December 2, 2021 Board of Education Budget Meeting

001all right good evening we're calling this special meeting of the budget to order can we please rise for the pledge of allegiance all right thank you so much okay um this is purely a budget meeting we're going to have a public hearing we have 28 speakers we have one hour allotted as you all know so then we'll do q a and a discussion amongst the board members and then we'll go back to those that are still on i would love to get you know 20 and and three so it could be even greater better if some people went to two minutes and we can get all 28. but let's just do our best and a reminder again this is only comments for budget if it's a non-agenda or a non-budget item we'd love to hear

002from you in two weeks but tonight it's just budget so with that and i'm gonna call the person and then the next person so we could be as efficient as possible in case they're in the room or on zoom okay so first up is erica jacoby and then next is rebecca cooper and obviously you have three minutes and karen will start the class thank you good evening chair stow members of the board of education and dr jones i'd like to start by thanking you as well as the district's administration teachers and staff for all of your efforts over the last 18 months at the elementary school level specifically the consistency of full-time school the socialization with our friends and the irreplaceable benefits of in-person learning have helped comfort and guide our littlest youngest ones through

003the craziest times of this pandemic and now for the real reason i'm here as a greenwich resident proud old greenwich school parent and this year's pta president i'm here speaking in support of dr jones proposed capital plan firstly i'm asking for you to approve the 2022-23 line item of 1.8 million dollars to proceed with the design phase of the ogs renovation project as discussed many times before this project will address the greatest issues our school faces but by no means is providing any nice to haves are fully modernizing our 120 year old building the 24.5 million dollar plan unanimously approved at october's boe meeting at 1202 am to be precise will ensure our building is ada compliant dry from raw sewage flooding properly ventilated and last but not least allow for the security improvements that

004meet the recommendation of connecticut standards and the studies for the department of homeland security the administration teachers staff and students deserve to work and learn in a dry sage secure and healthy building this is not a luxury this is not a nice to have this is the bare minimum that is acceptable to the parents of this town secondly i'm also asking for you to approve the 1.8 million line item to proceed with the design phase of julian curtis it should not be a question of ogs or jc or who goes first we go simultaneously we are both in need thirdly support the acceleration of both riverside and central middle school projects to within the five-year capital spend horizon how in the town of greenwich a town that is considered an affluent prestigious suburb of new

005york city do we have collapsing ceilings non-ada compliant buildings raw sewage flooding classrooms poorly ventilated schools and motion sensors installed to monitor the deteriorate and structure deteriorating structure of this school it's the perception of our town versus the pitiful reality a reality that needs to be addressed and needs to change to quote a very wise chair stow from the october 19th brd space we need to stop critically underfunding the master facility and maintenance plan on behalf of old greenwich school parents and teachers i ask that you have helped stop the cycle of underfunding by approving this year's proposed capital plan as it has been set forth by dr jones thank you for your consideration and time thank you very much uh next up is rebecca cooper and then after it would be jill earns good

006evening ms stowe dr jones and the members of the board of education my name is rebecca cooper and i have been a greenwich resident for 14 years i am also a proud member of the executive board of julian curtis on the pta i have four children two of whom went through the entire greenwich public school system beginning at julian curtis one current fourth grader at julian curtis and one incoming kindergartner in the 2022-23 season i am also here in support of supporting dr jones recommendation for the full 1.8 million dollar line item for both julian curtis and the old granite schools deciding to live in greenwich was a no-brainer for my family in particular we knew that as public school graduates ourselves the public education system in this town was top notch and that our

007kids would be supported in every way possible located in the center of our town julian curtis serves as a hallmark for the widely recognized greenwich educational system this is why we value greenwich this is why i'm proud to be a member of this amazing community ironically however what does not serve julian curtis at present is the greenwich educational system that i thought would support my children with the resources and facility worthy of the values that our town preaches during the decade plus since i've had children at julian curtis in the years where we were nearing 400 students through and including today when we are in the high 200s we have never received a capital improvement enrollment seems to be a moot issue when it comes to receiving funding at julian curtis so why is it

008an issue today we are a school that serves the entire district when other schools have been in need during their capital improvements and in some cases receiving an entirely new building julian curtis stepped up and accommodated those schools so why can't the district recognize and reciprocate that accommodation today along the lines of accommodations i must address the lack of ada compliant facilities in our building this year when my fourth grader was in an orthopedic boot due to an injury i had to get to school early and physically carry her and her books up two flights of stairs every day in order for her to join her classmates fortunately i'm a parent who has the time to do this for my child most julian curtis parents do not it is unacceptable that our building does not

009have any ada accommodations and every time we are up for improvement we are pushed back no longer we can no longer lack the necessities that our jc population requires in order to be safe ada hvac security where are these provisions in the title 1 school with a high population of at-risk students where are you greenwich we need you today thank you thank you mr cooper uh next that's jill burns followed by colleen alfano hi quarterback members my name is jill ernst and i'm a parent of three children at julian curtis and another child set to enter kindergarten next year i am also the pta co-president and speaking on behalf of many parents of our school i'm here tonight as i strongly urge you to support the 2022-23 budget line items of 1.8 million dollars to

010go towards the next phases of julian curtis and old greenwich renovation plans i'm especially important imploring the newly voted members of this board to show us where you stand on how to bring for 21st century learning to our children as one of the newly elected elected officials elected members stated let's work to make julian make greenwich one of the premier public school districts in the country if you consider yourself to be fiscally responsible please consider how delaying the jc project will increase costs and delay other schools that face significant building challenges in 2013 2017 the work of the facilities master plan began out of a necessity to bring greenwich schools up to par with other school facilities in our country julian curtis was scheduled to be the first school of many in the district to

011be renovated four years have passed and delays in approval have held up julian curtis as well as well as other important projects it's significant to note that the bet's rejection of last year's approved boe budget for jc was said to be due to declining enrollment and the plan included many nice to have and not necessities yes there has been a decline in enrollment but not just in jc national decline in birth rates will certainly affect enrollment but what about the responsibility this board has as well as the board that as well as the board and other town officials who decide where our tax dollars are spent the greenwich real estate market surged last year when many decided to leave larger cities and come up to greenwich why didn't we see an increase in enrollment as

012many had suspected it could not be that all these families sought out private schools only however if you are coming in fresh and looking at greenwich schools facilities without knowing the community and could financially afford to send your child to a newly expanded or renovated private school why wouldn't you please stop using enrollment to delay what taxpayers and more importantly children deserve just because schools may have less students than years prior does not mean that those students don't deserve the best 30 seconds facilities possible jc is utilizing every bit of space no classroom is empty a hundred percent of this the rooms at jc are filled due to program needs especially around special education this project can be broken down simply julian curtis was built in 1946 and 75 years later it is the only

013greenwich school that has not had significant renovations thank you for your time [Applause] thank you very much next up colleen alfano followed by david alpana good evening i'm colleen alfano 35-year resident gps parent and gps employee at the last board of ed meeting i spoke about the importance and the fairness of providing a reasonable accessible saliva test option for the board of education employees who have legitimate coveted vaccine exemptions hey colleen and i have to stick to the budget that's only tonight i am sticking to budget please replace my time three seconds sure um reasonable accessible saliva test options for board of education employees who have legitimate coveted vaccine exemptions and are required by the governor's mandate to test weekly we really appreciate that the board heard our message and several of you have taken

014an active role in trying to work out the logistics to bring the saliva test option to greenwich i think you are unfortunately beginning to experience some of the same frustrations with actually making it happen that we have thank you for your efforts and please don't give up if anyone would like more information or would like to get involved in this effort please email concern teachers of greenwich at protonmail.com as you consider the school budget and especially the sr funding i ask that you consider providing financial support for the saliva testing is my mic on okay i ask that you consider the school budget and especially the sr funding i ask that you consider providing financial support for the saliva testing it is clearly an appropriate use of the sr money that has already been accepted

015and will likely be accepted again i am also calling for a complete transparency with the public about how the us are money is being allocated and i decided to issue it again but the server is not on the budget it's not tonight this is the operating the capital budget i want to be clear so if it's not coming out of the esser funding then i'm asking that you consider taking using it take taking the money from the rest of the budget i'm not sure how the srm funding is being used because that's not transparent so that's what i'm asking for transparency thank you next up is david alfana and sorry after him would be monica garrido thank you is david online do you see him i'm not seeing him online okay well if we have

016to if he comes on we always can come back to him so next up monica garrido followed by francisco garrito i don't see them do you okay again we can come back next up jackie hillman followed by karen ball before you start the clock i just ask that you don't cut me off i am going to use the word esser because there are implications for the budget beyond the esther funding itself good evening as you all know i'm concerned about the decision to accept the arbester 3 funding from the biden administration in light of the strings attached to it that keeps our teachers and our children in masks and that require the school to promote vaccination using a still unapproved shot that has now killed 19 249 people in the u.s and left another 30

017967 people permanently disabled according to the latest cdc data the 10 million dollars from the art best of three grant comprises less than six percent of the requested 164.4 million dollar budget for greenwich public schools the fact that this money comes with strings attached to it should be concerning for all of you besides promoting vaccines the connecticut state department of education guide says that schools that accept esser funding are recommended sr3 funding are recommended to pursue controversial initiatives including teach rock which features social justice oriented content such as climate justice with greg thunberg and watered-down academics like math with beyonce the guide suggests districts should implement a social emotional learning assessment to transform districts through controversial cell programming that undermines parents ability to dictate the morality of their own children and the guide also encourages

018schools to open school-based health centers either within schools or on school grounds to serve students from pre-k during the day and potentially without parental involvement these are imagined as outpatient clinics or hospital satellites that would be staffed by pediatric physical mental and behavioral health specialists what it really sounds like is that we're planning to turn our schools into a social services center rather than a place of academic learning you can already see the decline in academic performance from 2019 to 2021 it's shocking math sbas reveal that less than 70 of students meet the benchmark many grades have reached a double d many grades have experienced a double digit decline in the percentage of students meeting expectations academic performance has fallen off the proverbial cliff and while i don't mind the overall level of spending on

019our schools i do think we should spend more of that money in the classroom and on course subjects in order to address the shocking decline in performance and not to double the number of social workers in our school why should we use the school budget money to duplicate social services that are already provided by the town of greenwich why are you taking money out of a classroom to create a social services agency and not to beat a dead horse but we've been told repeatedly that you're not teaching critical race theory yet i'm told you're spending money on hiring crt consultants is that really true 30 seconds i've been waiting for quite a while for the results of several freedom of information act requests to learn the specifics on the crt related budget items as well

020as earlier crt expenses like the purchase of the book white fragility for educators and greenwich i wonder why it's taking so long to produce these records at any rate if you do nothing else tonight i urge you at the very least to pause the funding request for arp s or 3 until you have a complete understanding of all of the strings attached to it time thank you thank you next up karen ball followed by janine madoff good evening my name is karen ball i'm a parent town resident and i'm currently a media specialist at ghs i've spent the last 25 years as a teacher and a media specialist at central and eastern so i'm fully versed in the program cuts that i'm going to be addressing i'm here to advocate for the restoration of the

021two middle school media specialist positions that were previously frozen and now have been completely cut in the new budget leaving eastern and western with only one media specialist each central's second media specialist is right now a temporary administrator cms is also down to one media specialist right now media specialists are certified teachers trained to know and support all the board approved curriculums with books and other resources co-teaching and collaboration with classroom teachers in a variety of disciplines they're expected to curate resources for these needs as well as independent reading and student interests they are expected to teach a set number of digital literacy classes at the middle school level along with multiple other duties and expectations with the covid changes the media staff were no longer available to co-teach classes because we were tasked with

022teaching more classes or covering other classes within our cohorts i was assigned to teach sixth grade english last year when i asked in february if i would return to be a full-time media specialist at eastern i was told there would be no guarantee i understood from the conversation that it was highly likely they would task me with teaching english or social studies or both when i decided to transfer to the high school when a position opened my position at eastern was used for english and social studies my colleagues and i at the high school are seeing firsthand the results of the two-year coveted disruption to our normal education process our ninth and tenth graders have not received the consistent training and lessons to build the skill sets they need for high school level research in

