December 16, 2021 Board of Education Business Meeting

001absolutely good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the board of bed to order let's please ride for the pledge of allegiance thank you so much good evening um as you can see i do not have my partner here dr jones did join us for executive session but unfortunately she is not feeling well and so she is going to drive home and join us virtually um she doesn't live far so i think she'll be on shortly um she'll also there are obviously some things we talked about in executive session one of them was on safety and security and she will address some of that in her superintendent's report later um one other thing that i wanted to do before we start the meeting uh i should also note that christina downey and michael

002joseph our um panelists are joining us virtually they're also not feeling well or there are different reasons health concerns so we are where we are um i would like to make a motion actually to um move the second item of the consent agenda which was on the board of education meeting calendar to the first item on the action items can i get a second for that motion thank you karen um and can i also then could we take a vote we're gonna have to do roll call unfortunately tonight since we do have people on virtually so we're gonna have to go back to that um so if you're in favor of moving this item for the consent agenda to action items so we can actually discuss it um i'd appreciate that so cody kettle how

003would you vote yes karen hirsch yes joe kelly laura costan karen kowalski christina downey yes i'm michael jackson mcconaughey anthony yes okay thank you that passes eight zero okay um i'm gonna put now a motion of the consent agenda on the table can i get a second for that karen hirsch okay let's do a roll call again starting down that way this time laura costen say yes please okay joe kelly yes karen kowalski kathleen still is a yes karen hirsch yes cody kettle thank you christiana downey yes michael joseph for conti anthony yes okay thank you that passes eight zero okay now we go into our public hearing and we are going to hear from the student government are they here in person they are in the back thanks guys good evening chairman stowe dr

004jones and members of the board and meeting attendees i'm javi serra senior class president at grants high school currently the student government is facilitating the voice for change initiative governor lamont has allocated 1.5 million dollars of federal arp esr funding for 76 participating high schools at ghs students are drafting their proposals on how to best spend twenty thousand dollars to improve the ghs community at large ultimately the student body will vote for a proposal on march 11th and the winning proposal will be awarded the twenty thousand dollars in federal funding voice for change offers students a unique opportunity to have a direct hand in improving ghs and i'm excited to see what creative initiatives my peers can come up with even if students don't create the winning proposal they will be participating in an active

005and productive dialogue about how to improve greenwich high school and i'm hopeful that this discussion will continue grants high school is home to over 3000 students and faculty and its best self can only be realized through the active engagement and advocacy of all of its community members additionally we have heard that the bridge under route 1 will be undergoing repairs next fall and the traffic will be one lane both ways for two years considering that in its current five-lane state route one at hillside has frequent traffic jams of a considerable size the limit in lanes will only cause more traffic and with it aggravation to address these traffic concerns students support the swift construction of the access road near cardinal stadium we understand that it may require additional funding in order to work on both

006the ghs vestibule and phase two of the stadium project in the same year but we feel that time is of the essence for both of these necessary projects as representatives of the student body we implore the board to prioritize funding for the completion of phase two of the stadium project as soon as possible especially as the construction on the bridge under route 1 begins i'd also like to publicly publicly advocate on behalf of our school resource officers fred reg and chris wallace regarding their interest in a third partner a therapy dog from rigorous academics to navigating a two-year-long pandemic ghs students deal with plenty of stress i alongside with the overwhelming majority of students based on a recent survey believe that a full-time therapy dog could help students navigate this stress just a little bit

007better high school will always have its fair share of ups and downs and drama in between but we all can agree that seeing a four furry four-legged friend would really put a smile on anyone's face finally i want to offer my overdue congratulations to chairman stowe vice chairwoman kowalski mr kittle miss costin and mr mercanti anthony on their new positions i'm excited to work with all of you as we move forward i'll see you all in 2022. happy holidays thank you very much it's a good way to start the meeting good evening chairwoman stowe dr jones members of the board and meeting attendees i'm kwame blatant student body president of greenwich high school december 14 2012 was a dark day in america the 26th precious lives taken at sandy hook elementary school of newtown connecticut

008or 26 lives gone too soon i remember that day i was a third grader who had no clue as to why the teachers were frantically talking with each other why police and barricades heavily guarded our usually lively pickup circle and why my mother hugged me so tight when i returned home from school that day i had no clue that kids that were barely younger than myself and teachers would not be returning to their loved ones that evening as i matured each year december 14 would fill my usually upbeat and energetic cell with a silent fear a stillness in light of a tragedy so disturbing that i could simply do nothing but thing what if that was me however this emotion is something that i continue to confront as sandy hook was not the last time

009that a mass school shooting occurred during my primary and secondary education i'd like to use this opportunity with you tonight to offer my reflections and the student perspective on what take on what took place at greenwich high school one week ago on thursday december 9. i along with many students fled ghs in fear of what could be not in fear of what was the disturbing message written on the bathroom stall had spread like wildfire via social media and the lack of communication from the administration through the school into a state of chaos kids were physically running through the hallways breaking out into panic attacks and crying in light of a situation they had limited information about and could only assume the worst possible outcome of out of the 10 years that i have been a

010student in this town last thursday was the first day for even a split second that i questioned my safety in school consequently students were incredibly disappointed in the administration's response javi and i are grateful that we have the opportunity to meet with mr mayo on friday to express our discontent with the lack of clear communication with staff teachers and students and the fact that no shelter in place and or lockdown was initiated we appreciate that mr mayo was highly responsive to our concerns and openly admitted that there were better ways to handle the situation mr mayo's willingness to acknowledge where things went wrong and the administration's commitment to handling dangerous threats in the future gives me hope that we won't see something like last thursday ever again at ghs it pains my heart to say

011but the reality is we live in a generation of school shootings and navigating threats is a given obstacle for the future two days ago at ghs we commemorated the victims of sandy hook by wearing green and writing down the names of either teachers or friends within the building that we trust to have our back that practice is a great way to honor the victims of that day and the many other days that we wish never happen however the best way to honor them the only way that really matters is to properly equip our schools with improved protocols to protect students faculty and administration to that end as representatives of the student body we will work tirelessly with the dhs administration to ensure that safety procedures are followed and communication protocols are in place to protect

012our school community thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight take care and enjoy the holiday with loved ones we look forward to a happy and safe 2022. thank you very much uh next up we have comments from gea lil she's online go ahead lil you can speak now okay thank you good evening everyone i'm lillian perron president of the gea we are all here tonight in some type of leadership role whether you know it or not in that role comes great responsibility whether we're our bet member board of education member administrator teacher parent or student that that responsibility comes for us to make decisions that are best for our children our teachers and our community and not based on personal gain privilege or party interest i was reading an article newsweek the

013other day and it talked about how hard it is for colleges to get students to go into mining i bet you thought i was going to say teaching that is true too but that's not what the article was about why would you want to get a degree and learn the techniques of coal mining it has a negative mindset of being dangerous a dirty job the thought behind this article was if we were to move forward as a nation and world and become energy efficient we need miners to learn the new techniques to mine for precious metals to make our fuel efficient cars and other things that are going to help our carbon emissions to save the environment bottom line we need to change our thought processes and look at things differently and through a different

014lens we can't think and do things the same way anymore because life has changed as we know it does not work and it does not bring the desired results that we need so where am i going with this well hop on the school bus everybody fasten your seat belts i'm going to take you for a ride we are humans and creatures of habit change is not easy and it's very difficult for some to accept i believe in greenwich our parents our students teachers in our community so let the ride begin to my bet friends i've heard you say in meetings that we need to keep two percent cap and then other meetings say if you need money we'll let the floodgates open well now is the time to let those gates open my friends i

015ask you to do everything that you can to support the superintendent's budget our administration has done their due diligence to be fiscally responsible and make adjustments where they can but if we are truly to be a great district and service all our students it's not going to happen with that two percent oh yes i hear you say that we don't make the cuts we just cap it it's up to the superintendent and the board to figure it out well you need to change your mindset our schools our children our teachers our parents need you now and you can't put a cap on that and working with dr jones and having conversations with the administration i know they have worked hard to find efficiencies our children are more than just a number we could never have

016planned for what we would have experienced during these past two years as a district state and nation we need to all think and act differently remember our teachers did pivot we were the only district in school our teachers were exhausted physically mentally we still have not recovered we have buildings that collapse teachers displaced for classrooms from the classrooms and buildings our alp teachers have accommodated a model change that they accepted during covet but now we must make things fair and equitable for them our sped staff are overwhelmed overworked overloaded along with our pre-k teachers and eval teams as they must learn new ways and create new teams for us to be responsive to incorporate the needed changes required for our special education report to my administrators and friends you must always have the courage to

017fight what is right for your students and staff and have the courage to speak the truth to the parents and our greenwich community we need to start to see and talk about what we have in common and not our differences i may not agree with some of your actions and some of your words but what i do agree with is what we have in common and that is your love for your children trying to communicate what is in your heart what is what you feel right is for you and your children we just need to find a better way to do together as a community working together we must also educate our children on social responsibility and responsible use of social media and how impactful and damaging this information can be and lastly to my

018gea friends thank you you've been through a lot these past two years try to do what you do best teach learning new ways to teach coming into work each day not knowing what to expect doing your best caring for students and at the same time caring for yourself your families and your own children but we too must act differently whether you've been vaccinated or not vaccinating we are teachers we are professionals it is our responsibility as professionals to work and collaborate with our fellow colleagues no matter what our differences are because we are here for students and for each other and that comes first enclosure please listen to this following word very powerful quote when i first my first speech as president i share it with you guys in closing by hayam ganat i've come

019to the frightening conclusion that i am a decisive element it is my personal approach that creates the climate it is my daily mood that makes the weather i possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous i can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration i can humiliate or humor hurt or heal in all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated and a person is humanized or dehumanized if we treat people as they are we make them worse if we treat people as they ought to be we help them become what they are capable of being thank you all have a healthy happy and safe holiday and i'll see you in the new year thank you thank you lil next up from ptac mimi duff

020good evening dr jones chair stow and other members of the board of education i am mimi duff president of pta council representing the 15 school ptas and the families of all of their members i'd like to start my comments by saying thank you to our educators and administrators that continue to rise to the challenge during trying times we recognize that as coveted numbers rise and we deal with potential security issues that our educators and that our students also are under great deal of stress we stand ready to assist in any way we can so please don't hesitate to ask if there's anything we can do i'll focus my comments tonight mainly on our support for the budget and a couple of my colleagues will also speak committee chairs from the special education support and diversity

021equity and inclusion will also provide comments and we fully support their efforts as they continue to advocate for our students on to the budget we had a p-tac board meeting today and our board fully supports the proposed operating and the capital budgets for the greenwich public schools on the capital side we're very concerned about the current state of many of our buildings not to mention the lack of ada accessibility and essential security issues we support efforts to close the gap on all deferred maintenance which is currently contributed contributing to so many structural issues investing in infrastructure improvements and the maintenance of the town schools is of utmost important in our meeting we were also brainstorming about how we can get help how we can help our board of education and also the bet members understand

022the urgency of the needs we would be happy to coordinate with school officials the board of ed and the bet to make sure that all of our elected officials have the most educated and complete picture of the current state of our buildings we were happy to hear that the board of ed took a tour of central middle school before the last meeting that's a good start given the size of the school budget line items we would like to see all meaning each and every one of the effect elected officials on the board of ed and the bet attend school tours for each of the potential renovation projects to that end we are happy to help coordinate to make sure that schedules can be accommodated to reiterate we fully support the proposed operating and capital budgets

023as proposed by dr jones i want to close by highlighting some of the great work going on in ptac these days first and foremost we continue to work with the district on many committees including textbook reviews for high school math and middle school french curriculums along with various other topics including alp's bed and academic achievement we remain grateful to be involved in these conversations and hopefully through our involvement we can achieve better outcomes for our students we appreciate the efforts by the administration to foster greater consistency transparency and academic excellence in our district our goals in p-tech are fully aligned in this way two weeks ago we also hosted a public session on socio-emotional learning and academics the speakers included doctors alina and fabian boyce from the greenwich public school district behavioral support team the

024presentation was recorded and is available on our p-tech website under council resources presentations and resources stay tuned for more of our public sessions which are monthly on fridays and we will do a better job to advertise these in advance they're always recorded and made available thank you for your time and i'd also like to wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season thank you thank you very much mimi all right now we're going to start with our community comments i have to say i don't know if anyone appreciated the new agenda where we have times um and we're they're obviously not set in stone for their guidelines i realize we're already running five minutes behind but um hopefully we'll catch up um but we will have an hour of course like we have in the

025past of community comments we do have 28 speakers so i suspect we'll be having more at the end of the meeting but with that as you know you have three minutes and i think um the first person up is jennifer taylor sarah prepared followed by randy chakino sorry thank you i'm sorry to ask this but you have to keep your mask on i do it's honestly very hot i know i know i i believe me i feel your pain okay it's not our call it's under the executive order dear members of the board thank you for taking the time to listen to me this evening i hope oh can you hear me now that's beautiful thank you all right i'm going to reset myself dear members of the board thank you for taking the time

026to listen to me tonight i hope you enjoy my jc strong candy that i left up there for you my name is jennifer taylor mommy of four cute and crazy kids ages are two four six and eight my husband sam taylor and i are both products and proponents of public school education we are proud to tell people that our children attend julian curtis and grateful for the opportunities afforded by the district that said julian curtis facilities are antiquated at best we implore you to allocate the resources desperately needed for this school we decided to move back to greenwich in 2019 and raise our children in my husband's childhood home as such we are the second generation of tailors to benefit from julian curtis i have to say while the exterior of the schoolhouse is extremely

027charming both sam and i were shocked to see the facilities were nearly identical to those from three decades before i was saddened by the lack of restoration at jc especially when you consider that i grew up in a small town outside cleveland where my own elementary school has been twice renovated during the same time to be honest the town's lack of attention to their facilities even gave me pause when considering where we would educate our children we are family strongly rooted in gps my mother-in-law diane taylor received the distinguished teacher award in 2017 and my brother-in-law dan is the fun gym teacher at north thanks to gps the four kids from this family went on to graduate from elite universities such as harvard penn columbia nyu and wake forest to name a few three of

028the four children live and work in the community too don't we all love when we get to see the talent come back as you can see we know and value the opportunities afforded by gps the unfortunate truth however is that many of our facilities are in the same sorry condition as the new york giants football record this year julian curtis needs your help so that our facilities can match the same high performance as our teachers 30 seconds so that our teachers have the modern resources that need to continue educating at an elite level so that our parents moving to greenwich can tour the school and have the confidence that they don't have to send their children to private schools to receive a tremendous education i am here to support the proposed capital spending for julian

029curtis and the other schools in our community there is no question teachers are second to none the only thing that we are missing are the facilities to match we want to have an environment where all children can thrive and learn jc is incredibly diverse as you know with 60 countries and 30 languages represented in all socio-economic backgrounds right this title one school deserves tom's support thank you we gotta go next up is randy shaquino followed by kdu thank you good evening board of education members thank you for your time i want to start by thanking you for your past and future service and your very important role making a positive impact in our children's future i am the ptac representative for curriculum enrichment for julian curtis school and i fully support the 1.8 million renovation

030on the capital budget for julian curtis and i'm here not only as a jc parent today but as a parent of future school schools in the future i chose jc for my child to be a magnet student because of the size of school the community i felt upon visiting and that so that my child would be with a diverse student population representative of the public school setting that i grew up in which i felt served me well i have found it to live up to those expectations i'm a very involved parent advocate and give back by enriching the students with experiences that will help them thrive academically like author visits and also expose them to learning outside the classroom and curriculum like bronx zoo visits science programs field trips in doing so for in doing

031this for over a year i've come to learn how much the jc community in particular so heavily depends on everything that comes from the district and the school and not from anything outside of it as a title 1 school where over 40 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch i can tell you first hand how our jc students learning relies on what comes from all of you and our district and budget from infrastructure to curriculum to enrichment to having the right space to learn therefore their path for the future depends heavily on the decisions made by all of you also over the last year i've experienced the decreases year on year of assured experiences and enrichment paid for by the district as it is not a distinct line item on the budget and

032therefore it doesn't always get protected like other budget line items beyond the learning environment the learning experiences are also in decline this puts even more pressure on our small title one school to somehow fend for itself for kids to learn and we simply can't keep up the parents can't keep up we do not live in that type of district or community and the kids are losing out because of it our children deserve to have a school that is up to 21st century learning 30 seconds environment and experiences alongside safety standards as a start it is too long overdue along with the other gps capital projects and its time thank you for your time happy holidays everyone thank you very much next up we have kdu who i think i see online followed by stephanie cowie

033um good evening can you hear me kathleen i can thanks katie i'll try to be brief good evening um in light of last week's events tonight's discussion about a safety road for ghs could not come at a more apropos time it is my understanding that the board of ed is largely in support of the safety road but as this is a as this is a public forum hopefully with media coverage tonight i'm speaking merely to lend my support to the development of this safety road as students barreled out of ghs last week in fear and panic to the safety of their cars they were greeted with a stranglehold of cars in frozen traffic on hillside and east putnam when a media truck collided with a student driving a car the situation got worse and when

034the ambulance tried to come to the aid of those injured in the collision it did in spite of all this i have actually heard some say that we were lucky thank god no one was killed i do not say that lightly now right now is the time to approve this plan and move it forward lastly i really just want to ask if our hands are really tied with regard to the recent outbreak of cobit cases in our district today i myself received three health alert emails as we're deluged with health announcements today i think we really need to think about what we are doing right now as families prepare for the break and visiting families and and visiting families and friends some of whom may be elderly why are we not considering starting the break

035earlier or having a couple of remote days before the break or at least giving students the option to learn remotely from home in closing i would like to take a moment to thank the board of ed for all that you do and to which wish each of you all the best in the new year thank you very much thank you katie next up stephanie who i see callie right there followed by miles spencer hello superintendent dr jones board and cabinet members my name is steph cowie and layla horne and i are co-presidents at ghs following last week's events we want to thank all those involved for their swift determination that this was not a credible threat and for concluding the investigation we would like to thank dr jones and the greenwich police department for working

