th year running at least one ghs student was selected at the regeneron uh Talent search as a scholar this year we had five students that were selected as Scholars which was tremendous and

023actually two of them were selected as rsts finalists which is really awesome in early March six of our students took part in the Connecticut Junior science and Humanities Symposium and four were selected to give prestigious oral presentations for their work much like a TED Talk three of our students won their way to the national competition where they all excelled at the Connecticut Science and Engineering fair in mid-march 14 of our students defended their research in an astounding 12 of these were selected as Fair finalists with which is the top 15 percent of projects and they all went on to win notable Awards including many first place finishes in April 10 of the student researches and one Eastern Middle School eighth grader more about that in a second uh participated in the Norwalk Community College Science

024Fair taking three of the top eight prizes and in late April one of our ghs research students was selected as the state winner in What's called the Stockholm Junior water prize competition which is a and she's going to basically compete at the national level to win an opportunity to travel to Sweden in an International Symposium and finally in mid-may one of our students competed amongst 1200 of the brightest kids at the regeneron international science and engineering fair in Dallas where she she did really well so I'll talk to you about that as well and finally this year marked the first year of our Junior innovators uh program where the eighth grade eighth graders from each Middle School provided the opportunity to come to the high school early in the day once a week to create

025or to conduct independent science research much like the high schoolers this year eight Junior innovators participated in csip which was really awesome and they well there's a phrase I'd like to use they kicked tushi as we say they really won many many top Awards and three nominations to What's called the National Junior innovators challenge which is the top competition for middle schoolers for eighth grade much like the talent searches for the high schoolers so that is really amazing so let me give you some details let's meet some of these fine young and I'll just read off the names the only two uh High School lovely scientists I see her mention Isabella they'll be in this story so first the 2023 regeneron science Talent search so we had five Scholars Stephanie Chang for a multi omics

026approach to host microbe interactions and inflammatory bowel disease Angie Fogerty for Rapid visual detection of illicit substances in in Social settings uh Isabella Geiger come on up all right um for synthesis of polysaccharide encapsulated hydroxyapatite I always think of hunger when I say that word Nano Composites to stimulate plant growth ambika Grover for a design of a novel do functioning TPA and Factor 11 anticoagulant therapy for strokes and ronic Gupta for the design of a rapid lateral flow COPD diagnostic via cytokeratin 19 biomarkers so those are our five Scholars and so round of applause for all of them um as if that wasn't enough two of them went on to become finalists Angie and ambika and ambika went on to finish in sixth place overall I know we've highlighted that where she won over 80

027Angie won twenty six thousand dollars the scholars win 2000 the finalists get an additional 26 and then ambika went on to win 82 000 which is incredible so I'm still waiting for my cut from each one of you anyway so congratulations to all I know some of them are out there um so moving on to the junior science and Humanities Symposium uh we had uh four oral presenters Angie Fogarty again ambika Ashley Malkin who's a 10th grader for basically identification of Therapeutics for neurological disorders through a machine learning algorithm to predict indirect drug and Gene interactions for the glymphatic system at Naomi park for concurrent removal of rising ocean carbon dioxide and oil and water contaminants via multifunctional framework Angie finished an honorable mention ambika Grover was in first place Ashley got an honorable mention

028and Naomi Park finished in fourth in a Post-It presentation Justin Bernstein basically created a functional claramine atorvastatin coated Hydro oh my God hydrolonic acid nanoparticles for targeted dissolution of other scrap sclerosis sclerotic I'll get it up plaque and Audrey Lynn basically made a a new enhanced system to remove ammonia from from water Justin finished first and Audrey finished in third so again round of applause for those guys um ambika went on to the national competition finished in second place in medicine and Naomi second place in environmental engineering totally forgot that um so now for the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair a lot of kids in here so I'm just going to read out their names and get a little easier uh we have Justin Bernstein Mitchell Goldstein um Zara Hawk Ava Jackson Lucy Lee Audrey

029Lynn Max Lou Ashley Malkin and Madeline Madeline minichetti Naomi Park once again Colin Reynolds Caitlin Tice Ryan wadwa and Kiera young some notable finishes in that list for engineering Naomi finished in first Justin in second Applied Technologies Caitlyn finished first Naomi in third physical sciences Naomi finished in third life science Lucy finished fourth Ashley and fifth biotechnology Ashley finished in third on Eureka fifth future sustainability Zara finished in first oceanology Audrey finished in first Naval Research award was given to Madeline a U.S Air Force award from Ryan uh the association of women's geoscientist Akira and Colin and Max were other Fair finalists so how about a big round of applause for those guys about something all right get in there all right so now for my junior innovators I'd say my favorite but the high

030schoolers might get insulted um so the junior innovators many of which are here um so if you hear your name come on up um Hannah de Cruz for her implementation of rhizobium nitrofixation to increase overall crop production and inhibit fusarium Wilt um Hannah finished in first place in environmental Sciences awesome um Amelia fall for reducing food waste with early visual detection of bread mold via a bow dippy color metric card detection of one octane three all um she finished in second place in life science and is one of the nomination one of the students nominated for the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior innovators challenge all sorry uh next Bridget hadn't uh demonstrating the Persistence of Long Island Sound polyarmatic hydrocarbon contamination Bridge had a lovely day first place in physical sciences the Pettit Family Foundation second

031place award the Connecticut Science teachers award best overall eighth grade physical science project and another nomination for the Thermo Fisher Junior innovators program also uh Amaya is Amaya here I've seen her Amaya for use of simple home remedy cleansers to selectively inhibit harmful bacteria on classroom surfaces um hamaya found some really interesting um bacteria on those so careful um yeah you can find uh you know remnants of lunches from Years Gone by just by looking at the bacteria it's not yeah um anyway Amaya thank you she won the American Society of safety professionals very good uh Sarah ramtula does our desire for convenience spring water come in an expensive meaningful microplastic harm um she won first place in the future sustainability uh award and the Freeman Family excellence in chemistry award very good and uh

032Lula Wang who I know is not here she made a simple rapid detection of early maturity onset diabetes of the young otherwise known as Modis via a random c-peptide biomarker essentially she made a what we know is a covet test with the two little strips she made one of those for um something called Modis which is like um it's like diabetes but not quite and so the treatments are very different and it's often misdiagnosed she won first place in Middle School Applied Technologies first place in but in alexion third place in life science and is at the third nomination for the the Juniors innovators challenge awesome stuff and finally Kate Wick uh wavelength specific illumination of hydroponic growth systems for increased Crop Production finished in fifth place and alexion biotechnology got a U.S metric award

033and the Connecticut Science supervisors Association what I know Kate is not here tonight but awesome stuff very good almost done sorry Joe uh so anyway the last one is the 2023 Norwell Community College Science Fair so we had Justin Bernstein Hannah de Cruz Zara Hawk Ava Jackson Lucy Lee Max Lou Ashley Malkin Naomi Park Cullen Reynolds Caitlin Tyson Ryan wadwa just the notables Justin finished in first place overall Ashley and second Naomi and Caitlyn got honorable mentions so awesome stuff for them and finally okay so last but not least the regeneron international science fair and the Stockholm Junior water prize State winner are both Naomi Park and I know that she's uh she at isaf she received the epa's top award for the most advanced best environmental science award at isaf which was really pretty

034amazing I know she's already been approached by journals and public national public radio has had her on already so it's really pretty cool and she's on her way to Colorado tomorrow for this um steak for this national competition with the hopes of winning her way to uh to Sweden so we'll see so awesome for Naomi and just one last mention this will take two seconds this is handwritten I just want you guys to know also it's it's been very these kids are amazing for so many reasons but what's really pretty cool is they are paying the town back in that many of them are promoting science either at the middle school or the or the elementary school level today I was at Riverside where Naomi and Justin actually put together a six-week program where they

035were working with elementary school kids once a day and they had a little science fair today so it was kind of cool and I know Zara ran something at the Water Club as part of something called stem to stern where they basically move the stem to stern kids into into science and a couple of these young ladies participated in that Affair and I think Sarah you actually won so that's amazing so so they do so much more and I really thought that should be appreciate you know all right foreign proud daddy moment Andy inspired my uh my oldest daughter she's an executive at Microsoft in the science that he had a uh directed her in is something she applies in her life today and she's a fine success because and she attributes Andy for some

036of her success I was also going to say it was pretty impressive to see the number of uh women we had up here uh for the science uh because we often hear that not as many women show up in math and science uh so it was incredible to see all of the you know the ladies up here today so congratulations to all of them okay now it's the public hearing section of our meeting it's time for the Greenwich high school student government Mitch Goldstein vice president of student body it's time for your speech this is the last one so it better be good evening more members and meeting attendees uh I'm Mitch Goldstein as you know already I'm the vice president of student body I stand before you today reflecting on this incredible year I

037can't help but feel a sense of Pride and gratitude we've accomplished so much together and it fills my heart with joy to see the progress we have made but before I delve into my remarks I want to take a moment to express my gratitude for the opportunity to serve as a ghs student body vice president it's been an honor and a privilege to be one of the Liaisons to the Board of Education from ghs over the past year we've witnessed moments of Triumph face challenges head on and learn valuable lessons that will stay with us together through our lives we have come together as a community supporting and lifting one another and yet as I look back on this year I cannot help but acknowledge the areas where I still believe we can improve diversity

038equity and inclusion are essential aspects of any thriving community and our high school is no exception we have taken strides towards embracing diversity but we must still do more we must create an environment where every student feels seen heard and valued so I urge you can to continue supporting measures like our courses on African-American studies or possibly thinking about hiring a diversity equity and inclusion officer for the Greenwich Public Schools I know that making drastic changes in a highly polarized political climate can be difficult however it is essential to remember that the decisions Made In This Very Room dictate what and how the Next Generation learns and that is extremely powerful on a different note as I near the end of my term I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to those who have supported

039me along the way first and foremost I want to thank the members of our student board for their continuous support specifically I want to thank Sherman Kelly Miss Hirsch and of course misto for attending our Student Government lunch meetings quite honestly our lunch meetings were one of my favorite parts of student government and I loved forming relationships and having discussions with the people that are in charge of making changes for our school I'd also like to thank Mr silkman the head of student government who has been an incredible partner and leader Mr silkman your dedication passion and of course unwavering commitment to representing the student's Voice have been nothing short of inspiring thank you for being a driving force behind our successes furthermore I want to expect I want to express my profound appreciation to

040our esteemed principal Mr mayo and our vice principal Miss tulada your open door policy receptiveness to our ideas and genuine care for our well-being have been crucial in creating a nurturing environment that allows us to thrive thank you for always listening to us and supporting our endeavors lastly but certainly not least I want to thank my partner in crime Isabella geiga the student body president for those of you who don't know Isabel and I actually go way back and it's really crazy to think about how far we've come since we first sat next to each other in this capialities kindergarten class on North Street but seriously I do want to thank you for your leadership your resilience and your commitment to serving the student body but most of all for being my friend for all

041those years in closing as I step away from the podium for the last time I want to leave my successors Caleb calland I know Omar galile I took the challenge please continue to strive for excellence you guys have the power to make a difference listen to one another and work together to build an inclusive compassionate and empowering High School community so now for the last time on behalf of the student body I'd like to thank the board for your time and I look forward to seeing you all at graduation tomorrow I now pass the microphone over to student body president Isabella geiga Jesus am I Cry I've known Mitch for 13 years the longest 13 years of my life and the funniest thing is today we had this little conversation and then I forget who

042turns it off turns to us and like you guys are like brother and sister and Mitch goes when you've known her for that long you guys are practically family so Mitch best 13 years ever man so I'll start us off glad to be here again good evening chairman Kelly Dr Jones and members of the board and meeting attendees I am Isabella gega the student body president at Greenwich high school today I have many mixed emotions as a bid farewell to this esteemed public school system that has been my second home for many years as I reflect on my journey I am overwhelmed with a gratitude with gratitude for the support dedication and commitment of each teacher administrator and board member toward the betterment of our educational Community I expressed my deepest gratitude to the parents

043who have also entrusted Greenwich public schools with their children your unwavering faith in our educational system is the foundation upon which we build our brighter Futures however as we move forward I implore our plant parents to remember a critical aspect of our Collective responsibility it is imperative that we place the needs and interests of our children above all us free of any personal agendas while I understand each parent has their own prospective aspirations and hopes for their children we must remember our educational Community thrives when we come together in unity focus on on what truly matters the well-being and success success of us the students to the parents I say trust the educational process trust the dedicated professionals who have committed their eye their lives to shaping young minds and more importantly trust your abilities

044your children's ability in foraging their own paths to the teachers I give the biggest thank yous of all time thank you Mr silkman for being the oil of the machine that we call Student Government thank you to miss Foster for your invaluable support thank you to Mr mayo and miss tulata the two best people to be the face of our school and a thank you to every teacher who has contributed to our educational experience and cheered us on every step of the way through thick and thin they manage to malleate us into the independent strong individuals we have become and most importantly to the students we didn't beyond the confines of textbooks and exams we've displayed a thirst for knowledge created a vibrant School community and displayed perseverance unlike any other that being said I

045am beyond proud to be graduating with the class of 2023. I implore you all to remain curious and Hungary for the future success and as we venture into the next stage of Our Lives let us remember that the significance of Greenwich Public Schools holds as a vital stepping stone for future success mom said I promise as Mitch and I say our goodbyes I am proud to introduce Caleb Callan as the incoming student body fight student body president I'm sorry and Omar galal as the incoming student body vice president I am confident in their ability to continue our Legacy and Forge their own path that better Greenwich High School I am terrible at goodbyes terrible so bad I'll start crying right now but I'm holding strong but I will carry the last 13 years with me

046forever I am only who I am because of the district District's educational commitment and I promise you this is not the last of me but for now it has been my utmost pleasure thank you I feel a bit underdressed so I'll make sure to come out with at least a college shirt next time but so I'm Caleb Kaylin the elected ghs student body president next year as Giga said I'm honored and excited to carry the torts of our past student body president Isabella Geiger and vice president Mitch continuing to act as a voice for our student and body and build on the work they have done as well as bringing in new ideas to help support and improve the school in this coming year I'm excited to hit the ground running with the new members

047of XCOM and see where this year takes us thank you these have been wonderful speeches from everyone my name is Omar galal I'm going to be the student body vice president next year um we can't wait to build on the work that Isabella and Mitch put in this year and we're immensely grateful to the board of education and the ghs administration for this opportunity to partner the student government with the town on a personal note I really admire the work of the Board of Education it's wonderful that the board takes strides to engage the community and I'm excited to be able to contribute to these meetings as a representative of the student body so thank you for this opportunity and we we wish you a wonderful summer YouTube looks bright this is good all those

048who uh have to go because of graduation responsibilities and homework and things like that sarly little I always cut everyone loose before you we have the honor of hearing uh your speech but if you have a uh an engagement please uh now is a good time to take off next is our Gea president Lil Peron well done everybody thank you student government that was great foreign good evening everyone my friends at home parents community board members chairman Kelly superintendent Dr Jones I have a new speech just 30 seconds ago because there's a change of plans I didn't hear any announcements so I'm going to make my announcements um so I'm speaking off the cuff and that's why the police officer is here in the back of the room all right my friend thank you yeah

049yeah so um first of all I want to just so impressive I wanted my good friend interim uh athletic director peach or Jew just amazing all of our All-State athletes our state champions um the town just keeps producing Excellence is just amazing my friend Andy burmonte um amazing scientist and teacher and the incredible every year and I read what the students come up with it is just simply outstanding and amazing and I love that the thing is really going to help people in society and future and uh I remember last year with the one with uh who's did something for his family to help the grow of the Coffee Bean so just that outstanding but uh congratulations to um all those Scholars all those scientists all those uh individ innovators it is just truly amazing

050um never under messed underestimate a child or our students never um I also want to thank uh Mr Goldstein and Ms gega for their leadership at Greenwich High School truly amazing leaders um just amazing their speeches um I just want to uh quote one of the things Mr Goldstein uh said which was really impactful and I hope you all really paid attention to what he was saying um decisions made right here in this room impact what's going on in in the classrooms decisions made in town impact so we want to provide the best for our students so when we're making those decisions you know let's let's keep that in mind let's fund our schools let's let's give them the best because they're giving us our best um and then muskega um made it very powerful

051impactful statement uh trust the educational process these are a teenagers trust the educational process and Trust in your the teachers that are professionals um I couldn't I couldn't write a better speech than what what those two comments are um so I want to say um thank you uh two people um yeah so every year uh I just say to Dr Jones next year is going to be better gonna be smoother and then this year I said the same thing so uh just re-elected I have two more years so third time's a charm you know so every year is new that's the great thing about teaching is every new year it starts something fresh something it's just a wonderful wonderful profession and wonderful to work here so I want to say thank you Dr Jones we've

052been through a lot um and we're gonna still get it done we get it done so thank you very much and my friend Francis Francis um our PTA president come on down here girlfriend I want to thank you for your collaboration your patience with me um are good times our hard work together you're just amazing I wish you all the best your official Gea member I got your T-shirt a little a little stress squeeze ball everything thank you thank you all right thank you I'm good right okay thank you no controversy thank you you scared me for a little bit no no no you're good you're good thanks Lil that was great thank you Gea little Perron nice and now we go to our p-tech Francis unobe outgoing president and John Fisher incoming president thank

053you lil good evening this is Francis unobe Mama Three Gps kids and outgoing PTAC president it has been my honor to work across the district to serve as partner and point person for the 15 school ptas and 15 plus PTAC Council committees for those of you who couldn't join us at Town Hall on May 25th PTAC recognized our outstanding PTA members who through exemplary achievement Inspire others demonstrate selfless spirit and make a significant difference in our school community this year PTAC bestowed the lifetime Essence Award to Valerie rimmer and the Essence Award for excellence in volunteerism to Kate Elliott bakassi fellow nominees were Carrie Bisby Christina Broderick Carrie Grouse Angie hartafilis who you've seen many times here Layla horn and Rocco Maureen Harper Michelle Horgan Jeanette liale Janet McMahon and Don wistrand one of the