023this age of misinformation and disinformation students are lacking crucial skills in evaluating sources looking for bias and inaccuracy identifying authorship and credentials for reliability and actually citing the sources they don't know why they have to cite the sources nor do they know how to use the online research tools we pay a premium for these skills have always been the responsibility of the middle school media faculty who would work with classroom teachers in collaboratively taught classes teaching and reinforcing these skills each year in research projects this built student skill sets so they at most needed a refresher at the high school currently each middle school only has one media specialist who's tasked with teaching digital literacy courses full-time they have no time to collaboratively teach or make sure that the research process is being taught throughout

024multiple curriculums we cannot do the full job of library media at this level with less staffing it's not physically possible in person to do this thank you you could always email more comments if you have them thanks so much uh next up janine madoff who i see online right followed by brian zeller hi can you hear me yes janine you may begin good evening i am compelled to speak tonight about significant and damaging cuts that have been proposed for our library media program greenwich library media specialists are second to none in our country and yet the administration is proposing to eliminate some of these positions and even the media coordinator position this is counterproductive to the district's goal of raising academic achievement and providing equitable opportunity for all students this administration has cut not only

025the library media coordinator position from the 2223 budget but a library media specialist from each of the two largest middle schools with an average of nearly 750 students at each school the remaining one library media specialist can't possibly meet the standards set by the state of connecticut just yesterday without a media coordinator the media specialists are without leadership and vision for the program and must cobble together professional development opportunities curriculum work and technology training at the same time the superintendent states on slide 33 of the 2223 proposed budget summary that a priority of the district is increased co-teaching in elementary and secondary schools our media specialists have been co-teaching with all teachers for decades in all content areas especially those that include research and technology just yesterday our state board of education enthusiastically adopted the

026national school library standards of the american association of school librarians all districts in connecticut will be required to meet these standards each year the state recognizes that digital citizenship internet safety and media literacy are priorities and that library media specialists are uniquely positioned and skilled to teach to these standards i hope you are aware that since 1992 a growing body of research known as the school library impact studies has consistently shown positive correlations between high quality library programs and student achievement data from more than 34 statewide studies suggest that students earn better standardized test scores in schools that have strong library programs and certified library media specialists in addition school libraries provide equitable physical and intellectual access to the resources and tools required for learning thereby helping to close achievement gaps i asked the board

027to consider the proposed media cuts in light of the adoption of connecticut school library standards and national library standards 30 seconds to be left behind while other towns in the state recognize the value of school libraries and library media specialists greenwich students deserve the best and that includes a fully funded library media program thank you very much next up brian zeller followed by david levine hello and good evening uh chair stowe bov members and dr jones my name is brian zeller this is jim behead and we are the co-presidents of the central middle school pta and we are here speaking tonight on behalf of the central middle school pta in support of dr jones five-year capital proposed budget as outlined um we were thrilled to see cms brought back to the forefront and we're here

028to support dr jones plans in any way that we um in any way that we can central middle school was built in 1957 and as the name implies it is in the middle or the central part of town but in addition to its primary function of schooling almost 600 students and employing almost 100 staff members it is also a building that is used by the entire town for its basketball gym facilities the soccer fields baseball diamonds the tennis courts and this very own boe meeting that we're all attending right now amongst other activities and meetings the master facility plan that was released in october of 2017 recommended central middle school is the only school in the district that should be totally replaced yet here it is 20 20 almost 2022 and we still don't have

029a long-term plan in place for central middle school our plans are truly of a safety matter we feel our teachers staff administrators students and anyone entering the building deserves a safe learning working and recreational environment among the most troubling issues the one that became very apparent in the most recent town elections were candidates were posting videos on social media highlighting the sensors on the walls to monitor for shifting buckling swaying and movement we have to monitor movement of of the walls i'd also like to note that the structural support beams were shored up with within the last few years as well so with those two things coupled together i feel like it kind of begs the question of the structural integrity of on the entire building the boys locker room is original from 1957. the

030lockers are zip-tied clothes the entire lock boys locker room is closed off off limits and is only used for storage the window wall the exterior doors have noticeable openings and gaps gaps in them due to their age and the over abuse and also as we continue to see an increase in severe weather patterns we will it will continue to exasperate the deteriorator conditions of the building as was evident by the sixth grade classes having to be displaced after the water damage caused by hurricane ida those are just a few of the facility issues here at cms and i also like to acknowledge the undue pressure and stress that the deferred maintenance and the need for constant repairs 30 seconds places on our staff teachers and most importantly indoor students we all know the last few

031years have been very very different and at times very difficult with many of our cms parents having never stepped foot inside the building they don't even know what the building or the school looks like let alone the true extent of the condition of the building we put our trust in the system and trust that you will make the right decision not just for cms but for julian curtis old greenwich and for riverside and improving the budget thank you for your time and for your consideration thank you very much next up david levine followed by bob cheney good evening dr jones chairstow board and everyone who's here watching and i think we're all very blessed to live in such an engaged community thanks to everyone who's here sharing their passionate ideas about our schools my name

032is david levine and my daughter autumn is a second grader in mrs schuster's class at julian curtis i want to say thank you dr jones for your leadership during the pandemic for keeping our kids in school when the going got tough you made such a difference in our lives i've got history with julian curtis my wife and all of her siblings went to school there and as you know sadly the school looks identically to when she went there 40 years ago in fact it looks the same as it did 75 years ago and as a free markets investor i think we need to look really critically and in fact be ruthless when we prioritize investments but i have to say that i can think of no better investment than investing in preschool at julian curtis

033you see julian curtis has a high percentage of our population whose needs based they can't afford private preschools other schools like north street nearby they have this opportunity and it's been an attractive option for young families living in millbrook we've seen an influx of young families same with indian harbor and other communities zoned for julian curtis maybe if we invested in our schools we'd see enrollment rise again rather than seeing it fall like it has when it's neglected greenwich is one of the best communities on the planet my mom's family's been here since before the revolution my wife grew up here we have deep roots but why shouldn't greenwich be a leader when it comes to investing in our community julian curtis serves some of the most desirable communities across all income levels it represents

034the perfect kind of diversity along ethnic economic and geographic lines over 100 countries are represented in our little elementary school thus it is a crown jewel and it shouldn't be neglected for over 70 years like it has modernizing julian curtis the preschool modern science labs making it safe for anyone with injuries to walk upstairs with kids with disabilities to get to their classrooms for kids to breathe for our teachers to breathe with a modern hvac these are no brainer no-brainers and some of the best investments i could possibly think of so i wanted to thank the school board for continuing to prioritize their schools by passing the line items that have been requested for julian curtis for the other elementary schools um feral greenwich and please let us parents know how we can help you

035to prioritize this project with julian curtis one last budget item this is on the revenue side for any julian curtis parents who are watching tomorrow's the last day of the book fair we'll be there right after school please come out thank you all for your leadership appreciate it all done thank you very much uh next up bob cheney followed by whitney o'connor uh hi um my name is bob chaney and i'm speaking this evening as a concerned parent of julian curtis students uh and uh book fair co-chair but that's neither here nor there before i speak about julian curtis i want to take a moment to mention that i also have a student at central middle school i want to make sure you understand that central middle school has many structural issues that i feel

036that it needs to be focused on as well and i also know that old greenwich and riverside have these same issues and all four schools need to be addressed in the order that is set out at this time now to julian curtis at the beginning of the school year my fourth grader uh like rebecca coopers uh who attends julian curtis heard his heal and was on crutches for weeks as i'm sure you're all aware julian curtis michael greenwich one of the other four schools with similar issues it has no elevator that meant that during this time i had to get him to school uh every morning and help him upstairs to his classroom i also had to show up early uh in the afternoon to help him down the stairs at the end of the

037school day luckily i was able to make the time in my day to do this but i'm not sure that other families who attend julian curtis have this luxury this is one of the reasons i feel is necessary that the work on julius cur julian curtis be started in a timely manner another point when we lived in my room we attended the north street preschool program while this is an amazing preschool program it was not easy to get to from where we lived at the time this is why jc needs to have a preschool program as well as it is simply located i think it would be easy for families who live around the downtown area to get to the school now if we're already in the school to fix the ada compliance there's no

038reason why we should not do everything else that needs to be done to julian curtis including the preschool rooms look my final thought is this it seems to me that the funding of the greenwich public schools is not being ignored it is being acknowledged and then dismissed this indifference to what is happening to the students in our public schools is unacceptable i ask you today to not only support the proposed capital plan but to please advocate for the necessity for the necessity of this plan for all four schools our children faculty and community are counting on you it is your responsibility to all of us to put forth a unanimous vote a unanimous vote for this budget sending the message that you fully support our schools thank you and have a good evening thank you

039very much next up is whitney o'connor followed by carolyn peterson what i don't see whitney online is she online can you hear me yes we can hear you go ahead great good evening chair stow dr jones and members of the board of education as first vice president of old greenwich schools pta i am here speaking in support of the proposed capital spend of 1.8 million for the design phase of the ogs renovation project all greenwich is a unique part of this town where our school sits at the core of our community it is an ideal setting where parents look out for each other's children and it is unusual to walk through the village without running into at least one fellow ogs parent the small town feel creates a sense of og pride in our parents

040and children alike when driving through old greenwich village on your way towards todd's point one would inevitably notice our rockwellian picturesque school just this week the holiday candles have been installed in our school's windows in preparation for the first light celebration this weekend but looks certainly can be deceiving because the interior and infrastructure of our school is far from picturesque or remarkable it is no longer generally accepted to have a building that is not ada compliant and it never should have been acceptable to have teachers and staff carrying our injured children up and down stairs sewage flooding into classrooms and a poorly ventilated school is neither safe nor healthy for our teachers staff and students and finally with our open campus and location on a main busy road it is imperative that ogs meets the

041connecticut school safety standards and security best practices on behalf of ogs parents i ask that you approve dr jones's capital plan to ensure we move forward with our very needed renovation thank you very much next up is carolyn peterson followed by marija i'm sorry nicola maria maria okay thank you so much my name is carolyn peterson and i'm speaking tonight as chair of the ptac facilities committee a member of the old greenwich association and a realtor i'm here to show support for the 2022 2023 capital and operating budgets put forward by dr jones all of us have attended these meetings month after month and year after year yet here we are again still talking about the same issues as i sat down to figure out how to make my comments for tonight's meetings meeting different

042from all the other times i've spoken i found myself at a loss it would seem that we are all in the same place in what feels to be a never-ending circle of discussion with no financial investment into the infrastructure discussion about julian curtis its need for security its need for a science room its need for two more classrooms more discussion with no financial investment into the infrastructure discussion about old greenwich school its flooding its safety its lack of ada accessibility more discussion with no financial investment into the infrastructure discussion about central middle school it's shifting buckling swaying walls it's lack of a boy's locker room its recent displacement of students due to flooding more discussion with no financial investment into the infrastructure discussion about riverside school its capacity issues its lack of ada accessibility its

043lack of multi-purpose spaces more discussion with no financial investment into the infrastructure on the greenwich public schools website it claims that we are quote a k-12 public school district dedicated to excellence end quote there's nothing excellent about the state of these four schools and our students our families and our town deserves better let's stop talking and let's start spending thank you very much next up say it again maria maria followed by katie jackson hello can you hear me yes we can go ahead good evening board members and members of the public i'm maria mikolajek i'd like to draw your attention to this slide in the budget proposal showing the enrollment decline part of this declines from families who've moved out of connecticut states that have more freedom and some of it is due to unprecedented

044growth in homeschooling in our state i have a son who's in ninth grade last year he was at central middle school and honors classes and a daughter who was in elementary a bright student who was always helping other students and her teacher i was an active volunteer in the green schools committee organizing cafeteria composting volunteers implanting in the school garden as well as helping in the kindergarten classroom but in september rules that were not based in science and which completely ignored the reality of healthy child development were implemented children were forced to reduce their oxygen intake to hide their faces with a bacteria-ridden cloth all day they couldn't see the expressions and micro-expressions of their peers or teachers which are an essential part of communication can you please control the budget point i'd really appreciate