036closely with ghs special thanks to our ghs sros officer wallace and reach as well as our ghs administration we know there were many issues that day and in speaking with the administration and greenwich police department they heard our concerns and will work to collaborate and do better we need to look at things differently now on to the budget we stand in support of dr jones 2223 operational and capital budget we also stand with the many here this evening and at home in support of the outstanding projects at og jc ghs and central middle school we do not deem any one project to be greater priority need than the other all of these projects are priorities because they all are safety issues hvac air quality ada capacity or security life safety there are many in this

037town who have sat and are continued to sit on feasibility or building committees like the ghs vestibule committee that are tasked with the very same priority safety we would like to highlight ghs cardinal field improvement phase two which is the second egress for ghs a priority because of what you guessed it safety ghs houses close to 3 300 lives each day sits on 54 acres with only one way out and one way in as you can imagine this causes many students parents faculty and neighbors anxiety thinking about the what-if scenarios we agree in past emergency responders have found it difficult getting to the school and access to the school for emergency and or drills because of the lack of a second egress without the completion of phase two the second egress we are putting our

038entire ghs community at risk there is a pattern here these very same priorities are presented year over year by the board of ed to the bet yet nothing moves forward it is unfortunate that the majority of our bet members are not in agreement with these projects and they continue to kick the money can down the road but to what end a catastrophic event where safety has been the greatest lapse we need to take better care of our children teachers faculty neighbors and families by taking care of our infrastructure we need your voices we ask parents to please contact the bet representatives and advocate for the needs of the adventist public schools thank you all for your time and consideration and to the board of ed we thank you for continuing to do what you are

039doing each and every day so thank you stay healthy happy holidays thank you very much next up vile spencer followed by david levine i don't see him okay so we can always come back if he appears all right is that you no no i'm sorry david all right go ahead david levy hey there you go you got up early thank you all right david levine followed by andy cosby um well good evening chairwoman stowe dr jones on board it's good to see you all again my name is david levine my daughter autumn is in second grade in mr schuster's class at julian curtis and my wife lauren and her three siblings went to jc 40 years ago we love julian curtis a bunch of conversations are hard i know that and it's because budgets are

040about values it's about putting our values into actions making hard decisions as an investor i think about numbers a lot and so in support of the 1.8 million line item for julian curtis i thought it would be helpful to put it in context look in greenwich we are so blessed we have 390 million dollars a year in revenues 390 million and so this 1.8 is basically 0.5 or half percent of our revenues for 390 million a year but 390 million is it's a big number i can't really wrap my head around it so i thought why don't i just put this in a context that i could understand the average household in our county makes about 150 000 so half a percent is about 700 bucks so that's what we're talking about equivalent of a

041700 investment but what does this 700 dollars achieve what values does it represent let's look critically at that i think julian curtis is the epitome of what greenwich should value first education jc is a magnet school 25 percent of the kids choose to go there for the education which is great second it's a low income school title one as was mentioned before 40 or more of the students come from low-income families and third diversity julian curtis is diverse economically it's diverse racially which is important also ethnically 60 countries in 30 languages do we as greenwich residents value education do we value our low-income communities do we value diversity for 70 years sadly it looks like the answer has been no when it comes to julian curtis um in terms of how we've made these decisions

042and how we've deployed our dollars it's made it look like we don't value education we don't value diversity and we don't value our low-income families but that's not greenwich we know that's not greenwich and that's not at least how we've acted in many ways with ham avenue and new lab we have invested so why not tonight the board come together unanimously and support this once in 70 years equivalent of 700 investment in julian curtis it's a small investment but it begins to put our actions in line with our values standing for education low-income communities and diversity please as representatives of our community show that greenwich values julian curtis please unanimously approve this line item for jc three minutes and um thank you very much uh next up andy cosby who i believe i see online

043followed by elizabeth dempsey can you hear me we can proceed thanks excellent thank you members of the board and dr jones my name is andy cosby i'm the mother of three students in grades two five and six and a co-lead of the ptac special education support for the district tonight i am speaking on behalf of the special education support committee which is referred to as ses to highlight current areas of concerns for sped families i would like to begin by thanking our interim chief of special education and student services dr helen ganfield for making herself regularly seen and available to this fed community it is a welcome change in discussions with our ses building representatives and the sped parents of british public school students two primary topics have emerged one expansion of the preschool program

044and two questions and concerns regarding building level leadership accountability and consistency i will first start with the expansion of the preschool program the program is considered a gem in the gps system it is a two-year program and offered at four of our elementary schools with enrollment for current school year of 220 students this compares to k-5 enrollment of 3700 or about 620 students per grade level the program exists for the purpose of fulfilling the federal government mandate to provide intervention for preschool kids with disabilities as such families with an iep do not pay while gen ed families pay approximately 8 to eleven thousand for the five day five to six hour a day program which equates to about ten dollars an hour compared to private school options this is a great value demand for the

045program is robust from the gen ed population and a growing population of identified children with disabilities early intervention for sped children is proven to work yet the gps preschool program has been declining in size both students with disabilities are increasing the earlier in a child's development that we invest saves money in the long run for sped students due to the efficacy of early intervention furthermore payments from gen ed families can help underwrite the expansion costs we ask that this program be reviewed 30 seconds building leadership accountability and consistency as highlighted by the recent sped audit there is uneven building level leadership and an inconsistent application of special education eligibility testing and services best practices exist at some schools and not in others and it is highly dependent upon building level training and leadership at the

046principal assistant principal and in this in the case of the high school house level well this is addressed in the sped action plan we ask for a district thank you very much thank you thanks for your time you too next up elizabeth dempsey followed by jill marchak good evening i speak tonight to urge the boe and the bet members who are listening to prioritize the funding of the ghs ghs road because it provides a second form of egress and is a safety necessity for two years i participated in a town appointed committee to stud study the parking and traffic issues surrounding ghs the committee included police gps security senior public works engineering officials pnz our ghs principal and outside traffic traffic consultants tuli these experts are our town's mvps parking spots traffic backups and the

047road engineering options were studied and compiled we looked at the traffic circulation patterns that were envisioned versus what actually happens at ghs every day in this committee complaints by parents about lack of access during lockdowns were raised gps staff explained they were aware that emergency services can't reach the school during a lockdown due to the road becoming blocked by parents and student cars so as part of the master plan kg and d school consultants designed the ghs access road as a solution support for the road was resoundingly unanimous including public statements by police principal mayo the pta council and all parents parents who all have been asking for this situation to be resolved as you know a second situation occurred last week when hillside became blocked again this time without a lockdown alert it was

048caused by just a fraction of the ghs students leaving the building parents again complained on chat rooms and elsewhere that emergency services would not have been able to get through the blockages and thankfully it wasn't a real threat the bet and town leadership need to recognize that a single access road leaves your largest population center in town vulnerable our new secure front entrance will improve security but it won't help police or ambulances reach those in need if an emergency occurs and hillside is blocked lastly the bet and indeed all town leaders should be uniting now to face the town side challenges the town wide challenges when the state rebuilds the bridge at putnam road as we know 20 000 people a day crosses in intersections and it will be reduced to single lanes if all

049goes to plan for two years this is not just a school priority it is a town priority our largest emergency corridor will be crippled causing potential life or death time delays well outside of the ghs neighborhood i applaud dr jones who says often that safety is our number one priority we have to move on next thank you um jill marchach who i see online followed by heidi matonnis sorry if i didn't say that right can you hear me okay right now good evening everyone um i'm a neighbor i'm a neighbor who's a great fan of greenwich high school and i'm asking for your support uh for an additional egress road from the high school my husband glenn and i live on hillside road our family has been in the same house there since 1970. my

050husband attended greenwich public schools including ghs as did both our children word spread quickly about last thursday's event at the high school and it reminded me immediately of the scare we had in the 2012-2013 academic year when both of our children were locked down at the high school because of a threat as with that threat the street area around the school last week just froze and we wondered how first responders could get to the school quickly if hillside road was completely blocked last week when some and not all of the students left the school how could the police or gems emergency medical services have accessed the campus if this had been a real shooting threat for us this should be the district's highest priority and is a large liability right now for the safety of

051staff students and our really our entire community obviously ghs has been expanded over the years but it hasn't been brought up to modern building codes when it comes to access now i'm just an amateur but i find it hard to imagine that any school could be built here today with only one form of access especially one of the size and yet the issue is unaddressed uh and whilst a road to avenue could help traffic flow more importantly it's a critical safety component and plus it's hard to fathom what will happen when the brothers brick bridge is rebuilt at the end of hillside road with a single lane over a period of two years or possibly more so this problem calls for leadership from all of our town officials and i ask you please to proactively

052step up to this challenge without delay and swiftly rectify the problem thank you thank you very much next up is heidi matanis followed by jamie downes thanks hello my name is heidi mattonis i live on hillside road my three kids attended the public school and graduated from ghs all three of my kids told me they felt like sitting ducks in the common luncheon area if there was an active shooter shooting down which is tragic that our kids even have these visions these days my son was involved in the lockdown that jill marshak mentioned i didn't know it was happening i looked out of my third floor window where my office is and saw dead standstill traffic on our street going in both directions i walked out on the lawn and started getting texts from other

053mothers and basically it was a mess and i'm here to emphasize that the access road is not a road of convenience for pickup and drop-off it is a safety necessity and i really think the town is putting itself at a great liability to ignore it so thank you very much next off jamie downs followed by amy moof do you see jamie online i don't i do not see miss down so she could raise her hand okay seeing nothing let's move on uh next up is amy moose followed by alyssa van oss we're gonna combine our yeah we're going to go one right after the other okay um dear dr jones chairwoman uh stowe and board of education members thank you for allowing us to speak tonight we are alyssa van osten amiemuth ptac dei co-chairs

054and parents of three children within the district the diversity equity and inclusion committee is a special ptac committee this year we hope it will continue to be a committee within our district going forward we coach fair alongside a dedicated community of reps from nearly every school in the district who are concerned about racial imbalance inequity in our schools our mission is 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 collaborating with the ptas to find the most effective way to partner with all families and help every student reach their full potential in addition we have met with community leaders and consultants throughout fairfield county specifically to see who can partner and potentially share resources in last month's board of

055education meeting the racial imbalance survey was presented by dr carabillo highlights of this survey included that in the last 10 years the percentage of greenwich public school students who identify in categories other than caucasian has increased from 29.5 to 39.6 from 2012 to 2021 that is more than a 10 increase the percentage of students who identify as two or more races has nearly doubled from 2.9 10 years ago to 5.7 in 2021 and students who identify as latin has increased from 18.1 percent to twenty two point six percent in the last ten years we have two schools new lab and hamf that continue to be identified as imbalanced and julian curtis is impending old greenwich north street and parkway are equally concerning for their lack of diversity a question was raised at the end of

056the presentation asking whether parents are complaining about this racial imbalance while there seems to be a strong preference in greenwich to maintain neighborhood schools parents also want their children prepared to work in and function in a multicultural globally connected world while parents may not outwardly be complaining at this meeting they are talking locally and we have met with school reps who have asked what is the plan to increase representation across teachers and staff what is gps doing that will lead to a more equitable experience for all of our children and how is gps ensuring children feel a true sense of belonging in our schools how can we enrich our curriculum to include a more diverse and inclusive lens for instance parents in town have raised concerns about the lessons and activities presented about thanksgiving and

057christopher columbus this year how can gps net negotiate for content across all schools versus each school working individually and i'll hand over to me we encourage the boe to look at the racial imbalance survey in a broader sense many here in this room have questioned the importance of what is seen as soft skills like sel as well as incorporating more diverse literature and teaching into the curriculum while we could get into a long discussion about the importance of mental health and support through guidance counselors and social workers we encourage you to think about how we can better bring together the students and parents of greenwich in addition there are significant benefits to teaching diversity in school settings to accurately talk about diversity especially in the classroom the boe must consider race ethnicity gender sexual orientation

058religion socioeconomic status being able-bodied in various learning styles as maya angelou said in diversity there is beauty in their strength by providing a diverse educational environment research supports that children are better prepared for a multicultural work environment and global economy have improved confidence learning about different cultures allows students to become comfortable with cultural difference differences across social groups and comfortable with themselves leading to a deeper sense of safety and self-confidence diverse education promotes empathy and reduces prejudice which translates to a decrease in bullying and potentially an improvement in mental health there is improved student achievement and it fosters creativity exposing students to diverse experiences and people will make a positive impact on their development and a profound impact on our society we appreciate that there are competing financial requests requests across town particularly for capital

059projects with that said we are also sure that the boe is committed to creating an environment of inclusion at gps we also understand that the road to a more diverse and inclusive learning environment will take time we ask that the boe consider small steps that we can take now to help improve access and increase inclusivity within our schools and community can we offer translation at the boe and pta meetings to increase access and participation for all should greenwich follow the lead of other districts like darien and hire a dei consultant should the boe and dr jones consider create creating and funding a director of family community engagement as exists in neighboring districts a person who can head these efforts and work to support our teachers and staff in the buildings to navigate these challenges all

060of our students go to greenwich high school and whatever we can do to prepare our children for when they all come together and then graduate from the district the better our community will be we look forward to working with the district to help support and advocate for the needs of all students thank you and happy holidays thank you thank you very much next up is susan myers who i see online followed by says f burke dempsey good evening members of the board of education superintendent dr jones and the greenwich vet members who may be listening my name is susan myers and my husband glenn and i have been residents of greenwich for almost 30 years i am speaking tonight to request that you place a high priority on the funding of the ghs cardinal stadium

061capital project which provides a missing access point for our emergency responders this access this axis of town-wide importance provides a vital link for emergency services who cannot access the campus during an emergency or a lockdown situation this is our town's largest population center sheltering 3000 students teachers and staff and town-wide programs day and night sitting at the heart of an intersection that sees 20 000 cars a day while i don't live on hillside i live on the street next to it and i know the area well our son and daughters went to greenwich public schools and were fortunate to be able to walk to ghs i am well acquainted with the complaints from fellow ghs parents about hillside road being flogged with cars and gridlocked i shudder to think what what would have happened if

062a true emergency had happened last thursday when the hillside road once again was frozen i see that this project is attached to rebuilding the rebuilding of the stadium's visitor stands although my children played sport ghs and i am generally in favor of things that enhance the athletes and spectators experience i see this as two separate and completely different projects i would give egress and safety the priority if it came down to a budget constraint there is no reason to put such a large community in a potentially lifes threatening situation if we have a solution if ghs is locked down and parents block access as had happened before your largest population center is vulnerable school staff have known about this for years and have supported this road chief of police james heavy and fire chief joseph

063you have both endorsed the need for this access road if that is not enough we need to consider the miles of backup that will be created with the putnam bridge rebuild and the impact that we'll have on the flow of traffic that is 20 000 cars backed up for a single file for two years on our largest emergency corridor i suggest you focus on the importance of this issue and utilize the authority you have to keep our students and communities safe i urge the boe to place this as a number one priority for the 2022-23 capital budget and that the bet fund it and the town administration get this project started immediately thank you happy holidays thank you very much next up is burke dempsey who i do see online followed by charles jurgens hi

064it's burke dempsey um i live on 21 hillside road my wife may have spoken or will speak i just want to approach a little bit differently because i've lived here 20 years and i've seen the traffic i know what i'm uh living with and this is more about everyone else out there every single person in town is going to notice this without having the road uh when the bridge gets put in at hills between hillside and the post road that effectively you're not going to feel very good because you're going to find out that you're going to have to either leave for school to pick up your child your child's got to go a lot earlier or you're going to be chronically late the i don't think people have really conceptualized the gravity of what's

065going to happen when that bridge starts to go in so getting the road in now is very very important for everyone in town and not just for me living on the street i already know it's coming but you guys don't know it's coming and we've been thinking about it so just imagine what your day is going to be like every single person in town goes up and down that road there's not a person that's going to escape this but with the road that would alleviate a lot secondly if there's ever a crisis that's been talked about or there's a natural disaster that needs to school those two roads are necessary we saw when there was a crisis about 15 years ago trees went down on either side the school was not even usable the second

066road would have cured that finally those people that are coming to visit our town the next few years and they go down the post road which they're going to have to do they are going to see a big snafu again would be alleviated by getting the bridge in now the minute something bad happens is going to be more than the cost of that back bridge to make a second road thank you very much next up is charles jurgens followed by allison walsh i don't see him online do you i'm not seeing him now okay let's go next then to allison walsh followed by dana franks hi i'm allison walsh i'm an rtm member um i'm i'm proud to be an active member of our community and i'm glad to be a ghs parent i want

067to thank all the administrators teachers and board of ed members uh for all you've done in the past couple of years especially um i want to speak in favor of the egress road both for safety and for transportation planning reasons i think it's uh vital for safety and i'm gonna and i'm gonna say this um i agree with what mr dempsey said in particular i know that we have city-like traffic on putnam road and that's before we have a state uh project that's going to reduce us to one lane it's going to be not good from a transportation planning perspective we need an egress road as well as from a safety perspective i'm going to turn it over to my daughter grace turner who's a senior at greenwich high school hi as my mom said

068my name is grace turner and i'm a senior at ghs i am the founder and president of the students women action club which advocates for um better gun regulation and decreasing gun violence in our schools personally i founded this club because i am truly terrified when i go to school sometimes and on thursday last week that really highlighted all the problems with um safety because i personally was scared and so many of my other friends were as well kids were fleeing the building and the entire front circle were just was just jammed up with cars and i saw police not being able to get to the school it was truly terrifying to think about if it had been a real threatening situation if the police were not able to respond properly so i am in

069support and so is my club and all of its members in support of this egress road and this bill to pass it thank you very much next up is dana franks followed by jackie homan hello board members and dr jones my name is dana franks and i'm the mother of three young boys aged two four and seven i'm speaking tonight in support of making masks optional for students and teachers it's been 463 days since our children went back to school wearing masks and they continued to wear them with no end in sight in the beginning of the pandemic and prior to widespread vaccinations it made sense to many of us including me especially in order to get the children back to in-person learning things are different now as of today anyone school age and older