054nominees humbly said I really don't think I can can compete with the many other volunteers out there I normally just pick up the odd jobs are no one else wants to do for which we say a sincere thank you three cheers to our ptas who make balloon arches plant flowers pick up ice secure permits plan field trips write newsletters host webinars fundraise learn Robert's Rules and our all-time favorite attend Board of Education meetings hours of Board of Education meetings thank you to our PTA Army of volunteers including the volunteers to my left and right who do so much for our schools I was so pleased to ring out the school year at our first in-person year-end celebration since the pandemic and I was especially delighted to hear several say that it wasn't the stuffy affair

055they were expecting because as I said that night this work is supposed to be fun we do this work for the smiles we will soon post our p-tech annual report including our district compilation video and you will see the smiles of the kids turning to work turning to tonight's consent agenda p-tech advocates for number one our school buildings and our grounds specifically ogs and CMS it's time to put a shovel in the ground around and around in circles and the costs just go up and up at this time it really seems unlikely that even those kids entering kindergarten this year will have a chance to go to a school in safe code compliant and education ready schools it's depressing it's exhausting PTAC continues to advocate for our students and to advocate for investment in infrastructure

056which will stand long after today's back and forth number two our school superintendent please extend Dr Jones's contract and maintain consistency in this District we all remember the long parade of superintendents who rapidly turned over before Dr Jones Dr Jones arrived in July 2019 and has been a steady guiding hand on the district since upon taking the superintendent role she immediately had to Shepherd the district through a worldwide pandemic rolled out K-12 remote and hybrid learning managed through multiple building calamities and kept our academic strong and our school doors open under her leadership the curriculum has been standardized and enhanced the GPS's third party ratings have improved GPS has become an employer of choice for professional Educators in addition Dr Jones has been an excellent Communicator with the community welcoming our questions and considerate of

057our suggestions we asked the board to extend Dr Jones's contract and stop the rabble rousing and lastly but most importantly number three are students as we send off our student seniors tomorrow and take a moment to watch our preschoolers fifth graders and 8th graders move up please take to heart the words of wisdom you hear kindness empathy teamwork resilience creativity compassion leadership friendship the mention of Greenwich Public Schools is to educate all students at the highest levels of academic achievement to enable them to reach and expand their potential and to prepare them to become productive responsible ethical creative and compassionate members of society I'm honored the part that PTA can play in that process now it's time for me to hand the mic over to incoming PTAC President John Fisher as I depart I leave

058you and the public comments to follow with wisdom from the North Street school kids who performed in the PTA performance of Madagascar take a moment to breathe in uh it'll help if you sing relax be cool chill out no you don't need to shout relax be cool chill out the Situation's been heavily overblown so relax be cool chill out we didn't mean to shout relax be cool chill out we can work it out relax be cool peace out have a great summer thank you Francis uh and and and thank you for being an amazing PTAC president and singer apparently um and for all your hard work for the schools and for the kids as Francis said I'm John Fisher I will be your PTAC president for the coming year for all those who heard me

059speak the other evening you'll remember that I noted that we will be hearing people involved in the politics of this election year talk about their support for our schools their support for Education PTAC will be listening carefully we trust those will be sincere expressions of support PTAC looks forward to continuing to work with everyone in the community to advance the very best educational experience that Greenwich can provide for all of our children and that's the end of my ptaccon comments if I may I'd like to have a few say a few of my own personal comments these are my own not p-tax um I'm always surprised by the things we see and hear on Twitter and op-eds and public comments suggesting that PTAC and ptas are somehow malicious and malign there was even something online

060suggesting that PTAC is a cadra of wrong-headed PTA skis preparing to barge into homes and force social emotional and mental well-being on others nothing could be furthest from the truth I'd like to help everyone visualize the ptas and ptat what we're talking about when we talk about ptas and PTAC is volunteer moms and dads volunteer moms and dads aren't Jack booted and thugs forcing anything on anyone when PTA members put on their Jack Boots they look more like this like Puss in Boots and kitty Soft Paws and we especially look like this when we're doing our parent social fundraising events which are fun and you should join them the reality is there's 15 independent ptas in town and those ptas each have hundreds of independent free-thinking member families PTA actions are more like herding ducks

061if you will like this now if it seems like PTA actions are orchestrated and aligned that's that says everything about those thousands of volunteer moms and dads shared focus on the very best educational experience for every kid now don't get me wrong ptas and PTA members are a powerful force in our community we work collectively collaboratively we get a lot of things done and those things are all good and all for the kids and the community it's more appropriate if you think of us as a colony of bees we go out and collect in our case we fundraise and then through each individual's efforts we collectively make positive contributions to build our school communities improve our school environments and enhance our kids educational experience if the B analogy is taken to its illogical conclusion it

062might be tempting to think well then etac would be like a queen bee but unfortunately the B analogy falls apart there because as you can see I don't look anything like this but I do like a good cup of coffee and a good book with that I thank you for the time uh we hope everyone enjoys a well-deserved summer break and we can all look forward to the coming school year thank you thank you thank you John and welcome now it's time for our community comment we will begin with uh Susie Ponce it's e silent yes okay and then followed by a special guest Sophia Bianca how cool is that yeah go sorry he's a little pretty good let me help it hello my name is Adam lean and I am in fourth grade thank

063you Dr Jones you're my hero you saved me from being bullied any further the school that I am in now is safe I want to ask the school boss to please do two things to help kids like me first to have a remote class for parents of kids that bully this way the parents of kid stop bully can learn what they need to do at home to make their kids stop bullying other kids second I would like to ask that all assistant principals follow the same rules at all of the schools when the kids are bullying me all through third grade in a part of fourth grade found out where my new school is she tried to continue bullying me she sent me bad messages with one of my new classmates at my new school

064my new assistant principal made it stop and it never happened again that is how all assistant principals and schools should fix bullying being bullied was a horrible experience and I don't want anyone to go to suffer like I did every day I am learning to forgive the kid that bullied Me Like Jesus forgave his bullies I want to learn I want to help other kids to be safe like I am now but without having to move schools like I did that can only happen if their parents help their kids to stop bullying so please let there be money in the budget for the parent bully class thank you thank you Sophia Sophia will be followed by Jackie Homan chairman Kelly the great at CMS well actually just a few days from being a Freshman at

065Greenwich High School My Capstone project was about creating awareness and finding ways in which we could increase resources for earlier detection for reading disabilities one in ten people one in 10 people are at some point in their lives diagnosed with breeding disabilities research shows that early detection and earlier intervention can make a huge difference in a school's academic achievement and for many it is a turning point in their lives struggling students are often pushed through the education system particularly when they do not have parents that won't take no for an answer or the student has developed their own competent coping mechanism and so their disability is missed the board and Dr Jones should continue to put additional Research into additional resources into allowing more children to be treated tested for earlier detection for reading disability

066so that the proper resources and tools can be opened up for those students as early as possible in order to help them be successful without earlier intervention kids will not will get lost and even intervention later in their school years is not enough they will they will still struggle and will always be many steps behind their peers you will destroy the chance to ever catch up if you don't make changes in how the district tests for reading disabilities in elementary level otherwise if you identify the disability late the only person who's struggling is a student they're racing to catch up with their peers and they will never win it certainly does not make four Level Playing Field isn't it easier and less expensive to detect reading disabilities for young at a younger age when you

067have more time to fix it than finding it later and racing to undo the years you missed to children on no children with the with learning disabilities should be forgotten or prevented from getting the necessary resources so that they can reach their full potential I respect respectfully asked the board and Dr Jones when focusing on the budget this upcoming year to factor in what it would cost to implement the yearly detection program they should make a different you could make a difference in so many young lives and set our academic career on the right track for for the very beginning thank you Sophia I second that I struggle myself and I had learned to put coping mechanisms in place and thank you for that that comment Jackie Homan shall mine thank you Miss Simon go

068ahead thank you good evening Board of Education members and Dr Jones I understand that the superintendent's contract renewal is on the agenda and before you make your final decision tonight I'm hoping that you will entertain the following what-if scenarios what would happen if an undercover journalist released a video that revealed Greenwich schools discriminated against hiring Democrats atheists and recent college graduates what if a group of Greenwich Educators decided to secretly Implement curriculum from Hillsdale College without the board of education's approval and direct violation of the Connecticut education law what if a student captured a video of a teacher telling children that sex is a binary and that gender affirming care is harmful and unproven what if students were forced to attend an all-school assembly running by turning point USA where they were encouraged to come

069out and proudly declare their Maga pride in front of the whole school what if guidance counselors were caught giving out pro-life flags and stickers that said God Bless America what if a School employee was caught secretly helping a student transition to Catholicism without the knowledge of their parents what if an employee was caught recommending books to transgender students about detransitioning would have vaccinated employees were forced to undergo experimental testing every week to make sure they weren't shedding what if free Bible clinics were set up on school grounds and outside of sports practices and students who didn't attend the Bible clinics were shamed in the classroom for being Unholy what if students were told the only resources they could use for their homework were Fox News Breitbart and Newsmax what if teachers used a private Discord

070server to share scripture from the Bible and promote Christian values to students without their parents knowledge what if the High School Sociology class taught students that systemic racism is a myth that is used to keep people divided what if Educators were forced to read the book American Marxism by Mark Levin and then required to incorporate the findings into the classroom what if the media center received a free Donald Trump book library that featured books celebrating his presidency and the America first movement that he built do any of those scenarios seconds so uncomfortable because if any of them did and you answered yes then I wonder why tonight's debate is over how many more years are added to the superintendent's contract for the sake of continuity when perhaps the discussion should be about holding the superintendent

071accountable for breaking the board's policies violating education law and creating a politically charged and divisive environment time thank you Jackie Joe Solari you're up next followed by David Lancaster you're on Deck David come on up come on up join us it's the first time you're here since a new setup welcome good evening uh Board of Education members superintendent Tony Jones and uh and audience here in I'll be brief I know it is a big decision that you all have to make on on the extension of the contract for Miss Jones or Dr Jones I know how it works in business we're a CEO reports to the board and the board reports to his shareholders and um the shareholders of the company um just like the Board of Ed represents the taxpayers in the town the

072parents of the children here and uh I certainly applaud all the effort the board has done in trying to guide our school forward in the in the best way possible and I hope you continue to do so with this contract and as I understand it you have new metrics that you'll be measuring the superintendent with and and the school with going forward and I'm just here to say I hope those metrics include greater transparency a greater focus on academic athletic and arts Excellence over a lot of the divisive nonsense that that many parents across the community have been troubled by thank you thank you Joe and David come on up how are you sir Watch The Wire here you gotta go the other side good members of the Boe tonight I'm speaking solely as a

073private citizen and taxpayer though I'm on the RTM from District 12. I'm asking that this board not to renew Dr Jones contract as superintendent of schools the reasons are many but primarily one the continued presence of social engineering and curriculums a lack of transparency and respect for parental rights academic results and discriminatory hiring practices superintendent Jones repeatedly says Greenwich Public Schools do not teach critical race Theory this is only approximate truth more like a sin of omission or a Jesuit would call a mental reservation either way the intent is to deceive the fact of the matter is Dr Jones doesn't need to promote classical CRT if she can till the academic soil using its many intellectual capillaries like social emotional learning this is what she has done she also promotes radical gender ideology as one

074example just last month the ninth grade class at Greenwich high school was shown a radical gender film and health class parents who up who opted out of this were shocked to learn their opt-outs were not honored parental rights were violated no answers as usual were forthcoming from the administration this is why foia requests have skyrocketed during her tenure the lack of transparency and honesty is has fueled this this neo-marxist poison is evil and is corroding the minds and Souls of our young a toxic combination of gender ideology and race grievance focused on the evil of whiteness regarding academics if you go to the state of Connecticut's Ed site you will see that the Greenwich scores are not Stellar despite costing well over 20 000 per student the disparity of student scores from different parts of

075greenwich's striking those areas with higher scores are such because the parents can afford tutors to make up for the poor curriculums this has been an Open Secret for years and I've been in I'm a native of this town math scores at the elementary school level are also down significantly we are simply not advancing academically for the entire population as if all this isn't enough the Boland Affair has brought ignominy and shame upon the Greenwich School administration and Tony Jones who promoted Mr Boland he said aloud what many suspected was occurring blatant discrimination and hiring is illegal and in this case a grave offense to Devout Catholics and all people of Goodwill sadly the investigations are still ongoing within the town and by the Connecticut's attorney general and the Department of Education there's no fixing this

076situation anymore 30 seconds to quote Churchill in reference to a political opponent Dr Jones is like a bull who carries her own china shop with her this decision may be difficult for some of you who have developed a close working relationship with her yet those of us who work in the private sector must do this all the time with those who make a lot of money and don't perform on matters less important than the education of the young led us as a town and community clean our educational house and start anew by hiring a new superintendent who is committed to accident academic Excellence over social engineering thank you please do not thank you David vote to renew this contract thank you and next will be Amy I mean um me what is I've been mispronounced

077sorry about that and also Gabriella Marcus fantastic thank you it's okay Dr Jones chairman Kelly and members of the Board of Education we thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Ami Muth continuing PTAC Dei co-chair and Gabriella Marcus incoming PTAC Dei co-chair as of July 1st we would like to remind everyone that June is lgbtq plus pride month a time when we celebrate the progress made in equality diversity and lgbtq identities we're recognizing the barriers still exist in realizing true Universal Equity was started as a human rights protest over 50 years ago in New York City has grown into marches and events and celebrations around the world June is also Caribbean American heritage month and importantly Juneteenth commemorates June 19 1865 the day that Major General Gordon Granger wrote into Galveston

078Texas the last City still held by Confederate forces and freed the last people still held in slavery two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was actually signed these significant recognitions of our diverse American history Heritage exists because for so long they were missing from our history books and our broader social discussions and awareness as we look back on this year we are reminded of our mission to Foster an overall sense of belonging within the GPS Community by intentionally building relationships and inviting diverse perspectives to the PTA we are also reminded that the need for deep EI representation exists because these and many other stories weren't being told the people weren't being recognized or heard or celebrated injustices persist in that Darkness the importance of allies showing up and speaking up cannot be over appreciated we hope

079that through educating our children about these and other important historic events and cultures we can continue to build on the fragile threatened progress that has been made and create a more inclusive future for our children we put effort in to ensure that our students are being taught a complete and inclusive history and that our teachers educational leaders media Specialists and Librarians are able to provide education and learning resources that support our students Learning Without Fear of contribution of Confrontation and retribution we want to assure these allies some of the most important people in our children's lives have all of our support to do their job in the best way they can the small number of loud voices expressing intolerance and exclusion only have power when we let them shout over all the rest of us

080let's instead work to ensure the historically underrepresented voices are heard it helps us all when we hear the stories of those who have for 30 seconds for so long been left out it harms no one whose story is being told no one we had a fantastic popular family-friendly lgbtq Pride event celebration on June 4th it was perhaps unsurprising but no less shocking to see the links the intolerant people will go to to prevent marginalized members from our town our community our schools from being feeling welcome and included this is today June of 2023 over 50 years since the Stonewall human rights protests and in this environment allies are important and their support for our work is important time okay in continuation to Emmy and good evening my name is Gabriella Marcus the incoming Dei committee

081co-chair from July 1st I'm looking forward to working with you and the community in this coming year Dei would like to thank Dr Jones and the Gea for the strong message sent out last Friday against the hateful signs and rhetoric that occurred before and after the lgbtq pride event June 4th the first selectman diversity advisory Council for recognizing that anti-Semitism is still a problem in our town and in our schools just like in the rest of the country and for working to help bring awareness and education around the Holocaust and diverse cultural identities to Greenwich Dai would like to thank you the Greenwich Public Library system in particular Jennifer meinhardt heard sorry head of Youth service and at parole library for helping us build our Dei library to share books around Heritage months her leadership

082knowledge support of our Dei initiatives has been invaluable Dei would like to thank you the Greenwich Alliance for participating with us EMS PTA and the ptas of its feeder schools to bring Mark Brackett to EMS last fall to share his knowledge about emotional intelligence key to raising healthy happy and successful children we would also like to thank the Greenwich Alliance for the many ways they financially support opportunities for all of our students to have similar experiences regardless of their circumstances Dei would like to thank you the Dei reps across our ptas who work for their PTA and school leadership to enrich curriculum and experiential opportunities and create ways to celebrate our students Rich cultures by learning from each other and bringing in resources to support that Equity across our all of our schools and ptas

083remains a priority for our reps Dei would like to thank you members of GPS who have been supportive of Dei and have worked to collaborate with us in Sharing Heritage information with school leadership and brainstorming around ways to provide diverse and Equitable experiences to all of the students in Greenwich Dei would like to thank you for those who haven't gotten involved yet it's never too late and it never has been more important thank you and enjoy your summer we look forward for the fall when we will begin our second year as a standing PTAC committee thank you Janet McMahon oh then we'll have to go Cara Philbin this car here or she online Miss filbert is online she has been here talking his turn on hello hi hi I'm Kara fielden I'm RTM district 10

084education committee but I am speaking um on my own behalf too much emphasis on other and too many initiatives that distract from the primary goal of educating our children is directly reflected in the data overall the district is trending down U.S news and World reports changed our ranking from 7th to ninth I've heard too many times that we cannot be compared to other communities because of our diversity this is not true all students are capable of achieving when properly set up for success in fact the current Connecticut 7th ranked school is 99 minority and number two is 78 minority compared to our 38 percent greenwich's top scorers are leaving explaining the drop in scores at all of our middle schools in many cases the West Side schools are achieving far less than the east side