045it this is about the budget okay ready um the children were made to unnaturally distance from one another and couldn't even go on the playground they were exposed to vaccine marketing and propaganda and untruths about the vaccine being approved when it was only authorized for emergency use and children were discriminated against with disparate treatment on quarantine rules based on private medical status so i removed my children from the school system to protect them from these harmful policies and i would like to know if the s or funding is going to cement in these bad policies that were supposed to be a temporary inconvenience it looks like it does from the application and because of these policies and the pending threat of vaccine mandates more and more parents are telling me they are looking into pulling

046their children out of the school system as well to homeschool or move out of town my kids and i have been loving homeschooling and people frequently ask me for more information about it as they see the kids in our homeschooling community are thriving with healthy social interactions and individualized learning but still i have to pay taxes and i'm here to try to impact this budget decision making process as a taxpayer at what point does declining enrollment harm the budget more than refusing this strings attached s or funding in addition vaccine manufacturers are protected from liability by the 1986 national vaccine injury act but what about our community there is no law protecting the school district or town from liability for pressuring people into participating in experimental medical procedure and no law to protect against the

047psychological harm or physical harm with kids 30 seconds suffer the kinds of documented vaccine injuries including heart diseases seizures loss of personal independence of daily activities etc and so i ask you to please reject the tainted ester funding in this proposed budget thank you thank you next up is katie jackson followed by jennifer avenzavenga hello good evening chair stow dr jones and members of the board of education my name is katie jackson and i am the proud parent of three old greenwich school students i am here speaking tonight in support of dr jones capital plan of 1.8 million dollars for the design phase of the old greenwich school my family relocated from new york city in 2017 in time for my eldest child to attend kindergarten we were drawn to greenwich for the proximity to

048new york city and the quality of its public school system and we ultimately decided on old greenwich for its close knit community and reputable elementary school over the past five years with children in three different grades i've had the benefit of getting to know many parents having helped welcome new families to old greenwich our school and serving as a parent liaison for our school's pta i pride myself in being a sounding board for my fellow parents and working to find solutions and make recommendations to enhance the old greenwich school community through the years i've listened to parents express their concern when their child is assigned to specific classrooms in the fall knowing that these rooms in particular will flood with sewage during storms i have witnessed injured children hobble up and down the front steps

049of our school i've heard the uncertainty and a parent's voice on how their child will make it through the day on crutches without an elevator their child's classroom residing on the second or third floor yet a portion of every child's day occurs on the ground floor with coved existing issues at the school became bigger and more evident my own children sitting in their classrooms with coats hats and gloves on the coldest day of the year with the windows wide open in lieu of a proper ventilation system although i was happy that they were in school i know this week emails were sent to the boe bet and first selectmen allowing their support for the old granite school renovation this is not just about a few parents and our administration supporting and requesting this renovation it's

050our entire parent body and on behalf of our parents and children i ask that you support the capital plan and request for the design phase of old granite school i just want to add a side note i was leaving my house tonight my parents who were watching my children thankfully said katie when is this gonna happen anyway and i said oh you know he said is it gonna happen for your children will they even reap the benefits of this and i was like does it matter like this is a safety concern you know like i i can't understand how we could possibly kick the can down the road 30 seconds any further because as we said all these people are here saying how they're concerned about safety for children and that's just so important i

051think i appreciate your time and thank you very much [Applause] thank you next up is jennifer kenzavango followed by trish mcguire yes we got the two principles in a row did you guys time that maybe good evening madam chair members of the board and dr jones as the proud principal of old greenwich school i am here this evening to request your support for the 2223 capitol plan and operating budget as presented by dr jones i've had the opportunity to provide tours to many of the board members thank you for your willingness to hear the needs of our beautiful school built in 1902 as well as the needs of our sister schools of julian curtis riverside and central a bit of internet research will show you that in 1902 shoppers in the village of old greenwich

052could buy a five pound bag of flour for 12 cents eggs were 21 cents a dozen milk sold for 14 cents a half gallon and for 48 cents you could get a fine felt hat the mill rate in greenwich in 1902 when our buildings opened its door was 13. i know you can all envision the rates of inflation on milk eggs and fine felt hats but i will remind you that our current 2021 bill rate is only 11.689 as the temperature begins to drop in cases of covid begin to rise our teachers have continued their practice of teaching despite the weather with windows open as our only appropriate ventilation option in the school covet has turned the spotlight on a long established concern with the lack of quality hvac in our schools our students learned

053with coats and hats on in the classroom and our teachers were given blankets as gifts for christmas last year this fall a veteran ogs teacher started the year with an injury resulting in the need for a knee replacement her classroom on the third floor of the school requires her to climb multiple flights of stairs several times a day for some perspective from the ground floor to her third floor classroom there are 40 steps she climbs those eight times a day 320 steps a day every week this teacher has climbed the equivalent of the same number of steps it takes to reach the top of the empire states building with a cane while waiting for a knee replacement we've shared with you the challenge of having classrooms that flood with sewage and water from toilets because

054they're below sea level what we haven't shared is the reality of the six-year-old child in one of those classrooms who is so afraid of flooding the room she waited all day to use the bathroom we shouldn't have to tell students what the procedure is if the room starts to flood and yet our teachers have had to review those practices to ensure students and their belongings are able to be relocated quickly during a heavy rainstorm if the water alarm is triggered this should be unacceptable for the students and teachers in any school especially a town like greenwich connecticut where i have been a proud employee for almost 25 years a town with both the ways and the means to remedy these issues and ensure every child and teacher in greenwich can attend a safe healthy accessible

055school every day i ask you today to please not only support the proposed capital plan time but to advocate for the necessity of this plan at the four schools our children and teachers are counting on you to have the loudest thank you all right thank you very much next up chris mcguire followed by gail lordson thank you good evening chair stow members of the board of education dr jones and members of the community as the proud principal of julian curtis school i am here this evening to request your support for the 2223 capital plan and operating budget as presented by dr jones i have been the principal of julian curtis since 2009 and i truly understand the needs of our beautiful gem of a building built in 1946 thank you for your willingness to listen

056to the needs of our school as well as the needs of neighboring schools of old greenwich riverside and central middle school our community in central greenwich has a lot of skin in the game for this capital budget plan our students attend two of the schools at the top of the needs list for renovations julian curtis and central middle school the central greenwich community is looking forward to these much needed renovations the gps 15-year plan is aging as we speak by the time this budget goes into effect it will be five years into a 15-year plan the original plan included a scope similar to the development of glenville and new lebanon schools why would the design of julian curtis be in question now when a precedent has been set across the district our school receives title

0571 funds and serves both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum schools built with similar specs are serving their communities well and enrollment has increased at those buildings post-renovation build it and they will come julian curtis runs a very successful magnet program that represents 27 of our population this includes students from nine other elementary schools in greenwich the jc magnet program helps to alleviate racial imbalance at our school as well as contributing to less crowding at other schools across town julian curtis represents every member of this town children of many heritages and socioeconomic backgrounds we don't only represent 60 countries in 30 languages but we represent a range of some of the most expensive homes in greenwich to a 110 family unit hud subsidized development these families all send their children to our schools and they expect

058the best that greenwich has to offer with only three minutes to speak i can't list all the reasons that support moving ahead but i urge you to read the district data on our district preschool enrollment review the master plan and visit the schools that already have similar spaces planned for jc the jc community is asking for equity across the district so we can provide our students the excellence being provided to others in the district i invite all board members of the boe and bet especially our new members to come visit prior to the december 16th vote during the school day to see for yourselves how the present rooms at julian curtis are being utilized we are using every single room in our building with the present enrollment as is i ask you today to not

059only support the proposed capital plan but to please advocate for the necessity of this plan for all four schools time thank you thank you very much next up gail lauritsen who i see online followed by mary ellen frozoski mr lordson you may begin you have to just unmute yourself okay can you hear me yes we can hear you um my name is gail lordson i didn't have a lot of time to prepare today but i just want to get a point across i support the renovation and upgrading of our school infrastructure making them safe ada compliant and bringing the hvac up to modern standards the total budget requested for the 2022 to 2023 budget is 176 million 403 dollars which represents a 2.65 increase over last year this budget has a professional development and other

060professional services jumping 59 over last year while you're cutting the library media staff and with so much need in the actual buildings please explain this increase in professional development funding i'm going to hang out after all the public speakers to hear how you explain this the um now i know the sr3 funding isn't part of this conversation but it kind of is a part of the conversation because it represents 5.7 percent of the total budget this relatively small amount however has an outsized impact on our children and teachers keeping them in masks and promoting experimental injections which are absolutely proving to be dangerous and in some cases outright deadly i personally have sent the board a list of scientific studies showing the health risks associated with masks as you have now been put on notice

061this board is risking lawsuits by any family who is harmed by these ill-conceived practices i do not support mandates which will potentially cause my tax dollars to be spent on perfectly unavoidable lawsuits please reject this tainted sr money and find another way to meet the budget demands thank you thank you very much next up mary ellen brzezovsky followed by roger rosendahl good evening superintendent jones and board of education members my name is mary ellen brazovsky i have been a media specialist for almost 20 years most of those years here at central middle school three minutes is not enough time to tell you about the hats we wear the roles we fill and the people we support i am an instructor i show middle schoolers how to stay safe online and be good digital citizens i

062am a teacher i educate students on researching topics that are interesting to them personally and vital to them as global citizens they learn to respect the work of others and give credit through proper citation how to evaluate sources and recognize bias i teach them how to communicate effectively and how to share what they have learned with others i am an innovator when students need to find unusual resources to demonstrate their learning i introduce them to our maker space robots 3d printing creating graphics podcasting or making videos all encourage students to think and express themselves in unique ways i am a librarian reading is amazing i do everything in my power to nurture young readers avid readers reluctant readers and everyone in between learn empathize explore new worlds and discover themselves through reading if they do

063not read how will they learn to write how will they learn about science social studies music art health and math have i left anything out chances are they'll need to read in order to learn it i develop our library collection by researching the newest titles in a thoughtful and thorough manner so that i can ensure the collection meets the needs of our students and teachers i am a coach the media center is the one stop shop for digital tools and training i collaborate with teachers in the classroom and make recommendations for sources digital and print to facilitate the delivery of curriculum when a parent doesn't understand google classroom or aspen i am there i explain how these tools work so the parents can get can better support their children and know what's happening in the

064classroom i am a link i am an advocate i am a guide i am a media specialist wait due to unfilled media positions and covid my role 30 seconds has been severely limited for two years teaching a full schedule of classes rather than having an opportunity to co-teach means that students are being taught these skills out of context i can no longer offer teachers and students the book talks they ask for and the drop in our circulation statistics show it pre-covered checkouts average 10 000 books per year last year we loaned out only 1600 books yes part of the gap is due to covet thank you very much thank you very much next up is roger rosendahl and then i see that someone we skipped is online so then we'll go back to them that

065is the burrito that's roger rosendale followed by garita good evening my name is roger rosenthal i'm a 25-year resident of greenwich i have only two quick points uh and i think my points reflect at least many parents and many teachers not including the teachers union point one uh while i support the uh capital plans proposals for julian curtis infrastructure i oppose the reliance in the budget on federal funding that comes not with strings but with handcuffs i do not believe that the greenwich board of education should take a bribe to effectively promote political actions that many people oppose point two on the issue of budget transparency in the october meeting of the board it was stated that there was no connection there were no handcuffs there was no connection between federal funding and the promotion

066of policies that many people object to that misinformation has been not been corrected it's board meeting misinformation i believe we need transparency in the budget to point out there is this connection and people who don't like the connection should know should know this thank you very much uh like i said we're circling back now to monica garrido and perhaps her husband is also online francisco guerrero hi this is monica um my husband unfortunately he left for work for the evening so um so my name is monica guerino i'm mother to manolo giovanni savarino and francisca garrido who all attend the julian curtis school i am also here as a latina and first generation u.s college graduate and my husband a columbian ecuadorian gulf war veteran and now community first responder also a first generation college