070who wishes to get vaccinated to protect themselves from serious coveted symptoms is able to there will always be covid variants the virus is not going away did we mask for the flu the flu is more deadly to children than covetous when does this end is it it is time to do a cost-benefit analysis for our children around the world there are many countries that do not require mass for children once in the classroom denmark and the uk do not require students or teachers to wear masks in school at all in the u.s only half have some type of mass mandate given other countries and the majority of the states in the u.s have successfully navigated in-person schooling without requiring children to wear masks all day there's no reason connecticut one of the highest vaccinated states

071in the country could not do the same to people who think that masks do not impact children and they are used to them by now you do not know my children nor do you have any idea how they have been negatively impacted at this early and important developmental stage of their lives my oldest son started kindergarten at north street last september his teachers this year and last year are incredible we love our school but the masking has created an environment where the social development is stunted and his anxiety is mounting every day my son lost two pounds in the first month of kindergarten last year because he was too nervous to eat at school around a bunch of strangers who couldn't properly communicate with him do you know what it's like for a shy five-year-old

072to walk into a big school and not see anyone smiling when will we let our children have a normal life how long do they need to bear the burden of a virus that has a 0.003 chance of killing them one of my son's first great classmates is hearing impaired and depends on lip reading another neighbor of mine at central middle school who is kind and exceptional young man has never had a disciplinary issue in his life was given detention because his mask slipped under his nose more than three times this isn't right people who feel safer wearing a mask can wear a mask as long as they want i understand that we are currently under a statewide mandate but when the emergency powers expire i beg you to vote to let parents decide what is

073best for their children everyone has had different struggles during this pandemic please let our kids go back to normal learning and socialization before it causes irreversible harm thank you for your time thank you very much uh next up is jackie holman followed by keith steinberg good evening dr jones and board of education i'd like to start off by thanking dr jones for agreeing to relax the vaccination requirement for parent volunteers originally the policy discriminated against non-vaccinated parents by preventing them from volunteering inside any of the buildings this policy was more restrictive than the state's guidance so the change is a welcome step in the right direction thank you for hearing parents concerns on this issue we really appreciate it unfortunately because this policy was in place at the beginning of the school year it meant

074that some parents were wrongly blocked out of pta positions that would have required them to be present inside the school we hope the pta recognizes the problems that arose out of their harmful policy and that they look for a way to be more inclusive of non-vaccinated parents going forward especially those who are blocked from participation at the beginning of the year the change in policy allows non-vaccinated parents to volunteer inside the building so long as they provide proof of the negative coveted test within 24 to 48 hours prior to entry while we appreciate this option for non-vaccinated parents to participate it's still clearly discriminatory to treat one group of parents different from another why would some volunteers be required to take an unapproved test with no negative side effects why would some volunteers be required

075to pay out of pocket for an unnecessary medical test and why would some volunteers have to prove they are healthy as you know the vaccine provides personal protection only the package label which you all have in front of you clearly states it is to prevent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus that is all the vaccine does not stop people from getting covered the vaccine does not prevent people from transmitting code this is according to the product manufacturer but it's also easily observed in real life how many headlines have you read about fully vaccinated people getting cobin what about the covet outbreak on the fully vaccinated cruise ship or the deadly outbreak of the fully vaccinated connecticut nursing home even the highly regarded publication at the lancet admitted there is increasing evidence that vaccinated individuals have a

076relevant role in disease transmission in massachusetts 74 of new covent cases were in people who were fully or partly vaccinated for example it is therefore wrong and dangerous to think that only non-vaccinated people transmit the disease so knowing that the vaccine provides only personal protection against severe disease what purpose does it serve to force non-vaccinated volunteers to take a covet test 30 seconds why don't vaccinated volunteers have to take a coba test when they are just as likely if not more likely to transmit the disease so please remove the testing requirement for non-vaccinated parents it doesn't make sense and it's clearly discriminatory if not you need to institute a testing requirement for all in-school volunteers since it's clear that vaccinated people transmit the disease every bit as much as non-vaccinated people do thank you for

077immediately rectifying this discriminatory policy and i hope you like the cookies thank you very much uh next up is keith steinberg followed by kathleen bynstein how are you this evening i have a speech written out which i was going to read tonight and then my first grader came home from school today north mianis he has a medical mask exemption and today at school his sneeze guard fell on his face and cut his face open i have pictures of my phone from today this is a school supplied sneeze guard for all of you who aren't familiar what a sneeze guard is it's a plastic box put around the child's desk according to my first grader nobody touched it nobody touched his desk it fell over by itself it cut his nose open he was forced to

078go to the nurse where she administered first aid okay that's because of a segregation issue so he was segregated in a box and it fell on his face and cut him open that's what happened today at school so i'll go back to my speech i'm grateful for the opportunity to speak have any of you wondered why all the focus from everyone has been all about the vaccine why are they not major studies completed for early treatment options that don't involve mandates mandating facial coverings requires the consent of the governed don't pretend there's a scientific basis for this clothing requirement not wearing a mask is not mere a personal choice like deciding between a head covering or t-shirt it is a flash point for being a free human being who is consented to be governed but

079has not consented to be ruled we do not consent to amassed america because this is a fundamental change in american society cultural norms and rights people who are apathetic towards their own liberty cannot eliminate constitutional rights for those who are not this is not the first or last time that people who believe in superstition are screaming the loudest the constitution exists precisely to protect all people during times of mass hysteria the mass has become a visible symbol of social conditioning to americans determined to preserve individual freedom thus far most americans have continued to give their consent to be governed but you are trying our patience to the town attorney you are supposed to protect the town and the people from harm it is unlawful to support the mandated abuse of children the town of greenwich

080has the opportunity to put children first and show the state that we will not tolerate executive orders that harm children my children have been harmed thank you and good night thank you very much next up is kathleen feinstein followed by francis novay good evening as you know i'm a teacher in the district on my very first day of teaching a second grader tried to climb out my ground floor level classroom because i asked him to put away his brand new backpack in his lunchbox a little girl threw up on her desk after eating grapes and i put a little boy on the wrong bus to go home on day two when i arrived at work my principal said hey glad to see you came back we didn't think you were ever coming but i have

081been coming back for 30 years and i hate to say it's gotten harder instead of easier this is definitely not the same job i signed up for there are a lot of balls in the air who's quarantined who needs the meat open can they hear me are they seeing the document i'm sharing can they hear what the kid in the classroom said who's doing screen and stay were they three feet apart for 15 minutes am i using the right resources is there bias in my lesson is everybody engaged how's the reading level too hard too easy is this a rigorous lesson who's coughing who's wearing their mask correctly should they go to the nurse i have a headache is it covid or is it just my job this is why year 29 30 and 31

082have been infinitely harder than year one in year one i had to deal with problems that i could control but at this point in my career i'm dealing with a lot of things that are not in my control i'm not in charge of who wears a mask and who doesn't i'm not in charge of whether i teach to a face or a screen i'm not in charge of creating and writing acceptable rigorous curriculum i desperately want to get back to the days where i do what i do best design and deliver exciting engaging lessons to the amazing children in front of me but in order to do that i need the people who are qualified and elected to make a lot of decisions i need to trust medical professionals academic leaders and educated elected officials

083sorry to do what's in the best interest of students staff and the extended families of all of us schools serve individual students and their communities and we have a responsibility to both no one's individual choice can endanger another member of our community i appreciate the doctors the researchers the academic professionals the government officials and this board for your efforts to keep us safe and healthy every day thank you so much for hearing me and for those listening if you feel strongly i encourage you to speak up too thank you very much um next up is francis novae who i see online followed by julia farianis can you hear me we can go ahead thank you hello this is francis funobe speaking in my role as mom of three students persevering through the marking period and

084counting down the days to winter break as ptf president mimi duff mentioned on december 3rd dr zelina and fabian boy shared the impact of socio-emotional learning on academics one of the studies that the boys shared was the use of two minutes of mindfulness at the beginning of class by 280 gps teachers and 5 600 students the boys found that transition time decreased by 44 frequency of redirection decreased by 46 percent frequency of off-task behaviors decreased by 66 students on task behavior increased by frequency of positive interactions increased by 37 as we wrap up 2021 and gear up for 2022 let's use these learnings to support tonight's boe meeting and take a breath take a break to improve our mindfulness and focus so we breathe in and we breathe out we again take a breath in

085and slowly exhale we close our eyes or settle our eyes we feel our feet on the floor we feel our arms on our lap we feel our body settle in the chair we take a breath in and we take a breath out again we notice the sound in the room we notice the temperature in the room we noticed any tension niggling thoughts in our minds and we let them go we let them go we let them pass we breathe in and we breathe out we call to mind a happy moment the sweetness of our children's we call to mind lightness love and light we enjoy this moment of quiet we breathe in again and out and when you're ready we gently open our eyes and have a wonderful and mighty meeting happy holidays thank you

086um i don't know what to say after that okay um we have julie fairness followed by lillian de sosa moziak hello good evening chairwoman stowe dr jones members of the board of education cabinet pta and community my name is julie fariniars and i am the executive director of the greenwich alliance for education the alliance is the only non-profit in greenwich 100 focused on our public school students teachers and alumni first i would like to say the alliance fully supports the budget the capital and the operating budget i am here tonight to speak on behalf of the avid program and our commitment to avid we funded the implementation of avid in the district in 2008 and since that time have continued to back the program financially and with volunteer hours in our district as you know

087we have 172 greenwich high school students in the avid elective and western middle school is now an avid school-wide program with 35 students enrolled in the avid elective there are more than 250 avid alumni who are enrolled in college as our college grads are in the workforce or back in graduate school most of our avid elective teachers are greenwich public school distinguished teachers which is also an impressive stat to add to the impact of this college readiness system i returned on saturday from the avid national convention in dallas where nancy kale and i had the opportunity to present the alliance's avid success program while there i once again experienced along with 2 000 educators the energy the commitment and the excellence of the avid college readiness system avid national has proven data that this first

088generation low-income avid alumni who go to college are four times more likely to graduate than their national peers avid's data comes from the national student clearinghouse where 3 600 private and public institutions provide enrollment and graduation data avid reaches 2 million students and there are many avid districts in the united states avid districts begin avid in elementary school and continue it through graduation our town's demographics are more socioeconomically diverse than ever and the achievement gap continues to persist the alliance believes it is time to expand avid to the elementary level sooner rather than later and we are here to help with this expansion avid's proven strategy strategies close the achievement gap we would also like to advocate for a redesign of the current avid district coordinator's role to address the needs of our most vulnerable

089students we must have a job that focuses all of its attention on the resources professional development coordination and more to accelerate to accelerate the growth and success of these students thank you for the opportunity to speak happy holidays and a healthy new year to all good night thanks very much julie um i think we have time for one more speaker and then we'll have to move everyone else to the end of the meeting and that is lily sorry lillian's a souza mosiah yeah sorry we said it's an hour and then you can always stay here to the end of the business hi can you hear me we can thanks so much hello yes please proceed go ahead that's how it works is she there or no no sorry you're not next sorry no sit down

090please uh mr souza your your microphone is open you may speak hi yes uh hi good morning everyone um my name is lilia nigesoza moziak and i have a daughter in first grade at north myannas i would like to ask your help so we can come together as a community to allow our children to breathe freely again in school it's time for us to explore this possibility kids wearing a mask seven hours a day five days a week basically wearing masks forever should never be normal our children deserve a choice enforcing masks on kids are cruel and unnecessary according to america from my doctors masks are useless for virus control it can cause dramatic harm to children mass cause learning difficulties in school in other settings ms cause real physical and psychological harm to children

091our children need to experience normalcy once again they need to allow to unveil their faces see their each other's miles see each other expressions that are so important for their development and well-being not to mention to be able to clearly listen to their teachers voices can we please explore a trial period without mask our children deserves the freedom to breathe in school please please help us amass our children thank you very much thank you very much so that takes us to an hour we will um of course come back to the end of the business meeting so that takes us to monthly reports and we have dr jones who will deliver this super attendance report online thank you chairstow um just a couple of items i i did miss the very first part when i

092was transitioning to online but um i think you mentioned something about we just had an executive session um okay so we are um the incident last week you know at ghs i understand was extremely concerning for students for parents for families it was very very stressful and you know i acknowledge that and i just want the community to know anytime we go through any sort of incident we go back and we review we review with the police we review with our security team obviously mr mayo and his team and you know all of that is ongoing right now i would say the one question um that i've been asked is what was what made it a little bit more difficult um last thursday and you know the administration can only go to either a shelter

093and shelter in place which is you lock your door and you stay in the room or you can go to a full lockdown but you have to know that there's actually been something reported in this instance by the time it was reported to the administration it had been circulating among students for about 20 or 30 minutes which is very very unusual um most of the time these students are very very quick um to report to administration and i think that you know in reflection uh part of our reflection is even though students were by the time it was reported some students their parents were already telling them to leave the building um we should have just gone ahead and done a shelter in place and that probably would have helped definitely the teachers and some

094of the students feel a little bit more secure but again as we really study what what we can do and get better uh what can we what we can do to improve we're analyzing all of that i would also say i i was surprised actually that how many parents didn't realize that we actually do have two uniformed officers um on our campus every single day and um i think that also understanding that there are 10 different security personnel so there's a lot of security that actually exists at ghs um and i i thought that was probably broader known than it was um some of the parents were requesting that we have an officer you know on site for the rest of the year and so i think they did feel better once they realized that

095in fact we do have officers on site um we do hope to have a security forum we had one in 2019 and it was probably more elementary focused back in 2019 just um some of our parents had questions from pta um but at a security forum we have the chief there at chief heavy uh at this one we would also have mr mayo we would have tom bobkowski who's the head of security um all the key players for safety and security for the district and be able to answer um questions to help families and help even staff have a better understanding of how the security works um in in ghs and also in gps so um to move on from that um we did send out a message today about a tick tock challenge and

096tick tock is an application that's very popular among a lot of young people usually they're very short videos that are made and the tick tock challenge right now it has to do with encouraging students to have false reports of threats tomorrow in order to get out of school so we did send a message out to our broader community just encouraging parents if you have children that are on social media making sure they understand the consequences of you know something like that when you have when you put out a threat and police are responding it becomes a legal matter it's it's a police matter and we don't want any young person to find themselves um find themselves in that situation um the other thing i want to just mention is on the um kova tracker that

097will be posted tomorrow it will be the highest number that we've seen since covet began and i know that everybody has different opinions um about what keeps children safe what keeps staff safe but i just want the community to know it was at 64 from tuesday um to this evening and it could go up i guess before we go to bed tonight but i want people to be aware just that when you're looking at birthday parties and things that happen you know over the weekend and outside of school if you're going to visit grandma or grandpa or anything like that over the holidays just be aware that it truly is spiking the good thing is we're not seeing a lot of we're not seeing a lot of in-school transmission it is in events out in

098the community um the other question that i've had um this week and it was mentioned in public comment as well is could we go remote for a few days um i understand some parents are getting nervous that see when they see a coveted spiking but just as a reminder we do not have the flexibility this year to go full remote unless the state would agree and it would have to be a totally health related matter and that choice is not there this year and the other question i've had over the last week was well another local community it was actually newtown they had a remote day and and why was it okay for them and not okay for us so i reached out to the state attorney who i'd reached out to at the beginning

099of the year and the reason it was okay for that community is they have a school calendar that is 182 days we are only required by law to have 180. um in greenwich we have a 180-day calendar so um we don't have the flexibility to take one of those days and make it a remote because the state doesn't care about the additional two days in that other community um i think i'll leave it i'll leave it at that um thank you um quick quickly can you just give us a north minus update oh i actually had that on my notes sorry um we're very very excited about north myannas moving in ahead of schedule tomorrow the move will start there's an early release at north myannis and we will be moving all afternoon evening all

100through through the weekend although the movers say they think it'll be done by by saturday maybe and then we have a late start at north myanis on monday and the students will come they start arriving at 11 45 and we'll get everybody back into their rooms and north giannis back together as um one school community so it's very exciting for that school thank you do you guys have any questions dr jones no okay um then we have reports of officers committees and liaisons but we have all new committees and committee officers so i'm not sure we have any updates yet do we nothing sure that'd be great thanks joe okay everyone wants an update on the road so uh we re i think we should and hopefully we will we will rebrand uh the cardinal

101stadium phase two project to the safety road uh project because basically we have separated uh the visited side uh team room from this road project because the road project in my mind and uh my colleagues on the board agree that that is a higher priority uh than the visitor uh changing room so uh so we focus we're focusing just presently on the uh on the road and the design of the road uh this project is no longer just a board of education project this is a town project because and we've heard it multiple times tonight about this this route one construction project that's gonna have us in a uh in a traffic nightmare uh there's also it's been brought to my attention i have little information on this but it has been brought to my

102attention as well enough to look into it more at the same time there is also going to be an i-95 project that's going on that's also going to cause a slowdown of traffic on i-95 around the same time that route 1 is uh is undergoing its its construction of that bridge so we're working real hard to try to get this road ready and push it forward now as a somebody who has done a lot of private projects as some of you might know or might not know a public project is quite different there are a lot of things a lot of input a lot of obstacles which we need to overcome one just happened to come up recently and it's a bit of a well i have to say it's a significant setback for the

103road which is the tree warden has now opined and has redirected uh the path of our road with the redirection of the path of our road uh we now have to redesign drainage and redesign the road and it's going to take a fair amount of money and time for us to do that i spoke today to our first select with fred camillo who is 100 behind getting this road done now i don't like taking no for an answer and uh and basically i am doing all i could do to make sure we push this thing forward it's possible to get it done in a timely manner if we all work together and all our town agencies work together to make sure we push this thing through because basically there are multiple reasons this is important