085of our five magnet schools despite extra Federal funding only ISD is performing well our steam Hamilton Avenue magnet is only scoring 35.7 percent in science an Ela 9 out of 14 Schools experienced a decline with the exception of five schools math scores have decreased in some cases significantly cos Cobb decreased by 12 points with only 62 percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations last year's third and fifth grader third through fifth graders received little to no learning loss intervention these fifth grade scores fell six points to 75 percent Ela and 65 percent Mass a 2021 superintendent directive to only do homework to only give homework as necessary resulted in too little practice time for math 16 million in ARP s or federal dollars for learning loss was not properly allocated as evidenced by these Port

086by these this poor performance and certainly not warranting a raise considering Dr Jones is already the highest paid Town employee this is unacceptable the Board of Ed needs to start doing their job working together and fix this you cannot solve ideological differences and it is not your job the common ground is more direct instruction less technology use especially in the younger years and to focus on academics first it is absolutely time to respect all parents by mandating opt-in for all controversial programming thank you Janet McMahon come on up it's your turn good evening members of the Board of Education Dr Jones and guests thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight while I'm a member of the RTM I am speaking tonight as an individual and as a taxpayer and Public School parent they see

087that third time's a charm so I'm hoping that tonight you will again support and re-reaffirm your vote in favor of the Central Middle School Ed specs as you're aware these Ed specs have been carefully and thoughtfully created with the input and buy-in of most if not all CMS Educators Administration and staff these individuals do not have any political agenda or motives they just want to deliver high quality education to our students in Next Generation classrooms these Ed specs also seek to maintain the rigorous academic standards that both Greenwich taxpayers and parents want and expect further diminishing these specifications will negatively impact our educational standards and therefore property values I attended my daughter's moving up ceremony at North Street school earlier today so I have an incoming Central middle schooler again I want to make you

088aware that there are many of us in the parent community that are rightfully anxious about the timing of the school's construction since the structural fixes made last year are only in short-term fixes therefore we also respectfully request that construction begin as soon as possible let's not waste any more precious time and potentially close down CMS to shore it up again let's build a high quality brand new Central Middle School quickly and efficiently that starts with your vote tonight please vote Yes a third time a third time on the Central Middle School Ed specs as written in August and revised in April I would also like to address another item on tonight's agenda the contract extension of our wonderful extremely effective hard-working and dedicated superintendent Dr Tony Jones I was here before you back in May

0892021 to voice my support then and I come back here tonight to voice my unequivocal support again during my nine years in the Greenwich Public Schools I've seen four superintendents come and go Dr Jones has not only stood the test of time but a global pandemic countless school shootings across the country and scares close to home budget cuts multiple building closures and a thankfully short bus strike and more Dr Jones has managed all of these obstacles with a plum 30 seconds while always being empathetic and forthcoming with information to the GPS community at Large um during her four-year tenure at GPS our academic rankings have incl improved drastically on niche.com U.S news and World reports and public school review in fact according to niche.com we are now ranked third in the best school districts in

090Connecticut and third in the districts with the best teachers in Connecticut that is in large part due to Dr Jones's thoughtful and Visionary leadership um and the um we've been infinitely lucky to have Dr Jones at our house thank you Jen Ben you're up hahaha good evening members of the board chairman Kelly Dr Jones and guests my name is Jen Ben savango and I am the proud principal of Old Greenwich school this morning 59 fifth graders sailed on from ogs to Eastern Middle School being an ogs dolphin means that your roots you live in Love by the very special Old Greenwich core values of be here be kind be safe and be gentle you work hard to achieve your personal goals while celebrating the success of those around you we are so proud to send

091them off with a strong academic Foundation sense of self and as advocates for their community as the advocate for my entire ogs Community I'm here this evening to ask for your continued support for our school building renovation project later this evening you'll hear from our dedicated building committee chair and professional team about the detailed estimates developed for our project I want to take a moment to thank our entire volunteer committee for meeting at 7 A.M sometimes 7 PM sometimes on weekends in person Zoom from afar while on business and pleasure in Japan London California and Chile our committee has dedicated 50 meetings and countless hours for the betterment of the Old Greenwich school and Community the presentation will highlight the efforts taken to address the immediate needs necessary to establish a safe secure and accessible

092school for all in Old Greenwich I also want to take a moment to thank Dr Jones for her efforts to prioritize the needs of our school community and that of my colleagues Dr Jones is a Hands-On superintendent who has always had the best interest of the Schools staff and students at the Forefront of her mind just last week as the red Haze spread from Canada through Greenwich she called me throughout the afternoon to ensure our 120 year old school was faring well with the dropping air quality both inside and outside of our building she was concerned for the safety of my students and my staff having worked for 17 yes 17 superintendents in 25 years in Greenwich it is comforting to know she will always answer the phone and thoughtfully respond to the needs of

093our special school by the shore the ongoing support of our building committee the Board of Education and Dr Jones are deserving of the greatest Old Greenwich award we have the Old Greenwich School dolphin award for a living are core values with Dolphin Pride so here you go 30 seconds or are you that's okay thank you Jen Ben Clara kugelin she's not here she online she's online go ahead Claire good evening um Claire Claire kogalen um I'm speaking tonight as a community member a taxpayer um a Greenwich parent um wanted to talk about a few different things I support the contract extension for Dr Jones and just to remind people that um before Dr Jones the communication I mean the communication we get from Dr Jones is unparalleled uh the weekly messages all of the Publications

094that have been put together during her tenure to really keep parents as informed as they as they want to be and I appreciate that um I also uh want to indicate my support for the Old Greenwich project but I want to turn my attention to the CMS Ed specs you know now is the time thank you to the board for your work and collaboration with the large team of Educators who've worked countless hours in developing these appropriate Ed specs the 81 000 five square feet of program space to deliver a building that supports Collaborative Learning you know this is not a super-sized school as some claim and I would like to share something that you know multiple Architects commented positively on the thoughtful work that was put into the program space and size and given

095the bipartisan work on the adjustments to the program space I know the community looks forward to the entire board moving these specs forward today and when you vote vote as is your duty in the best interest of the students children and a school building are not political and they deserve a modern facility thank you okay Diana Martinez is she here or online Diana no Thomas Kenya hold on Joe she's online I just unmuted her Diana you can go ahead good evening Dr Jones chairman Kelly and members of the Board of Education thank you for this opportunity to address you also thank you Dr Jones for condemning the display of hate at our towns long last week when a bigoted group who will not own up to their act desecrated the safe space in which we

096proudly hang our flag our rainbow flag various groups have pointed fingers rather than make a direct statement of support for the rainbow flag and what it represents but we will need to be clear to our lgbtq plus families and children that we Embrace who they are one way we can do that is to give equal representation to all groups and our curriculum and to teach children the story of their people and the ways in which that story intertwines with the largest the largest story of humanity this is what I set out to do when I asked to read a book about gay pride to my son's fifth grade class an obvious Gap in his curriculum even though two of his peers in class have parents that identify as lgbtq Plus I chose a historically accurate

097children's book about the Stonewall riots which tells about the courageous acts of rioters in 1969 which led to the designation of June as gay pride month but we were told the book did not portray police officers in a positive light we were given a list of books featuring gay characters that we could choose instead which we did parents would have to opt in if they wanted their children to participate in the reading and we could only do it in the courtyard unless it rains I wanted to read you an excerpt from my son's letter to his principle about the matter quote you say Stonewall book shown you say the Stonewall book shows police in a negative light but it's the truth police were destroying the community that gay people built the one and only place

098they could go to be free and be themselves the only negative thing about that was the police imprisoning them not the author telling about it I think you should reconsider not letting the true meaning of gay pride be learned in school I would similarly pose my son's challenge to this board Pride isn't just a flag we have we wave to create the illusion of diversity it's a commitment to embrace people who've been stigmatized and marginalized and to tell the truth about their experiences if we want to avoid incidents of hatred toward the lgbtq plus community so brazenly posted on our lawn we will have to tell the truth about history we will have to honor our students and their families identities through what we learn and talk about in school through the representations of what

099children even recognize as families and heroes in the books they read this year's this year's fifth grade literature selections were Fierce Ben's fifth grade class read stories about racism the struggle of Mexican-American Farm laborers yet his teachers had to present the option to opt out to parents and I know they receive criticisms for these selections teachers have to walk on eggshells to teach what are considered classic young adult texts I think we can all agree that it shouldn't be this hard to tell the stories of underrepresented and marginalized groups many of whom are the very students sitting before thank you Thomas Kenya am I saying that right Kenny it's Kanya Kanye yes uh first of all thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening and also thank you I wrote emails to every single

100one of you and you responded and took it on the speaker I also thank you about that very very big and I wasn't unexpected I stand here tonight um about the policies at glennis board of education has put into place that are harmful effect to my family in 2015 my husband and our two children moved to Greenwich our children have attended North Miami school from kindergarten and by short days will move up to his middle schoolers while our family is unique to Greenwich and the only one like it in North Miami have a unique family structure with two fathers was never an issue and they're the classmates we never felt any sort of discrimination until last year when I was approached by another parent to read a book about the rainbow flag that highlighted the

101diversity in the gay community despite teacher support we were told that such a book could not be read in Greenwich due to Boe policy at first I did not believe that such a policy could be legal in Connecticut in fact I called my childhood friend lieutenant governor Susan baisowitz who confirmed the policy was targeted in family structure was unexpected was explicitly not allowed in Connecticut however through our efforts we were told we were able to read the book in a secondary school location and then told the pen and then told that herons would be happy to opt in their children to hear the book read in the end 100 of the parents opted in and we were allowed to read the book in the classroom this year we again approached School administration about reading a

102book about the Stonewall riots to their fifth grade class again we have been relegated to a secondary school location and again parents have the op to have the opt out in the reading The Stonewall wire is a critical part of Human Rights expansion in the United States history serving is the home of the modern day gay rights movement but also the model how rights can be gained by all marginalized and targeted Americans a fact that many medical members do not know 20.3 percent of gen Z's identified as lgbtq given this the introduction of gay rights movement needs to be a priority the lessons can be learned from Stonewall and any great right movements are especially pertinent today's America in States not only are gay community being targeted and misrepresented and laws being passed at am

103aim to once again marginalize us but also worse for our trans transgender brothers and sisters who we have who who have been even further targeted and marginalized given the history of Stonewall the gay community will not take these matters sitting down and we'll use our great resources energy intellect to beat back all these laws based solely on these hate and ignorance they'll skip ahead tomorrow I've given in we will probably have to do set a radar in the courtyard truly a sign that the Greenwich Board of Education abused gay students gay parents and gay allies as third class citizens the collateral damage is my 10 year old boys I repeat my 10 year old boys to the collateral damage they're so proud of their fathers they're so proud of their family they're so proud of

104their family structure and this woman sat on public National Television sitting there condemning us thank you let's not give personal twists this guy get personal it is personal I'm sorry I'm trying to pick people up and then when Once gay rights and gay I have them here thank you thank you appreciate it okay let's go to the superintendent's report Dr Jones I know we had a bit of a little spillage over there so hopefully uh we can recover without any damage take your time thank you Mr Kelly um first of all just a reminder and I know the students have all mentioned it but tomorrow is probably our one of our biggest days of the year and that is graduation um look really looking forward to that and it's supposed to be beautiful weather kind

105of like it was last year where it has little bits of rain during the day and then hopefully when the Sun goes down it'll be Breezy and cool so that's what we're all hoping for um also just there is a report on here tonight for summer school I sent some some of you sent a few questions we sent those out to you so hopefully um you had a chance to read those but I would be remiss if I didn't mention Tara Fogle and the work that she has really done um you know pulling summer school together it's an enormous job and this year we started with the first Challenge and that was just where can we even host summer school because we have so many summer projects that are ongoing and of course we work

106with our partners in the town with park and rec they've lost the Civic Center Eastern Civic Center so most of our buildings are closed in the summer so great job Tara and also Dr carabillo helps her and helps her in preparing for that and I think when you hear that report tonight you'll you'll also see that we're continuing to grow that program it looks so different than it did several years ago and I think our parents are really grateful for the options that they have to make their summer look right for their children and what works for them and then I just want to say congratulations also we have a lot of moving up ceremonies that have started for our fifth graders congratulations also to our eighth graders and those will finish up I think

107the last one is actually on Monday so um we're winding winding down so thank you thank you Dr Jones I forgot to mention this before we are kind of pushed for time a lot of us all of us have graduation tomorrow so uh uh if anyone has any questions of the superintendent please put your hand up otherwise we'll go into the next thing going on it's going twice I see no questions uh now we'll go to uh reports of officers committees and Liaisons would anyone have a report they'd like to give Christina super quick the um the have a Meyer committee which Joe and I serve on has continued to meet at present um we're waiting there's an engineer an engineering firm who we've worked with we've hired who's doing an assessment of the building

108we expect to get a report in July so that's where we are thank you anyone else Kathleen I'm just real fast the Greenwich Alliance the party was a huge success with uh 50 Avid Alum Avid Educators and many Community supporters including Dr Jones and chair Kelly uh they officially launched the Avid success Alumni Association today they were awarded their first CIP check from the Greenwich United Way for their Avid success transition to College summer program and tuning into music recital was last week at Western Middle School 50 students performed for proud parents they're graduating two students who've received these free lessons for seven years and have been playing at Greenwich High School school psychologist Alina and Fabian were busy this week with two dare to care programs this is a continuing Grant from the alliance

109the programs include a performance by renroe students to preschoolers at New Lebanon about friendship and a mindfulness Retreat this past weekend for children and parents next Michael so the research Ed conference Dr Jones was able to identify a new date uh recall we we had some issues with the first date so right now the um and we got confirmation today that we are targeting April 6 of next year for uh to host the research Edge conference at Greenwich High School excited about that and more more work on that over the summer in the fall great work that's great work anybody else I will talk quick about the uh the ability committee nobody talks about which is the JC building committee we are about to sign a contract with the if we haven't done already uh

110with the architect to design the elevator which could attend access all three floors but that's part of the debate whether it's only two floors or three floors making the second floor Ada accessible uh we're also looking at or have designs on the entryway about security and Ada access to the entranceway of JC and uh it it looks promising we'll get a lot done in a very near future okay not more one more Michael oh point of order sorry so so there's no more of the um there are two agenda items that have a lot of community members um here for seaac and the Old Greenwich building committee I don't know if there's any more but given the hour I'm wondering if it makes sense to to to to move both of those intended items amend

111the um up to so that we can um then move forward with the rest of the agenda yeah go ahead do you have a I was gonna say one I one I know is an action item so I know it's but really off you know not just moving in between I think the discussion items Michael I think we can move quickly on these couple items can we give that a shot and then if we drag out then we'll uh we'll readdress that the Emoji guys are on the clock too so right oh that's okay that's important uh I'm going to try School entryway Christina discussion items thank you um and you know what maybe we just move the OG as the first action item at a minimum how about that um okay James um okay

112ghs entryway which um a letter was shared with the board from our esteemed building chair Steve Walco who's gonna I'm gonna drag him he's here yes um to fill in so with the bids were Steve I'm not going to steal Steve's Thunder the bids were received um it's a little closer than we had a little higher than we'd wanted um but I think we just in the interest of transparency and a community conversation Steve will present where the building committee was we took a vote this morning um to go through the project and just so the board understands Where We Are please Steve come join us we always like to have you join us good evening members of the Board of Education Steve Walker chairman of the Greenwich High School building committee I see Dave

113Stein is here who's also our architect but I think he's here on another project I'm hopefully not on our clock um so we need to ask him to come so he's not on our state and and uh this is really for an update uh the bids came in and if you were around for the Hamilton Avenue construction project back in the day you know that we started that project within budget but without enough contingency and if you've done any building projects whether at your home or otherwise you know that generally speaking you're looking for about a 10 at minimum contingency just so that when you start the project you have enough money for change orders in this case our bids from what we thought we were coming in with and don't forget we we relied

114on the values that were given to us on the first round came in about 14 percent higher than uh we had estimated and and we have built in we thought enough uh leeway there um that we we had uh two bidders all within a hundred thousand of each other uh so clearly that's where the market is for this project um with that the lowest bid was uh 2.930598 um as you know we have a total of 3.5 million if you include the architectural fees uh some of the soft costs the engineering fees we've already done soil testing so that was already included you end up with 9.8 percent now we probably wouldn't be here tonight just describing this to you if it was just 9.8 percent contingency close enough to ten but we also factored

115in uh use of an owner's rep and so while the committee hasn't fully decided this yet what's likely have going to happen is we're going to reduce the amount of time we have for owner's rep we have a per hour cost uh and two proposals for that so we still have to make that decision and I think we're going to end up around a seven and a half percent agency or so and again I think this is just the building committee working through this and we just wanted everybody to be aware of this um as we proceed down this project the goal still is as I like to say all the time to all the contractors and Architects there should be no change orders but if there are will be prepared uh at least up

116to around that seven and a half percent or so um and so we just want to make sure that all of you know about that so that if there is an issue especially with soil and I always hate to say that but it's a reality in Greenwich and especially at Greenwich High um you know we we have some money but we don't have a lot of money thank you Steve Karen so given the type of project that this is right so it's the entryway it's coming off of and it's already has yeah probably not the best way to say it but right it's got the slab going in which you'd have to dig up so I imagine you're worried about what's the soil is under the slab but what I'm saying is be given the

117type of project in comparison to other major renovation projects like we're not ripping stuff down we're really adding stuff in do we think or do our uh you know our building experts tell us that a contingency of this nature is obviously much different than what we're suspecting to have at Old Greenwich because of the work that we're doing here has that been a part of the conversation it has and and the two areas of concern with this project in particular would be a little bit of the soil although we have tested and we're not going down very deep to your point all we're doing is putting in a slab so we're not we're not really going down deep and it's in the front of the courtyard so we've already tested we believe it's clean and

118we've already accounted for that at least in theory so unless we find some hot spot we think we're good the other area of potential concern is whenever you connect to a building you always have the potential with that connection that there's uh a field condition that you couldn't have seen that none of the professionals could have seen or envisioned and therefore that connection there might be an additional fee that might be needed if there's a change order in that regard um so the short answer is we know of the two areas that we're that you would just generically know about we think we have enough money for this and we think our our uh uh even at seven and a half percent or the give or take is going to be sufficient I I think