067graduate i'm here in support of the proposed capital spend for the respective improvements to julian curtis and the subsequent schools in our community when we moved here we specifically sought out the julian curtis school as a community we wanted for our children because it speaks so strongly to who we are we have dedicated our lives to the community to community work both locally and internationally because we know that when you improve communities the world becomes a better place we're asking the community not to give back to us and our children but to give back to all of us through the capital improvements for the benefit of everyone we believe so strongly in what julian curtis has to offer because of who we are and because of the rich diverse community in which it stands my

068husband francisco who has left for the night for work and i fully support the proposed budget for capital improvements thank you thank you very much sorry i wasn't able to give the next person a heads up but it's alexander stevens followed by carrie brisby good evening superintendent jones and board of education members my name is alexander stevens and i'm a 20-year town resident a ghs teacher and a parent of three children in gps schools i want to talk to you tonight about the gps media department to which i have devoted my entire teaching career i first spoke before this board in november of 2016 when the proposed budget included the elimination of a media specialist position at ghs a proposal which would have resulted in a reduction of force and possible termination of a tenured

069teacher there was no explanation about why this position had been targeted and the board thankfully reversed course and reinstated it fast forward four years when in may 2020 we saw a proposed cut of half the district's media assistance and elimination of the entire book budget for all 15 schools for the next school year after another outcry the district found the money that enabled them to keep the media assistance but not to buy any books so we went more than a year without buying books for our 15 school libraries a result that was particularly frustrating given that the boe returned significant monies to the town at the end of the school year then in fall 2020 the district froze six positions in our department even though money had been budgeted for those positions while two media

070assistant positions were filled at the beginning of this school year the remaining positions are frozen for 2021 and 22 despite having money in those boe approved budget lines to pay for those positions so now we come to the proposed 2223 budget and we learn that three of those frozen positions the wms and ems media specialists and the media coordinator positions will now be eliminated also eliminated is one media assistant position at ham app in addition parts of the ems and wms media center spaces have been carved up for use as offices and classrooms instead of a vibrant 21st century media center so my question of this board is why why in a town as wealthy as greenwich do you keep removing funding for our school library programs what seemed like a blip in 2016 with

071one position now looks like a systemic dismantling of important parts of the gps media library program our school libraries are not merely safe spaces for kids to explore literature although that alone might be a reason enough to want to preserve them rather they are places where students learn to research and avoid plagiarism it is where they learn how to properly use their one-to-one device how to navigate a 24-hour information society how to discern reliable sources for misinformation to expand on best-selling author neil gaiman's well-known quote google can give you google can give you a hundred thousand answers to any question a librarian can help you find the right one and i would add a school librarian can teach you the skills to find it yourself i strongly urge this board and the administration to examine

072why instead of prioritizing this critical program it is instead systemically systematically chipping away at it as a gps parent a library media specialist a taxpayer and personally as a long ago teen who like many teens today found solace and safety in her school library i urge you to reconsider all library media position cuts as well as the return of library spaces to full access by our middle school students thank you thank you very much uh next speaker is perry bisbee and then we'll have to stop there because that'll be an hour we'll go into our meeting and we'll come back to the remaining speakers thank you hi can you hear me yes please go ahead okay good evening i'm carrie bisbee co-president of the riverside school pta on behalf of the riverside school parent community

073i'd like to express our unwavering support for the major projects at both julian curtis and old greenwich we are also backing the superintendent's proposal to execute these two projects on a parallel track with that in mind the riverside school community encourages the board of education to approve the 2022 2023 budget line items of 1.8 million dollars each to fund the design phase at both julian curtis and old greenwich while major work at riverside school is not part of the 2022-23 budget we do want to declare our support for the four project plan recently unveiled unveiled by dr jones that calls for construction work to also occur at central middle school then riverside school within five years riverside families cherish our community school thanks to our exceptional teachers and staff whose efforts we enthusiastically applaud riverside

074is a place where our children are challenged and encouraged to meet their full potential it is also a place of comfort safety and support for students particularly as we navigate this pandemic and we have no doubt it's the same at julian curtis old greenwich and central however for the elementary schools in this cohort the structures that contain these spaces that we deem safe for our children are outdated and failed to meet ada standards that were established decades ago they also lack ample multi-purpose spaces to support the next generation learning model that gives our students the tools to reach their full potential some including riverside are also operating at full capacity without a single empty classroom or vacant space these needs that i mentioned among others highlighted this evening are critical and must be addressed while

075i'd be delighted to stumble upon the fountain of youth myself i've yet to find it so like me as time passes these buildings aren't getting any younger in turn delays at julian curtis and old greenwich impact subsequent projects namely those at central and riverside compounding the risks vulnerabilities and costs that come with operating so many aging school buildings all told it is our duty as residents and your duty as stewards of our excellent school system to ensure our buildings are safe and accessible for everyone by investing in the necessary improvements now and over the next five years 30 seconds greenwich central and riverside thank you thank you very much that concludes our public hearing for now like i said we'll come back to uh the remainder after we speak person stone may i say something

076i guess i'd just like to clear something up and uh i feel it's important we do this at this time of the meeting uh we have some new members of the board we have some attorney members of the board and for the sake of not offending anybody incorrectly can we talk about how we'd like to address each other i'd like to be called joe during the course of the meeting can we find out how everyone can be addressed so that for no one gets offended incorrectly can we go across the board make sure we cover that i think we can do that okay so joe got that i'm fine with cody are you sure because i wanted to really say mr kittle over and over okay how about you karen i just changed your name

077well you can call me karen mrs hirsch just don't call me late for dinner other karen you can call me karen but not other karen christina or vince danny whatever whatever pops into your head the the shorter the better mike is fine can i can't go mj mj also works yes laura is just fine fine all right i like that joe that was a good suggestion oh there's so many names you can go kj chair whatever whatever moves you at the time and dr jones i know there's been some question on how you should be addressed in the meeting a couple times in the past how would you like to be addressed by the board members i also respond to whatever um as long as it's where i understand that it's me usually when the

078questions get harder we turn to you so there we go thank you everybody thank you i also should take this time to say we received hundreds of emails um as well and it felt like more in the past maybe that's because i had the opportunity to individually respond to each one but it was awesome and i read everyone so thank you to all the people that emailed and please keep them coming and like i said we will come back to public comment but let's now go into the budget and i'm going to turn it to you dr jones um for the q a so the the board has just seen the q a tonight we got a lot of your questions over the last kind of 48 uh hours or so um so we worked

079on them right up until late today so i'm going to walk through them but what we didn't have time to do is group them by necessarily like capital and operating um but there we have about 70 i think five just to kind of go through some of them are similar um so i'll just start and kind of work through them i won't read to you word for word but i'll try to kind of give a summation and if it's not clear just let me know um on the first one it's really um this is just statement that was actually in the letter where it was just talking about how we took our coaching staff um last year and actually created those math interventionists and there'll be more questions on that so i'll speak to that

080a little bit longer um question two is just talking about the math interventionists and how they show up in the budget again there's another question that's coming up on this it is um you have to look very carefully within each elementary school because it looks like uh curriculum instruction professional learning goes down that's because that's where the math interventionists were sitting in the current year next year as you know we're trying to fund uh fully and so that was moved to the math line in the schools and again when you have time to really soak in these questions you'll see several of you ask that same question um is for number three the cost of the math interventionist and that's this is just to reiterate it is correct this year you would only see although

081we have a 1.0 in each elementary you'll only see in the operating budget 0.5 because that is funded and operating we have point five that was funded through grant um next year again you'll see that it looks different and number four um this is about um the program expense section for ems and ghs and this is an area that shawn is still researching and uh just as a reminder we do not have an hr director right now through the end of december so i'm also managing the hr department um and so it's taking us a little bit longer because we're down a person um on question five this is a reduction in the media um and that's just showing that um yes there's a reduction of the 1.0 fte from media i did reach back

082out to both of the principals just because i knew this was going to come up at western um and eastern and make sure that this is still you know their recommendation and those positions have been reallocated within the building and they're happy to speak to the board if that is a request to do at some point in the budget session um on the next one the repeated reductions in current instruction and instructional learning and again this has to do with math interventionist so i encourage you to like circle the ones you want to go back and read carefully but question six several of you had it and it's just asked in a different way but it's tricky how it shows up in the budget to know what you're looking at um looking at the program

083expenses for visual arts and looking at some of the reductions that are happening there this is when it gets so difficult when we have it's 18 or 19 000 different accounts so when you go line by line and you see something go up and you see something else go down it usually has to do with staffing and so as we go through and we start pulling these you'll see like a veteran teacher leaves and then we hire a two-year teacher so just to give you perspective on that um in our current current year's budget if we hire a bachelor's teacher who's right at the very beginning of their career it's fifty six thousand one hundred eleven dollars if we happen to hire the most expensive teacher let's say a teacher that has their doctorate it's

084129 564. so when you have changeover of staff you can see big differences in the expense that you're going to see in one particular building simply because of the turnover of staff sometimes it's moving a staff member if we cut a section for instance at you know hamilton avenue and we moved that teacher over to og because they needed an additional teacher that salary shifts with them so it's very difficult to go and look at one year and compare it to the next year you'll never ever see exactly the same because of movement of staff um the next page i'm on page three is really looking at the cost for the english language learners and they're really going in and looking at where those changes are they think right now has more to do with

085the paris structure but we'll continue to provide more information on that and on costco it's asking about the enrollment and why the salary line is increasing uh by a hundred and five thousand and there's a good explanation there it's certified and non-certified so even though you're going down a certified section you still have things going on with the non-certified and then also you have to remember that 0.5 math interventionist is going back in all of the elementaries on the operating side and sean did a good job providing a chart um down below just to show you kind of what was happening within that building for those of you that really kind of dug into the building level for question 10 there was an error that was a typo it should have read 24 students or

0867 percent of the total that are in special education at dundee the type of said 76 um so we will correct that in the next version at hem avenue um if they're down two sections it would seem like there's a decrease in salary but again when you go in and you start looking at certified non-certified um and all of the changes it has to do mainly with it's with staffing changes when you look from building to building um and you have to really just drill into each line to see who moved and you know where they went um julian curtis is the same again i'll let you kind of read that but sean's giving you the breakdown so you can actually see what was happening um inside the building and i will just say and

087i know sean's happy to speak to this but also we encourage you just to look at the very front of the budget where you really have the overall view because salaries are right where they're supposed to be that's why it gets really tricky when you go in and start looking at individual salary lines because it's individual people that are moving around the buildings um on question 13 this is new lebanon north street mill greenwich they're up over five percent uh in their salary line again you've got a chart that kind of gives you the information to be able to see there's just lots of movement um also on the increase you're also looking at things like general wage increase you have your step movement you have extra duty pay that shows up longevity which is

088part of a teacher's contract that's something in the bargaining unit and over time or any changes in in personnel and i'm just i'm not going to hit on again same thing for north street i'll let you kind of read these when you have more time to soak it up and you can send us follow-up questions if it's still not clear old greenwich is the same um for parkway based on enrollment projections um having particularly small numbers in kn5 and the question was asked have we considered doing a combination classroom that spans two grades certainly that's something we could explore it would take some professional development while teachers are accustomed to differentiating when you start bringing two grades together and you're doing multi-age teaching it is it is a different skill set um but that was

089a very good question and we're happy to have happy to have that discussion um for riverside it says they'll reduce by one section uh but there are five sections of third grade this year um that won't be able to become fourth grade next year so what i would emphasize here is that we've gone through every section um of the elementary so we go through all 200 sections and we look at where we think we're going to go up where we think we're going to go down based on projections going into this for this particular budget going into next year we have a reduction of five elementary sections and generally when you're talking about five sections that's through natural attrition doesn't mean we're having to issue like uh reduction in force we'll have people that will