104we talked about the safety reasons we also talked about this traffic nightmare that people just don't understand the magnitude of this thing it's going to be a disaster so we need as a town to really push this thing forward we are one-third complete on the road that ada parking for greenwich stadium for cardinal stadium is one-third of the road we have a bridge to build over by the ball field we're designing that because of a uh the tree wardens telling us there's some trees that we have to avoid and some rock croppings that we also have to avoid he's redirected this and delayed us on that process but we're doing our best to redesign that i was also informed and not sure this is the case yet but some uh some board of edging board

105of education colleagues have told me we might also have to reapprove this redesign of this road so uh we'll certainly present that as quickly as we get the drawings done so uh once again i've done this professionally privately and it can be done in a timely manner we just need the whole town to kind of push together to understand the importance of this uh so i have another report too wow keep going uh it's a little nicer this is this is a little uh this is a nice that last thing was not a nice that was a need this one's a nice thing some time ago we put together a group to address the waterfall at the high school that what looks like right now an abandoned lot we have now brought a group together

106ashley cole is leading this uh group to uh get that redesigned uh and uh to uh uh to make it look real good because that could be one of the wonderful vistas uh fred camillo referred to it as could be the best vista uh in town and uh uh and we could change it from the vacant lot to a beautiful town vista uh we've got the uh tony d'andrea has given us some drawings uh some elevations and boundaries he's donated that to us uh to the group now this group also this will not take any funding from the uh from the town this will be self-funded also we have a uh a landscape designer who is also doing things gratis uh uh it's uh dylan hoffer is uh working with ashley cole uh to design

107this and soon in short order hopefully we'll have this design presented to the board for uh for our approval if we need to approve it but we'll certainly present it to the board out of courtesy and then hopefully work with the town and proceed on this project okay that's a lot thank you um miss downey do you have an update for us yeah i just wanted to give a click on the high school entryway we are moving along and we're going to be before the architectural review committee and planning and zoning um ideally in january so that as of this moment things are moving along to stay on the timetable that i presented to the board one or two meetings ago to in a perfect world break ground immediately after school gets out in june

108sounds good anything else nope okay let's move on to discussion items and look at this we are two minutes ahead of time so discussion items special education review update dr stacy online yes okay um good evening madam chairwoman uh board of education members dr jones um over the past few months i've had the opportunity to give some periodic updates of the special education action plan as we have begun working on that so tonight i'm just going to give a brief update and then answer any questions that you have about the action plan and going forward next slide so over the last several months we've put together um and the action plan for the 28 recommendations that pcg had and within each of those recommendations we put together an objective a target with very distinct action

109steps as well as persons responsible in timelines that was posted onto the district website um the very beginning of november and during the month of november it was out for public comment and for feedback and we um i was able to meet with ciac we did two different presentations with ciac um met with the sesptech representatives there was a town hall meeting in which we asked for public comment ahead of time when we're able to answer questions about the action plan i've had some comments from um from you as the board in the design of the action plan and the action items i've met with gps principals assistant principals administrators and as well as special education staff so throughout those meetings they were able to provide some feedback next slide please um and some of

110the specific recommendations um we're looking at making it a little bit of a user-friendly document adding hyperlinks to some of the um some of the action items so for example one of the recommendations is universal design for learning so being able to link that to maybe a website so that families could learn a little bit more about what some of these practices are clarifying some of the language we had an acronym list and you know we were asked to make that a glossary of terms to help again um being able to understand as well as a overall visual timeline as opposed to each item just to make it easier to see kind of how everything flows together and just some clarification on the timelines and accountability so for example we have timeline listed on for

111each of the action items and the timeline actually stands for when we look are looking for the timeline completed so just clarifying some of that to make it more um user friendly and understandable the actual format of the document was chosen by a group last year and based on the um lausd template and we took that and adapted that for greenwich's use and um to be able to communicate information out next step next thank you um so our action planning rollout of the 28 recommendations um we have been getting ongoing feedback and will continue to get ongoing feedback as we go through the process a number of the recommendations have been completed or close to completion such as the redesign of the special education transportation process the organizational structure of the special education office the

112collaboration between departments so hr finance making sure that we're working together as well as the special education procedures and practices manual there are some recommendations that will take several years to fully implement such as the recommendations that look at broader scope of of action such as the general education classroom collaborative teaching co-teaching the steps to implement it district-wide things like that will take several years um and so as part of the action plan we've been able to identify those and the steps that we need um this year we're looking at some of those foundational pieces and as we move into next year next slide please we're really focusing on the ex the the domain within the report of the expanded learning environment and specialized services for the 21-22 school year and so that's looking at

113increasing co-teaching in the element elementary and secondary level implementing a unique learner program for our upper elementary s schools so for our students who are on an alternate curriculum pathway having an inclusion specialist for programming so again focusing on that inclusive education philosophy and also repurposing a position for a reading lab teacher to help with our students with our most significant reading needs to help move them up and to help support our teachers in providing reading services next slide there we go um so as we go forward we'll continue to get feedback and to update the plan the plan is much more specific this year and at the beginning of next year but as we move into year three it's making sure that you know we update that and you know are able to provide

114specifics to the community um so that everybody is aware of what we're doing um and we will continue to update the action plan on the website so that we have it marked off as completed so that that can be seen of where we're going um there were also um myself i'm scheduled at the next four at the february 3rd uh 2020 board meeting to give a more in-depth update of the action plan and where we are in implementing that action plan thank you okay thank you do any discussion you yes sorry miss hersh so um i had a i'm sorry good question in the middle of our business meeting thank you though so i had a quick question um for you dr eigenvaller um i you know i know the action plan was presented um

115you know it was shared out with ciac i was in the meeting when you presented that and the special education town hall and i know it was with p-tech but it was never actually presented to us as a board meeting um and so we really haven't had that opportunity to give you feedback on that so i'm sort of hoping that we can have i mean tonight clearly we have a large agenda and it's not actually on the agenda tonight to go through that um so i mean i i have a lot of feedback to share with you but i'm hoping that we'll have an opportunity to have that presented um i don't know if it's before february 3rd but i don't know how many of our members have read through it um [Music] but uh

116email before i give feedback i i wanted to make sure others have had the opportunity to see it so right now i i right now the next board meeting um that's on the agenda is the february 3rd however i'm more than happy to come to any of the meetings or or have a separate meeting to go over it in more depth whatever would be most helpful to the board um i mean certainly we can get to that when we get to agenda planning but um you know i i just wanted to like i said i don't know how many of other board members have had the opportunity to read through that document because uh you guys have done an incredible incredible amount of work in a short time um and there are a lot of

117incredible things happening so you know be very nice to be able to hear that at a board meeting uh sooner rather than later but it's just a lot also all at once and so i know there's a couple of question marks in certain areas and i'm sure we'd like a little bit more uh information on at some point soon go ahead karen yeah i think um it would be helpful to obviously bump that up and maybe we can fit it into the january meeting but here are my overarching concerns that once this process of taking the 28 recommendations went forward it really has been somewhat sheltered from the board as with respect to the timing the rollout the priorities of these 28 particular recommendations and whether or not we as a board think that the

11828 recommendations that were made if we want to implement all 28 recommendations and i think my understanding of the process here was that pcg was supposed to help come up with a strategy for doing that and then the board needed to decide as to what the implementation was going to be what was the rollout what were the priorities uh and and also from an expense standpoint what were those expenditures that needed to be incurred and we haven't had any of that so i'm slightly troubled by the fact that there hasn't been any board input since the 28 recommendations came as to what we as a board actually want to do with respect to what has been given before us it was a board study it was commissioned by the board and i feel that since

119then we haven't had any input and that's troubling to me so the i mean and we as as i shared um with the other karen i'm more than happy to go through the you know the 28 recommendations um they they're somewhat grouped together in in terms of building off of each other um and it is possible that we you know we can implement all of those but it you know again going through each of those um to look at what that means for gps we can definitely go through each of those individually well i think karen and i probably are on the same page and would love to have that and again when we get to the agenda planning maybe it can be put somewhere uh in january so that we have a better opportunity

120to give you feedback as we haven't had that opportunity and there's a lot of those uh recommendations are very open-ended um and i think we need a lot more information for some of them but i will just say again uh you guys have done an incredible job um and you have been very transparent with parents in the community and i know uh a lot of the special education um community has been really very happy with a lot of the improvements and changes that have been made so i wanted to say thank you on for that as well thank you michael joseph yeah thank you um sorry i can't be there um i i do want to say the um i i too thought that uh we were actually going to talk about the presentation on

121the actual action plan uh this evening so so we might want to think about um um agenda item wise how that was communicated but all that said um in dr h's defense dr h is um um agreed to uh is going to meet with uh karen hirsch and i as the as the board members of siac uh mostly to be able to update that way and we'll be brought back to the full border so that's that's going to be an ongoing way that we'll be able to do that to that communication that said to um the other karen's point i think when we talk about some of these larger issues here and these long log or implementation items we have to recognize two things one i think we need to remember the real urgency here

122um these are our most needy students and um this has been an issue for um obviously too long um so we can never unfortunately we can never pat ourselves on the back too much and i don't think anybody's doing that i don't think we'd ever recognize that uh two um when we talk about co-teaching which i'm a big believer of and i think it's uh too terrific that we're talking about going in that direction we really need even beyond the board we really need to have a community conversation about what that means and why that's advantageous to both general ed and special education students because that's going to be a lot of raised eyebrows if we raise that in a way that we implement co-teaching in a way that is not very thoughtfully uh articulated

123well ahead of time we need to be really talking about that this winter if we're going to have co-teaching widespread um and then the danger with coaches you really have to define what it is you know we didn't define it in this presentation i'm not defining it obviously we need to make it clear what that is um and obviously which i know dr h knows um we need to make sure that when we're talking about co-teaching we're really talking about um a vehicle for specialized instruction such that there's ways for students special ed students to receive skill development in their iep goals what we mean by co-teaching we're learning by co-teaching is to support students in the general ed setting in the least restrictive environment possible to get instruction in in in their specialized goals

124um co-teaching without specialized instruction is a waste of time and i think we need to go into any co-teaching implementation uh with that awareness and with that lens so i really want the question is more of a comment but i look forward to those conversations moving forward yes thank you mr kelly you can call me joe just was fun thank you uh i have a brief question we've had some over the uh over the last couple of years we've had some wonderfully supportive special education parents that have come to these meetings and really helped us along those that are dealing with this uh with this group could you tell me what their input is recently how they appreciate our progress uh what their what their comments are i i i certainly i said they're very

125helpful times they came here and now now i know we've created the opportunity for them to work closely with us could anybody comment on how uh how we're getting along with our parents at this point i think dr hagenthaler is probably um best suited to speak speak towards that uh having presented at multiple different um community groups um i mean like i said i i i've heard from from many that they are very happy with the movement forward with the transparency with the fact that there's documents um that have been posted on our website uh giving them more in-depth information um and access to understanding how the program works and and other things but i think dr h is probably best suited to speak towards it thank you yes um really making an effort to

126be in communication with parents both through the parent groups uh the seac and the ss ses ptac um as well as individual schools the the the ptac through that as well as individual parents um parents have responded very positively to the changes as as karen had mentioned um and are seeing things that are occurring in in the schools right now um you know just this morning i you know in a um for the greenwich high school we had a parent coffee and in discussion with one parent you know she was able to share that she has seen a change and she feels very supportive um supported her her child and is really thrilled with the progress that we've made and the things that we've shared moving forward in terms of class balancing and co-teaching and

127the supports that are at the classroom and i'm having those same conversations with parents at the various levels so at the elementary level as well as the middle school level change doesn't happen overnight you know i'm not able to you know hit a magic button and and have you know have everything change but i think we're definitely moving in the right direction um and that uh parents are saying that they're seeing that and they're feeling that and many are communicating that for some of the parents who might not see it so maybe not in their specific program or they might not have a specific something happening at their school they're out there advocating and saying that they're seeing the change and so i i have to say i feel very i i'm very lucky with

128the support that i'm getting from the parent community and i really appreciate the support that they're providing me well thank you that means a lot to me because promises made must be promises kept and we certainly made a lot of promises to our very enthusiastic special education community and very happy to hear it's progressing in a positive way thank you thank you thanks dr h seeing nothing else i think that we'll talk about this during agenda planning making sense okay let's move on to action items oh sorry did someone say something no okay let's move on to action items um remember i removed something from the consent agenda so the first action item now is the 22 23 board of education meeting calendar does anyone want to put a motion to put this on the

129table i can do it so i'll still move it all right thank you miss downey have a second laura costen okay discussion miss downey um i think my one comment which i believe i made at our last meeting is i was hoping to add one additional meeting to this original one proposed by the superintendent i think we find that in the fall in particular we have a lot of meaty topics including for example enrollment and achievement data which are big topics which i would like to see a second meeting added in october and i'm happy to make a motion to add a date when you tell me it's the appropriate time so would you like me to do it now mr or no sounds good to me i mean i i had also asked about

130one in late march which i can look at but uh just to have it as a placeholder i know dr jones had mentioned that there's a lot of um [Music] you know budget meetings uh during that period of time when we're meeting with others but i just know we get a lot of other data that comes in at that period of time there used to be a board retreat at that time so i thought it might be helpful to have it as a placeholder um i think i personally think with march the only challenge is we sort of need to know what the pet and rtm schedule is for that period of time for the budget cycle because that's usually when we're going to the district meetings um so and and then we have april

131break so i just don't have those dates we don't need a vote on this tonight necessarily but i think that i mean but i want to get the feeling from the board generally are you the only two or other people in agreement with that before we put send it back it seems to be no opposition so i mean it's up to you christina if you want to make an amendment to add things tonight or if we want to give dr jones a chance to add some dates and then bring it back in january you know i kind of defer to dr jones i mean it's not earth shattering that we do it tonight um i would suggest we add thursday october 6th as a in the retreat category but that was the only one i

132was requesting that we add ms hirsch what's your problem uh i still think we should add an additional one because there's a long break in the in the spring and between the february and the yeah or it was like the whatever it is the march and the april dates but um i can defer to waiting you know we could put a placeholder at some point and just add it during agenda planning if need be it's just easier for board members to hold something in a place on a calendar but we don't have the rtm meeting dates yet so i get that the march meeting is march 14th of 2022 for the rtm and typically district and committee meetings are the week prior we know it'd be really fun it would be 2023 sorry so why

133don't we do this why don't we have march 13th for 2010 and it depends when the bet usually votes on the budget at the end of march beginning of april that's really where the more relevant calendar is the bet calendar because they typically vote in between that the date that ms hersh is recommending is right around the time that there's the bet vote on our on the budget so i think that's relevant information more than the rtm i'm happy to to wait and add it if we need to be uh prior to the start of that school year once we get the other town bodies calendars is we don't want to step on any toes kathy yes go ahead michael what i'm i'm sorry maybe it's because i'm remote on the uh on the agenda

134it's the school calendar what what are we talking about our calendar yes it was on the consent agenda and i made a motion to move it too oh i see it so we could talk about it i sense that people weren't ready for it so why don't we do this why don't we uh karen why don't we bring this back and um we'll talk about during agenda planning but dr jones if you could take note of these items and then let's vote on our next meeting once everyone make sure they're comfortable with it it's always easier to delete meetings frankly than add them because then we it becomes you know a special meeting and then we're not as flexible so i think it's wise for us to make sure we get our planning right for

135next year so i guess i'm with did i make the motion no christina did you're withdrawing it okay all right so with that let's move to baller policy governance and i am shouldn't be down for this this is missed out yeah okay um so i'm going to move out because i should cover sheep i'm going to make a motion um that the board approve and adopt the following policies zero five previously proposed zero five two one three five four two point one four zero zero zero point one five one four one point five five one four four point four five one four five point four four five one four five point six six one four two point ten six one four two point one zero one and along with regulations 5141.5 are happy to second

136that um okay thank you so um as all the board members know these were presented in october the bulk of them and then two of them in november they i took board comments there were some very minor changes that pgc made that are were in the packet for this meeting in response to people's comments so we wanted to go ahead and these are reminding people that these are policies that we should have in place that we've as we've been filling in the gaps um between moving over from our old model to the cave model there are still some additional policies that need to be put in place and this is the first grouping i think we'll have some more and we'll have going forward with the new pgc starting in the new year um you'll

137note that we typically do not vote on regulations the one regulation we are voting on relates to suicide prevention that is because that's required by state statute that boards approve the um under 10 and my number's right two oh gosh i get that 10 to 20 oh my gosh i should know it off the top of my head um it's a required understatement connecticut general statutes that we vote on regulations relating to suicide prevention so um that is why that one is being voted on by the board so i guess it's either open to questions or any other discussion yes hersh uh i just i know a question had been uh forwarded to us by one of the board members in regards to one of the policies that we are discussing um i believe it

138was four zero zero [Music] zero point one uh title nine uh for students and i would ask the board member if they would like us to uh possibly separate that one out for discussion or referral back to pdc yes it's and it's actually it's partner policy which they go pretty much hand in hand and they have some similar language so it's policy 400.1 and policy 5145.44 i'd like to refer those policies i'd like to separate these policies out and refer them back to peace to the policy committee for further discussion i have i've raised concerns with those policies regarding title ix and their implications and i don't think that they're ripe for a vote at this point in time i i will uh hand that to our chair christina would christine would you like me

139to make that motion yeah i actually suggested to karen to make the motion to segregate these two out and we can refer those two back to pgc for further discussion before yeah before they come back to the board yeah i just didn't know if you wanted both or just the one so either make the motion or second it whatever you'd prefer yeah i know i do want both and um i did like christina know late in the game that i'd like both of them so i i'm happy to make the motion so i i make a motion to uh exclude policy numbers is 4000.1 and 5145.44 from any vote tonight and refer those back to the policy committee for further discussion i'll second that okay with that motion on the table let's take a vote