119the worry a little bit is just the the dollar amount so it's nice to talk percentages but even on uh so let's just say it was five percent contingency just to pick a number make my math easy um at three million dollars which is round numbers the project you're talking about only 150 000 that's not a lot of money if in fact you hit contaminated soil or something like that so um I think we're comfortable with it and and at seven and a half percent give or take I think we're good it is a smaller project and you're right it's a it's a relatively simple project it's a box on a slab punch a hole through a wall and connect to admin so yes uh we agree with that uh proposition I could jump in

120again please um because of because of the limited scope of the project we feel there's a limited change orders there's just there aren't that many things that we're going to be able to that they're going to be required like it's not like when you're doing a ton of trim or you're doing window you know it's a very small scale project to begin with so there's yeah there's no Plumbing well actually there's heat there's a little bit of heating but an electrical but we're tying into existing systems and we have some HVAC so you know we've again you know we're going into the existing office space and doing a little reconfiguring not big expensive kind of things that finishing stuff tends probably to be less expensive than the bigger things um so I think the committee

121really felt like um that it's an opportunity and we also have some great professionals and architect and a builder on the building committee who are very knowledgeable and helpful um and in the in the trade so in terms of our use of an owner's rep we also have a couple of experts on the committee itself which is helpful thank you uh anybody else thank you Steve that was great always good to see you nice to see you guys see you at graduation of course thank you okay next an abbreviated version of where we are with Central uh sorry with Western Middle School fields yes they meet on Wednesday so uh Dan prepared uh let me know where they were this morning uh the submission to Planning and Zoning was separated into two pieces uh the

122first submission regarding soil grading drainage Etc was approved the second submission for detail of the ancillary work including retaining walls walkways lighting and plantings uh were submitted on June 2nd and planning and zoning meeting for submission two is scheduled for July 6th and the remedial action plan addendum was submitted to that Regulatory Agencies on June 2nd the initial response was that no additional meeting was going to be required but they did ask one representative ask us to put June 22nd on hold just in case they had additional questions and construction documents are to be issued on June 16th to the team for final review and notification of the project has been issued to the pre-qualified contractors and vendors cool any questions fantastic stick ing up this one Karen briefly just one uh quick question since

123I know we're heading into summer season and uh I'm sure parents are interested when might that mean that we could possibly have a shovel on the ground we really think right now it's looking more like August um by the time because the you have to give the construction team time to get everything you know pulled together and what it's going to look like and getting on and off the property um but again we're very very pleased with Where We Are cool thanks everybody else good move on uh summer school planning and you want to come up and do that one is that you or is that Mark um be honest yeah they're all perfect okay everyone seen the uh anyone have questions for summer school Christina um so thank you so much it was helpful

124Tara um one question I had and I know this kind of relates to what Tony was saying about um locations I know last year we had a dedicated school where we had students who were invited to their own school to come um did we look into that we did like what was the thought process because it seems like we are not doing that again and I just kind of wanted to hear about why yeah we do not have satellite programs happening this year at our Title One schools and I think Dr Jones can share a little bit more about the rationale there I think Western is a building that's closed um JC we're expecting also big projects there um New Lebanon I'm not really they didn't do it last year neither did they oh and

125I know some people couldn't hear that probably because it's not a microphone um they were not able to do the deep cleaning last year because of the volume of Summer work so they need the building back this summer in order to be able to get it make sure they're maintaining the building okay any further questions Karen I'm sorry okay so when what about him we didn't look there hemab didn't do it before because you have to be able to have enough staff that want to do it and work in the summer and they just they haven't been able to have that in that particular building um and just generally about um yeah I saw a lot of numbers and stuff just a general sense of our enrollment this year versus last year do like where

126where do we sit um we're on path to be to surpass last year's enrollment at this at this time we have a significant uh greater enrollment significant changes at the middle school is where we have the most increased enrollment for this program and it is important to know that the capacity of our program is often determined by the space that we have and we do have more space at Eastern than we had at Western last year so we were able to invite some more students which means that we have more students enrolling in that five to eight program we also are continuing a rolling enrollment for all the ghs for credit recovery courses and we don't close that until the final grades are out hey Karen um I know one of the questions that I

127had sent in that I didn't get a full clear answer on was um I know for students that are invited to the program we do provide transportation for uh I think is that correct yes so our transportation model is we provide HubSpot transportation for all invited students k through eight we provide door-to-door transportation for all esy students we provide HubSpot transportation for all Pre-K esy students and then for our 9 through 12 ghs students we do not provide transportation because each of their courses are different amount of hours so it wouldn't behoove us to transport each student based on individual hours and so if we have Hub locations anybody who wasn't necessarily invited but if there might be room at a bus would we be able to offer those extra seats yes so we do

128so so if you had a high school course that was starting at 8 AM and you have a hub spot near you you can get on that bus and those parents who have reached out have been in contact with our transportation manager so we do understand the anticipated enrollment and seats available on those buses and all of our hubspots are on the website if you guys wanted to take a look and I know that this not does not necessarily need to be said but anybody's watching I guess you said there's so enrollment is still open for some of these uh programs and courses correct high school credit classes and our um math uh five acceleration courses for Middle School there is still open enrollment we do have some spots left the amount of available spots

129left is posted on the um registration website so parents would be able to see that thank you I see no more questions Tara thank you very much that was great we'll move on to uh Karen Hurst could you run the ciac report discussion I can we have um some of our to our incredible ciacca co-chairs um I'm sorry Jenny Reynolds and Audra McDonald and I will let them um take the wheel and beforehand I just want to thank you guys for the incredible work uh that you guys have done this so far this year and um no we'll be meeting soon to sort of start focusing on uh next year and all the incredible things that you have coming there so let's hear about all the great things you have for this year and looking

130ahead to next year thank you um hi I'm Jenny Reynolds and I'm here with Audra Donovan and we're happy to present so highlights from this year's ciac report next slide we're really proud to be part of CXC is a council made up of parents Educators administrators related service providers and community members and we're all really passionate about making Greenwich the best possible place it can be for all Learners next slide the seat Council votes every year on what our committee work will be this year we chose these three committees Behavior prevention and intervention consistency and enrichment um the Committees themselves are made up of both voting and non-voting members and all the Committees are a combination of parents and District staff um of a wide variety of positions we really encourage you if you have

131not already to read the full report it's got a lot of details many examples so staff and parent experiences and much more detail than we can possibly do tonight next slide so in the behavior prevention committee we had seven staff and seven parents and we chose these five areas of concern and focus to guide our conversations and our recommendations to you next slide before we even began our Behavior conversations we decided to just stop and take a moment to create a foundational framework so that we knew where we were going um and and that we were all coming from a common place so we created this list and I included in the slides because we're really proud of it and we feel like just doing this list alone would solve a lot of problems so

132we ask you to consider adopting this within the district before we go into the recommendations for the behavior committee I just want to make sure that we relate to you that much of our work comes from and understanding that there is a huge Paradigm Shift happening in behavioral Neuroscience this is coming because of a four to five decades worth of research and Child Development and in challenging behaviors and this research is showing us overwhelmingly that the traditional ways of looking at and approaching behaviors are not the be-all end-all the traditional ways are looking at behaviors as voluntary willful things that could be corrected with consequences rewards other compliance strategies and the simple fact is that the research is overwhelmingly telling us there's a better way this better way is looking at research looking at the

133behaviors differently it's looking at what the child's brain is perceiving and when a child perceives something as threatening whether or not we see it as threatening it can send them into fight flight or freeze when a child is in fight flight or freeze their brain is offline and this is when behaviors happen the best thing the research says to do when this happens is to help the child regulate by co-regulating we need regulated adults to help the children regulate we don't need compliance strategies so there are a lot of um this paradigm shift is happening a lot and with parents in homes and it's happening in some schools and we're asking you to start considering this as you work towards um supporting children with challenging behaviors here in Greenwich next slide our recommendations for the

134behavior committee start with getting some more consistency um we're there's a significant variability in classroom environments across the district ranging from trauma-informed classrooms to authoritarian classrooms and sometimes this happens on a switch of three minutes between periods that's a lot for a student to try to process and so we really need something that's systematic that is common language common strategies common approaches we want a strong focus in tier one interventions and that would include creating safe and structured environments positive connection connections trusting relationships udl class size and Matrix we really want to look more closely at what we do for those children who are still having challenging behaviors despite these structured environments right now we're using a lot of rewards and consequences and they're not working we need to start shifting towards more trauma-informed and

135restorative practices and we need to really build in time for team discussion planning reflection adjustments right now a lot of times after a behavioral episode in a classroom there's crisis management and then there's not necessarily a meeting afterwards especially in secondary to start to make adjustments so the nervous system is more heightened the behaviors get bigger and the cycle continues next slide in order to um really adopt this and get everybody on board we need to have better training and this training needs to be district-wide at every staff level this needs to be trauma informed and Neuroscience aligned and we have had lots of I know that Audra will talk about this too but there have been lots of staff that have asked for training to have more small group sessions coaching follow-up accountability so

136that there is an extension of the training beyond the initial presentation these small groups especially when there's multi-discipline allow them to brainstorm to to trial and and think through real life problems and to um to really see what their individual impacts are it might not mean so much for um an Alp science teacher to go to a behavior conference but when they're in a small group talking they get the sense of what impacts um the day in the life of a child that struggles um paraprofessionals we we we know that they need um training and um we have lots of reports that some paraprofessionals especially the part-time paraprofessionals don't even have touch points with their sped case managers so the whole year we've had some reports that the entire school year the paraprofessional has never

137had an opportunity to meet with the sped case manager about the students that they're seeing so there's a lot of winging it happening and we need to make sure that we're supporting the full-time paraprofessionals sometimes do get more time because of there's wraparound times at the beginning and the end of the days um we also hear that reports of paraprofessionals are being rotated frequently at the secondary level so they're not with the same student all the time sometimes they're seeing multiple students at the same time and knowing what the research is telling us about building trusting connections and relational safety we really want to look closely at this we've offered in our um report many options of schools of thought for trauma-informed practices and options for helping these paraprofessionals from reinstituting the paraprofessional Academy in

138the summer to just even having book clubs to just start helping them have more skills next slide please um every meeting that we had for the behavior committee we ended up talking about Staffing even though this was not one of our original Focus areas it became a focus area because it was constantly brought up we are hearing NC act that staff are feeling stretched thin particularly mental health professionals and special Educators it's um leading to levels approaching burnout if not already at burnout and when we go back to what I had said earlier about a regulated adult is needed to help bring a dysregulated child back to a steady state if if the teacher or the mental health professionals cup is empty they're not going to be able to help the kid so we need

139to think of ways to um to look at our staffing and also just look at how we can support and have more support um for even gen Ed teachers when a crisis happens um so one of the next two uh recommendations five and six are just two examples of things that we came up with that we thought would be low cost and easy implementation considering a Schedule C learning facilitator in each school to help support that has a broad background in udl um and uh trauma-informed approaches and is able to coach and help in crisis we also think finding moments of small breaks is very helpful this is research-backed everybody does well when they can take a breath or get a drink of water or go to the bathroom so finding creative ways to just

140bring micro breaks for both staff and students is going to help just get everybody back to a little bit more level state next slide please our last two recommendations in the behavior committee are around restraint and seclusion we've already heard from our leadership in the district that the district does not do seclusion which we're thrilled about we would just like the district to take a stance and put that in writing because there is no research that supports a therapeutic benefit for seclusion and we would like to just make this District policy regarding restraint um in the state guidelines for restraint it says that in cases of emergency where you're there's a threat of bodily harm restraint can be considered idea defines this risk of serious bodily harm as a substantial risk of death disfigurement or

141loss of bodily membral organ we are glad to hear that the restraints are going down in this District but we are hearing episodes of restraints happening for much more minor things than the things I just listed we would love clearer policies on what constitutes an emergency and we think that in combination with um implementing more of this trauma-informed approach and restorative practices will reduce the need for even getting to restraints in the first place I'm now going to pass it over to Audra and she'll talk about the consistency committee hi guys so I'm Audrey O'Donovan and I co-chair the consistency committee so everything that Jenny just spoke about and other stuff we've spoken about on the years if there if it doesn't is not done with consistency throughout our district nothing will ever change they

142came up with six sub committees within our committee that to discuss it was the first one was variations in programming could you switch who's the slide thank you so the first one was variations in programming the second one was the Staffing model the third one was the variations in staff training particularly about uh OG training and literacy training also about coaching there used to be some coaches some of the staff said they used to have coaches in the building like they might have a behavior coach and stuff within the building uh the fourth was communication from the schools in the district the fifth was hiring practices and turnover and the sixth was outplacement and percentages I'm just going to go briefly over some of the top recommendations from all of these committees the first recommendation

143was that mental health and behavioral concerns continue to be at the Forefront for all our stakeholders this is just is not just special education this is general education as well all the staff require training to proactively address any and all these concerns are special education children are in every class so this is General Ed staff and special education staff really need to have the training like Jenny said in the mental health and behavioral concerns the second one is the district needs to keep a Mastery inventory of Staff training and certifications resources programs and materials should be made readily available in each individual building with turnover sometimes you had a building that had tons of literacy staff if staff leave we might not have as much we need to have a master list and it has

144to be available to parents and to staff so we know what the staff training in that building are and we can upkeep it so we we know we want to upkeep it we we believe the district does if we don't have a record of it we can't do that every building needs designated sensory spaces available as well as special education spaces available again with the consistency some buildings do have sensory rooms some peop some buildings do have sensory walls we want to make sure that every child and every building has access to this also special education students must no longer be taught in hallways cafeterias or closets in the past our students have been taught in these areas and other General ed students have not we want this to be done at a district level

145that twice a year administrators meet with every building and make sure that our special education special education children are not being taught in hallways or in closets Continuum of service Services need to be evaluated by District level special education administrators often our parents have reported that they are told we don't do that here one building does it another building doesn't do it we don't want that anymore so in order to have this consistency we again we're asking on an administrative level to check to make sure if this is reported that we don't do it here it's investigated and we make sure that the buildings are providing the same services oh sorry I'm on the next slide the fifth one is building administrators should be able to make recommendations for their students rising to the next

146level often we hear that we're going to wait and see which basically translates to sometimes children fail before they get Services especially when there are staff recommended they need them so we want to stop that if a child if any administrator or parent is discussing that a child needs help Let's help them successful programs such as Avid and other programs that we see that are succeeding in other buildings we're asking if we can see if we we know we can't bring Avid it's a very large program to another school but maybe there's different aspects of it that we can let's evaluate what we're doing right and transfer it to another school as well and use it there number seven we would like to each we would like each situation where a student this is relevant

147especially for tonight we would like each situation where a student has to leave their neighborhood school to be educated at another GPS School investigated by a district administrator we all heard that Brave child talk about being bullying and bullied in a school she's that she's not the only one there are several children that have to leave their neighboring school for situations for bullying for other situations that they're they felt either the Ida was violated we're asking for the administrators and every single time a child has to leave their neighboring school to investigate what went wrong that that child had to do that often times and you you heard it from that brave child tonight say how great she is doing in her new school why couldn't that be happening why didn't she she feel safe

148in her neighbor at school we want to know why and we want an investigation investigation about that we had this written before she was here so just want to congratulate our committee who brought that recommendation forward number eight staff and parents should be educated on the district Staffing model as Jenny said again our committees are made up of not just parents their administrators related service providers and teachers everybody is asking about the Staffing model so we're asking that we share it with our staff so they're fully aware what it is number nine each building keeps drastically different building procedures record keeping and data collection similar to what Jenny was saying saying for some Behavior charts some schools give you a smiley face and that's what they send home to tell if your child did well

149together other schools will say they had a breakdown because of this and how many times they called out I don't know if it's not maybe if we improve training that it will be consistent but we need somebody on an administrative level to oversee that one school is not getting a smiley face and once schools get in detail description about why their child had a breakdown number 10. communication between schools families is notably different per School some parents who are in our committee said they knew who their special education manager case manager was they spoke to them often some parents said they didn't even know who they were and this was in January and they never even heard from them so we do know its policy that they reach out but it's it's not happening consistency

150throughout the school so we're asking if that can be looked into the same administrator in each building oversee similar processes in order to become experts and communicate procedures you just we have heard from parents in our committees that when they have had administrators who are overseeing special education who have had a special background the practice has been different and they have felt that the Ida and their child's that interventions have been drastically different from other schools so we're just asking whoever is overseeing sped to please have a special education background and have experience within it utilize the data we have to evaluate our processes we should we're asking to evaluate which school buildings have state complaints outplacements adversarial relationships with special education families we have schools that are amazing and our children are doing great

151things we have some schools that are you know are struggling we're just asking if we can evaluate so we can learn from it we can say why did we have this complaint what did we do wrong and how do we correct it for the next time uh I think everybody in our committee is dedicated to our kids we had tons of Staff tons of Administrators tons of parents we met probably once a month sometimes twice a month we're we're they're looking to work together so and I think we I have to say we've come so far we have so many you know Dr Jones Dr H we have a lot of these policies that have changed we have a lot of training that has come in but if no one's evaluating it no one's over

152doing having oversight of it and following through then it's just words on the paper so we commend everybody for the changes we've made but we want to keep it going and really change the trajectory of the children in our school um I'm just going to finish up with our enrichment committee we held two workshops this year for parents and really for staff as well our first one was a mental health panel with five uh GPS mental health professionals they were awesome they presented so many resources for families that PowerPoint is on our web page and is a great place to direct people for finding any resource they possibly could want and our spring Workshop was with Dr Jenna rufo who spoke about Ida the IEP and Universal Design for Learning it was an excellent presentation