090retire somebody will you know leave to move out of state but we have five positions coming down however we do have ten more that we're watching we have about five that could go up and five that could go down so you can't go into the budget and reduce all of those sections because you could be a million dollars short um in the fall so we try to those are really close and we watch them all throughout the summer but we try to make sure we're right there where this class size guidelines are now i'll take this opportunity just to say when you look at class sizes this year and last year they do look a little different because of covid some of our classrooms are only 650 square feet so we could not put the

091number of students by guideline in the class and socially distanced three feet uh which was a requirement to be able to open schools so this year's it's kind of off if you look at it but i'm hoping next year we'll be back to normal we hope question 17 again both jc and og have ed specs i'm on page 7 at the top and we do know the scope that's going to be done in those buildings and the question uh was asked what capital projects could be removed from the infrastructure side if all of the end specs were done and it really it's hard to say because it depends what the building committee is actually able to get done and what budget is actually voted on because right now it's just a feasibility we haven't gone

092into actual design but let's say the elevator gets done then your vertical lift elevator would come off that infrastructure side you know of the master plan and it literally would be going item by item but if you do everything and you don't do the roof for instance then we still have to come back and do that and it would stay on the infrastructure side so until we get to the next really step of the process we wouldn't want to start taking things off of the infrastructure list and then be putting them back on because it might give people a false sense of what the future is going to look like wait can i just interject right there for a second because i this is i had a similar question and i really don't understand so

093but our ed specs are are set as to what we're going to do whether it includes doing a roof over part of the building or it includes hvac or it includes the elevator lift so how would that change my understanding from our former chair was that once the spec is passed the layout the the actual design of the building could change depending upon the architecture but the ed spec was set in stone and in fact wouldn't change so i don't know how that sits with your comments there about what gets done and what doesn't get done we've already decided what's getting done in the schools so let me give you my own personal experience i was going to say feel free to do this but i was going to actually ask that we go through

094all the questions and then people we open the floor but if you wanted to do that one otherwise that was sort of the process i'll answer that one quickly and then i think that that's good thank you kathleen um what where from my experience where this really comes to play is when um the town decides that you have x amount of dollars and that's it and that your building committee goes to work they go out to bid it's um it ends up being four years from now depending on when it's passed um you have escalation that has escalated more than was anticipated especially right now with what we're seeing with shipping and what's happening in the market construction materials so at that point what i have had to do in the past is i went

095back in front of the board and we said okay this is what we can build for 30 million dollars but we can't get everything that the board had in the first approved ed spec and we bring it back to the board and um but that's certainly we could go into the infrastructure side and go straight by the ed spec but then you're kind of giving people a false sense so that's that's the concern for 18 this is the eversource lighting project and what it would like to do central middle school and this has been a struggle for us and i know the board's going to want to talk more about central but um you know central does need a lot of work and we can't we're already now into we're going to be into year

096five of a 15-year plan and we feel like we need to keep a healthy building and continue to do work in the building um if we're not going to be doing a major project so you know by the time the the lights were paid off even if the project moves forward um we would we would still have healthy lighting for our children while they're here while students are here um and again question 19 is very similar to the one i just responded to so i'll take that when we have more capital questions um on the five-year plan it seems we have a disportionate number of roofs so dan's provided a really good chart for you just to see um where it has the school it has the proposed dollars what the budget request is um

097the the revision year and then it also has um when the actual uh warranty is up so you can actually get a good idea of what's happening there and it's based on the current condition of the schools and the status of the existing warranty so i know you'll look at that further um on page 9 question 21 they were asking just for a correction and yes that we will correct that in the next version of the budget book where had it asterisks about new lebanon on question 22 uh what's currently in the esser and not in operating we are working right now uh on a good ester sheet so that you'll be able to see it just like you did with crf sr1 esser2 as you know we brought a report to the board um

098we um that sean is working on that right now so we're trying to get aggressive in getting that back in front of the board every month and so that you can actually see what's there how to ester funds for professional development supplies impact the operating lines they really don't uh in the sense that esser is not supplanting operating funding that's not what it's for twenty percent of it is for learning loss and it's very um specific and the categories where s or funding has to be spent and i i i feel kind of an obligation just because i have some new board members here again just to reiterate it is not tied uh to anything um other than learning loss categories like that um but as far as like masks or vaccines it's not tied

099to that at all and i wish i could i'm jonathan sitting here we'll try to figure out a way to craft a better message the only thing that um i can think that people think it's tied is because we have some ppe in there because as you know we used almost all of sr1 for ppe a lot of s or two um and we don't want to be taking if we are still having to buy masks and things of that nature into the spring or into the fall we do not want to be taking that away from things like materials and supplies from our schools in the operating so that's sitting in there um what capital projects are in esther and not in the capital budget we have hvac in there which was uh north

100myannis while we had that opened up and we were able to invest north mianis we also have a needlepoint ionization for air quality improvements at four of our different schools um on question 25 how much would an appropriate budget be if we were to attempt to accelerate the construction and um really what you're seeing here is the budget number presented is an effort to move it forward you know aggressively and i will say when you look at that number and i know there's another question in here somewhere it's based on the number of square feet times six hundred dollars per square foot um and so that's kind of where that number comes from for central i'm sorry um and fourth central and i will say if you take that number and you start escalating it

101out where it was way out of the budget you'll see it gets back up to 9 million so that's what your you know the wait time actually costs you millions of dollars question 26 is it possible to get a breakdown of current potential out of district students um and this is for our special education outplacement and settlements and we will this year just as we do how we have done the last two years have an executive session so that you can see students like by by school not the student names but by school and what those costs are we do that in executive just to make sure uh for confidentiality because we may have a school where only two children go to that school and maybe it's one of your neighbors and you know we

102wouldn't want that to be attached so we were very careful about that um for 27 we have a sense of current reimbursement numbers that we get from the state um what the person was asking here is about excess cost and um our cost sharing and when you look at these both of these grants uh in 1920 we got more in our education excess cost than we did in 2021 we don't have a 21-22 number but again these don't come to us both of these flow to the town of greenwich so in most localities they would flow to the school district but it's just a different viewpoint here where um they they have the viewpoint i think that they fund our budget and so thought you know it's all one big pot of money but that

103just gives you an idea and i will say there was a report that came out uh late yesterday uh about the special education access cost and that the state of connecticut is not funding adequately so we'll see where that goes if they actually start having a good look um at how the funding is handled in the state of connecticut uh question 28 is there a simple answer why stipends are up 7.7 and this is a mixture of contractual increases because those are one of the schedules especially in the teachers contract in the back of the contract they automatically go up we also had some team mentor stipends that weren't uh showing in this budget that are back in for next year and that is um when we hire our new teachers and they help mentor

104um the state used to pay for that and then about i would say three years ago they put it back off onto the districts um 29 is the district run preschool related services the only service we're allowed to offer in connecticut um for preschool we must offer actual preschool in our public school but we do partner with community programs as well um through for child find and i will say i know this board um had it wasn't here for the full presentation but just the partnership we have even with united way at the preschool level and at some point i'm sure david raven would be happy to come back and talk again as well we also offer speech and language services so what kind of outreach did we make to sell you cellular carriers to

105improve access in and around a ghs and mike team gives you a good dis um description about reaching out to the major cellular carrier who actually had the recommendation that we look at third party solutions um the other aspect is we can't as many of you know we have a lot of restrictions on that property because it's maxed out so putting a large cell tower like in the corner of the property uh would not be um welcomed by many of our neighbors um so question 31 uh do we have a projected number of elementary sections for next year by grade we have it from a staff perspective but if you if you look at it um it's difficult because it's going to change before september you know we watch that and it moves so we

106tend to in the budget just give you the big number for each school for the grade for the projection but we actually staff do keep it by sections um question 32 there are some new programs planned in the budget so stacy dr holly gentler has tried to give you an idea of kind of the program location the size you know how big the program would be um what the age range is and that's just to kind of give you an overview of what the program would look like um what some of the an explanation about what would happen within that program if you look down on the bottom of page it starts the cost analysis for the unique learner program which i talked about during the budget and i you know would point out that

107that's where you have a teacher who's teaching with this unique program and then on page 13 it carries on on the top you'd have two paris and that would be um at 60 000. we we plug in 30 000 per pair for a program like that so your program cost is right at about a hundred and eighty thousand for ten to twelve students generally with this population of students that we're talking about and you know we want to have a concerted effort on the number of students that have to seek out placement because we can't meet their needs one student for us in greenwich averages right around 114 000 in tuition and then on top of that we must transport children to their school so 10 students if those 10 students are outplaced that's a

108cost approximate of course of right around 1.4 million so building programs in district can not only be wonderful for families and children to have a program because you know especially a lot of the children that have siblings in the school they really want to go to school you know where brothers and sisters are they don't really want to choose to go somewhere else um so question 33 um just these are just explanations i'm not going to read these for you but it's really community connections is our 18 to 22 students who stay with us by law for transition windrose is our alternative education program and then the wellness center is located at greenwich high school so these are some unique settings that some of the board may or may not be aware of that we

109offer um and again i'll let you read those when you have time uh question 34 um do we have information about private school enrollment generally we would have information about private school enrollment but we don't have it for the current year it's lagging we only have it available through 2021 and question 35 this has to do with the number of tuition students and again most of these are staff members who bring their children or town of greenwich employees who have children that are on tuition so this just gives you um now preschool's a little bit different preschool is your peers when you talk about tuition but k-12 are generally staff members and town of greenwich um so some of the k-5 classes seem smaller than normal is there a reason so the next two questions

110are just giving you the breakdown of how class size guidelines are utilized um kn1 is at 21 students if we're following our guidelines second and third grade would be at 24 4th and fifth are at 26. but again if you look at this current year and you look at sizes you're gonna have sizes that are small because smaller we couldn't fit 26 students in in many of our classrooms especially with bigger kids in fourth and fifth grade for cobid question 38 the individual buildings in terms of staffing many of you also have reached out and said you'd like to see the staffing for in general for all of our schools and we're working on that for you as well so on 39 the town tries to appropriate funds for projects that could be executed in

111the next fiscal year and dan gave you i think some great explanation just about overall how projects spread more than one year you know there and that's often intentionally like our roofing projects are bundled so it takes us you can only do that kind of work generally you can't have the you know hammers banging on the on the roof when kids are in school so that some of the longer larger projects take multiple summers in order to complete so again in the business meeting you do get that capital update every month um and you'll see we've we try to be aggressive about closing projects out but sometimes they just take more time question 40 on transportation and the bus contract um it is likely that we will have an executive session on the bus contract

112and that's because we have the bids have been opened uh we had two companies that were bidding we know right now this budget is built um on a five percent assumed increase however the increase for the lowest bid is at twelve and a half percent and so before we actually sign a contract it is likely we'll talk to you about the negotiations we're having um right now but we will do that with um with abby wadler and ask her to attend as well for question 41 on budget efficiencies again when we've removed positions assuming the workload that the salaried positions covered had not been reduced so every position is different and if you go back over our budget in this past three years we've made a lot of adjustments and tried to run as efficiently

113as we can um you know one example i will i you know i would share is that um like the superintendent the deputy superintendent we used to each have our own assistant so when when the deputy superintendent's assistant left naturally um we you know absorbed that and anna and i share linda and she does a fantastic job for us um but we both also do some of our own work like i you know i type a lot of my own stuff um so i think it works for us it doesn't mean we put more load on somebody else and it really just depends on which position um some positions were felt to be a little bit underutilized and we needed to actually increase the workload a little bit um to reach that efficiency question 42

114for preschool um with the preschool ratio we adjusted that um two years ago so that we could slow the growth a little bit of sections and we are still we have a great ratio balance for preschool so if we add a section of preschool we do add typical peers we will add more peers but we don't add a section of preschool just to have peers so it's it's tied to special needs and when we need to add that on question 43 special education tuition there was a question about you know have we put in enough and how much is a placeholder you know or a cushion and if you look at kind of the response below again you'll see we're planning to have an executive session to share more with you just so you're well