140on that cody yes karen oh yes sorry kathleen still yes karen joe yes laura yes christina yes michael joseph yes now we're back to the original motion so it's approving the policies and regulations all the ones that you listed but with those two out right you just need to remember exactly emotion yeah i think you need to make a new motion yes that's right so go ahead christina can you just make an emotion okay um so that does she need to withdraw the first actually withdrawing the old motion do that that's easier draw the old motion to make a new motion i think that's cleaner okay i'd like to make a motion that the board approve and adopt the following policies as presented to the board um zero five two one three five four two

141point one five one four one point five five one four four point four five one four five point six six one four two point ten six one four two point one zero one and regulation five one four point r i'll second that okay all right take a vote cody okay karen yes kathleen stoja karen yes mr kelly yes laura yes christina yes michael joseph yes okay that presses eight zero thank you very much now you guys will take that up at the policy committee okay next action item is now the calendar 2023 2024 school calendar can i get a motion i don't have it in front of me but i think i can do this approve the 2023-2024 school calendar as presented can i get a second second thank you karen kowalski all right discussion

142anyone karen kloska like apparently we only have 180 as is so no let's add two days and then we can implement remote days at some point i am not doing that anybody nothing all right let's bring this right to a vote then cody all right karen yes kathleen stewart yes karen yes joe yes laura yes michael joseph yes christina downey yes okay thank you that passes eight zero okay next up operating budget this shouldn't take long oh sarcasm okay when i get in front of me i'll get on the table okay i'm making a motion to approve the rupo's fiscal year 20 22 23 operating budget of 176 million 403 242 as presented can i have a second laura okay discussion miss downey yes um i was actually going to make another motion or so

143um that we add to the operating budget in connection with additional i i guess additional costs that we're going to have can we talk about it i mean yeah so put a motion on the table to amend the budget okay motion to amend the figure for the operating budget to add 290 000. i think even two ninety two right is it two ninety two i thought it was two ninety two hundred ninety okay all right i thought what we discussed okay i will second that can we have a discussion on the item sean i'm sorry kathleen you wanted me to make a comment we'd like to hear it we just made an amendment to the budget to add money specifically to the transportation line and the amount of 290 000 and i think we'd like

144to have a little bit of a discussion on that item can you open it yep hold on a second shut up we allowed to talk about this while we're in middle negotiations with this contract yes we can yes thank you for asking um so when the budget was presented we had called out a uh that our our bid had not completed and uh in the meantime we had inserted a placeholder increase for transportation in the amount of five percent uh since then uh the low bidder has come in and it's an increase of 12.5 percent uh so the the gap that we start out with is about 762 we do believe uh that we can uh find some savings uh by route consolidation that that we hopefully will yield about 200 000 so that would

145leave a remaining gap of 562. and we also looked at some areas to target uh where we could reduce and and move funds into transportation to cover uh the majority of the of the gap it would leave us with those transfers those proposed transfers it would still leave us with a gap about 290 000 so that's where we are and christina's motion is to uh close that gap by requesting an additional 290. and and with that 290 the the the year-to-year increase of 2.65 would go to 2.82 sorry to say that more time what's the percentage increase so we're joining the bt guidelines for 2.65 so just be adding 0.17 percent if if the if this if this motion is approved the request would increase the year to year percentage uh from 2.65 to 2.82

146an increase of 0.17 okay further discussion on this item let's take a look down on this amendment wait does this is the increase is this with the electric bus oh we're not talking about the specifics around that but i'm sean can you answer that um cody uh we we did discuss that that's something that i will uh you know make an approach on uh and uh if we are successful we could we could uh reduce what we need to transfer in but um at this point the motion is without the electric bus sorry i just realized michael joseph has his hand up go ahead you're on mute no no worries i i worry that this might be a this motion might be uh premature um we have um we've already found um [Music] a period

147plus um thousand savings to help me this towards um this deficit um i i don't know if the authorizing 200 and going over the bet guidelines right now uh makes sense from situations that fluid and we talked about other possibilities for savings in an executive session um if we need to go back and if we can't make it work then then we we can have that discussion um at a later date but i i don't know if right now uh it makes sense to throw up particularly when we're also in a negotiation right now it makes sense to throw our hands up and put that money in in the budget and and exceed the guidelines and that's harsh um my question then is i think we have to be able to have the funding in

148order to be able to sign any type of contract is that correct sean uh yes we do and so if we find that the funding between now and when that contract is signed if there's some other uh discussion points that the cost would drop we can then ask you know to remove that extra funding when we go for bet say we no longer need x y is it correct when one option really is i mean you could motion to approve the budget as is but by doing so we would be taking on some additional risk in the budget so in other words we'd continue to look for savings to close the budget but in reality we would uh you know we would have we would have to assign some risk to uh a few accounts

149to close it at that level joe in my time uh working on his board but basically uh it was very important to me to make sure budgets were put forward very accurately and paying a budget is not something i've ever liked to do uh in in business anyway you want to be accurate you want to have the numbers exactly as they are my expectations are that the budget we put together was the accurate budget we found an another cost that's added to that we should actually accurately represent that or present that as a budget and if we could somehow reduce that due to other savings we find that is good but accurately putting a budget forward i think is is is very important if at the end of a cycle we end up giving as

150we do to the town anything left over we give back to the town if we give back a large portion of money or we have to collect or or get more money from the town well that's not good accounting that's not good budgeting good budgeting is trying to land straight down in the number whether it's a plus at the end or minus so anything added to the budget i think has to reflect right away and if we could fix that uh before the uh before the end then then we'll certainly do that yeah i'm just going to add a little bit there too i think that just to give everyone a little history here um the bus contracts have saved us in the past in terms of money that covered our budget um sean did

151a great job when we were sadly out of school that a lot of the money was returned um and we haven't had the issues that the rest of the country has in terms of bus driver shortages or anything like that so um and it turns out we need to bus our kids and we're kind of at the max i mean we're still getting emails on the fact that can you please reduce the radius where kids from high school if they're within two miles have to walk and i forget it's middle school it's one and a half and one or something like that um i think busing is important i think we need to transport our children we are responsible also for transporting the private school kids you started with a 762 000 delta and you

152got it down to 292 by optimizing the bus routes um i think we're at a spot now where i want to make sure we can in fact meet our obligations and 90 of our budget as we talked about in the past is is contractual so i'm generally in support of adding the 292 or 290 000. cody um i agree with mike i think this is uh jumping the gun a little bit i don't think this is a question of over whether we are in favor of having buses to get kids to schools nor do i think that that's at risk at all i think it's a question of whether we're confident that the there's i think to joe's point you have things move around in a budget some some things increasing costs some things decrease

153i think this is an increase relative to what we expected but i'm not convinced that the uh gyrations and the potential decreases has been fully uh vetted yet and even um very recently they've uncovered i think sean's done a nice job uncovering some areas that uh make up most of the deficit and i think using the electric bus as an example uh there's still uh extra room where there's spending that um can probably be reevaluated and i think that might even extend beyond the stuff that we've looked at recently so i i i'd support what uh what mike said mrs klosky so i think that um sean has done a great job in going through the budget very carefully to find where savings can be found um i'm also you know i know this is

154a little bit fluid and i feel like sometimes we are always racing to the end um in doing this and and i'd like to say wish we had more time always on this but you know there are i think there are other avenues where cost savings can be found while coming within the bets prescribed um proposal of the 2.65 and going through this i have found a number of places that i think you know there are always cost savings and we always end up at the end of every year returning large amounts of money and i believe in was it not this past year but the year before that we returned two million dollars so there's always a fact of savings uh and i think that doing so we should stick within the guidelines and

155we should work diligently as sean always does to figure out where those savings can because we always end up returning money sorry miss down he hasn't had that go ahead i mean the perils of being online um i i am of the view that i appreciate and applaud sean for finding ways to cover the shortage in what we didn't expect to however um for some of the newer board colleagues we are must much better served by putting in our request now which we have to vote on tonight the amount of the contract or the amount we think we need for the contract because to the extent we can find the savings we can always reduce the request or i'm sure the bet and the rtm will be happy to do that for us however we

156can't add to it after tonight so if those additional savings can't be found in places that we are comfortable um without impacting on the education of our children um we put a gun to our heads by by not including the money now so i think it's rather while it's a large amount of money relative to the total amount of our budget it's a tiny amount and i think if it gives us the comfort that we're going to be cutting a number of things and we will continue to look for them but without putting a gun to our heads i am in favor of adding the 290 000 and i i applaud and give sean the time now to continue to look for efficiencies that may be able to help cover that shortage so sean did

157you have anything chad i didn't see her um i mean i do i do agree uh with christina that now is the time to put it in um as i said in the executive session um this is this is something that is we're just in the beginning of this and we will likely see some cost savings uh going forward and and very likely we will see some uh cost risk especially in as we've seen in the special ed area so we not only need to find uh cost savings just on an ongoing basis but we uh we also need to be aware that there are risks coming as well that we don't even know about yet so as far as the electric bus goes we will pursue that but i can't imagine it's going to

158be a significant amount of money buddy oh yeah i was just going to make the point that i think staying within the uh b2t guidelines has benefits that extend outside of the budget just given that i think there are some capital projects that we may want to be even pulling forward and increasing spending in those areas and i think there's something to be said for building credibility with the uh with the bet um in terms of us being uh disciplined about the way we spend and i would just say for my two cents i don't have confidence about the way that the operating budget was put together i don't think that it is as fixed as we have treated it uh and i think that some of the information has taken you know longer not

159necessarily the fault of anyone involved in assembling it they have a lot on their plates but um i just i i think there's a lot of value and actually you could end up in a situation where more money on an operating and capital basis is spent on kids with a little bit of credibility building with the bt which is something that i think this board probably uh has a deficit to fill jeff thank you uh well i'm torn i uh i really would like to uh agree with cody agree with stick to the bet uh budget guidelines i think it's important to do that uh but this uh addition to the budget that that sort of fell in place here uh concerns me uh we can't i i ca i can't say it because sean

160you would know better than anybody uh but basically if we're making an assumption that we're gonna find money uh is that a bit irresponsible making that assumption should we identify this money put it in now or do you think maybe uh just maybe because you're good at this your white board in your office is full of all sorts of savings and great opportunities so do you think tell me do you think it's irresponsible in your opinion uh for us not to include this uh this uh this this additional money into the budget what's your opinion on that i mean we've made a really good faith effort to try to contain as much as this i mean all the items that i've identified so far are not a given i mean it is adding risk so

161for us to leave the budget as is we are we will be adding additional risk so that's a concern to me and uh you know and and as i said earlier i mean there are other costs that it will likely hit that we don't even know about you sorry so many hands michael joseph oh sorry then christina and yeah no i'll be quick look the um if we stay within the bet guidelines then that gives us a strong argument um in the conversation the subsequent conversation with the bet that we say to the guidelines if we do not it invites um invites them to open open up and take let's look at everything um and undercuts on any any argument of negotiation i think cody's point about um being making good faith effort here is

162an important one when we look at the future conversations in the next part of this process it's downy then i'll come back i think a final point and i'm going to call the question is the bet guidelines did not assume the percentage increase that we have are looking at for transportation and had they had that information i think it is likely that the number would have been a higher number so my own point of view let's call let's call the question christina the bet guideline assumed two percent for transportation that is a good fact miscosta i i just want to be very cautious about you know chasing unicorns in the budget when we already have a you know a budget that's been scoured for efficiencies and i think our responsibility is to the students the

163bt knows how to do their job they know how to ask questions of us they know how to uh seek in the information they need i have full faith in their confidence in their fiduciary responsibilities our responsibility is not to incur any unnecessary risk and to make sure that we can transport our students so looking for you know unicorns in the budget that that may never materialize as far as you know undiscovered savings i really want to be cautious about those kinds of notions here and i think we need to move forward any as you know any additional funds that are not spent are returned to the town and and if this 292 is found to be somehow not realistic then or or is is too pessimistic i think that we will have those um

164those discussions after but right now i think assuming risk and a negotiation that we do not have a lot of avenues as far as as far as negotiation so i think we we need to move on and just look at what we have before us thank you karen dr jones so i have a question for sean and you had mentioned the fact that we have unknowns that always happen with respect to the budget including we've experienced it over the last several years with regard to special ed and when we've got had those issues a real art regarding a need for additional monies in those areas we've gone back to the bet and we've asked for interims correct um we we had uh discussed with the bet coming in for an interim and it we were

165advised to you know wait till the end of the year to get a more accurate view of where we would land and during that time as you recall um you know it was the you know covert had just hit and uh we ended up having a significant amount of covert related savings so that really saved us that in conjunction with the uh the renegotiation of the bus contract really really put us in a very good position but they've never said no correct uh that is true i don't know about that i'd have to go back and look but i think well as far as for two years they've said no they've always said you know always approved it yeah and we don't want to make sure we don't use we don't want to go into

166budget season already talking about our interims um ms hirsch i just wanted to address the you know point on credibility and i i actually agree with wanting to make sure that we we you know look credible when we are working with other town bodies and to me if we already know that we have this additional need for 290 dollars it is more credible for us to go out in asking for what it is that we actually need and give sean i think the time if we can find other efficiencies or ways to reduce uh the cost of that contract between now and uh when this is presented at the bt i think it it behooves us to ask for what it is that we know that we need today and if we can find other

167efficiencies tell them that we are happy to make that reduction uh if we find them dr jones yeah i i just feel like as a school superintendent i'd be remiss if i didn't say that i don't see cutting the budget as efficiency when we're going in and cutting software we're cutting maintenance the way that we got in such a challenging situation over the last couple of years for areas like curriculum and materials and supplies is when we are asked to go in and cut there there's not a lot to cut and so what happens is we end up taking it from areas that we truly believe that we need and i i just i think efficiency is the wrong word um if you're asking us to absorb sean what was the number 760 something it's

168going to impact instruction i mean ultimately the first i think probably last year where we felt like we were funded you know where we needed to be was one of the first years in a while where we hadn't had to go in and cut the supplies at our school level and our school supply level has not increased over the last couple of years it's just stayed flat even though we all know the cost increase has you know continued to go up um but i just i feel like i need to say that it's really not efficiency it's just taken away from areas that we need i'd make one follow-on comment to tony uh tony's comment if you look in the details section of the budget you will find a huge number of accounts with zero

169increase uh huge i mean all the supplies accounts zero percent increase so we've held we we knew we had to increase for salary we knew we had to increase our transportation and we did we called it out at five percent knowing that it's dependent highly dependent or dependent on the rfp result uh also special ed tuition we needed to fund that uh utilities we needed to fund that so i mean it all adds up and in the only way we can do that in these accounts which are exceeding you know two and a half three percent in each of those areas is to keep a significant amount of things flat and we did that all right i wanna oh constant just one more thing um i know that we talked about um optimizing bus routes

170and right now we have children on buses for a long time you know our our kids have told us repeatedly you know mommy it might be just better for me to walk than get on this bus and sit on it for 40 minutes so i i also want to be very realistic about what avenues we truly have and i think um using the number that we have that seems pretty concrete is is the approach that i would i would take here so uh the motion on the table is to add specifically we want to take a we're first going to take the motion up on transportation um so specifically adding 290 000 to the budget um cody so just you're just voting on the amendment right now which is just adding the transportation piece so

171yes we're voting now yeah i'm gonna go with no thank you you want me to do your vote too i'm happy to do it i think you could do all of our vote i'm gonna say yes but you just made my day i'm gonna go yes no yes christina yes michael joseph no all right so that passes five three um so now that brings us back to the original motion so can i just i can the original motion i have to amend it right so prove the proposed fiscal year 2223 operating budget of check my numbers 600 sorry 176 million 643 i think it's sick what 693 this is my bad hand or anything hold on it was originally 176. at 290 would be 693. oh yeah so let me do that again approve the

172proposed fiscal year proposed 2223 operating budget of 176 million 692 as presented or as amended second okay any all right take a vote on this now cody no karen yes kathleen stowe yes karen no joe yes miss costume yes miss downey yes and michael joseph no sorry you said no okay that passes 5'3 all right up next is capital you want me to put this on the table okay all right i am going to put a motion on the table to approve the proposed fiscal year 2223 capital budget of 878 621 as presented can i get a second second thank you miss constant okay discussion or amendments i suspect why don't we just start i suspect we have amendments and i think what we'll have to do to keep this clean is that we'll take

173each amendment vote let's sort of keep a running total and then uh come back to the original motion which will probably be an adjusted number so i think for cleanest sake possible i think the first part may be to address the greenwich high school road right we're not calling it phase two anymore it's the greenwich high school road okay is to to take is to deal with that with respect to the capital that i believe it's currently six million dollars in the the budget but in light of the comments that were previously made by by joe concerning the the status and the unlikelihood that it is going to get done this year i would make a motion to amend the capital to exclude the 6 million for the ghs road i'll second that discussion ms

174hirsch uh i think it's pretty clear that that access road is not only needed uh but something that this board does support um but i do understand that it makes uh little to no sense to to have money uh sitting in an account especially that large of a number if we can't use it this year um but joe i know you mentioned some and joe mentioned something quickly about separating the two out did you have just out of curiosity did you know what the cost differential was for the road versus part of the stadium and or i mean my second part of that question that was for joe my second part of the question is is you know what is the board's appetite should we get approval from the state in six months you know

175time to ask for an interim if we pull it out now the way we would do with the except for western i mean i just don't need to have money sitting there that we can't use until we get an approval to answer your question the uh visit this side the team room is 850 000 so it reduces the uh the cost of 5.15 million dollars miss downing i see your hand up yes thank you um so i think most of us would agree about the need for the road i think our concern is that the process hasn't moved along isn't sufficiently developed with the state with municipal improvement we were hearing tonight about things are moving and we have a tree warden there are a lot of moving parts so i think in an effort

176to be good fiscal stewards we can't be just appropriating money for something without really having a fully developed plan um i think karen hirsch makes a great point about treating it potentially like we do the western field that if western fields that if as and when we get approvals we could come in on an interim basis and ask for money with with some urgency but i want to kind of go back to the point that i believe when the rtm passed recently their new rule about building committees i believe that we talked about whether this project um is required to have a building committee and it would seem to me that if in fact that's the case and we do have planning money in our current year's budget shouldn't that building committee be formed so