153and the video is available for another five months on the web page and our slides will continue to stay on the webpage we also started in our CX meetings to highlight programs within the district for parents so we're trying to have more connection with parents and we're trying to highlight all the great programs that already exist in the district and so we just started that Spotlight in our past meeting we did second step and we're looking for forward to continuing that tradition next year to make sure that in addition to ask all our asks that we're also highlighting all the good next slide we just want to thank you for your time and for all the collaboration um that we've had especially with Dr hygen taller's office and um we are really excited about the

154work that we're doing and we as as Audrey said we're looking to find ways to collaborate with you in any way that we can to help forward these things and to just continue to make our district better thank you um well thank you guys for that informative presentation but even more so for the informative and really well thought through uh report you guys gave us I highly recommend everybody who has interest in this area take a look at it I also wanted to make note that there were a lot of things that you guys didn't put into this at the hard work that's been put in um throughout the year um you're have worked with the district to help create some of the forward-facing parent documents and other support materials for parents and things like

155that and I also wanted to note while there are mem 21 voting members and some alternates ciac also offers General membership status to any parent or guardian of a child with a disability or previously known or suspected of having one um amongst other things and so that information is all up on the Greenwich Public School website ciac has their own page under that with all of that information I highly recommend um parents who have interest or looking for more support um or education in this area take a look at that because uh this group has done an incredible incredible amount of work in just under two years of working with the district um and I know it seems clear we have a lot more work to do um but have seen a lot of great

156board movement and so I'll just open this up to to questions um so this report is fantastic I mean the as a veteran reader of seaac reports the uh um the Committees out to themselves this year and I think it really serves as a a model or example that maybe we can use in some other areas because obviously at the board level one of our biggest challenges is though looking under the hood right and getting down to the classroom level and what's happening is happening only so much ever comes up to the board level and this is a really great example of talking about what's really working but here are some a lot of really concrete examples of where we can be doing better so and I know and the rest of the board should

157know we Karen and I have had a number of conversations with the Seattle leadership this year about uh questions about holding us accountable like what do we do with this report because obviously it is an awful lot of effort that goes in this report every year and we talked about some systems of follow-up and follow-up in the fall and some and and and administration coming and talking through the recommendations and why they make sense was it at CX readings and I think that's important to mention you know at the board level because you know I hear at this because this is the beginning of the conversation um and has to be the beginning of the recommendations then we have to see what makes sense the more fun the other thing well I have the mic

158just real quick the um on the behavior side which you know was so many great so much great stuff in there and I was so excited to see because I'm odd I was so excited to see the the Neuroscience uh connections and things starting on page seven and things and as an aside performance costume gives me the side eye the um as and as as an aside um um you should know I mentioned the beginning the research Ed conference that we confirmed for April 6. so the founder of research Ed fellow by the move Tom Bennett um wrote the book on Behavior neuroscience and behaviors to use the behaviors off of the United Kingdom he's going to be here presenting in the district um all about uh connecting all the ideas you just talked about

159in here uh specific to to the science and things like that so I think that's a great opportunity for us to leverage a lot of the ideas you're talking about a lot more to a lot more to say I do think it's worth a qualifying uh Audrey just for a second the uh when you talk about OG in the report can you can you clarify you're not talking about Old Greenwich oh sorry it's a literacy yes so we just want to make sure that every building if a child is dyslexic that it doesn't matter where their neighborhood school is every building has the same trained staff so they can stay in their neighborhood School which speaks to our lovely uh younger speaker here about uh testing earlier and providing support earlier and we think if

160they're trained they know what to look for or General Ed teachers and special ed teachers so if they all have literacy training then a general a teacher can I mean even simple things in kindergarten if a child can't rhyme that could be a sign you know so we we can do more training on everybody in the future I saw Miss Carson's panda so I want to commend you for this report it was comprehensive and um I really do thank you for it and I thank you for always making recommendations that um it's not it's not just finding the problems but also suggesting some remedies um however I do think um that as a board and an Administration you know the onus is also here at this table within our power to make sure that when

161we see areas of concern like to me I see it as very concerning that you know staff are burning out or there's um it's there's a feeling of a lack of transparency because all of that undoes all of the effort that you know Dr Stacy Dr Joe owns you know you know we get emails and and I think gosh if there's a if there's a family out there that that is coming to us with a concern then then we're missing something and if they're using social media to amplify their concerns we are really missing something and it that perception that disappointment undoes so much of the good that we have tried to um to rectify years of you know real failure in special education here so I I really commend you but I think we

162also as a board as a you know as a district need to maybe have some more um FaceTime with you too to work through some of the issues of concern that I see in in the report for sure Ms Downey thank you Echo um just unbelievable amount of work that your committee and subcommittees put in and we thank you I know it's a labor of love um and appreciate putting together very comprehensive report and a lot to think about um I guess my question is more of a maybe it's a Dr Stacy question about kind of an action plan and next steps and addressing you know you get the report and kind of how do we move forward we get all these recommendations I don't know if you could speak to like the game plan

163I think we'd appreciate it you probably need to be on the microphone Stacy sorry to make you get up way to put me on the spot now um so whereas the report comes out we take a look at it and look at what are the recommendations that we can do right off the bat so what are the the ones that we have the staff the resources to implement then the next step is looking at what are the next next steps many of the recommendations are Beyond just my department so that's working in collaboration with Anne with Mark to see how do we do that when we're talking district-wide all-teacher type of things so how would we Implement those so it's kind of going through and looking at those at those different steps and then some

164of the some of the recommendations too we have pieces of that so how do we get some of that information we know what we have for State complaints we know we we know who's going where like we have that and then it's trying to balance the confidentiality versus transparency um with all of that and I know sometimes I share that with you guys in the executive session um but having that information and we we do take a look at that [Music] yeah thank you so I've still working my way through the very comprehensive report and I appreciate it because I I want to go through it with with great detail but I do one of the things I think that might be a benefit and I think maybe Laura was touching on this a little

165bit earlier is having more the touch points comment you know having more of a session so rather than having a bigger report at the end of the year uh that we're all trying to quickly digest and to figure out how to to manage it but rather have perhaps whether it's quarterly or we figure it out but greater touch points so we know what progress you're making and what things and Trends you're seeing and what your committees are coming up with so that we can be a little more proactive throughout the course of the year to give us greater lead time into coming up with action plans how we're going to resolve it and so we can Implement that and so that Dr Stacy has more time to figure out greater so that at the beginning

166of the next year like we've got something going so maybe if it's more on a rolling basis that would be helpful not saying that we need the full report at any point in time but again trends that you're seeing updates what committees are working on and how you're putting it together so that we can be more proactive in the sense of working in parallel rather than reactive to everything but otherwise I thought everything that you've come up with and and your suggestions and recommendations are great because I think one of the toughest part is saying here's the problem now fix it you're you're saying here's the problem fix it and by the way here are a couple of kind suggestions on how you might want to achieve that is a wonderful way and makes everybody's

167jobs easier so thank you thank you so just to address uh both of uh Ms Kowalski and Miss costen's comments um Dr mercanty Anthony and myself have met with the heads of ciac um most recently sort of to have exactly the conversation that you two had is how that this is their second year so they're still figuring things out as are we as to the best ways for us to work together it wasn't a criticism no no no no no I'm just addressing it's not meant to be a criticism it's that these are things that they as members of siac have already thought as well as without us as to how we can start moving forward now that they've got a good rhythm going during the school year to have more input here um and

168how we can better work together during school year as opposed to just getting an end of the year report um I'd actually reached out earlier we're going to be sitting down um and we're going to arrange a date to have that discussion so we can start some of those over the summer so that we start the fall off ready and raring to go so I did want to address both of your comments that we will be hearing more um in this upcoming year than we have in your past now that uh you know the Committees have have had two years of this under their belts and and we're really helping uh see where they want to go as well yeah we plan to provide stuff in September and working collaboratively with everyone and meet with

169you guys to give you updates on our recommendations throughout the year so okay yes I just I know the board is aware but the public probably is not but when it comes to Staffing and the Staffing pressures we have grown by 180 190 students over the this last year and just in special education and so we've already added two positions for next year that we're they're not in our budget but we have to have them and so we are I really appreciate your comments we do have staff who feel the pressure right now and um we're looking at Staffing very very carefully so thank you thank you thank you thanks guys okay thanks great hey Blaze time to turn off the Rick and Morty reruns and give your monthly financial report hey how's it going

170hey at least uh you don't think I'm sleeping this time Joe no no you know you're watching Rick and Morty okay so I'll be very quick because I know you have a busy agenda uh the financial report um it's fairly straightforward it's May it's the end of the fiscal year we've been doing a lot of work a big thank you to the other members of cabinet to Dr Jones um and many of the principals and program coordinators um really helping us clean up a lot of the financial data that's made uh financial management um fairly challenging and to really give a good picture but of key points um we ended up actually getting the second uh excess cost um payment for special ed and a lot of thanks to the work that Dr H has

171been doing we've been talking about a lot of the stuff she's done tonight um that expected payment actually just came in um at about 1.38 million um and so that's over the original like nine hundred thousand dollar that was budgeted um on the expense report we're really trying to work through the end of the fiscal year we have a number of budget pressures but between Transportation the budget freeze and the special ed interim um as well as a lot of the data cleanup we've been doing um things look to end uh fairly well um at the end but it's kind of a challenging time we have multiple fiscal years going on right now on June seventh we reopened um the Munich the financial system for actually fiscal year 24. so fiscal year 24 is also

172up and running that is so that everybody can at the school level can place a lot of their orders before 10-month employees leave and have the supplies and services ready to go and school comes into session and then we're closing out you know for the June 30 fiscal year um everything else is fairly straightforward in the report Capital we are really in the time period where we've been working on a lot of Contracting and getting ready to execute you know significant Capital over the summer um in Grants uh really a huge thank you to the finance team um you know Pat Meredith and Kimberly costoro and working with uh Stacy Mark and and and their teams as well on working through grants and coming up with a really solid Grant execution plans um remember this

173report is is as of uh May the end of May um and so just on on Title One Alone um in the last few weeks um Mark's team you know Tara Mike and and the whole crew have executed really over about two hundred thousand dollars with us in just about two weeks so getting those grants um spent down you see a significant month to month um decrease in terms of heading towards that execution rate the school lunch fund is is doing very well right now um a major driver of that will now be the cash lieu of Commodities unlike many other school districts the town of Greenwich has cash reimbursements from the federal government instead of participating in direct food provision and it's based on participation so clock is is significantly higher than expected and

174just working very closely we meet regularly with the scss team we have bi-weekly meetings we we meet often and just kind of monitoring the uh the the financial condition of scss but we should be in in Fairly good shape there so that's a quick overview and I don't want to take it does anyone have any questions Christina hey boys um how are you um on the last page of the report I just wanted to talk about um because this is kind of like the transportation update and kind of go into our year-end number and we have a budget well budgeted there's an item a deficit amount for a federal court representation of 125 000 yeah you could just walk through those that last chart on the last page obviously electricity is our electricity cost over

175time is what it is the special ed is on the previous page substitutes is our substitute teachers correct yes that's correct those those are all fairly straightforward and ones that we have um you know discussed at length the federal court representation is so there's a federal court case that involves special education and the the Law Department um is our law department and they are we have a Consolidated legal service um but they they chose to use outside counsel for a specific course for a specific case and it was running it's thousands of dollars a month um and then we were advised um that Stacy was kind of advised that because it's special education they don't budget for special education law uh they weren't going to pay for it um and so this was an unexpected

176expense we actually still have about 55 000 in outstanding uh bills to shipment and Goodwin and we we disagree with the interpretation of the con of the Consolidated service we're working with the office of the first Selectmen right now on this and will likely probably look to the board um the BET and maybe the first selectment at a later date over the summer to really to really hash out maybe a memorandum understanding because kind of this is this is a for example this is a federal court case uh we're being represented by the Law Department the the law department has outside counsel um that they brought in and they're running the entire case um and like every other case this is typically covered by the law department but for some reason because it's special education

177law and we were advised that that they weren't going to cover it so that's the concern there but this is something have we had this kind of issue before or is this a you know unique set of circumstances and and just you know when when litigation gets farmed out by the Law Department usually they pay it pay for it isn't that correct special education uh law would be the only exception my understanding is that um you know something similar happened about 10 years ago and the Board of Ed paid for it and that's really one of the only examples I'm not sure if that necessarily sets the standard um as far as I know the my interpretation was that the law department is a Consolidated service every Department in town if we were talking about

178being treated the same pays their own legal Consulting and special ed has a legal Consulting budget just like human resources has a legal Consulting budget and that's the same thing at the town every department has legal Consulting but my understanding was that typically legal representation in court where we are you know being sued would be a expense that would normally be both run and fully managed and then covered by the law department but in this case it was not let me jump in for a second uh because it's kind of unfair to really put that on him that's on us yeah no no I think it's a dialogue we need to have exactly where I was going no no and that dialogue has started uh so because my concern was do we even have the

17950 000 you said we're still in the hole to pay right which we have to talk to the beach we're we're gonna Joe you you ended this on the way I was gonna end it too which is that great minds think alike yeah exactly no this uh this is a um it's one where we're gonna have an open conversation everyone's actively at the table it's there's an ongoing concern because this case could go to the next level of court and the next level of court so this could be an ongoing something for an example and this could be many other examples um and so that's why we have an mou with Parks and Recreation that spells out every single Consolidated service and who is who does it um who pays for it and so the

180thought here with the first selectman's office us is to do that for all of our consolidated services the Law Department town finance and maybe go through each one of these and have a similar mou so that when these situations arise pretty much everything is spelled out already well this specific one the dialogue has started so we do understand it has to be resolved we can't just let it randomly settle so you're gonna like the notion of mou for going forward because then we don't have you know then we're not having some other board down the road absolutely discussion I was also just more focused on actually being able to have to pay the bill right now do we have the money for it we're going to pay the bill now yep because because out of

181that two three seven one eight three five that's before you take the impact of our interim that we received or or it's just kind of all funny money in there together yes yeah that would be so far that this is a deficit that we are covering that that's that's the deficit after the interim for special interests thank you any more questions Karen um so mate I just want to make sure I understand so we with this last line on this last page with Transportation savings the district will still need to absorb roughly 2.37 million meaning we have to come up with 2.37 million we are that those are the sources of deficits that is what our operating budget is absorbing correct so where are you finding that money from well we froze the budget in

182March and we then did a series of basically exercises throughout the whole um we we settled the number of deficits and basically pulled funds from from all the places and part of the freeze was working to cover these deficits this is really the reason that we froze and thanks to a lot of that cleanup work we're kind of we've pulled the funds a big piece of it is also a churn and salaries and vacancies that happen throughout the year so a number of the savings is coming from um salary savings thank you okay you good I will make you a motion no no no oh you are still on this topic okay I'm sorry just real quick please because I um I know we we passed the um the summer transfer authorization as part of

183the consent agenda um and since it's your first time through just when when we do come to September um obviously if there were summer transfers it would be good to have that support so definitely yep thank you I would like to make a motion to move uh move the Old Greenwich building committee into the first action item do I have a second all in favor we need a two-thirds vote that's unanimous thank you very much all Greenwich is now up Michael will you take control of this an action item so I have to make a motion to get it on the floor so so I would um like um uh before welcoming the Old Greenwich team here I'd like to make a motion um to recommend a capital budget amendment to the Old Greenwich School

184renovation project in the amount of uh 43 million uh 154 625 dollars 43 million 154 625 dollars would somebody like the second man you know budget weight budget amendment for what year oh 20 23 20 to 20 this this um 23 24. the current you're the coming year coming the upcoming year fiscal year 24. would you like the second I'm just trying to think if that's right because if we yes basically you're talking about yeah because we get five seconds okay discussion okay so I'd like to welcome so as you see here the many members of the Old Greenwich building committee is here as you heard I will I will spare a lengthy introduction because they've got um a lot of details to share the one thing you would do is worth pointing out you

185heard the um we celebrated our 50th meeting um earlier this week um they're excited to uh present that we sent out in the board bracket uh numbers around uh construction estimates the um and we're excited to uh we wanted to walk through and explain uh with the help of our Architects and Downs Construction where those estimates came from and the decisions for the board so with that said I'm going to turn things over to the our ever-capable um old goodness building committee chair Mr James Waters come come closer guys good evening Dr Jones and members of the Board of Ed tonight we're thrilled to provide you with an important update on our progress bottom line the Old Greenwich School building committee is in position to submit to the osc GNR by June 30th we expect

186to have schematic design complete by June 20 which will include a list of recommended modifications to the Ed spec to ensure ADA compliance we received professional estimates on our schematic design yesterday which is largely in line with our updates back in February and March tonight I'm um uh yes and and yesterday uh the building Community Committee unanimously accepted those estimates and guidance um uh to our architect to finalize this schematic design by next week and tonight I'm pleased to have our project team here with us joining us our uh Lawrence Rosati of the morgante group our owners representative uh David Stein of silver Petrocelli and Associates are Architects and Jeff Anderson and Ryan Patrick of Downs Construction Company our construction manager at risk we'll be brief and are certainly happy for the questions so uh

187let's go to the next slide just want to see what's there okay um yeah the the those motions uh are what the building committee approved yesterday let's go to the next slide please that they just articulate the things I just said um okay this slide you guys have seen this slide before uh there is a new element of it which is a in a big red box which you've been given a whole lot more detail uh but this is just kind of showing side by side comparison um the new information here is a comparison to the estimate we received from Downs you will see in a red box about two-thirds of the way down the page this is our the estimate we received is 540 a square foot the estimate is seven million dollars higher

188than what we discussed before but I want to note that 540 dollars per square foot is directly in line with renovation comps across Connecticut and in fact is cheaper than many other Renovations as you'll hear we design we've designed a slightly smaller Edition which saves us at least a million dollars and we've already done quite a bit of value engineering and we'll explain the four main drivers on the increased cost tonight on cost escalations we actually did a fairly decent job when we updated things before um and Lawrence maybe I just asked you to quickly walk the board through the assumptions that we used before and and you know your your perspective on how we did on that committee asked myself Morgan I need to come up with class escalations and footnote number one uh