115informed um and as of 2021 this these are the number of uh outplacements and the number of settlements um that we currently have again as of december 1st but i know the board is very aware of this but um you know this is a often a legal obligation as well if we have a student who moves in to greenwich from another locality that student could be have it be outplaced already and it could be sixty 000 or it could be 400 and 450 000 and that's we have a legal obligation to actually continue that as part of their iep so again it's um it's a growth area for those of you who haven't you know learned about the outplacement and settlement component yet and i also just want to mention settlement doesn't mean parents are

116fighting us and that we're actually you know they have attorneys and they're filing a lawsuit if if the only placement for a child or the best placement in the agreement from the parents perspective is a school that is not on the state list then that's considered a settlement and sometimes we have a child with such a unique need that they need to be in a school that's not state approved and it still shows on the settlement line but if we cannot we want them in state approved schools so it shows up um as an out placement for the district again we'll talk more about that um on question 44 this is just talking about the special education action plan and they will be in front of us i believe on the 16th so you'll hear

117more from them as well um one of the great things i think about the special education action plan is that it's not just a money-driven request you know a lot of their recommendations are cultural procedural shifts which we really needed and they don't cost anything and um you know credit to stacy she's good she's been very quick to get in and really look at what positions we have or can we use positions differently and literally from july to september she was able to make some adjustments in the high school to get co-teaching which is one of the recommendations that we needed and it's working fabulously and we were able to do that at no cost to the district um so we literally are working through all of those right now um the staffing adjustments for

118co-teaching the next uh question just you know addresses again kind of what i just mentioned that they are being taught and we're right now we're very pleased um with what we're seeing uh for literacy co-teaching it's the same as above um on question 47 it talks about balanced classrooms and this is really talking about in those classrooms where you have um for instance let's say it's a the lower level of physics and in that level we used to put we might have 22 students in there we might have 23. every one of them were on an iep or a 504 and there was no para and no no help within that classroom or special education teacher so in those classrooms the goal is to have 50 50. the goal is really to have 50 students

119who are on an iep and 50 who are not that because of the way the schedule is structured and the way those classes have been utilized through the years that's a hard thing to do simply because they were just generally even though they were general education classes they were very much front loaded with special education students so what we did this year if we can't we've got a better ratio and we also kept the classes smaller so that it's manageable for the teacher and so we've seen again that's been very welcomed this year so adding a specialized reading position this is the position that app opened up again naturally was doing a lot of our um orton gillingham training and so instead of having one position that's doing orton gillingham training this budget is proposing

120that position is sorry that position is actually going to be utilized as a very very high level um reading um teacher for students who are in that kind of top one two percent of real challenges a very unique position and then we have contracted uh out with uh regional centers with uh resk and circ um to be able to do the training so we're not losing a training component but it's actually more cost effective to do it in this way um on 50 this is again just about teaching learning and longevity and that longevity payment is something that staff earn and if they've been employed for 20 years or more in gps as of july of 2015 they get 1200 in each year of the bargaining agreement so that you'll see that longevity that's why

121it's different at each school just depends who which staff are at the school um for question 52 this is really uh teaching and learning stipends and why it's increased 160 percent um it was actually in 2021 reduced due to covid uh and the budget for 2122 was under budgeted and not knowing really where we were going to be but a lot of our stipends just set um because we couldn't run things after school that we would normally have done question 53 for teaching and learning and targeted instruction there's a question about the 25 000 allotted in 2122 budget that's been reduced to zero and do we no longer need targeted instruction so there's no intended reduction to teaching and learning targeted instruction and we're doing a little bit more research on that one sometimes it

122moves from one line to the other so we're trying to track that one down for ghs targeted instruction it's increased by 25 and then they were asking was that for co-teaching and this was actually a line correction um from page uh on page nine it tells you where it is uh line correction because spending for teaching learning targeted instruction is generally closer to 80 to 90 000 if you look back um in the actual going back to i believe it was 1819 so again that's a line correction on uh line 325 again they're asking about a specific line in the budget book um this stipend is for k5 um pe oversight and and this was is the older board members will remember we reduced the pe position the coordinator position so we have oversight now

123instead of 170 000 administrative salary and we we've utilized that differently on question 56 this is about funding that's used for targeted instructions at all of the middle schools and they're asking about these particular lines if you go and look them up and these are funds to support after school activities and programs and the principles the buildings use these along with grant funds um non-profit sometimes it's greenwich alliance that help fund things and mechanisms to funding so you have additional opportunities um question 57 again this has to do with professional learning and development and where the funds have been moved you'll see lots of shifts inside school budgets and this is really just a change in accounting last year the new math positions again were put on the simple line now they're in the math

124line so when you go and you start looking school by school that's probably one of the biggest ones again that can throw you off um question 58 for el instructional salaries we're going in and looking at what the fluctuation is generally again it's personnel and it may very well be the assistant for el but we're trying to find each person we have to literally go through all the lines to find it um so the cost for have a meyer the four hundred thousand dollars that you could see have a meyer language arts that is for six through eight uh english language arts work that we're doing uh the french textbook is in the world language budget someone was asking about where that was um also in math if you remember we implemented math this year

125our big ideas implementation that we just had our presentation on so you will see a drop in that because we don't have to buy everything again next year and those funds then move on to the next curriculum management plan uh core area which again is language arts and then the platform and consumables are for the math courses and we have some math courses that are in the management plan that are getting getting renewed right now and so they have to renew their online resources for science for science salaries uh we didn't need we don't need additional money to actually go back to advanced science it just means somebody is teaching an advanced course instead of an on level course so you don't need additional funding for that on the western fields uh when do we

126expect to have an update is a reminder the western fields were not put into the capital we did exactly what we did last year we've called it out and we know the bet has said when we are ready come and ask for the funding and we'll we'll move it forward right now we are still working with them um ongoing aggressively and they were asked to do more testing on the outer perimeter of the fields where there was some more contamination uh then there was a request most recently in the last few weeks for water testing and ground testing so they're working through that right now and they just had another submission into epa and deep um this last week so we're hoping to hear from them um as soon as possible we're trying to stay

127as aggressive as we can um so on 58 the funding for el instructional salaries again this is just looking um oh i went back on the same page i know don't go backwards please at page 21 on question 63 do we really need to do the full phase two project in 2223 the visitor bleachers do have several years of sustainability um has any work been done on plans or drawing so the work that we're doing right now we do have the design money for that next phase is in the current phase that we're in and it is a complex project so you know what i would say is that you know we want to push it forward it doesn't mean you have to do the bleachers first we could concentrate on the road um the

128bleachers the first year that i was here they said they had about five years of life i think that that was conservative um we were talking about it just i think yesterday it could probably go a little bit longer but by the time even this money would be approved we would already be at the five years and by the time we get the road and these other things done we would need to really be looking at that so that could be a conversation you know obviously for the board um on question 64 the cost of soil um has been added upping the cost of phase two and have we done testing in those areas we work closely uh with amy in the town of greenwich and also uh with both of the firms uh langan

129uh talks to aecom aecom who has carried the project on the high school and they've done some testing in that area they've told us we need to be aware um and that they think that you know we're definitely gonna have it's the same thing that happened in phase one is likely to happen in phase two it may be polluted soil which is great if it's that instead of contaminated soil polluted means we don't have to go through epa and deep and we can actually track soil off where if it's contaminated like it was over in the field area it's a different process but we know we expect to have some soil challenges in question 65 this is about the the study for uh for central middle school we were actually just updating um today is

130they're monitoring the correct monitors that are on this building to make sure that it's not widening that it's you know the building is not shifting um obviously if they told us it was an unsafe environment we would not have children in here are we monitoring it absolutely we have to and i know several of you walked around the building today um but we should have even more update i believe within the coming weeks so we're safe right now is that what you're saying we're i think we're okay sitting here right now yes but we are monitoring that because we want to keep it that way um on 66 the cardinal stadium project again the breakdown of cost um we can work on a better breakdown i think we actually had that um previously it really

131hasn't changed actually other than you know your soil that's been built in and for unforeseen on question 67 the estimated cost to rebuild and how is the number was calculated i think i mentioned that before and that just has a calculation for you on question 68 where do the numbers for the capital plan come from um in general the numbers do align with the master plan however the master plan is more than four years old so if you look at the original and you know you do have the annual escalation costs that we update for you each year there may have been additions or deletions in scope based on new information or how things have been prioritized um question 69 is this sets out on a five year plan are we only committing to the

1322023 that's a tricky question i mean we are talking about the 23 budget and that's ultimately what the board has to make a decision on what are we going to put forward in the capital plan but we are as staff asking the board to really give serious thought about what are we what are we going to ask to accomplish in the next five years because it's becoming more and more challenging for us to not know what's going to get done otherwise we have got to continue on all of these small infrastructure projects because it takes a while to go in and do a major renovation and we are really getting behind so i just definitely i know be a bit much bigger discussion um are we spending money on schools that are slated for construction

133uh you have to spend some money absolutely um and especially not knowing what major projects will be approved and again depending on the timing uh what the board puts forward what actually gets approved uh we'll be able to look at that closer like there is money to shore up some of the walls here at central and you know depending on timing how much of that how little of that has to get done it will depend on timing so question 71 what are the recurring hvac costs and these are high-level estimates again for design and installation of the um bipolar needle needlepoint ionization system and dan can speak to that more if you have questions about what that means on question 72 the feasibility study the ada feasibility was covered in a previous budget and so

134they've been working through um what we what we are what we have completed um there were some lifts that were put in last last summer um and dan works on that and right now so the replacement and actually on question 73 it gives you the cost of the little lift that went in the stair climber and last but not least what is the 408 in operating plan for language arts and that just gives you the breakdown again 405 000 is the language arts that's in the curriculum management plan and the 3 500 was centrally was for central and there's 2 000 for riverside and those are when it says textbooks those are more like novels and things like that that they have chosen for their building that they need okay that's 74 questions got it

135and i know that many of them will receive we're still coming in this afternoon so impressive that you're able to uh respond um and then we'll obviously post this for the public now absolutely okay great um so i know because of the way um since all of us did our homework late you couldn't sort of put it into operating capital but i'd rather talk about things ourselves that way um for some structure so if it's easier let's just start with operating and uh let's open the floor joe thank you i i just have a question first well one statement and one question uh about the uh uh about the questions so now you had mentioned that the uh uh with this questions about and i'll just be general when i say the government money there's

136lots of different names for it lesser different phases but the government money to keep making reference to being tied to something and is there a way using our town legal department we could possibly explain this to the community more clearly uh with further credibility and not that you of course don't have credibility but that seems to be the question keeps being asked uh is it tied to something and i'd certainly like to get a legal point of view can we go to the town legal department have them possibly explain that at a meeting so therefore we have more evidence that it's not tied to anything because i keep being told it's not tied to anything and i believe that but certainly our community has asked a number of questions relating to that number two you

137had mentioned during the course of the questions being answered about the enrollment of private schools uh don't doesn't the busing depend at times on private schools and the proportion of greenwich students that attend or connecticut students that attend those private schools so isn't it important or required for them to give us that that enrollment information we do get the information i think it's just lagging right now it's kind of like the birth rate a lot of the people that do that same data are doing other types of things uh during coven or they're short staffed but um as soon as we get that then we will actually pull that number okay i'll let somebody else ask another question we'll come back to a couple other questions i have please miss downey thank you tony that's

138a lot of information i'm guessing kind of jump topics um talking about like the elementary sections i think you know kind of we all started getting into the the really granular level of this section at this building and i i will admit that i was one of them as well um so but basically is our fundamental takeaway on elementary school that you are budgeting for five fewer sections um that's correct yes so my i guess my concern is that the numbers of kids don't lay out in the buildings for you to be able to make that reduction because of you know kids aren't in tidy little bundles of 20 kids at this school you know whatever number at school so in the event that happens how do we how does it get addressed well you

139know from experience why is this a song okay from from experience was that's why we don't go in when we're really truly at 15 that we're watching but these five are so low like you know we're talking you have you know 20 kids and there's i'm just gonna say three teachers you know you know that that section is very safe to say we're not but the other ones that we're watching are not like that and that's why we don't do that because you could very easily have a million dollar hole in your budget if you just went from the projections and started cutting sections so you feel very comfortable that there will be an elementary reduction in five and there could be further i feel very confident with five and one of the reasons i