177that it becomes a more orderly process in terms of getting the approvals and and having a group that their specific charge is to go through the process of design and approvals similar to what for example we're doing on the ghs entryway is we are working with other architects with planning and zoning and arc as i as i discussed earlier and that's what if if we're going to have to have a building committee for this which the rtm was telling us we need to do then we should get that process moving to help get the road process moving that's you know one person's opinion and it would seem that that would also create a group that will respond that have ultimate responsibility and accountability we absolutely 100 have to put a building committee together due to

178uh uh the rtm's decision in a meeting they had not too long ago so that process must get started uh i clearly do not agree uh with with removing this money from the capital budget uh seeing how i was asked by this community uh to uh uh to go forward with this road as best i can i am going to get the uh bet on board as best i can i thought i spoke to the first selectmen today about a supporting at 100 i'll continue to talk to the community about the importance of this as we get closer to that bridge uh work gonna be done on route one and as we get closer to uh possibly this work that's going on in i-95 the community will realize how important this is and uh and

179we'll we'll look at a possibly an interim uh uh uh funding of this project as it ripens i do agree uh that it is not there are some obstacles uh pardon the pawn roadblocks that are uh stopping us to get where we need to go that doesn't stop me working hard on this thing and pushing our team to get this thing done if by some chance we could all pull together as i mentioned before and work real hard to get this done i'm still gonna go and request the money from wherever i can request the money from because it's the town once that project happens on route 1 and that project happens on i-95 simultaneously the town 64 000 strong i'm going to turn around and say why didn't you do that road okay all

180right next sorry this is our business meeting i'm sorry you cannot interrupt us that's anyone else or do we take a vote on this right michael joseph i'm sorry michael joseph no that's okay um so joe i'm not i'm not clear to the um um what you're suggesting joe are you suggesting because i heard you say um um separating the project the um and i didn't catch that i think because i'm a remote they um would joe as the person who's really been the champion here um what do you think we should be uh putting forward right now in the budget to get this road done uh that's a good question uh well i want i i want this road to get done uh so therefore whatever it takes to get this road done because

181it's no longer a border that issue if it was a there are there are certain issues there are capital issues which we have to address and proprietize uh is this the top of the list or not well that's for everyone to debate and discuss i was charged by the community and by our board to push this process forward just like i was asked to do the same thing with cardinal stadium so therefore i find the importance of this i've expressed the importance of this i'll continue to express the importance of this wherever the funding comes from to get this road as i said i don't believe it's any longer a boe issue it's a town of greninja issue and that money should come from somewhere in order to uh uh to help this town through

182this crisis that we're about to uh come across sorry ms costan i want to express solidarity with joe and his concern for the safety and security and accessibility so if there's any way that we can um make sure that when we have approvals we get this money and we get this done as quickly as possible because it's so important for for the safety of our students and for our community i believe that yes ms klosky and i think it's important to note that i think that the purpose of this vote is to clarify that even if we put this money in the budget it the unlikelihood that we'd actually get to spend it is less than 50 50. and considering the capital that we are about to go through and ask for approval on the

183fact that we would be tying up 6 million for a project that may not happen not because of a lack of diligence but because of process and red tape and approvals that need to go through i think we need to reconcile that versus what is happening as the vote for the vote tonight because we have a hefty capital budget and we need to make sure that what's on it is going to get done and for next year as opposed to putting something on that may not and again not through lack of diligence or want no i think karen you made the right analogy to the western middle school fields like it's clearly a priority but it doesn't make sense to um hold it up in our capital and we have to wait for approval still

184um so why don't we vote on this particular amendment um to see and so the motion on the table is to remove the six million from the capital budget as it relates to this ghs project um cody do i always have to go first you know that's fair but i'll switch it next time okay uh vote no you don't want to remove it sorry i do want to remove it i'm good this is so fun okay karen i will vote yes to remove it but only on the fact that we are no closer to actually having an approval right i'm a yes karen yes joe well i'm gonna have to abstain because i'm too deep in this uh process so i abstain okay laura i want to abstain as well okay christina downey i'm gonna

185vote to remove the money but with the hope that we can get the ball rolling in the proper process um to come back at some point soon so that's a yes okay yeah and michael joseph um no you don't want to remove it exactly okay gosh okay six one two is that right yes okay thank you so six one two no that's too many kathleen oh my god i i have a super majority don't you know five one two thank you i just made us nine okay next up do we have any other amendments to capital no don't need to make an amendment i'll make an amendment all right christina do you have one um i was actually going to make a motion um to bring forward into fiscal to your 23 250 000 of

186planning money i don't know if we're going get visibility or architectural engineering planning money for central middle school happy to second that discussion how much money sorry 250 000. the 250 000 that was currently in 24 to bring it forward to 23. actually when we asked sean it was 250 thousand that was required apparently it was a 0.3 it was rounded up it is 250. is that the soonest we can get that going it's a good question sean uh i'm sorry what's the question yes if that's the soonest we can get the planning money in there and get it going uh well i mean we don't have the funding now so as soon as we can do it is 23 if that's if that's the question being asked but cody 23 is the budget we're

187voting on that's next year's budget so july 1st 2022 is the first is basically when you start getting to use the 250. could we go out i just thought of this but i know we talked about this the other day but could we ask to get that funding now so they could start the work now in the form of an intern i mean there's such the savings the sooner that that project happens the savings on the building are pretty big they actually we might get an audience for that i don't want to like derail i think the general consensus on this but just food for thought yes mr kelly well what we can do is uh address the maintenance as it's happening on the building if we understand we're going to address this sooner we

188can address the maintenance uh and instruct the maintenance to uh the work that has to be done of course will be done but if this stuff we can reduce with the concept that we're moving it forward then that number can come down so i have a clarification question so you're saying so hypothetically and sean you might have to open on this too so hypothetically if the maintenance for cms next year is two million dollars and we decide we want to well wait this money doesn't even come back we don't get that money anyway july 1st july 1st so that doesn't make yes doctor john sorry i don't see you i was just going to ask would this be a good time for us to bring up the chart and sean can actually show what the

189finance committee looked at that shows the savings and even if you bring the 250 forward we're still going to have to have some infrastructure capital because of what's going on in that building but i think it might be helpful for people especially the ones that weren't at the finance committee good idea can you share your screen is someone trying to pull that up yeah mike has that document everybody see it yes um okay so what this chart is we have been um requested to identify how much uh infrastructure that's in our budget that could be eliminated if if we received assurance that the major projects for these particular three projects would be funded within the next five years so tony and dan watson and i got into a room in the afternoon uh earlier this

190week or maybe it was last week last week and with that assumption that the these three projects would be funded within five years we identified how much infrastructure in our budgets for for the five-year period could be eliminated and in the case of the first one i'll go through is in in the budget book for old greenwich over that five year period uh we had 10.9 million dollars of infrastructure spending and and 558 of it being in 2023 and of those amounts we identified for 2023 we could eliminate 236 000 of the and then going out to the five year we could eliminate uh 7.3 million of the 10.9 million that was budgeted for infrastructure if we did the projects if we did the old greenwich project within the five-year period same thing with julian

191curtis for 2023 there's almost 2.3 million dollars of infrastructure and 7.8 million in the five-year period of those numbers we could reduce 843 000 out of the 2.3 million 5.9 million out of the 7.8 million over the five-year period and then the big one central we have 4.5 million in the 2023 budget and 36.5 million over the five-year period of that amount we could reduce 898 in 2023 898 032.1 million over the five-year period and just so i mean the 898 seems to be a relatively small number of a reduction uh on a base of 4.5 million but we looked at that carefully and given what's going on at central we left in there i think it was about 2.3 million dollars of mainstream masonry work that we feel strongly we should be keeping in

192there as we will you know if shovel doesn't hit the ground until for example of we most likely need to do some masonry work just to make sure that the building remains safe so when you add those three things together you go to the bottom of the chart uh for 2023 for those three schools we had 7.4 million dollars of infrastructure we we could reduce our 2023 infrastructure budget by about two million dollars and over the five year period we could reduce uh 45 out of the 55 million of infrastructure so significant uh reductions if we do these major projects and and i think i think everybody agrees that central is a pretty important project to focus on i mean these three are all i think very important but uh i think the one we're

193talking about here you know related to uh central with the 250 motion can you go to the next slide you can see that yeah i should have said that so what's attached to four more charts that show the detail over the five year period the the highlights in yellow indicate that those those numbers could be fully eliminated and then any in the pink color will have a number a replacement number so for example we're looking at uh central building envelope windows and doors for 2023 193 in pink we could reduce that to a hundred thousand that's that's the gist of it so we've done that for those three schools and that's how we get to the 2 million for 23 and and 45 million for the five year period for the three schools well kathleen

194also remember this when you go in and negotiate this position we reluctantly surrendered 3.5 million or so for a field we were going to put back there and that got somehow absorbed or swallowed up and now let's look at this project and say we've saved that by also contributing that some year ago uh so that's a that's something you must keep in your hat when defending the position for central uh number two uh we have yet and don't want to panic anybody but we have still not gotten our engineers report for central so the urgency is is uh not quite uh uh we haven't gotten the facts on that yet which it could very well have to hurry it up if the engineer comes in and tells us we have an issue we need to

195address then then certainly we'll have to act immediately but we haven't gotten that report back so don't uh the community that's there don't worry as far as we're concerned we're still okay and if we hear something bad which we do have the engineers doing the work then we'll certainly uh relay that when we get it other thoughts on this one did you have a question does it does it make any difference if we did an interim request for the planning spending on central versus doing it for 2023 like would it would help accelerate the timeline at all well um i mean i guess joe is right that we need to get the report if the report comes in and it tells us that you know we need to do the work sooner rather than later

196then i think an interim would be appropriate i'm just going to interject cody because you haven't been on the rtm any interim requests that we make have to be first voted on by us then they go to the bet and then they go to the rtm and have to meet all their criteria for meetings so it's a several it's not an instantaneous process so i'm not you know it would be a matter of more okay thank you there's a reason that we just go through this long budget process a good point arduous process sorry michael joseph yeah i mean i think um i think this is a i think this is a good idea i think it's a good idea for a number of reasons but i think most importantly uh moving forward with um

197getting uh edit specs started on central middle school really puts us in a position where we prioritize over the coming years or capital projects um there is a there is a strong argument here that central um um might need to go to the front of the pack um for for a few reasons uh one they um so we remember you know when we did the master plan five years ago um those those architects said that this building had to be rebuilt completely in 15 years in this current plan in our current budget that's moved up to four years from now recognizing the real need in the building we just went through um an election campaign where you know we heard all about uh crack monitors and other concerns about central there's lots of rumors about

198shoddy construction and things like that we know the building's safe we also know it's not um up to standard and then finally the other thing to keep in mind here when we are prioritizing all these things is if we follow the current process the um if on the small if on the young elementary children in jc it's conceivable we're looking and that that student would be looking at um [Music] construction um influencing their education throughout k to eight if we went basi and then central um and and i think that's that's that's also something and then look at the savings i mean 30 million dollars you know first for central alert if we move it up um so this is this is a longer community conversation um that's going to go on past tonight where

199really we have to talk about um prioritizing um that that um [Music] the master plan we did five years ago is not a sacred document that was our priorities at the time priorities change they um it's conceivable that central is changing the priority and that's i think we have to be honest about that as a board and take a leadership chance when it comes time to it mrs kowalski so i agree with my comments yeah i think it's really important that we are addressing the issues of cms and i think the writing is on the wall when we saw this in comparison to what we've seen in the past in relationship to cms because this has a spending 30 almost 36.5 million dollars in the next five years just to keep this building going and

200originally we had planned not even to touch this building until 2034. uh which which is you know a remarkable difference between what was originally prescribed versus what we're seeing now which is we could build this school in what we in five years for what we need to spend just to keep currently maintained so i think the writing is on the wall with respect to us needing to bump up cms and realizing that it's important and i do emphasize also the fact that while we have the julian curtis community they would by doing this we're ultimately they're walking into a brand new school which is something that currently those students at julian curtis won't have even if the construction starts there sooner rather than later so i am all in favor of bumping up cms and

201addressing this issue because this is the school that's going to require the most work in the next three years anything further on this particular one okay and seeing the motion on the table is to accelerate the planning money around central middle school for 250 000 and for cody's request i'm going to go in a different order michael joseph yes christina downey yes laura coston yes joe kelly yes karen yes i am a yes karen hirsch yes and cody okay that passes eight zero okay do we have any other motions right i'm happy to i think related to what mike just talked about looking at the julian curtis is that we want to talk about that now sure i'll put a motion on the table or would you like to put one on the table okay

202then i'll do it um i am going to put a motion on the table to actually reduce the a and e money because in conversations i understand that we feel that we can actually do the a and e planning for a little bit less because of the fact that we have our ed specs are so well planned out so i was actually going to i'm going to do the motion separately i guess um reducing the a e money for jc from 1.8 to 1.5 can i have a second second sony okay discussion mr kelly well just quickly so people understand this uh sean gave us the 1.8 number uh in anticipation of what it's going to cost to do this he's now tightened that up a little bit so we're getting the same thing uh

203for jc but just for uh lesser amounts so we're not conceding anything all we're doing is sean has now sharpened his pencil and said well what i told you we could do for 1.8 we could do for 1.5 yeah sean could you actually talk a little bit about that and dr jones yes it wasn't my pencil it was dance yeah i think from last year to this year um the reason it if you remember last year it was at i believe around 1.5 and it really was that escalation number and we think that we can back out some of that escalation and that 1.5 um we thought would would be able to do it ms kowalski i thought the one point it was coming down because we had 200 000 left in the budget to

204have done ed specs that was left back for last year's budget and that we were just applying it to this component that's what i thought i misunderstood that can you explain that sean i think you have to return that money right it hasn't really said it's effect specifically uh you talk you're talking about uh for jc yeah we'll uh that was for uh feasibility and we will most likely return that money i think it was about i think it was about 200 200 000. anything further on that miss kowalski um i've said it before i've said it twice before so i'll say it for a third time i think that the work for with respect to julian curtis in that school it is the it has a lot of great elements to that project in

205addressing its elevator issues for 80 ada purposes it has hvac issues which are being addressed it is also addressing the security issues as it relates to the front entrance and the office this is something similar that um is also an issue at old greenwich and i think all of those things should be addressed as i've said before i think i i have a big problem with building two additional classrooms and the science room for this school at this time given our current capital restraints the issues with respect to other schools and the declining enrollment in and of itself across the district but particularly at julian curtis that is over the last six years down 33 percent i don't think it behooves us in being fiscally responsible to be building bigger schools at this point in

206time particularly because we can't even address the ada issues across the board i'd also suggest that we should have as a board taking a different stance with respect to this because i am very much concerned that if we send this to the bet it will be one of the things that they don't approve since they did not approve it before and i think that we should have taken the two hundred thousand dollars that we had and taken a sharper look at this school and if we'd come back and said nope this is what we're doing great then this is what we're doing but we didn't give it a second look and i think that we do a disservice to the julian curtis community by not having looked at it again sending it back to the

207bet after having been rejected and running the risk of it being rejected again only to delay it another year and i think that we should have redone this i would be happy to do the elevator i'd be happy to give the elevator money from have meyer and do the elevator at julian curtis tomorrow because i think that's the right thing to do but i think given the fact that we have ada issues in multiple schools that haven't been addressed we have issues at north street and concerns with cracks with respect to the foundation at that school we have a lot of issues and i think we need to be prioritizing what we need to fix and how we need to fix it so we not only address the beautiful elements but we need to address

208the health and safety elements and we're going to be neglecting those if we tie up capital and building extra classrooms which we don't need i'll add one other piece and that is if we came with the continue of the priority remember when we put shovels into the ground we will literally tie up every julian curtis child from k to eight for a the next 10 years in building a school and building these schools and they will be in construction their entire elementary and middle school careers and i just think that's the wrong move mr kelly jc has to be done correctly it's a 75 year old building it's the bones have to be checked we can't just slap some plaster on the walls and attach some uh certain features to the uh to the building

209and say well it certainly meets some codes are okay to move on to a 75 year old building those walls have to be checked we can't have the same thing that happened in north miami where because we couldn't access or didn't access certain features of the building because it's not normal maintenance a disaster happened when you have a 75 year old building you take a real you take a really good look at that building being in the construction business i certainly understand that you have to make a decision at one point to do things the right way sometimes i bought and sold about 100 homes in doing that sometimes you look at it you assume the bones are good you slap plaster on the wall you paint it over again and you sell it off

210to somebody else sometimes you have to go and reassure those bones are correct and you have to do a proper job and do it adequately a 75-year-old building is arguably a building you might want to well let's go to a old greenwich 125 year old building is a building you arguably might want to take down and build a new one because of all modern construction features but we decide not to spend that much money we're taking what exists and we have to do it right we can't just slap some plaster on it or reduce the scope i moved to this town uh some time ago from overseas we sent our kids to jc we uh we moved halfway through the season i'm sorry halfway through the school uh uh the session and uh we i

211planned on going to the private schools we fell in love with julian curtis we thought it was a a tremendous spirit in school but we were we were hesitant to stay there and and many who lived in i guess i had a fortunate career so so uh there's some parts of town that and we had some friends that went there as well from the the where we lived in town and we thought the building was old and we thought it was dated and we thought maybe we we maybe shouldn't go here to go to a more more uh up-to-date school that was 25 years ago and this school is still even more in the position that it's in it doesn't service some of the parts of town that it's meant to anymore because i i

212asked the principal or some of the people from the neighborhood that i live in some of the neighborhoods around us if they go to julian curtis anymore and she told me no because they're not serviced anymore because the building's too old it needs to be addressed immediately and needs to be addressed correctly miss hersh uh i'll point out that um when the master facility plan was given to the board and they selected the top three things that were uh just to make priorities um you know that's how jc uh and old greenwich and riverside which we haven't gotten to yet were selected um to go first uh in the four years that we've been sitting here discussing this i don't think any improvements have necessarily been made there to change that they still need the