18910 in 20 21 15 2022 12 and 23 and 8 and 24. what I did is what went back to the office for those two years we had six projects that we were working on um reviewed those projects in detail to make the recommendation of the 10 and 15 and going forward um we tie out with the Downs estimate for the current escalation and the future escalation okay great um okay next I'm going to turn this the mic over to David Stein from Silver Petrocelli who's going to show you some of the first images of what we've been up to yeah thank you everyone and um good to see everybody again um so the next I have a few slides here to sort of walk you through the schematic process we've as as we onboarded

190this project we we went through a variety of different solutions and have settled in on one that really hits the main drivers and mission of this project which is the Ada improvements and we'll talk about how we solve considerable amount of the entry piece um with that with some of the slides of that coming up um we also uh the HVAC Improvement so we'll talk about that hand spent to the overall just sort of Wellness of that of the building and then obviously the classroom expansion which deals with the overall enrollment projections and just providing the right size for the overall building so as we're looking at this first ground level floor plan just to give everyone sort of the orientation the big blue that you see there is a four classroom Edition we've actually

191downsized the overall arrangement of this from the original education specs in an effort to be able to save save money but what it really does is a classroom that's sort of nestled in the back of the paved area now has a much more compact design and circulation that sort of creates that Loop to the school so the circulation is much better the main driver of the Ada improvements was to reorient and actually go back to the original entryway which you'll see some images and maybe we could move on through the next slide or the next few slides um main level and second floor you could continue on um just because I want to be brief we could always come back to that and this is probably a good slide too uh this is the site

192plan so the site plan is the main entry off of the drive aisle what we are proposing to do is remove the main entry stairs and reorient the primary entryway at that level we need to do that by actually lowering some of the grade we're going to remove the plaza we're going to slope it downward and I'll show you images in a second but I just want to pause at this slide because it just gives you sort of the orientation from street level so that's sort of semi-circle area which is of the existing Plaza you'll see some 3D renderings in a second um now creates a brand new entryway you see the addition that's located in the back and we are creating an internal Courtyard which now also offers opportunities for more green space we

193are removing some of the paved areas and we're reorienting some of the play surfaces and outdoor areas next slide and I'll just go through quickly on this one just shows the amount of large trees and vegetation that's there so we have to make sure that we keep that vegetation in place and sort of augment that with the newer design the next slide of a 3D rendering and this is really our sort of first pass rendering okay we know we have a lot more work to do as we move through into the design development stage both the intent of what it's showing you is that that new entryway is now sort of carved down and creating more of a accessible pathway that entryway is secure so in concept it's no different than what we're doing at

194the Greenwich high school project in terms of creating a clear concise open looking design and then obviously working with the right vegetation to give a much softer look and balance to the overall piece as I mentioned the HVAC which is a considerable part of the budget and you'll hear that from our construction team is that we are going through the entire building and we're removing those existing systems and we're put inserting energy efficient systems that will fit within the existing building somewhat challenging building being over 120 years old and a variety of additions that have taken place over the years but we are striving to be as energy efficient as we can with those systems so it'll be new heating air conditioning and proper ventilation along with a fully sprinkler building and then really right

195sizing the building with the classroom Edition along with other improvements that will go along with it Ada improvements include bathrooms upgrades stair improvements door entry points and a variety of other elements that go along with the building so with that James I think I covered the majority and obviously answer questions so thank you yeah let's keep going in the estimate that's right next slide uh thank you very much again Jeff Anderson I'm with Downs Construction Company your construction manager for the old Granite school project uh just quickly uh because this is the first time I've been in front of the board uh Downs Construction has been around since 1934. we do and concentrate all of our work here from a construction management perspective in the state of Connecticut and we have extensive K-12 experience oscgr

196funded School construction projects multiple projects right now that are similar in nature to the old Granite school projects such as being multi-phased and occupied throughout construction which is what we would be dealing with ultimately Old Greenwich so thank you very much in terms of the effort that we've undertaken in the recent past is trying to take a look at these schematic design drawings developed by David and several Petrocelli Associates to come up with a budget that takes into account again our understanding of this type of construction process the oscgr requirements and the trade contractors that ultimately will support the bidding of this job down the line and we've done that by comparing for you up on the screen here the original estimates that James in Lawrence were talking about so originally at 24 million five

197hundred thousand dollars and then back in February an anticipated project cost of 35 million 910 and we've tried to outline at a high level now of how we got to our ultimate current budget of uh here over 43 million dollars it consists of uh increased cost escalation now that should being shown as a credit because we are recommending a seven percent escalation for a construction start of June 2024 uh the estimates from February were recommending eight percent but our data is indicating for a project that starts from a year now year from now excuse me would be seven percent uh we have some increased scope um increased scope uh to the extent of what was included originally by a company called cage D on that 24 million dollar budget that is required predominantly related to

198ADA compliance that was not included as part of that original uh estimate and process we have uh as of about a month ago the data associated with Hazmat abatement within the building uh so that is something that was not contemplated at the level uh in that original budget so we're seeing about 2.7 million dollars of additional impact because of that scope uh that scope that we see from that report is really standard for a building of this nature 1902 in additions going all the way up to 1994 if I'm remembering correctly but the older buildings are are typical for the Hazmat that we see in all schools throughout the state of Connecticut we also have extensive phasing costs of course as I mentioned before we're looking at a phased occupied renovation here so we have

199to look at ways to ensure that we are separating ourselves from the students and staff throughout the entire construction process I don't believe that the original budget contemplated the phasing costs required to accomplish the scope of work we have increased contingency which I'll talk about in a moment and we have a reduction in soft costs so we work collectively with James and Jackie and other members of the committee to look at the soft cost and reduce them where possible supporting the overall budget as it sits right now of 43.1 million next slide so um this is an outline of our approach to the estimate which had three options a b and c uh concentrating on option A which is the Ed specs option uh but with the inclusion of uh ADA compliance uh uh in

200additional scope associated with that so I'll ask to go to the next slide this is really the summary of those options concentrating on the option a column I just want to point out some major uh significant items especially contingency our recommendation at this level of project is that we carry a 15 design and estimating contingency because of the early stage that we're still at withdrawing development really slightly pre-sematic design if you will there's still a little bit more effort to get to a schematic design stage as we progress through the development of the drawings getting to design development and then construction documents that contingency goes away but our experience shows that at this level we need to carry that 15 percent for the things that have not been drawn yet in layman's terms on those

201early sets of drawings we also have a three percent construction contingency that will stay remaining all the way through our ultimate guaranteed maximum price that we submit to the town once we get to that point hopefully and then we also have a seven percent escalation so we're saying that there will be an additional seven percent of escalation in the construction Market by the time we start construction uh hopefully in the summer of 2024. um in terms of the soft cost I want to continue with the contingency discussion in the soft cost number that we have within this overall budget there's another five percent of contingency for the owner on the owner's side of the table that marks up our construction hard costs but also marks up the soft costs so for any unforeseen conditions down

202the line after we progress with the balance of the process the town has that contingency fund which is standard and proper uh on a project of this nature so uh James had talked uh briefly about uh the cost per square foot uh it is in line and matter of fact a little bit less than what we're seeing on similar jobs uh in the past month or two we've reconciled uh two projects in the city of Hartford that were closer to renovate as new that were in the 700 to 900 dollar per square foot for the renovation of those jobs so we've gone through as James also said earlier an exhaustive cost management process to the extent that we can at this early stage we have a little bit more work to do to make sure

203that we're fine-tuning this estimate to the extent that we can uh and we're going to commit to that value management throughout the process to make sure that we are providing the program that's necessary within the drawings that uh silver pasture Celia provided but we're also making sure that it's as economic as possible anything else expensive tmnc and then yes I I should highlight Thanks James um we have an estimate here that we presented to you that was reconciled with another third party estimator a company called PMC that works independently at the same time as us uh under silver patricelli Associates and then we got together and did what we call a Reconciliation process so really the the board should be looking at this in a town that this is a reconciled estimate in other words

204it's not just Downs it's not just pm and C it's a reconciled estimate of what uh the cost of this project should be here in the state of Connecticut and in Greenwich and if it's another year we're talking about an additional seven percent uh would likely be added to the cost that that we presented you to you tonight uh and that's approaching somewhere in approximately the three million dollar range on top of again the numbers that we have this evening next slide thank you uh again did you might just introduce myself my name is Lawrence I'm a project exec and the director of pre-construction for the morganti group I was hired and been working for Morgan for 30 years in owner of rep service for the last 20 years uh we were brought on by

205the building Committee in February of this year um in my 20 years I haven't seen a committee work as hard to make this project come to fruition at this point in in at its stage we've had weekly meetings with the building committee each and every week weekly design meetings we've had principles meetings we've had constant communication with Dan Watson and other members of of the town of Greenwich Jen is the principal has been asked You Know instrumental in in reviewing the design and approaching it we've begun the discussions with planning and zoning I've met with Patrick larrow two three times since February and Doreen is assisted so that we're familiar with the process of pnz and starting the pre-pnz application hopefully after successful approval of the budget here tonight we've also begun conversations with Rich

206Familia with the sewer department and I've also we've also contacted your building department of fire department Chris and John to clarify some permit costs this slide shows uh just it doesn't show the level of effort really but it shows what's happened since since uh since February uh in the month of March sbna has presented presentations of the parent Teachers Association to the teachers to the students one neighbor's session meeting and another neighbor session for the end of June the schematic design phase a tremendous effort by silver Petrocelli David and his team started in roughly March the documents were done late May uh Langan was out in early March to do surveys phase one surveys as uh as noted in the reports and and Langham was out as well along with silver Patricia April 10th the

207wing is the week of spring break the building was pretty crowded with design team members David and the rest of his staff and all his disciplines mechanical electrical Plumbing Engineers thoroughly reviewing the project Dean was out there along with David and Barbara I believe measuring each and every door for ADA compliance uh Langan had a cruel four out there uncovering all of the unknowns of asbestos so that when construction starts it can help it can go through smoothly once Downs put together a faving a phasing plan to accommodate all of the Hazardous Materials um we had a reconciled meeting I was part of the reconcile meeting as Jeff said the two independent estimators reviewing and coming to agreement on scope and uh costs um with the final review of the dog the documents um the

208bottom half of the chart is going forward with your approval uh the Ed Speck says James mentioned the professional cost estimate that we have um and with approval tonight or in the near future uh Downs in sbna and myself can work through with the rest of the state Grant applications next slide please um so this is the full-blown Milestone schedule that I created way back at the start of uh of the project back in February it's hard to read but the top third per se was the previous slide we just talked about upon proceeding with the project today and and and granting James emotions that he wishes to design document phase which start roughly um end of June and go through December construction document phase which start roughly in January and in April and then

209Downs would put it on the street for roughly a June construction start so we're ready to go to give Jen the building that she deserves thank you I love it all right next slide Mike okay um so I'm just gonna pause for a second uh and I'll get to the numbers in a second but you know you can see I hope you can see here why we hired the team that we hired right this is this is a this is a team you guys are you know I always hear well how are you moving so fast your team's working it's because of the team and it's because of Jackie Welsh who's our vice chair who has gone through every single line item on the schematic design and every single number and made sure that it's

210consistent with what you guys have asked us to do okay and it's because of Jen benzavango who's fulfilling four jobs right now uh at her school and still finds time to go and sit on two hour uh design meetings um and you know it's it's incredible so this slide is intended to be a summary I'm not going to you've seen that you already saw this on a previous slide but I wanted to focus on where those red boxes are okay first thing we're going to be doing at the end of this week is diving into that 2.78 number of net increase scope I want to make sure it's necessary my assumption based on the building committee's in-depth review is that it is but we want to confirm second I want you to make sure you're

211tracking on the additional three percent of contingency I told you before it was we needed 20 I'm being told by my team that I need 23. okay um and some of it may go away as we get to you know just as we go through the design process um and then finally the bottom box based on the funding that has previously been allocated to the project if construction funding is to be provided we would need an additional allocation of 39 million 565 625 dollars to be able to submit to the state on June 30. um I do want to reiterate that all of this everything that we've said assumes we start construction in June 2024 which means in 16 days we go to the state if the project is delayed past the June 30 deadline

212and construction starts in June 2025 we should all expect that an additional seven percent escalation will be applied to it and that will bring total project costs uh but to 40 45 7 45 7. was that what's that number 46 1. to 46 million 100. so in 16 days we're going to be at that point where we're embracing an additional uh three million dollars to do this to this project and it's already we've already seen how many extra dollars of it it's cost to date so um next slide please okay I'm I'm not going to read these words on the page but this is an extremely complex project okay we've been working extremely diligently to manage the costs it is an extremely complex project I will tell you that we have received extensive Community feedback

213at five separate meetings people like the design we're proposing we've Incorporated their feedback and there continues to be strong support for preserving this iconic structure and pursuing a phase renovation that eliminates the need for busing modular classrooms and keeps the kids safe foreign so we are standing by and ready to proceed based on the board's guidance we're going to present our final schematic design for your approval on June after June 20. we're ready to assist in reverting to the U.S department of education's office for civil rights within 15 days of your approval we've agreed that the town has agreed to that we'll be ready to submit our project to the state by June 30 if construction funding is provided um we plan to start design development and the Mi process this summer and we would

214be thrilled to begin this renovation as soon as June 2024. so thank you very much and we're happy for your questions Mr Kelly thank you a couple of just background questions I'll begin by by saying I'm gonna have to be the bad guy here I'm sorry I'm not prepared to vote tonight I'm going to abstain from voting most likely so I don't want to get in the way of other people voting but that's probably where that's where I'm going to be so I want to be able to manage everyone's expectations some of my questions and it's complicated why but why I don't want to waste anyone's time with the reasons why a couple of quick questions the uh kg and D the original budget I have cost for this before I Karen took on the

215uh feasibility and reduced that what was their their number back then do you remember that was that was the feasibility kg and you might not know this answer I should have asked you prior to this you mean from oh you're talking about from the facility Master correct your plan 38 38 million yeah 30 about 38 sorry 38. all right so originally back then the estimate and it was covering the same basic scope that we're working at right now no different scope different scope so it's Apple storages there there's multiple Scopes so one of the things that we've discovered in the in the design conversations that makes things a little more complicated is that the OCR settlement um came came after the feasibility so that's where some of the changes some of the some of the

216um that two two million comes into among to make it ADA compliance so so that's that's part of the part of the issue as well is that an additional two that's right okay thank you so it's 38 plus two so 40 it would have been so 40 compared to the 43 we're talking about right now is what the original estimate was years ago uh and they could not have taken into consideration the inflationary environment we're going through right now thank you um the percentage of the building we're addressing what is the percentage of the building we're addressing the HVAC were addressed in the entire building okay the Ada we are addressing elements of the entire building so there are certain doors that are we are required to address but we're not addressing every door um

217I think that's really the main piece of it in terms of its entirety HVAC and sprinklers are the entire building yes right so basically it's well we're not doing the entire building we're doing say including all the things you just mentioned saying 70 of the building 80 60 what do we what do we because we're leaving some stuff alone basically it's yeah since this is an alteration project we are we are hitting sort of strategic areas so it's hard to calculate what we're doing in totality um the HVAC and that what's that in terms of the percentage of cost that's probably a good way to look a large number you know I think that the way to phrase it is is that there's pockets of work Beyond those items that we were just mentioning HVAC

218sprinkler electrical upgrades and then focused at the main entrance uh focused at that the new office area which is part of the main entrance the the exterior section of course the addition breaking it through uh we have an elevator going in so it's really hard to say what percentage but just reach up in the air and pull me out like a percentage 90 60 I've got our estimating manager it might take him a minute if he uh open up his computer I'm kidding we we can't do that right now okay that's fair enough if you can't answer the question I would say it's probably about 70 if I had 70. thank you just just to be clear the things that we are not doing right is you you guys have not authorized us to do

219anything with the building envelope right uh we're doing not doing all the windows what are or uh or the or the the roof but I don't think I think the roof is mostly of the right a good age right um what are the other major things we're not doing sunroof uh you know I I don't need the detail because I just disappointed but thank you for offering it I do appreciate that and uh a question came up and this might not another one might not be able to be answered correctly but is this project uh completely remediating any uh hazardous material that might be uh within the building 100 or is there only partial remediation going on uh only partial maybe can I ask the same percentage or I thought on the percentage of how

220much stuff we're mediating and why are we not remediating everything from the building we send our kids to uh the plan right now is not to um there are certain components within the 190 Bill 1902 building for instance that are staying we are only going to be removing the hazardous materials that are required to accomplish the scope that's been undertaken percentage-wise I I honestly can't give you exactly the percentage what's left but but focused in the 1902 that would be one of the areas um I don't think we're chasing uh within existing walls as an example uh if there was still pipe insulation uh buried within a wall uh as a good example okay and uh stuff thank you all right 60 that's at least the number we can and uh I'm interested I will

221be interested in uh Karen and doing having done a feasibility myself on JC you're doing feasibility here I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts from the Delta between the uh uh when you're working on the feasibility at 24 million versus the 43 million now and you don't have to answer it just I'm curious just your thoughts well it's significantly it's a good chunk more um and obviously it would be nice if it was closer yes less right um I can appreciate what the run through that they've gone through with respect to what is the differences between the driving numbers um I know I have some concerns over what's driving the cost it it feel if I were to go from just it feels expensive but then again I have to go back to the

222fact that I'm not an expert in this area I don't do this forever I did mean to put you on the spot no it's fine I don't mind being put on the spot um I don't do this for a living and so well I could say it feels expensive the fact is I've got one two three four five gentlemen all standing behind me at 10 30 at night on a Wednesday telling me that they've done the work and they've gone through it and this is what it looks like um particularly the things that we didn't account for uh which are driving even more of a cost or obviously the abatement Factor uh the phasing Factor The increased cost associated with having the contingency element which when you're working at a building that's over 100 years