140felt confident with five five is a lot in one year but had we not been in coveted we would have actually reduced a few this year we wouldn't have hired but we had to because we couldn't fit children in the classrooms thank you um okay and then my second question i'll reveal to someone else um i think it would be helpful to hear from eastern and western on the media specialist this guy if the principals are willing to either i mean it's obviously difficult because this is a meeting and then we have our meeting where we're voting on it but if there's some way for them to communicate to the board in whatever fashion is appropriate i think um it's been raised and i think we all want to feel comfortable that if they believe

141it's or they have a plan for it it's because of covet or whatever the rationale is i think i would be happier hearing it from them directly if possible yeah i did reach out to them they're more than happy to share karen so just following along with um christina's question which is on the media specialist you know we see the line items in here and we've heard from the community and some of the teachers with respect to media specialists in your own words can you describe what's actually happening with the media specialists and and what your intended outlook is for this particular role and those that are in that do that are the media specialists and we're reducing rules what is your vision for the use of that that fte space is that ft e

142space going through natural attrition and therefore they won't be replaced at the time that they leave or retire or go to a different school or how are they moving being moved into different positions and do those people have the do those teachers have the expertise to the positions that you're moving so could you just explain in english what is happening sure um so what happens is i really work very closely with the building principles and you know i i respect their vision for the building i respect what they where they see where maybe we we could change staff because we are very well staffed where we could maximize in a different direction and i and this is one thing our principals really asked for um when i first started is please listen to what we

143need in our buildings um and sometimes they're you know it's a specific position so both of these positions in in western and eastern the principles feel very strongly that those fte instead of coming and saying i want another i'm just going to say i've got it in my notes so i can send it to you later but i think one was music i need another music teacher or i need another reading specialist they felt like that fte could actually be utilized more effectively within their building and i will say and i respect media specialists i just want to say that my son is in a master's program for library media so and he's almost graduating so i really i do have respect for what they do um for buildings our size it is unusual to

144have two uh two full-time certified um and with the build when the principals are saying you know i reached out to them as recent as a week ago maybe two weeks ago and they're like they have not had one complaint from staff from parents from students now the media itself has looked different in covet because we weren't even really checking books out last year so we're not fully back to you know doing what we what we do but they also have different way that they utilize their schedules and again they can talk to you a little much better than i can but um they both feel like what the way that they have used the fte is highly effective and they thought that that was what was best for the building and um i will

145get them to either put something in writing if we don't or they can come on the 16th michael joseph i i i understand what you're saying and i think that makes sense i think it's very important that when the principals do do that they make clear since the public heard a lot tonight about you know services not being received by students and things like that that the principles make clear how students are going to be learning all those skills that we heard tonight um in the plans i think that that's important for the community here absolutely thank you laura i just want i never think this thing is on i knew it um i just wanted to uh volunteer that um in october 20 the october 21 enrollment report we did get some information about

146private school enrollment is that and the total number of greenwich students attending connecticut private schools in 2020 so it's a year lag was 3 135 if that's any guide with the bulk of them going to greenwich country day anything else in operating okay okay good all right go ahead karen yes all right joe oh how cool i'm gonna call on sean if you don't mind their uh dr jones uh sean are you with us i am hey joe that is wonderful thank you sean uh could you i love the way you explain some of these things so i'm calling on you to explain the uh uh well the transportation uh we uh i guess what i'm confused confused about on the transportation is that uh we had all these years of savings that we kept

147hearing about and then all of a sudden now after uh i guess the situation changes and all of a sudden we have these added or the results for the rfps are extremely high is that a function of some of the savings we had maybe put off or just explain how the rfp process worked and tell us why the existing bus company sta has given in a 23.4 increase when we put a i guess we put in the uh in a place mark or a five percent increase what we found out through the ir fp process is that about two years ago uh the vendor uh you know renewed an agreement with their bargaining unit the driver's bargaining unit and uh unbeknownst to us they wouldn't share it with us uh because they considered it proprietary

148information and uh what we learned through this rfp process is that they signed a very generous agreement with their drivers and so as a result of that you know in year three of of the five-year agreement with ghs where the daily rates were set they signed agreements that uh significantly increased their labor cost so as it turns out they've been losing money uh for the last two years so i suspect i can't prove it they you know they say no but i suspect that that the the bid came in higher than expected at least for them because they're trying to claw back some of the profit but i can't confirm that uh still in transportation what's with these rfps we've come back with the percentage increases what's the uh the duration of the contract we

149have to enter into agreement with these companies uh the the plan is to the plan is to uh enter into a five-year agreement we did we did attempt by the way uh to extend our current year agreement with the vendor but uh you know in in our current five-year agreement the contract calls for an extension of two and a half percent increase in the sixth year and we reached out to them to see if they were willing to extend for the year at that rate and they said absolutely not so uh we did try okay well you uh you are quite experienced and usually successful in negotiating our bus contracts so uh keep at that certainly don't settle for the first rfp offer that we have and keep at them i trust you'll continue uh

150to work with uh what's best for our interests here second question is uh once again also to sean is related to the uh the individual school salary costs uh and year on year-on-year basis and school-to-school basis kind of like when you're going through a budget book it it kind of stands out or gets your attention like a rattle trap would a blue fish in long island sound basically you see sometimes the salary costs are up five percent sometimes they're down uh two percent or even uh down to negative from school to school in year to year uh could you somehow give us a handle on why that's happening sure um and and tony did touch on it when she was going through uh you know some of the earlier questions that i prepared charts on

151but with every with with our you know it's a people business you know this the school system is a people business our employees move around between schools and so you could easily have a person at the top step uh move to another school to replace someone who is not at a top stop maybe could be a master's five-year and when something like that happens you could easily see the year-to-year increase in a one particular school to go up conversely if you have in one school someone at a top step that retires and and the back bill is a master's five for example with several years of experience there will be some uh you know lower cost in that particular school so there's a lot of a lot of ebb and flow there's a lot of

152dynamics here but the net of it is uh when you have people moving you can easily have uh a year-to-year growth that exceeds the the aggregate contractual increase or you could have a situation where it's actually lower than the aggregate contractual increase when you look at the total you know you want to be sure that if our contractual agreements are in the two to two and a quarter percent range you want to be sure that your your growth is in that range for sanity check but when you look at it by schools it's hard to do unless you go underneath and and uh and perform the analysis which i which i did with uh about five or six of the elementary schools so how do we make that more digestible because in a in a

153normal bargaining unit you would expect an increase of like approximately two percent in recent negotiations uh this is really standing out on on the budget book where as i said earlier it's just everyone's going to see this how can we better explain that to people that are that are looking at this short little 300 page budget book i i would recommend them to go to the to the summary uh budget on page 24 of the budget book and if you look at the overall salaries uh certified salaries are growing 2.12 it's right in the ballpark um you know non-certified are growing a bit more than that but a significant number of those employees are relatively lower lower cost and also have steps so when you add in general wage increase with a step increase you

154could easily see that the number could go higher than the two percent thank you and third and final question for you sean is uh special education uh obviously tuition's uh up special education tuitions are up 500k uh i guess i'd like to know what's driving that i know the specific cases we can't get specific on what's driving that because we we go into special session for that so we can verify where these costs are but just so we can have a public discussion on it because people sometimes ask me they said joe how come you guys can't control a special education how come you can't budget for it properly and i try to explain without giving the special cases or the heartbreaking stories we get about these uh these poor kids and what we have

155to do to help them out it makes it really hard uh for uh uh for us to explain to them without getting specific give me a little help on some general explanations on this topic sure uh so the budget we have for this year is basically flat to last year's budget of about 7.3 million dollars um for 22.23 and looking at where we are this year our our current projection for this year on a budget of 7.3 we're looking at right now and this could change between now and year end but we're looking at an increase of about 500k uh due to uh two placements um again i can't go into the details but you know roughly two placements that's uh increasing our overall projection by 500 and uh we anticipate that those uh those

156placements will continue for uh the next couple of out years so very difficult every district struggles with projecting uh special ed uh tuition costs um you know we can get an idea by looking at our current uh uh our current list of students you know where they are when they expect to graduate and that type of thing but one thing we can really not have a good handle on is you know how many students are going to move into the district we just it's it's impossible to predict thank you sean and i have a question and tell me uh madame uh chair or chair you want to be known as or kathleen or chairs call chair cool okay chair uh i do wanna ask a question that is uh is related to uh both operating

157and capital of dan watson do you mind if i ask him when it covers both i think so joe thank you dan hello dan how are you sir i'm not sure dan's willing that's the issue is it okay if i call you dan like i do in real life or do i have to call you yes sir go ahead joe sir i i have the pleasure well you're the director of facilities and i over the last year while working on the stadium project i had the privilege of having worked very closely with you and i gained tremendous respect of your professionalism and i respect you in what you do and your opinion on these topics that i'm about to ask are kind of very important the uh uh i guess we'll fir we'll go both

158operating and we'll also go at a as i said we're gonna go at capital about maintenance now uh uh now i know for uh for uh operating maintenance we uh uh we've had several studies done uh that have advised us or suggested to us what sort of uh uh what sort of money we should spend on maintenance on operating and if you can incorporate also uh what we're doing in capital whether you first of all the first question will be answering the uh the studies if you feel we're or we're spending as much money as the studies have told us we should on maintenance to make sure we keep these buildings in the condition we need them to be according to the experts that have uh have advised us and second is the uh is

159the capital uh if you feel that uh uh that would adequately uh taking on projects uh to maintain the buildings at the level they should be maintained let me first ask the question when you say level of operating that we do are you talking about you know maintenance of the buildings you talking about custodial service custodial staff or a combination of both the studies that we referred to that we brought to the uh board several years ago had to do with uh custodial coverage in the building uh which i would consider part of maintenance um and it showed that we were below a standard and now that we are you know incorporating uh cost for covid uh in different operations that we're doing in the building i i think we're below standard as far as

160man coverage in the buildings as far as maintenance of the buildings that's a tough question to ask your our buildings probably have not been maintained to the level that they should have been or they should be uh i think we're making serious moves forward with that uh but we're still dealing with buildings that are you know we got one or two that are turn of the century uh a lot of work still needs to be put into them um just to maintain the level of the systems that are currently in place um so your second question i don't know if that was answered or not in that it certainly did in the first part with the uh with the maintenance the operation uh but we also have some capital projects we're taking on do we

161feel that the scope of the proposed capital projects are adequate to keep our buildings and the conditions they should be that's a loaded question uh there's you know it it's hard for me to tell because there's a there's a few capital major capital projects that are out there that are being discussed tonight and if those projects do move forward obviously there's some major maintenance projects that would fall off fall off the schedule or be pushed out whatever there still needs to be a high level of capital improvement done at schools that are even being identified as needing major projects just to keep the level of air quality safety security infrastructure to the level that we need to have the building in operation so i'm hoping that answers your question thank you sir may i be

162seated i think so except maybe you're going to be called back up in a moment so don't go far all right i think karen thanks joe karen are you next uh i will say in the interest of time that i will forgo asking my operating questions because there's so much contained in this document that i need to kind of read through and digest so i will probably email you some follow-up questions because i have quite a few but i feel like we went through these so quickly that i need a little more time to absorb and digest uh before i ask if that's okay mj yeah i i did want to clarify if we could on um the esser question um i i appreciate that we're going to get an updated report on esther and

163one pager um but can we clarify are there um as far as fixed costs um like fte are there are there ftes in in esser um and then doing how how many um i would ha i don't want to say it off the top of my head but we sr2 and the sr3 both or arp and sr3 are interchangeable is the name but yes there are absolutely we have this current year even just social workers the 0.5 math interventionist and then there's some other fte um a wild guess is like 13.3 but i would want to go and double check that number okay obviously that's that's something i think that's that's crucial for us to understand because while it's not funded and operating this year obviously esser is a temporary and that's going to have