213work we i i have had a student that was at glenville if you had seen what that school looked like before they finally went in and redid it you'd be amazed but the fact that there was discussion then that the school facility would never house more than x number of classes uh historically that it never happened but you know what they built the school and within a year and a half we'd outgrown it if you build it they will come we are not looking to build a building for what we are considering in five years we are looking to build a building that will last 75 years and then some to house that community which is what it does now right they haven't been touched really with a major renovation in 75 years uh we're

214looking for funding for a e we're not looking to immediately put a shovel in the ground and i think you know a lot of information will come from from that a and e as a discussion point but they their their needs have not changed and improved in in the four years that we've been you know looking at this miss downey thank you um i just think that it's important for us to realize we're talking about funding architecture and engineering money we're not making a decision tonight about a timeline for construction or which buildings are going to be simultaneous but the planning process takes a long time for any of these projects but none of these projects are going to happen unless we put time in for the planning and the architectural and engineering um so

215i don't think we i personally think we need to ask for the architectural engineering money for both old greenwich and julian curtis and if we have to you know people mention prioritization and discussions i think that's a discussion at our next budget um when we see where we are but right now at this moment in time um we have ed specs we were ripe to start the planning process and it is a very extensive process it's not going to happen in months it's going to take probably close to a year for each of these projects if not longer the in traditionally if we look our a e was over two years before we started construction michael joseph there you go um um yeah i think to christina's point it's not too early to [Music] we

216need to be honest we need to talk um every time about prioritizing we just took a vote that committed us to that sent that didn't commit us but put us on the road to spending 65 70 million dollars to build a new middle school they um we're looking at where we are on the road right now on three major capital projects the central middle school um old greenwich which i i certainly um uh support and i don't think i haven't heard any um amendments against that and and and julian curtis that's um that's over a hundred well over a hundred million dollars in spending um that's that's that's that's probably too much uh for any that is too much for for for us to absorb for the town to absorb in a year um it's

217going to be up to us the um because if we don't do it another board is going to another town body is going to to prioritize these products these these projects they we've already been told that julian curtis my other that that julian curtis is more expansive than uh you know as a project than um and they have been here than even the master plan said uh asked for so let's let's let's let's be honest about uh what we're putting putting forth here um because i think there's i think there's a i think there's a lot that we we're we're piling up and it's easy to it's easy to add um but we have to make some tough choices okay sorry miss kowalski then laura then i want to talk sure so for the record

218i never said we were going to pop some plaster on it and not do it right i said it was too big and i don't agree with adding schools to it and i i'm sorry adding classrooms and the science room but i do agree that it's got to be done the right way addressing the health and safety ada and security issues absolutely i also want to state that you know from an engineering perspective when north mianis happened we had engineers in ever in many of the schools particularly older schools including julian curtis where we spent seven thousand dollars to make sure that there was an engineering study so something similar would not happen there so i think we're doing the right things and i think it's just it is a good project it is just

219the wrong science project miss clauston i would just say we need to be mindful as a board of what our charge is our charge is to provide for the health and safety and education of our students and i think this project does just that i think we it's not our job to forecast the bet or do their job for them they do it quite well um and um so does the rtm right now we have a school that is not ada compliant has hvac issues has security issues has an undersized cafeteria that they are right now using as a gym so that they can socially distance their students during kobed and i think right now um just because there are maybe fewer kids in that school it doesn't change the need and i think we

220have to um not try to be the bet here i think we need to do the job we were um sworn in to do and that's and that should be our priority here i'm just going to end hopefully with i see my fiduciary obligation i agree laura as asking for what we need for our schools nothing has changed since i've been on the board unfortunately things just keep getting delayed that doesn't change the needs julian curtis and old greenwich didn't miraculously get better over the past couple of years and um central middle school does have new information and so i do agree with accelerating that we need to ask for the a e money we're not talking about the timing of the construction costs that'll come in the next phase but we do need to

221know what we need and um it is my belief that we need to ask for any for um og jc and planning money for central middle school it's not it's unfortunate that we are where we are because things had been sort of kicked down the you know we keep saying kicking a can down the road but things but let's move forward from here and for me i still think that these projects are important yep cody i we just talked a lot about need i i think it's important to recognize that i think there's elements of this project that are definitely needed and there are elements that are nice to haves and when we think about our job being to prioritize competing interests when we have scarce resources i think it's irresponsible to package things that

222are needed with things that are not necessarily needed and on their own would not be priorities over other projects perhaps at other schools i think what will happen is for the third time we'll put this forward it will be rejected and we the losers will be uh students at julian curtis who need ada compliance and need some of the health and safety things and we know everyone knows that this project goes beyond health and safety and that for me personally i wish there were no health and safety projects or ada compliant projects that needed to get done but i think until we have all of those uh needed projects complete across the district it's very hard in my mind to justify putting forward um elements of projects that you know would be lower priorities than

223those i also think that from a practical standpoint we will be back here and we will just have delayed more time that you know this student with a broken leg at julian curtis has to hobble up the stairs and the the sooner we get estimated specs done and estimates that allow us to know what it would cost to do the project without some of the nice to haves uh the sooner we'll better serve the students uh of julian curtis i'll tell you dr jones but just so you know we've voted on the jc ed specs now three times and so um they passed every time but yeah but how's your how are you doing getting funding with those okay but i'm just telling you what the prior votes of the board are so we could

224go back and rehash everything but i'm just giving you an idea that that's where we are uh dr jones yeah i just didn't want to forget to mention because we were only talking about jc but on og we also thought we could take that from the 1.8 to the 1.5 we just hadn't mentioned that on both of those okay thank you that's helpful okay assuming we have nothing further on this particular amendment the motion on the table was to reduce the a e funding for jc from 1.8 to 1.5 and i'll start with the vote kathleen stowe yes christina downey yes michael joseph no um cody but this is this is just reducing one eight to one five so it's it's kind of a it's kind of a funny position to be in because yeah

225i'd like to reduce it too then you can make an amendment after this right right so i'll abstain from this one okay karen yes karen joe yes and laura yes okay so we have five did you say no or michael joseph or abstain i'd like to change mine to abstain of course okay five zero three that fast all right i'm sure we'll have an amendment a second but let's just while we're doing this for og i'd like to put a motion on the table to with that new information to reduce the a and e um for old greenwich from 1.8 to 1.5 can i get a second okay second all right cody you seconded it okay uh discussion on the item okay seeing none laura costan yeah yes okay joe yes karen i'm a yes

226um karen yes cody michael joseph yes and christina yes okay that passes 8-0 um should i keep going okay i guess all right um [Music] this no if christina right here in person this would be her job as chair of the budget committee but i will keep going here um so now that we have a e and planning money associated with ogc and central middle school i am then and sort of one amendment going to look to reduce the infrastructure associated with those projects those specific schools assuming those major projects get funded and so as a result i would be reducing see if you could follow me here um old greenwich by 236 000 julian curtis's maintenance by 843 000 in central middle school's maintenance by 898 for a total of 1977 000. can i

227get a second to that anybody okay laura thank you austin okay and discussion so i'll just i'll open it but basically i think i've explained it there so um now that those major projects a e money or flash planning money have passed um what sean's chart showed is that we could eliminate much of the otherwise work we'd have to do if we weren't addressing the needs of those buildings ms again when we talk about transparency and and going in front of the bet we can certainly reduce funds we certainly can't add them back in if we go forward with a budget with money built in for a e for these schools and that doesn't pass and we've already reduced the funds for the maintenance that is needed uh to support those schools i think we'll

228put ourselves in a very difficult position because we can't add it back in i think the discussion point is if those if the funds for the a and e pass can we then uh you know we can then take this money off but i i think it is a not the smartest idea to take them out now when we are not sure if we are going to definitely need it it's just efficiencies that we don't that we could remove if if they are not needed going forward but i think today as of today we do need them miss downey yeah i share miss hirsch's concern on this um that we're then cutting money that if our requests are then cut then we kind of double shot ourselves in the foot um i'd like to hear

229sean's thoughts on these particular items for these three schools for next year before we undertake it or is there or can we do it as a conditional motion that you know i don't know if there's a way to yeah i don't know this back to robert's rules if the money gets approved by the bet and the rtm then we will reduce this request i don't know if that's even practical i i'm i'd be happily correct on that but i think you actually have to put a number forward um and the only issue that i have with this is that in the sense you're double counting right because if you're choosing a then you're not i totally agree but i also but if we get if we don't get part one and we've already taken out

230part two then we get neither no those are i think we could have those conversations with the vet if that was the direction they went at that time but i i hear you so um michael joseph yeah i had a i had a similar concern if we think about it the um without being annoyed about bringing up the prioritization point again here because um um a number a number of uh my colleagues who have said that we're not prioritizing right now we're just getting information and things like that for decisions that happen later at the same time if we're cutting maintenance we are putting us on that road a little bit towards doing those projects so it's not we're we're making prioritization uh moves without saying so so i think we need to be mindful

231of that i would rather leave the money in and it could be part of the discussion with the bt because now we've given them a road map for if they approve it and approve our request then we say well that we're ha we're very comfortable with you taking these numbers out that's i don't know that seemed cleaner to me but maybe that's too too mainstream i know i just i just think that i don't know i feel like we got hit a lot with the double counting piece and i think you're you know whatever this board agrees but i think but i think by setting out the numbers we're making it clear what you know we're not trying to hide the ball we're saying okay this is what we can do if you give us

232this right i don't know maybe i'd like to hear from more people sure cody yeah i like the way christina's thinking about this i i'm not worried that if the bet passes these that we'll be back at a meeting with you know sean or whoever saying you know these these numbers having disappeared from history so i think it will be we'll be able to uh correct and respond accordingly once the bet makes their decisions so you're saying take it out or don't take it out no don't take it out so yeah okay anything further go ahead joe it's it's confusing you can't put something conditionally forward which would certainly be the ideal scenario so we have to put uh the the number forward with the understanding that we're going to walk into the discussion uh

233making sure that they are in the same are on the same page that we are so i guess the only option uh to safely approach the negotiation is to believe the number in and then as you leave the number in you have that to reduce as long as you get some some guarantees some commitments from uh from the money folks that's fine if you want me do you want me to withdraw the motion happy to do that i would be in favor of you withdrawing it okay michael joseph oh nope i left my hands to hand open sorry i was finally catching on to the hands okay so i'm happy to withdraw that motion i'm done anyone else can i ask a question you may um so i i totally get you know the discussion

234that just took place but are we are we talking about withdrawing the motion for all three or are we really talking about jc no withdrawing for all three it's based on what just passed on the major projects so you have to follow the same logic okay okay so let me do some quick math here [Music] i think it's in i think sean's given us the number already right well you know he gave us the number without the infrastructure which is the number right so but i just did it i'm just removing 6 million 350 000 right so yeah so i removed 6.6 and i added in 250. so i think i got this does anyone disagree with me sean okay i'm going to put for her a number you guys tell me if you have

235something different based on the votes we just took oh but i i'm sorry i didn't know that's what you were doing i i wanted to make one more motion if i could oh yeah go ahead sorry the um i moved to uh strike the um havermeyer um elevator project can you give me an amount please no um yep i have in my notes believe it was 1.9 i think it's 1.2 1.2 sorry you need a second i'll shut his turn a cody you need a second for the motion second okay discussion so i had a question about the havemeyer elevator and i believe i put it in an email um and i know it's been a busy day so i'm not sure if anyone had a chance to take a look at it but um

236i the question regarding have meyer is if i look in our facilities master plan that um there are no major renovations to that building until i believe 2025 or 2025-2026 and um the first of that is a a 0.4 amount of 400 000 and then the larger expense which is a 1.8 million expense is incurred in the subsequent year which let's say i think is 2026. i assumed based upon the elevator expense of 1.2 that the 1.8 was not going to be done until 2026. so i have two questions one is why are we bumping it up um when we have ada issues at our schools first that aren't being addressed and secondly when i look at the master facilities plan on what that expense was going to be it had an all-in expense on

237a line item i believe it was on page 11 of the facilities master plan of 488 000. so my question there is what is the difference between how do we get 488 000 there versus the 1.2 now plus why are we bumping it up so i might speak to that so when we met and we were looking at capital i will say on page 250 there's a pretty good description of trying to take care of the ada compliance at habermeier it's not just the elevator shaft but the elevator when you look in the master plan i remember we talked about this last year that's just kind of the box there's a lot of other work that has to go in to install an elevator like upgrade of the electrical you know um all of the

238things that we've listed here trying to get an ada compliant bathroom it is a public building and really quite frankly from the staff perspective we know at the rate at which we're moving there's nothing that's going to happen at habermeier for 20 years i mean that's truly what we what we think because our needs are so large out of the school um and we listened to what the community was saying to really try to make uh ada a priority and we thought it was it was good in a public building um so that people could access our building access our restrooms which they can't right now even access our restrooms um so that that really was the thinking and that probably the larger project it's going to be a long time coming at the rate

239we're moving i don't understand what is the long time project that you're referring to well if you look in the budget book have a meyers you know built in one 1892 um it's it's not it's a it's an old building it is not in good shape and you know it's supposed to have a major project as well um and if you look on that page 228 uh habermeyer's major like big project of 20.2 million comes in 2032. but we don't feel like we're gonna meet that target even even remotely close and at some point we have to start doing some infrastructure in that building um it's old it's a really old building and so we were trying to be responsive to the community uh on this ada piece and felt like that would be it

240would be great in a public building to be able to have it accessible for all people so where are we getting the 1.2 so what i i guess what i don't understand is um if you look at the facilities master plan it has everything settled out and if you total up all those numbers you get those large big numbers for everything and that's what we've been working off of so i i guess i and and it does say when you list out the ada components it says elevators lifts etc so how do how are we assessing that it's going to be then 1.2 million and why wasn't so where and then where are those components in the facilities master plan regarding the others 700 000 that's there this is back to the same old discussion

241that we keep having in that there are two components to the master plan one is you go in you're going to do a major project and you take care of the building one is you just do those minor infrastructure pieces and everything is not in there and if you go in and start doing the infrastructure pieces there are some components that you're going to have to move into that like upgrading the electric you're going to have an elevator you know and just attack an elevator onto a building is very different than when it's part of a major construction project the other thing that's included in here is um the interi the entryway egress locations the signage we don't have appropriate signage the restroom facilities workstations are not ada accessible so it's doing the basic ada

242including vertical transportation um trying to make the building accessible and really again there's an assumption that that's probably all that building is going to get for many many years cody i was just going to make one comment which is um i think that as long as we have schools that are not ada compliant it is not responsible to spend money on an administrative building to make it ada compliant i would much rather divert every uh dollar there towards ada compliance at schools until we're done with that and i and i think that why you have jc and og be being put forward they both need to be done and they need to be done aggressively well yes but i will will that complete all the ada compliance for all of our schools well when you

243say ada compliance it depends um you know when you start going into a building are is every door frame the right width do the doors open in the right direction do are all the sinks um or do that is there a sink in every restroom that's accessible we have a ton of work to do all across the district but when we're talking about the elevator issue these are the primary buildings that's why they were prioritized in that way in the master plan miss hersh uh i may have missed this when i stepped out but the fact of the matter is is that it does affect our students uh greatly if parents don't have access to all parts of our building at havemeyer for instance dr heigenthaler our interim special education director is on the second

244floor uh parents especially parents with young children sometimes in strollers are constantly having to go upstairs for meetings uh if they can't access her office we're limiting their ability to to speak with our special education director to have those services for their children uh we also have individuals that come in uh as parents who can't access uh multiple different floors it's not just about our about our staff but you know there are people that come in for interviews and can't go upstairs i think that's why hr is on the main floor there's also things downstairs as well that they can't access without an elevator i mean not just the print shop but this does affect our students if parents don't have access to the uh to the upper and lower floors sorry oh laura um

245also bonnie o'reagan's office she is the one who administers all the testing for alp and such and i had to drag my kids stroller all the way up those stairs so that we could have our son tested so i think you know special ed meetings um alp meetings parents attend those at um at habermeier and i think um at this point um we have to prioritize accessibility and safety there's no other no other way we should be voting at this point um looking at how long it's been since that law was passed michael joseph yeah i think i don't i i am not against um accessibility of course i i just think this is cody said um we have to put adult buildings at the back of the line um there's other work to do

246first anybody else all right so me in the back i'm sorry christina no i just didn't know if there was a way to do some elements of accessibility without the full-blown elevator which might help the building become more accessible but would not be as expensive i know the whole building you know obviously needs work but i agree with my colleagues said you know buildings where our students are should be the priority but i is is there a happy medium here um not having walked through having meyer to check exactly what we're talking about i don't know um sean or tony if you have any thoughts on that yeah i mean i think we were really trying to be thoughtful and putting children's buildings first because that's why we know that in 2033 or before that

247happened meyer is not going to happen and um i it i think it is important to have an accessible public building where so many people come in and out could we just do the bathroom i suppose but it doesn't really fix the major issue in that building because not only are the stairs are also long they're not ada compliant size they're weird just the width of them um it's not an easy it's not an easy building and you know i think back to just last year when our curriculum office was up there and they were moving a whole set of um textbooks and things downstairs and they have to do that by hand and um you know they were using one of those trucks like the metal kind of truck lifts to get down the

248stairs and they lost control of it we were extremely lucky somebody wasn't at the base of the stairs you know our whole our warehouse is downstairs for the whole district um so i think we were trying to be thought in the long term uh making sure that we really yeah dan actually was just just sent a note to say just to remind that the existing wood ramp that is outside is also not compliant just one question go ahead cody this the logic here is we were comfortable not having this until 2033 or whatever but because our crystal ball says that we don't think we'll do this in 2033 we something that we thought previously we didn't need for 12 years we suddenly need now is that a correct following of the logic no not really