223old I think that's a good portion to take into account that you're going to have things when you open walls that you probably didn't expect before I do appreciate the fact that they've already undertaken the abatement portion of this because and looking at it because that would have been something that would have been extra so now we know what we're dealing with um I also think someone should say something on the fact of only a portion of the building is being evaded but that doesn't mean that the rest of it is somehow unsafe for our children to go so somebody please say that on the record or I'm going to hear about it in the papers tomorrow the other factor that is also being accounted for that I think is helpful um is that but

224so overall I'm yeah it's more but again we have to do it we have to get it done right I think the community has overwhelmingly spoken that they want this building and they want us to fix this building and something has to be said for that so we've heard them loud and clear um yeah also you've got to account for you know inflation and the fact that things are costing more money and we don't see those numbers generally coming down very quickly so if this is the price this is the price thank you Karen that was very helpful Mike I'm finished thank you can I ask uh silver petrocellular Downs to address the your point I I mean just from your experience I mean on the on the abatement piece well the town's consultant indicated

225uh when we were first reviewing um the findings of that report that there uh was not any you know safety concern uh within the school by what we found and and maybe do you guys every project that you see do you fully Abate every single bit of asbestos in every school that you've come across no we do not so as long as the material is essentially contained and concealed and not in any sort of a friable manner than it is lit left intact especially a building that was built at that age you would be essentially demolished in the entire building so as long as it's sort of inert and in its in its state it's safe to do and that's common practice throughout I think the entire country in terms of how you do that

226Miss first oh I I was gonna Echo Joe that just I know that we got this uh just yesterday as the building committee so there's a lot of information here to kind of dig through and I have a bunch of questions so I'm happy to send those um I'm not ready to vote on this tonight but I also don't want to hold this process up because as you mentioned I believe the number was 16 days um and I may just ask uh I I don't know where everybody else stands and so if others feel the way I do because I I know the building committee uh share Mr Waters has mentioned wanting to dig a little into some of this as well and I I'd love to be able since you guys have done such

227great due diligence to allow that to happen well we formulate our questions and get those to you if others feel the way that Joe and I do maybe there's a possibility that when you get to agenda we can put I hate to suggest another meeting next week um but I don't want to hold this project up but I'm I I want to make sure we do our due diligence as to give the time to you as the committee as well well right and my understanding is we probably will need one anyway because well we would need to if we were if we were talking about June 30th because we will need to revise the expense so in an interest of time I mean I know I have a bunch of questions but I I feel

228like they may be best since you know we have a lot of a lot of people here to kind of dig in and do them ask them you know why well no I was calling on Christina that's right well will you be clear Karen because I have a couple questions if yours was just a quick point so go ahead do that and then I'll do so my one point is you know we've been told by the CMS building committee uh or at least the experts within the building committee that the June 30th date isn't necessarily the fixed date that it just is contingent it really is a point of point for depending upon when we get our reimbursement back on when we file is that the same thing here so is there is there some

229magic to this num to this num date that we don't have with CMS yeah for us to file and do construction with to start construction in June of next year we need to file the application by June 30th with the intent to get on to the priority list in December to get authorization to proceed with that funding for next year does that mean we can't start the project or just we won't get any uh money back until you know a year later that's what I mean it just means does that eliminate our eligibility for reimbursement if we have to wait to put it in who knows the June 30th I'm just double check is it was it we heard something different from another committee so I'm just wondering the the per the process is that

230for priority projects the deadline is June 30th and you need to have full authorization of the funding by the Board of Education and and in your case the bet the legislative body needs to approve the authorization to submit an application by June 30th is so there has been confusion um and we're trying to get clarification from the staff perspective because they just reorganized the office of Das literally like two weeks ago we got the first email and um and Blaze feel free to chime in if you can articulate if I'm not doing good enough job we sent them that very question because the CMS building committee is under the impression they can submit anytime in in some regards that's true they can submit in September but then they're not going to go on the legislative

231agenda until fy25 and we you know I the conversation that I was in with the building committee members I do not believe in Greenwich that without an approved project that we're going to be moving forward on 100 million dollar building um but if you look at some of the language there is like an emergency clause and because CMS has a letter saying it's like a five-year fix and we've already burned through one year we're trying to get clarification because initially when we reached out to the office but there were different people there a few months ago it was the conversation was is there a way to actually get the project number and move forward we've had different answers um so we were actually Blaze was working on that today we don't believe that there is

232but I know they're shaking their head we've had different answers from the office so we're trying to get something in writing and just this was not my question but to follow up David and has learned the hard way with the high school entryway project where we've gone to the state twice and seeing the process and that's a different project because it's a non-priority project so it's not subject to this June 30th deadline um anyway um so become a like mini expert on state reimbursement um so just one thing thank you guys for a great amount could we get these slides sent to us that you should use tonight because we did not get them in our board packets so that was number one um just because that'll also and I believe in our previous presentation

233we had was there details about option A versus option B versus option C James or do we have that somewhere yeah we let us send you tonight we'll send you the um uh the presentation we'll send you I think you may have already seen the draft schematic design report which does include a checklist yeah I remember that yeah that's it's all in a lot of different places right now so yeah um okay a couple quick questions um the reimbursement rate while we're talking about the state on this project is the correct we start at 20 I believe everyone start at 20 as the high point and and we believe we're going to be at 15 effectively okay so just to get a sense of what the state reimbursement is going to be thank you um

234soil testing has there anything so what's the I kind of maybe I missed that in the middle of this about what kind of soil testing have we done what are we worried about where are we yeah so we um uh our consultant is Lang Langan engineering out of um well they have two offices Stanford and um and New Haven they provided a variety of environmental testing for us one they started with a phase one environmental assessment report which was completed that did not reveal any um any type of uh concerns to trigger us to look at a phase two environmental so from that perspective there's no concerns related to moving on to a further deeper dive in terms of in the building we tested all materials for asbestos lead and also any caulking that we

235saw we would make presumptive assumptions uh that we would be removing any of that for pcbs so we've gone through that overall piece in terms of soils we've also done geotechnical Engineering borings in the position of the addition those have resulted in knowing what we need to do structurally for the addition but they did not reveal anything that was suspect of uh environmental or contaminated type of soils from those results but we do have Wetlands to work around well we are within it we are within eight we are within the FEMA flood plain which we have identified in um and pinpointed exactly where that lands as a cross-sections through our site so elevation 13 is the number and our new addition is going to be at elevation 14 because we have to be effectively one

236foot above the flood plain so yes we also have um those soils we identified as part of our geotechnical report where our groundwater is going to be PL is essentially situated weighted through that site and we're also looking at correcting or further investigating the sanitary lines and these storm sewer lines as they discharge out onto Sound Beach because there are some issues related to that we're hoping to we are planning to improve and eliminate those conditions that are there as part of the alterations excellent thank you just in terms of process Mike I think I agree with Karen and Joe that I think there's a lot to digest and we clearly have some questions I would make a suggestion that we have a special meeting next week as as expeditiously as possible and then to

237that end um and then this is Food For Thought for next time whether it's a budget amendment versus an interim request is kind of that that because we don't because there's nothing budgeted for this project except for the million dollars for a e I'm not sure I'm not I don't know the answer but I think it's just a food for thought if we are going to have a vote next week on something I think it should be the right the correct vote that's that that's fine the uh obviously this is uh we we live in unprecedented times here we're for Budget Building committees all creating towards you know this dead possible deadlines and things so that's fine we can figure that out the um we had if we were amending the request in our budget

238that's why like we had an original request an object I know but it's a little different because the budget's now been set by the BET and the RTM yeah might have to be an interim request okay as opposed to a budget okay yeah now so I think I think we should be having a discussion or maybe Steve's helps can figure it out as the member of the building committee sure but to figure out what the right we don't want to go through all this and not do it properly right uh Chris Christina this is Blaze I we I'll reach out to town finance tomorrow for the procedural question like boys out of the bluebellies thank you I see Cody over there Mike I was just curious about your thoughts on whether we should vote on

239this tonight um and just your thoughts generally on the project yes so so and I and I promised uh Miss costen um to say something so so let me um but yeah so obviously I'm in favor of the project so the the reality here is um that uh you get because we're in unprecedented times we have to think about how best can we how best can we move this process forward and the thinking was putting this number before the board this evening I understand um I understand um people's discomfort and the sense of the meeting is we need to wait you know we're not going to we don't want to have a no vote um but with 16 days left and with an understanding as we all are well aware of on this board we

240do not control the purse Springs the um the thing the thinking was that uh passing uh passing that and passing this number um while then continuing the design process and continuing the work moving forward in the Edge specs gives us the best shot should that this should this need to should because after this would have to be if if this project was going to go forward the um and I think it I believe strongly that it should this would have to be a bet conversation it would have to be an RTM conversation um both of those would be special meetings there's a lot better chance of all that happening if we you know come out and say hey we we're requesting this number now then if we wait for a special meeting in a week

241or two and then request that and then time is then we set of 16 days we're talking about seven days so that's kind of part of our thinking why we wanted to bring you this number today miscasted uh just a couple of questions so I know that you said there's a checklist about what uh what the different options are I is there a higher level um explanation that you can give us between you know what do we what are we foregoing with any one option and number two how significant a revision of the Ed specks are we talking is it like a lot our keyboards I mean so I'm going to turn this to David because he he he helped us conceptualize a reverse option a verse B verse C option A is the Ed

242specks the one the additional piece was how do we uh certify for OCR that that this this school will be complying with the 2010 Ada standards so because just to reiterate so when this project does go through we have a 15-day turnaround with OCR to get it approved so they're going to kick it back to us or to send it to send it to them and and they can they can review and they can come back to us and say sorry guys it's not um so option A is is that option b is a little bit more enhanced compliance and um option C is what Silver petricelli's View is on you know a best practice in general uh but option C is not I will highlight options C is not renovated as new right in

243none of these options do you have redoing the envelope of the building redoing all of the windows in the building redoing all the roofs right we we none of these options of this so it's just it's basically a good better best and what we're proposing in the 43 million is a good that did would you say it different no okay so so um just a question on the the process so in your opinion um can the the question wasn't really answered can you proceed with the project shovel in ground before you get on the list for the state um you you proceed you you proceed at risk of not getting your full reimbursement so in other words if you are um if you are filing for reimbursement for certain items and you haven't been approved

244the state could essentially say no too bad correct yeah it's really you need to you need to take the process one step at a time you can't go through the fully complete and then ask for reimbursement you need to take you need to take those steps one one at a time I I think that was why we were hoping for Blaze the voice from the the screen which would let us know if he's heard anything differently from uh the State Office of school Construction Grants hello I don't have any magical words yet I would I would say we're in a confusing point we did reach out to das again as Tony said because we have kind of two different interpretations um and then CMS we're also trying to get clarity on the emergency piece of

245it um hoping to have some interpretation tomorrow it's been they have been in significant kind of turnover at their leadership um at that at that specific office and so it's been very confusing depending on different staff members we've talked to we so we're actually trying to meet with the commissioner of Das um and so hopefully we have some more information very soon I have a very simple question but it I think the board will know it's not always simple so with the CMS aspect that we had to redo because the same firm was working on that project that firm did all the updates so because this was a different Architecture Firm that put this one together are you actually as the committee going to do the actual edits on the document or does that have

246to come back to staff and we the committee has asked us to take a look at it and to evaluate that language based on option A so you know once if if if option A is decided upon which it sounds like it is we will give our opinion on modifications to that so my question is actually who is going to make the modifications in the actual document we uh we we will need to get through the answer on that obviously um uh does anybody have kg D's number who has the word document well I think we could probably probably get their document but just knowing as we when we update Ed specs sometimes it takes longer than we think and when we're talking about 16 days um it would be great if we could start

247that process now and I'm happy to see if I can try to get a word version we may have it somewhere we're seeing anybody to help we'll we'll try to work with you on that and I agree that getting the word right I think working with Christine on the high school we changed it half a dozen times to get it right so um we'll work with you we'll work with you on that yeah like could we just I mean just give an example of like any if we're changing the ad specs what would be something is it just like square footage like what do it like because I feel like this is really the scope of the project we talked about so I'm a little confused about what we would need to be revising in

248our ad specs because they felt like they were pretty basic they weren't you know bells and whistles David's David's looking up some of the detail but I just want to for example but yeah exactly so so you know sorry yeah I mean it's it's it's basically you know the The Architects are going through and saying what what do we have to do to be compliant with the 2010 Ada standards that process was not conducted in my understanding as in the feasibility process it it because there was no complaint at that time and so now we have to go through and do that and so you know yes okay I mean of course you were doing things I mean and I know Miss Kowalski was was part of that that process as was um you know

249Jen Benz Van Gogh but you know there were certainly Ada improvements going to be made in ramps and and it right so we just need those specific references in the document exactly in terms of what Ada items we're going to be doing okay so that's a great example we're not trying to make some big case that we want to dramatically expand I wanted to know um anyway um and so when we get the ABC because I got to tell you again now not that not that we all we're I think we're all having a little sticker shock um but but the cost is the cost right like we don't like the cost but this is what you you industry professionals you're getting paid to tell us this what it is but for example option A

250versus option b there's only about a million three in incremental cost as opposed to a to c and I think we as a board should also be thinking about that's why I think to the point about not voting tonight I think you know we say OA but I think we should be a little thoughtful about bang for the buck on some of the things I know but we just don't have it from that's my point may I jump in just one second point of water I guess correct I believe there's a lot of moving Parts here and there's a lot of questions and I believe that uh it's probably likely that it's probably more useful to withdraw your motion and then have a special meeting next week uh judging by availability so if you'd like

251to do that or not we can call you call the question or withdraw the motion but I think that's we should do at this point no I don't think you have to withdraw the motion do you want to vote on it if you yeah if you have to complete the motion yes of course do you either withdraw them I would vote for it Mike we have we have to follow through with the vote if we do want to leave the motion in place if you withdraw the motion we could then shelf any photo until the next meeting Joe can I just a practical point I'm thinking about you know I don't like bureaucrats and I feel like a classic bureaucrat thing is to just layer on more stuff that other people have already done and

252to me this is a time where kind of have a people that we rely on and trust and I'm just thinking in the next week are there any questions or things we would do or say that would change what the actual outcome would be here which was like are we just doing Superfluous things that will end up in the same place my gut is yes that's why I would vote on it now I have a ton of questions but will your questions lead to any substantive change in the outcome so yes so I that's fair and I and I am I am sensitive to people's discomfort I'm also sensitive to the timeline so I think um it would be helpful um to have a sense of some of the other board members if what we're

253thinking here um and then I can I've heard from I've heard from several so who will only more time missile I mean I've generally as you guys know have been in support of both Old Greenwich and Central Middle School I feel like I just received this I really do want to go through these numbers because I'm not maybe I am into option b I'm not sure but I really I mean when I think about the amount of detail we've been on Central Middle School and it's in front of us again I don't want to give this any less focus and so to I'm willing to have a meeting you know early next week with this on the agenda and make of a solid decision at that point appreciate okay Lauren I I want to just

254say I think I might be into option b because I like the most compliance although maybe I don't need new windows or whatever else is in option C but the other thing I want to lay out on the table is I knew that this sticker shock would be something that is um is real and it makes me sad I think I set it to Jen before that I know the you know sticker shock is real and it makes me sad but I want to just say from a practical standpoint and as you know I'm the CMS uh building committee liaison I think it's unrealistic to think that these projects won't overlap and they should both have our enthusiastic support um this um yes okay so uh Karen and then Karen and then we'll brought that

255up well this is just you don't have to answer this now um I think but if if we were asking the difference between option A B and C the one other question I was hoping to get an answer to at some point during the week is one of the things that sort of surprised me was the increased scope of 2.783 required scope added for Ada um because one of the biggest things that we had focused on other than the sewage and another thing was ADA compliance and it's always my understanding when you do that it's not just adding a ramp um so I'm kind of surprised that wasn't in our initial uh Ed specs uh full ADA compliance so if you can just lay out the differences of what's added and if there are things

256that were missing if that's the difference between to options a b and c um just so we have a better understanding of that like if there's areas that aren't going to be touched because I'd like to know that you don't have to answer that now obviously but that was one of the major reasons I was like I'm not ready to vote because I didn't know the differences there between option A and B and C and that one sentence there kind of hit me in the uh kishkas the scope added for something I thought that was already there in our expects that's all no I just want to understand the building committee looked at both a b and c and decided and took a vote on which option they wanted yes or no we endorse uh

257all of the of the estimates I I think what we have been under the impression all along is that you know option A is is what you have asked us to do so if you were to choose option C that would be a dramatic a much more dramatic uh revision of the Ed Speck um and that's not necessarily what we're what we're asked that's not what we're asking for the challenge that obviously as we all know the building committee's charge is to meet The Edge specs so we have this challenge of The Edge specs and then the socr thing which is why we have this weird option a issue but then we do have these other concepts of B and C but the yeah so it wouldn't be appropriate for for us to say AC

258um so Mr chairman I uh uh humbly respectfully withdraw my motion they um and I look forward to a special meeting conversation in the near future thank you I'll start calling around Friday to check everyone's availability now we know we're having a special meeting so some of these other items if we can bother down we could also address those in the similar way let's go with the uh the budget priorities and procedures I I make a motion to approve the fy25 budget policy and procedures thank you guys good night okay we have a second or do we have any discussion about this Christina um as as Dr Jones told us we actually don't have a list of budget priorities so Blaze can tell us whether we have to vote on this tonight because without the

259priorities it seems a little weird if we're voting on priorities and procedures without the priorities there so please from the from the outside voice hello yeah I mean the procedure is extremely limited and it's pretty straightforward I I really actually Christina might agree it doesn't really need to be something that needs to be voted on but process but there's no priorities right now to be presented for fiscal year 25. I then withdraw my motion and uh basically we could approach it in the future if we need to uh next karakowowski on the policy I make a motion to approve policies uh the revised policy 9121 on the board of election of officers I'll make two separate motions I'll second that thank you any discussion all in favor 80 vote yes uh I make a motion