249it's not um i think last year there was a lot of discussion of even from members of the board that were wanting us just to look at the infrastructure section and not look at major projects and i think we listened to that input and there was also a real cry that we needed to pay attention to ada so the projects that are in the capital budget are very much um ada focused um and to get those elevators in those buildings and then have a meyer was was a building that we knew is also in that same situation it's um you know it's a difficult building to get around and actually someone just sent me a message and said that um not only is the ramp not ada compliant um but the door is not either

250but what was the relevance of talking about the 2030 the in the prediction that that wouldn't get done well because we we have to look at every time a project doesn't get done you have to move things around and you move them out so now we're into five years of a 15-year plan and we haven't been successful at getting things done so that tells us if it's still sitting out there in like 2030 now you're getting into not having ada compliant a building in 2032 um that means it's probably going to be more like maybe 20 40. i mean that that's a long time out when 1.2 million dollars could at least help get a building um accessible you know for individuals and so i i think we were trying to be thoughtful with some

251take the input from last year about let's at least get this ada and make it a priority um and making sure that school buildings are the priority but that that does mean that if it was iron clad that that project was happening in 2032 we'd be comfortable not doing the project now well i think if we didn't do the project now um are we comfortable no i think you know we should be doing all of the projects but we're so far behind we know that it's not realistic so i think that's kind of that is what the master plan is and it just keeps getting pushed back but no we should be doing it now but we know that we can't i want to raise my own hand for a second just interject um we've

252all heard the first selectmen talk about how um he'd like to have work with havamir and have it in some way i know there's some debate about that because it's supposed to be deeded for educational purposes and this is something i'm sure we'll be talking about for a while um but is there any questions if something like that were to happen i mean it would still need to become compliant because it would be it would still be a town building but then it's perhaps something that wouldn't need to come out of the board of ed's capital have we thought about that is that a question for staff kathleen i suppose or anyone really yeah because we're not really involved in that at all that discussion i'll take that i mean that's what i've heard is

253that that there are um and there's been a recent push to uh look at that building again and i think it'd be helpful to understand from someone who knows more rather than just a rumor mill but there is a discussion and people have walked through that we've heard people walk through that as of recent in connection with trying to figure out a different purpose for that building and we've talked about whether or not that made sense to move the administration out of that building and into office space i think and how we would pay for that then but i don't think we should i think we should be careful about the upgrades and how extensive the upgrades that we're going to do on a building that is if it's going to be taken from us

254that somebody else can pay for that and not coming out of our own capital right and just to clarify because i'm hearing i know that nothing formally the bless you has has started um but you know we're all aware i mean i believe the selectmen actually talked about a like a legislative breakfast or something so this isn't like this is sort of an open secret um so i'm a joke ahead there are ongoing discussions uh about right now doing the analytics on who's building it is uh the deeding understanding the needing of the building we do understand clearly uh that our staff needs better accommodations than uh than are given to them where they are right now also too during these negotiations or discussions uh the board of ed's interests will uh be taken into

255consideration and uh they will be uh compensated for what positions they do have on the asset so uh uh and we're in the early stages of trying to understand exactly uh what the legalities are what the deeding restrictions are what the rights are all those things are being discussed and analyzed no decisions have been made this has been an ongoing process for many many years yeah i was aware of it under peter tessie franklin this has totally been happening for a while so go ahead ms kowalski i just want to throw out an idea since we're thinking about escalating central middle school you should add on an administrative wing to that building because it's centrally located and it would be the perfect spot to relocate them interesting that's a great idea um but let me

256before karen hirsch like goes crazy um there is there there is a lot of work to be done here um there is a deed that doesn't must be used for educational purposes um but and we should probably formalize something if this is happening where we actually have like a liaison from the board which sounds like it is you joe um but um this is a process that's starting i see michael joseph's hand and it just makes me think um it's perhaps something that we want to at least defer as a result in our capital so go ahead michael joseph yeah i mean i um i think it's um i'd like to call the question because i don't know we need to spend too much more time on this the um i do think there is

257a um another field analogy here in that if there is the possibility even though it's a rumor that something else might be happening in this building all the more reason why spending money on um prioritizing this as this adult building right now doesn't make sense okay so the motion on the table was to remove 1.2 million from capital sorry what was the specific number again 1.263 thank you 1.263 um from the ada accessibility at habermeier um cody yes karen no uh i will say yes karen yes joe yes laura no michael joseph yes and christina downey yes okay so that is six two that passes okay now i have to redo my math hold on a second are there any other amendments all right you're all going to check me minus okay so i am

258now going to put forth a motion oh no oh yeah food services sorry to approve the proposed fiscal year 2223 capital budget of 30 million 265 can i get a second miss costume okay i'll go that way for the vote then miss coston yes joe yes ms kowalski no am i yes karen yes cody yes michael joseph um yes okay and christina downey yes so that passes the capital budget passes seven one and please tell me i did them okay if there's any extra i'll take it okay awesome so with that i am now going to move on to the food services budget come on someone else wants to put this motion on the table or do you want me to do it again okay okay you want to do it can you read this

259to me i have it in front of me let me do it i need to second it okay um putting a motion on the table to approve the fiscal year 23 food services budget as presented on page 259 including total revenues of 4 million 354 000 total expenses of 4 million 354 000 and contribution from the general fund of 225 000. can i have a second miss kowalski yes thank you okay discussion um dr carabello or sean i'll say a couple words so this this budget assumes a back to normal year with a reference year being 2018-19 you know all pre-covered uh the budget assumes uh cash sales of 3.3 million which is slightly more than the 2018-19 actuals uh state reimbursements of uh 0.9 million uh also uh slightly above 1819 levels so total

260revenue 4 million 354 uh expenses the same for 354 leaving a uh you know a break-even point uh salaries at 2.050 which is actually slightly down but it's it's based on a bottoms-up view of the people so i think that's a pretty good number and then supplies and materials are up about two point eight percent year to year and about eight percent up versus eighteen nineteen so i think it's a reasonable budget um but again it hinges on us having a business as usual uh year meaning no more coverage meaning no more covert well meaning something similar to 1819 i think cove is around for a while any discussion okay take that to a vote going this way laura costan yes joe yes miss kowalski yes uh yes karen hirsch yes cody yes michael joseph

261yes and christina downey yes that passes 8-0 what's next okay thank you next up financial and staffing report i'll put a motion to put that on the table um yes please i'd like to put a motion on the table to um pass the financial report for period and financial and staffing report for the period ending november 30th 2021. i will second that okay thank you sean okay very quickly um so as of the end of november our year-to-date actuals are at 56.3 or about 32.8 percent of our full-year budget of 171.9 uh compared to november a year ago our spending is up by about uh 2 million or 3.6 percent drivers of which salaries are up about 900k or about 2 and supplies are up 1.3 million or 93.7 and again as mentioned in the

262last year last month in the financials uh that's a residual effect of the reduced level of spending uh that occurred in the first half of last year and that was associated with the pre-spend activity uh in june of the fiscal year before that services are down 400k primarily due to late transportation billings so that will normalize by the end of the year um on capital um overall capital available balance is down to 27.4 million the reduction of a million from the prior month report the available balance includes 12.6 uh of uh appropriation prior to year 22 and that number is down a half a million from the october report uh and when you look at when you look at that pre full year 22 balance uh it's down about 15 million dollars from september of

2632020 so we're continuing to focus on closing projects out uh especially on the pre-22 fiscal year projects uh also just quick mention also included in the pre-22 are four building committee projects with available balances of about two and a half so once those projects are finally closed out with the state we should be able to uh to give that money back and that'll take it out of our available balance just lastly on food services you know it's consistent with my message last month is that you know it's it's it's another year where we're we're giving out the free meals for everyone so we will continue to see a reduction in cash sales but uh partly offset by increased state reimbursements for the food that we're giving out uh expenses are up by about 160 k

264driven primarily by salaries supplies and materials and meal delivery costs that's it that's all i've got questions sean i have a question um and this actually may be unrelated to this but i understand that we still get free food for all kids at this point everybody's provided a lunch for free how much longer is that gonna go on uh right now i think it's till the end of the year into this year june okay else okay seeing you know exactly as do i right now all right so with that i'll start christina downey yes okay michael joseph yes laura possum yes joe kelly yes karen kowalski yes yes karen hirsch yes hey just you're voting for yes for the report cody kettle yeah that's fine okay 8-0 so let's do agenda planning and then we

265have and then we're returning to our public hearing okay real fast agenda planning um so i have that we need to sorry let me just go to the next page kathleen can i make a point of order oh yeah sure um is that i i had a uh motion um unrelated to um agenda item that's something i can do now um i suppose okay so that's a good point you do need a two-thirds vote are you trying to add something to the agenda yeah yes okay well you'll have to do that you'll have to get a second and then we'll have to six of us have to agree all second oh look what's the motion it's so good that you blindly follow him what if he was like i'd like to buy your house on

266roundhouse i trust mike excellent um ahead i'd i'd like to motion to use the um 200 000 in this year's budget um fy 22 that the bet has already given us to develop alternative ed specs for jc that prioritize hvac safety and ada second okay all right so the motion on the table is that now you joe's right you need to get two-thirds of us to agree since you're amending the agenda since you didn't bring it up during the budget to even take this up well it's because i didn't because it's not next year's budget this this year's budget that's why i didn't bring it up i'm talking about this year's budget because um the bet left it in this year's fiscal year 22. to use the money right i say can i just make

267a comment before just to see if before we get the two-thirds vote i think we have the money it's our money to spend and it's a belt and suspenders approach in case the bet throws julian curtis back it is a way in which we could present alternative plans just in case so that we don't lose ground that's right exactly right this is plan b it's really not like in sort of use or legal order to do things this way so um i'm going to take the vote on the process and then if you want to edit the agenda for the next meeting in a more formal way but let's take basically are we even hearing this motion is what the vote is on the table um so i'm gonna go with a no cody yes

268karen no karen yes joe i need more information sauce i know and uh laura i i am conflicted because i don't want the i don't want the bt to tell us no i want to have a plan b we could add it to the agenda for the next meeting we're just talking about the process right now i don't know what the process is at all then i don't know you could do you want to add it now for us to discuss so that's a no okay michael joseph i samir yes and christina no okay so that fails five or five three so but now we can talk about an agenda planning if you'd like okay okay so wait this can come back we can do this again sure we can add to the agenda okay

269well you guys can make a requested funny agenda then we talk about it at the chair meeting is it not in legal order i'm i'm it was not because he tried to add something to the agenda at this point in the meeting when he and so when you do and by the way if it were a special meeting like all of our prior meetings have been you wouldn't have been able to do it at all but because this was actually a regular meeting because this happened to line up but the fact that for some reason this was a meeting that didn't get impacted by the coveted new rules yada yada um so this comes back next week so this on formal process in order to add to this meeting you would have two thirds vote

270okay so yes we can now so you'll suggest that we ask the agenda we'll talk about the chair meeting i have no reason why i wouldn't on its merits so anyway but that's the process so now that we're at agenda planning it seems like for the january 20th meeting michael would like us to add are we looking at jc's expects is that right if you yes okay it's a request okay we also are talking about we moved um as you guys can see we were supposed to discuss stem reports tonight they were ready but we thought this would be too media of a meeting karen and i decided and we were right since we are at 11 and by the way we're totally falling within the um actual guidelines that we laid out so i

271want to keep going so i'm so impressed with our our planning so so as a result that looked like a good move so we have um we're adding stem uh hopefully the stem reports back to the january meeting um and then i think you guys also wanted to hear more detail from dr stacy is that fair it is it is fair however um let's just talk about this karen for one quick second because it we have a board retreat at havemeyer on the special education plan what a week and a half later two weeks later after that which is just that so let's give some thought to whether or not it makes sense to bump it up there's a difference between presenting the action plan and then giving an update on said action plan um

272fair enough that that was my point it's just it was presented to the public and got their input was given we have not had that privilege that's all i agree so i think that's fair so that that is a distinction with it's just my request and you guys can discuss it in your chair meeting and yeah what it will be no i i like that i do too and pgc uh title ix needs to be added probably back on point thank you okay okay are we adding that on as a discussion item or are we adding it on as a vote uh i think to be honest yeah to be honest i think we have to figure out when pgc is going to meet january board meeting is so you could pencil it but i

273don't i don't know if it's going to be right for january 20th because it has to be if we do anything has to be posted the friday before so um cbd well i just know i mean i i think that's maybe we have that as a quick discussion then with uh shipment of goodman aren't we kind of delayed already in this having the title ix yeah but i think if we're not ready for a vote we're not ready for a vote but we don't even know when we're going to meet and have a discussion with them so to know whether i think you could have it as a you could put a placeholder for the january meeting but i don't think we know and if we do anything it would be a vote it's not

274gonna be a discussion item it's already been a discussion item so it would be an action item okay we could talk about that at the chairman yes joe how do we do this uh building committee thing for the safety road do we have to vote on having a building committee how does it work do we know let's put it this way let's find out in the time now but let's put it on the agenda if we have to put that uh we have to vote on it so well that'll be put together by the first election but how do we release him to do that it's our it's our from what i understand it's for us to ask him for a building committee that's right so all right let's talk about yeah when we do

275that if we need to do that at the next meeting or after that okay good point okay um and then i don't think we as a board have to vote on that no i have to just i have to make the request right or the first left one so then the other thing sorry that i'm forgetting about is the calendar right that's coming back as well the um the board of ed meeting calendar and that's hopefully we could vote on that once we've made those amendments okay yes and um can i can i suggest um adding the strategic plan to the february 3rd board retreat they um i'm hopeful that maybe during the board repeat that would be a good time to talk about uh as a full board [Music] direction to go around the

276strategic plan and and moving forward yeah that's a great idea okay so i think we've got a lot of stuff heading into january and february but that's okay um okay wait yes we need to add air extra imbalance um yeah not yet though more like later like more like let's talk about the chairman but i think we can push that off a couple months okay let's not make our lives anymore but okay okay um [Music] okay anything else before we go back to our public hearing okay seeing none cara philbin come on down and then after that it's sorry maurizia mccullough maria sorry i think she's online right ahead math should be mandated for should not be mandated for students it should be choice because we have had great progress in natural immunity vaccination therapeutics

277and treatments in the past 18 months everyone especially those at high risk who choose to have had the opportunity and access for vaccination therefore we why do we continue to harm our children with masking mandates for our own sense of security the various state and local school mask policies create a two-tiered system vaccinated and unvaccinated while ignoring natural immunity that violates students privacy and could stigmatize those who choose to maintain medical privacy we are striving to be an inclusive community yet we are supporting policy that discriminates against children and families for every doctor quoted in the newspaper that says there are no health risks as noted by the district 8 rtm rep in this week's editorial there is a doctor like the highly regarded doctor mcdonald who testified under oath in court stating my physician

278is simple masking children is child abuse there's substantial evidence that shows that children have been medically physically and psychologically harmed by mandatory mask mandates i've seen hundreds of children in the last year come to my practice who are coughing spitting sick in the throat streptococcal infections conjunctivitis and pedigo allergic reactions panic attacks all from masks not a single child has benefited medically from wearing a mask and they've all been hurt or dr robert malone the inventor of a liposomal mrna delivery system who sunday night at a global covid summit said masking children causes jaw changes developmental harm as children need to see facial expressions to develop normally delays in language disconnection causing depression suicide drug addiction differences in iq of 20 points and bullying and harassment the fact that mask wearing presents a severe risk

279of harm to the wearer should standing alone not be required for children particularly given that these children are not ill and have done nothing wrong that would warrant an infringement on their constitutional rights and bodily autonomy promoting use of a non-fda approved emergency use authorized mast is unwarranted and illegal the mandate is a direct conflict with 21 u.s codes section 360 bbb section 3b 1a 2 1-3 which requires the wearer to be informed of the option to refuse the wearing of such device misrepresenting the use of a mask as being intended for anti-microbial or antiviral protection and or misrepresenting mass for use as infection prevention or reduction is a deceptive practice under the ftc it is clear there is no waiver of liability under deceptive practices even under a state of emergency as such forcing

280children to wear a mask is similarly forcing use of any other non-fda prime medical credit product thank you without the child or the child's parental consent is illegal thank you all right she's i'm saying her name wrong again laura say it maria she's online hello good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board tonight i'm going to be sending my time to my daughter to speak hello my name is lauren nick electric i'm eight years old before i start i just want to say from the first speaker of the night i love the idea of a therapy dog for the schools but if you didn't have masks it would be much better i'm here tonight to ask you to let parents decide if kids have to wear a mask i'm homeschooling because me and my parents

281didn't want me to be in a building with everyone i see wearing a mask i feel so bad for the kids in school who have to wear them it's hard to see and breathe and if someone is sad you can't tell as easily all you're doing with a mask is wasting your money on a useless thing and getting yourself more sick than you think you would get without a mask it says right on the box of masks that they do not protect you from covered germs once i saw a friend who was wearing a mask and took it off and put it on the counter of the sinks on a public bathroom when i saw her put it back on her face it was so gross i thought i was going to puke who wants

282to put a germy dirty cloth right on your mouth and you cough and sneeze in it yuck and let's go back to the beginning what happened to just two weeks did it just turn into two years or is it forever are the kids gonna gonna be wearing masks forever it doesn't make any sense if you do get sick it builds your immune system with all due respect stop enforcing mandates that hurt kids thank you for your time and now i have to go to bed because you made me stay up till 11 o'clock waiting thank you very much for your time thank you very much that was quite enjoyable um and yes it is late sorry um next up and andrea uh followed by roger rosendahl who would be our last speaker do you see

283either online i don't i don't see any of the remaining speakers or any of the speakers we skipped earlier online on it okay well then um happy holidays everyone happy new year and can i get a motion motion to adjourn okay would anyone like to second that oh wow okay well kara karen okay here we go can i have a vote laura joe yes karen kathleen is a yes karen yes please cody michael joseph yes and i think christina just signed off so 7-0 thank you so much everyone have a good night bye