260to approve new policy 6148 policy to improve FAFSA completion rates as presented to the board do I have a second Karen any discussion all in favor 8-0 well done excellent care I'm gonna take the record for having the fastest agenda item on the docket tonight thank you very cool all right uh CMS ad specs uh Laura custom can you take control of this please I would like a motion to approve the amended CMS Ed specs dated April 24th is that right oh sorry I've got it it's gonna make my own creative writing motion motion to approve the Ed specific educational specifications for a new Central Middle School dated August 11 2022 as revised April 24 2023. so I I have a point of order uh second okay we have a second discussion well I have

261a point of order point of order uh takes precedence okay so I it's unclear to me on why we're voting again in regards to the Ed specs that were voted on in April for which were approved and I understand by a series of motions so that's the first part of my question the second part is if we don't approve this then what happens does it just revert back to the multiple motions that were uh that were voted on in on in our April 24th meeting and then the decisions on that stand or are we asking to amend the Ed specs or amend those motions so it's unclear to me as to from a procedural standpoint why we're doing this and what effect it has I think I'm gonna divert it Dr Jones that's the answer

262to that one thank you so the reason that we are um approving the Ed Speck is um otherwise we would when we get ready to submit on that June 30th deadline we would be submitting all of the 40 plus motions along with the old Ed spec and there's real concern that that's going to be very confusing at the office of school construction and if they don't really understand what they're looking at we haven't really made it the way it normally would come into them it may very well not get you know accepted and so it was advised that the board because the only change to the ad spec are those motions that the board you know agreed upon um and that way when they ready to submit they're submitting one ad spec and I will

263say we had an HVAC Grant and Blaze feel free to chime in um we had a we had an issue with the paperwork where they just it looked a little different in how it was submitted because of the date of the original Ed spec like for JC and then the timing of when we were doing the project and they kind of didn't look any farther and we had an additional meeting and we'll be resubmitting but that it goes to exactly what they're concerned about if we try to submit 40 odd motions uh yes now we'll go to discussion what a voter has been addressed now go to discussion if you would please uh Cody just um is this basically just a procedural vote to say hey instead of sending 46 things send one thing so

264don't view it as a it's not because otherwise the memorialization of all the things we voted on incorporated into one document yep so it's not about what your view of the Ed specs are because those 46 go through all right I'm asking this partially in the spirit of hoping that this makes it a quick discussion uh Dr mercanty Anthony Wisconsin so can you read the the the motion again the proposed motion into Cody's Cody's comment that person to approve the educational specifications for a new Central Middle School dated August 11 2022 as revised April 24th 2023. so so that that language doesn't sound like that that's I mean doesn't that language sounds like an endorsement not a recognition that that's the outcome of what we said what the of the April meetings it's a culmination

265of all of our votes in one handy dandy document I think Mike is saying that there's a better way to phrase that that can incorporate all the votes I guess the question is whether that's acceptable to the state I I I'm happy to I'm happy to help Laura rephrase the motion but the question is whether that passes muster with the office of school because like if we don't I don't know what their wording is we could I'm happy to phrase it differently and help her do that but I guess we and if people are happy with that then I guess we could deal with it if it's we have a problem with the state does uh Karen do you have a question oh no I was just going to say it was exactly what Cody

266had said it's we already made these the Motions in the board as a whole even if it wasn't entirely unanimous on every single line item approved these ad specs this was just re we're just approving the revised document to reflect those votes that's it right because you have to have it to submit to this you don't have to put any little hearts next her name you can well I mean I feel okay about it right I think and we also went through to make sure that you know there were periods at the end of a sentence and make it you know make sure you know that kind of stuff right so I think we right so in the spirit I I think we can get the uh unanimity um if if we're talking about the

267um if we're rephrasing the do you have a suggestion Dr mccanty Anthony um I won't give you any side eye I promise I don't believe you go ahead all right I'll try it okay I'll make a motion oh no I can amend well which would you prefer I'll make a motion to amend Laura's motion such that the new motion would read approve the educational specification for a new Central Middle School dated August 11th 2022 are accurate in reflecting the board votes of April 24th 2023. I I second your motion it's been seconded I'll take control again at the vote if possible Michael there's something we're thinking we can possibly uh uh wrap our arms around go ahead let's give it a shot I read the story it was approved a motion to approve the educational

268specifications for a new Central Middle School dated August 11 2022 are accurate to reflect the board votes of April 24th 2023. it's been second and we're in discussion mode right now my question to you Michael is you think that's something that could uh uh could get some right Yosemite here I I I so that that's that for the motion to approve part is the uh we'll approved it's the motion to approve them I'm not the lawyer I'm not one of the lawyers in the room they had the motion approved part is should you say can I make it suggest not that I I would make a suggestion and I can make an emotion to a man but I was in motion to amend the amendment to approve the educational specification document is that way because

269it's not just the specs right but to reflect but what you said reflect the votes okay to reflect the revisions okay how about this um Laura why don't you withdraw your motion I'll withdraw my motion to a man from scratch no no I've got one okay okay I'd like to make a motion Joe a motion to confirm that the educational specifications for a new Central Middle School as presented accurately reflect the results of the board votes of April 24 2023. I like that one cordial second it what I'll do is I'll call the question all in favor please put your hand up all opposed please put your hand up abstention please identify we are seven zero one thank you thank you everyone Mike thanks for doing that I appreciated though uh Mike you're up boy

270dolls before you move on Joe was Laura's original motion withdrawn yes it was talking about amendments at one point everything was withdrawn they were both withdrawn all right Laura said I'm gonna I will withdraw my motion which then negates the uh no Laura motion was withdrawn and it was a brand new uh the amendment was withdrawn and it was a brand new motion that Christina put forward all right thank you Mike thank you so Mr chairman there were some late emails um around the board goals this afternoon and if we were having a special meeting um I'd like to suggest that move it over to the special meeting thank you next we'll uh uh consider the superintendent's contract extension uh the motion is to extend Dr Jones's contract for one year our present contract ends

271I believe it's June 24 is that the month extend that from June 24 to one year extension to June 25 to 2025. uh do I have a second second Michael uh discussion Kathleen sure um I will be voting no on a one-year extension um I'm just going to give you a little reasoning why um just to bring you all back to Center I led the executive Search in 2019 we made a specific effort at that time to focus on finding the right superintendent that could stop the superintendent turning over I'm just going to recall some of the characteristics that stood out in our search that we specifically requested that she was student centered that she was a strong manager oh sorry I should have said it was a person at that time it wasn't a

272she a track record of success a great communicator a superintendent experience at a similar District um it was a Countrywide search Dr Jones Rose to the top she was clear on her commitment she led our district in the right direction on so many fronts for our students without even throwing a little pandemic at her in between she leads a ten thousand person organization tirelessly and I'd say seamlessly she's I started to write she focused on the most important thing our students and I started to list these things and then I thought about it I heard it tonight I mean when that fourth grader came up then when the principal came up um and then when people talked about just her increase in communication with all of the to her staff to the parents to us

273um she has and one of my favorite things is she's created savings because well we finally have someone that's in control she actually has brought back two and a half million plus annually simply through redeploying and reducing overhead but no one could do that unless you actually have some consistency in leadership and then that's of course the fact that she's recruited a great team and that's because people want to be around her she is our proven CIO CEO and have having run a superintendent search I can share that the market is a three-year contract and therefore a two-year renewal at this time is customary anything less than two years is a vote of no confidence for her and her team which is watching this closely not the message I want to deliver thank you anybody

274else Christina thank you Kathleen um I too am not in favor of a one-year contract I think a two-year extension of Dr Jones contract is warranted two weeks ago the board met to give Dr Jones her review which was overwhelmingly positive that same meeting we unanimously voted on a salary increase for her for next year those are the actions of a board that believes the superintendent is doing a good job if that's the case we should be doing whatever we can to ensure that she stays here at GPS to promote the stability that the district needs after a number of years of turnover and resulting chaos at times Dr Jones has been with us in Greenwich for four years now and during that time she shepherded us through covid we opened schools in September 2020

275unlike many other districts she's led a comprehensive review and revision to our special education program she's continued throughout these years to continually strive to improve our schools via programs curriculum and Personnel while also adhering to extremely strict budgets imposed by the town are there things we would like her to still work on yes and we have communicated this to those to her and we have witnessed her repeatedly respond well to our feedback but if we tell her we want her to have a vision for and lead the Greenwich Public Schools going forward we need to give her the time and the opportunity to achieve those a one-year extension does not do so some of my colleagues have articulated no reason whatsoever why a one-year extension is appropriate more appropriate than a two-year even even in

276light of that other districts provide their superintendents with a three-year contract at a time when they want to retain them if my colleagues would like to respond I'd like to hear a precise explanation about why we should take a different approach than other districts in the area and I pose this question to my colleagues how does a one-year extension versus a two-year serve the Strategic and long-term needs of the school district to provide for stability and planning or how is that beneficial to our students our district has been characterized by turnover we finally have stability and do you want to jeopardize that one could surmise there are some political motivations involved person or personal or professional um and while I don't like to listen to the gossip or scuttlebutt I believe everyone on this board

277should be in a position that they are not seeking to be superintendents supporting other people to be superintendent trying to get our superintendent out if they are they should really they have a conflict and they should recuse themselves we have a superintendent with a proven track record who we say we want to keep so we as a board need to put our money where our mouth is and extend the contract by two years thank you Michael so so I appreciate it um um one of the challenges uh Dr Jones I've I feel bad that one of the challenges of being superintendent here as you know is that we all have to debate this in public if you're sitting here today um so so so they um I do not publish the awkwardness of of your

278seat the um I think the other thing that um needs to be said publicly is that the motion on the table is uh is an extension of the contract the um and I I suspect that there is widespread agreement to onto to to to to extend the superintendent's contract because uh for all the reasons that um Miss Downey misto just said just just mentioned the um at the beginning of it so for clarity for community members and I'll be watching right so Dr Jones is currently in the second year of a three-year contract um at the beginning of this year uh she began the year with two years left on the contract uh but on her contract if we um with a one-year extension she would enter next year with a similar in a similar

279rate was two years um on her on her contract um the um offering the at the same time this board has quite recently gone through a strategic plan process where we've established a number of different metrics and things that we've tied to the superintendent recommendation and things like that the um this time next year many of those metrics will be will will for the first time in four years we'll have data around those metrics which is a appropriate opportunity for the board than to have a similar conversation about contract extension I think the um I would encourage the community um not to view any vote this evening as a vote of no confidence in Dr Jones instead the uh my vote for this one-year extension is a vote in favor of Dr Jones and the

280excellent work that she's been doing on the board as well as an endorsement of increased systems of accountability and governance as a as that we are doing as a board of education the um as we as these metrics come online as we consider how we evaluate the superintendent and the district performance over here is knowing that next year will be in a similar Swift with a one-year extension would be in a similar situation looking to extend the discussing the extension of the superintendent's contract and offering two years of job security similar to how we were on September thank you Cody um I think it is more appropriate to have these conversations in executive session but I think the one-year extension is well deserved and uh it makes a lot of sense to me I think

281it's worth reminding the public that these contracts do not contain no fault termination Clauses which is I think more common in the public sector but I would um uh I would never give anyone a a two-year extension on it doesn't matter who they are so I wouldn't I just want you to make sure that you're you know read into the idea that in the same way I wouldn't do five or ten years there's no limiting principle uh I think it's if someone's doing a great job you give them an extension enter next year the way they entered this year and uh I think that's a very healthy Dynamic and it sets a good precedent as well because I think in the future 20 years from now it'll be great if the board is not bound

282uh or pressured into you know longer term contracts with uh you know very diminished flexibility thank you anybody else then I'll concluded uh Karen did you want to jump in before he concluded were you trying to sneak a conclusion after me I don't know I'll let you but that means I have the group you go Karen I was gonna just simply say that I I understand the you know we've had discussions in in concerns and understanding of one year versus two year and it's it's just some you know yes while something is done traditionally one way doesn't mean it always needs to be done that way but there are reasons that they are done certain ways uh one year versus two years and I would simply say you know we have never had a superintendent

283you know I should think of it she's made more forward movement than any superintendent that I can remember in the past 15 years that I've been involved in working with our you know and advocating for our schools here um she's been integral in the process and direction of our recently improved strategic plan um and helping keeping those items on track and focused on for you know student achievement and in other areas of special education and I think we all know one year of data doesn't say much I mean it's gonna it'll give us a positive movement but two to three years shows Trends and I think we need to be able to have that option um you know looking in those areas and you know that's that's to me you know she's been very responsive

284and I I feel like you know that that's one of those things that you know we've talked about and so to me that's kind of a key point in having one versus two um you know is having those opportunities to really look at trends thank you Karen uh and well I guess I'll wrap it up here uh Tony the the my number one goal in this topic as the chairman of the board is to extend your contract okay uh that is important I think that's best for our community that's best for our schools I think that shows that this board one likes the job you're doing we heard from the board about your evaluation and everybody 100 of this board I believe I will find out uh I think from what I'm hearing wants to

285extend your contract uh second priority as far as me as the board chair a unanimous decision on how this board looks at you all voting together showing the community that we are combined that we think as one unit and we want to support you as a board chair all unanimously voting to tell the community that any negativity I don't want to hear any more negativity because we all 100 of us are voting in favor of you that's the reason why I think there's a very very high importance of having a unanimous vote I want to renew your contract I want everyone to vote one year I want everyone to vote two years whatever we can get everyone to vote on I would like to support I'm I am struggling to find the ability to get

286everyone to vote two years uh I I one year is is something everyone is kind of voted on but they want another year at the back of that other year so it's kind of like half one two years half want one year uh three I don't think it's fair to force somebody who wants to enter into a one-year extension on a one-year contract to enter into a two-year extension on a one-year contract to force people who don't want to do that uh having been having employed thousands of people uh in my past knowing that when people don't get the contract of the endorsement that they're looking for they tend to find faults in that an employee they tend to want to undermine that employee they tend not not to work together or own the decision

287the point here is if we can get eight people to own this decision eight people will defend this extension to the community and I think that's Paramount I think that's the most important thing because we do get attacked on a regular basis and you heard when people gave personal evaluations of you they are in support of you and if we are saying that people who want one year extension and are forcing them to take a two-year extension they might not defend you they don't own the decision I think it's really really important that all eight of us own this decision and we all come come together and make this decision on a personal note I will be leaving the board in November I will not I will not put myself up for re-election in my

288personal opinion which is why I yielded to the advice of colleagues at this point it's not my job to make the decision of the future of another board uh that board has to make the decision on their one and only employee and uh so I hear there are some people that want uh a one-year extension on the one year and I hear there are some people who want the two-year extension on the one year yeah it's not my decision to do that my my decision and my motivation is to get a unanimous vote uh in one way or another and I don't know how we're going to get there with different opinions uh but that's where I stand anyone else I will up Cody go ahead well isn't a logical thing to do to vote

289on a one-year extension and then have a two-year extension vote right after yeah sure right that makes sense so uh let's let's take a vote uh all in favor please raise your hand of what the one year of the motion right all against that's 4 4. that motion does not pass is there another motion I'll make a motion to extend the super superintendent's contract till June 30th 2026 and authorize the board chair to execute that contract Kathleen will second that any discussion I'll call the question all in favor please raise your hand all against please raise your hand put your hands up okay uh motion fails uh we have a special meeting uh coming up I don't think a discussion at this point is going to advance our our maybe it might okay go ahead

290Karen Joe I I'd like to make a motion that we should I'd like to make a motion to extend Dr Jones contract for one year and authorize the chair of the board to sign that so that it extends it to June of 2025. please yes explain that I'm confused so is there any reason why we can't I mean so it sounds like the uh there is there is agreement or you know around the room that everybody wants at least one year oh I see you're remaking the same motion okay uh I'll second that motion all in any discussion on the one-year extension on the one-year contract what's the point of order we're rebooting the exact same thing we just voted there's no limit on the number of times you can make a motion to vote

291on it yeah I think the point is that if you're in favor of a two-year extension presumably you're in more in favor of a one year over not having any extension at all Leave It All To voting uh so we have a motion we have a second any further discussion all in favor please raise your hand uh old against please raise your hand that motion fails uh so now uh you can't go around for a while but I don't think we'll accomplish much but all right so uh are we are we okay to move on I don't think we can resolve anything at this point thank you uh where are we now let's see uh the agenda plan we have an agenda plan discussion so we should probably add to the agenda some kind of

292um something related to a search related to a new superintendent if there's not going to be support on the board to extend the contract year I'm just saying practically we just had the opportunity to extend the contract we have till June 30. yeah but we just unless I'm just saying it's we've got a clear indication from the board of where certain people stand so uh I think it would be irresponsible not to start not to put something on the agenda to start planning around that I shall make note of it thank you I would like to rebut what that comment was well you could put something on the agenda or this is just an agenda discussion there's no real well I I know about the superintendent search I think that that is not the consensus

293of this board the consensus of the board is yes we want to keep Tony it's how long to keep her and I think half of the board is in favor of keeping her longer so I don't think we're at the superintendent search stage I think we have another meeting coming up and we have till June 30th so you're suggesting we put on the agenda that coming up the superintendent's contract I agree with that so I think we should put that on here I'd also like to defer the agenda plan to our special meeting because it's 11 25. yes okay I can I I concur uh let's do that uh so there is one more item which you're going to bring uh Dr Bud's item up is that what you're doing Christina no I was actually

294going to talk about scheduling our special meeting oh yes I was going to tell her that yes I I think I think we I will make the phone calls on Friday to address the special meeting I think it's probably I don't know what my schedule is okay right I think we should do it on Friday and I think Laura should make her motion no motion to adjourn I'll second that all in favor that's unanimous thank you