164major budget implications down the road the um yeah we were very very aware of that and um we do not want um a funding cliff however um the math interventionist that we put in this last year we felt like it was urgent but that we go and have full time with where our kids are if this operating budget doesn't make it through and we would have to put it in sr you know again next year and then if we still couldn't get it funded in our operating budget we feel like it's a critical need i mean i can't tell you how many special education parents have been in front of us talking about our early intervention and that it didn't exist and it didn't exist because we didn't have any math so we knew when

165we put them in esser that we wanted to try to get them into our operating budget and do that you know over a couple of years so we've we've been very thoughtful about what positions are in there because we are very aware of the fun funding cliff portion and we don't want to be in that situation all right um and then just real quick the other question then on the um the french textbooks is that i don't remember i know we've got the um curriculum cycle and i know ela's in there or writings is the french textbooks part of that cycle today next year you know i would have to actually defer maybe marcus on where you can look at the curriculum management plan it could be this not very big number in there so

166i don't know if it's replacement of existing or if it's actually new but i would need to look at the curriculum management plan or or defer to one of the curriculum staff i could say my french student does not have a textbook and it's very hard so i can tell you that they are looking at the french textbooks this year at the high school to make sure that they are up to date and they will be bringing something forth to uh me to present to dr jones in the early winter maybe february i think is the time that they're bringing it forward that that's that's good to know i just my only question would be if that's part of the curriculum management plan or or you know or how how would yes it is a

167curriculum management plan okay so they're both 400 you have two 400 spots because there's the answers to the questions i was a little con confused about which is somebody asked oh is the 408 000 part of the foreign language and and the answer to that question said no it's in the foreign language part and then so there's two increases of 400 000 roughly for textbooks you know based i'm going to say it really simply what we've done is it took more money to implement k-8 mathematics because it was k-8 so what you're seeing is you're seeing that number split in two this year to be able to fund the next two curriculum areas one of them is and i think it's and i'll try to find it in the budget book um and sean you

168might be able to flip and look to tell me um but one of them is i believe ela um let me just see if i can find it and we'll see if we can find a page number for you okay so what you're seeing is the four the 405 and that 300 which is on page 77 line 211 and uh [Music] so it's line 211 210 2010 and 2011. and if you look at on the 2122 budget the current year you'll notice that math is at 700 000. so that's what we restored i'm going to say restoration this current year so we could start on this curriculum management plan again and start taking care of our curriculum challenges because that area had been literally cut to nothing and that's why our books and things are

169so old um so this year we don't need that same amount of money because it's not the k8 implementation so you're seeing 300 000 on the math textbook line that's actually high school if you look at the curriculum management plan they're reviewing right now um and then you'll see 405 000 on the language arts textbook line and that's what was referenced in the q a laura i always have a question about preschool so um i see on page four sorry um the special needs preschool is expected to grow by 22 additional students this spring um where will they go uh page four of the budget book yes exactly so we actually right now and we know we we are watching very carefully that we could be adding a class in the middle of the year

170um and we knew that coming into this year and it all depends on our rolling admissions because uh they start when they turn three and again it's child fine so you don't ever know but we knew we were running we're running very close and um we'll be reviewing that again probably right after winter break oh i'm sorry my last question was um perhaps i missed the detail but um there is such great community interest in central um the the 100 000 for engineering work here um what is the timeline for getting that information because there is such you know community interest in this um they are finishing up um like right now they've been monitoring all of the cracks and they're you know looking inside the building behind walls things of that nature um we're

171hoping in the next few weeks thank you laura's moving us to capital is that uh that's okay i know can i have one question on operating i suppose question 36 i was just intrigued by the example uh the district guidelines those are max class size um i guess limits that are set by this board is that right yes and i would have to go back and look because we've done so much policy work i don't know if it's in your board policy or if it was in regulations but apparently this has been our class guidelines for a long time in greenwich but is is this the sort of thing where in particular if there was a situation like the example given in um in question 36 that we could just say oh uh we're okay

172with having two classes of 25 instead of going down to 17 or would there be some more involved procedure around that it's usually pretty pretty hard and the teachers unions usually have a strong voice on that if it and there's actually there is something in board policy and i can certainly look that up but um it makes a difference in the point in time in which that 25th student or 26 would enroll as well um it did it happen before school started or did it happen you know a month after school started um but that there is something in board policy because i literally just saw it like in the last two weeks but i i can look at that and share that with the board yeah i'd appreciate uh understanding that michael joseph yeah

173just uh just to reiterate on that because i think particularly in this era of or in this world with the declining enrollment that we're we're facing and whatnot um i understand how you're monitoring those sections very closely and you make the final thing in the summer and whatnot i do think it would be helpful if we got that um at the board level more more frequently you know discuss an item you know to see the section breakdown and things because i think that kind of transparency really would would would help a lot of the uh the conversation both at the board level and in the community around around these numbers particularly and then we can see that they change because i know they're going to change i'm more than happy to do that in fact

174in my previous district it was part of our monthly financial report i was going to say we do get two we get an initial enrollment report because there's a specific date that they have to have a final enrollment before they can stop uh adding sections and whatnot and then we get that final enrollment report well that's not a final but the enrolled the more updated enrollment report based on those numbers so we do have those and i can point out we're there karen on that same genre of students in classroom i think one of the things and this is a little bit aside from a budgetary issue but from a policy standpoint with respect to hamilton avenue school where k-1 guidelines is apparently 16 students as opposed to every other school being 21 i think

175it might make sense to one think about whether or not that's necessary and what that does to the number of sections particularly there and also whether that makes a difference given hamilton avenue as a magnet school being able to attract other children to that school given our impending racial balance issues that we'll be discussing further in additional meetings but i think see what that impact does for us i think we need to evaluate it yeah i think just jumping in that was the intention of that him have having a lower guideline number was to in to draw students in to have some impact now whether it's done that job yeah right that was the intention versus the result so it is good to look at those numbers it was also my understanding that the kinder

176kindergarten and first grade classrooms are their footprints are smaller because when they redid the school it had to stay in the same footprint um and so if i'm not incorrect at the is it the square footage in those rooms also that requires them of no i would have to go and check the master plan and look at this i could be confused but i thought that that was also a part of the reason i did track it down um this last week because somebody asked me a question but it goes back 10 superintendents ago and um it was it was only like three years no so i didn't mean it that way it's just they had to track it down um and the decision was made to attract magnet students and also based on scientific

177um data about having smaller class size and uh greater student achievement results so okay i kind of want to move us to capital okay so and and i was going to say we're going to have a budget committee meeting we have to have a budget committee meeting for sure between now and the 16th so there could be certainly we'll have a lot more questions of course that's always public we could have had some time to digest all of this um so i think it behooves us to move forward so capital nothing great all right joe okay uh well let's talk about uh what is called cardinal stadium phase two what i'd really like to do is rebrand that and call that gis ghs safety road because basically that's what cardinal stadium phase two is uh

178the it's a big number we put in there and there's a lot of reasons why it's important to at least think about certainly think about this and put it forward we uh uh oh things we have to do first let's talk about a building committee the rtm requires us now to have a building committee for all projects uh that's meet a certain criteria and this one does so let's put it on a schedule to put a building committee together and we'll actually pass it off to the first election and have him do it another issue we have to bring up is the uh the skate club has uh nice nicely uh donated 12 point uh not twelve point five million twelve twelve hundred twelve twelve thousand five hundred dollars for a feasibility study for the

179possible uh skating rinks over the moved tennis courts as we move those tennis courts uh to put a road in so we have to put that on the agenda or at least find some time to discuss it if we want to entertain a feasibility study uh the russ has uh has said the feasibility study uh is at that cost and the skate club would like to pay for that feasibility study um so going back to the actual phase two which is more importantly the safety road the road is one-third done the uh handicapped parking for cardinal stadium is one-third of the road that leads from the parking lot behind the school to route one the police chief jim heavy uh has said and if asked we'll say again that that's a requirement for our school

180for safety purposes the uh fire up uh the uh fire chief uh joe mchugh says the same thing if you ask him to talk to him about it this road from the back of the high school to route one is an important safety issue and we have to look at this now we can look at it over time and address it when we need to do it or actually we have an opportunity to move this thing up because this road could be an urgent uh road that could help this town tremendously there's three of us right now who are advocating uh for this road who are volunteers uh that's uh uh myself ashley cole and elizabeth dempsey and we keep advocating for this road in a short period of time there's going to be a

181major project on route 1 which is going to cause disastrous traffic to the area because we have no natural uh no natural detour that'll actually service the amount of traffic that goes through route one route one will be down to uh uh one lane of traffic each way it'll be inadvertently closed for a number of construction reasons hillside uh road will also be closed inadvertently for uh for construction reasons this road which we approved as a board there's nothing the board of ed can do at this point other than ask the bet to fund it but while this this havoc is wreaked in in the center of town uh this road when we don't have a study for this and i've urged the rtm because i've sat through several meetings with them i said you

182should really do a traffic study that can prove that this disaster of this bridge replacement on route 1 uh some of the relief of this disaster can be handled by this this uh this new safety road so uh uh so for us to now move it up as an urgent matter not just a board of ed issue but a town of greenwich issue b-e-t has to understand the importance of us getting it in under the construction of route 1. the town has to understand that as well we have put it forward as a board of ed we're asking for money for it not just as the row as it is but if we speed this thing up as i said there are three people advocating for this road right now there will be 64 000

183people asking us why we didn't build this road when the town of greenwich is clogged up by this disastrous project now this project's a state project we have no control over this fixing of this bridge on route one uh but it's incredibly important it's a large number on on our capital budget but basically it's a large number because it's not just right now at this point a border vet issue it's a town issue it's everyone's going to look back and say why didn't you do this road if we could alleviate this uh this traffic so it's not just a board of ed thing at this point board of ed thing can be done over time this also the scope of this work because of the urgency of the route one situation the scope of this

184work can be narrowed uh we could we've split this project before why it's phase two cardinal stadium we did phase one because one of the projects was shovel ready and ripe so we did that project this other project the road there are issues we're handling and dealing with on a regular basis so basically and also there's a couple other components of phase two which hopefully we can rebrand it to ghs safety road and there's a couple of other uh things which we can put off to the side and target the bridge and the road uh because of the reasons of safety which is paramount and secondary of course to alleviate this this traffic nightmare that's about to land on our town hey karen well i i take a little bit of offense at saying there's

185only three people advocating for that road because i believe i've spent the past five years or longer through pta council and beyond advocating for that road it is a an exceptionally important should something have happened at our school that like what recently happened in you know outside of detroit our students would be it would be detrimental to our students there's only one way in and out of that school i believe it's one of the only schools of that side of our size in the country that only has one egress and an exit and so it is something i've been pushing for and begging for for five years as well it's why i was asking where we are with the state um you know if we can get that done sooner i mean so you know

186is there i know you you put a little bit in here but how close are we with the state to get that approval to to make that cut through yeah that was not in a q a or i read it wrong if it was um is that what you're asking on that yeah i did ask it was in there probably dan could give us a little help on that one he's no one knows more about this than uh sir could you please elaborate on the d.o.t situation uh with route one the right turn in and right turn out and how they would uh we've used our state representatives to get us some leverage in leeway and if we had this urgent matter pushed forward how i think the d.o.t and my experience would actually cooperate

187with us better and we could work out what we're trying to work out but i'll leave it to you sir so the only thing that we're talking about with the state dot right now is the right turn in right turn out it's got nothing to do with it being a roadway so let's make that perfectly clear we are working with the d.o.t for the right turn in right turnout as a handicapped parking lot the drive lane and the bridge is a huge bonus and we really need to move forward with it as far as where we are with d.o.t we're this close um there was some serious movement in the last week or so the uh the architectural team and their um consultants have been speaking daily with dot representatives so i'm hoping we're gonna

188have some kind of resolve or some kind of answer before christmas but we're we're that close so yeah i mean i it because i did you know it was part of it it was part of one of the questions i had asked but um so you're asking you know that that's for a turn in and turn out just for the the parking lot what we're asking then that's correct that's the only thing that's before them right now so we haven't discussed with them actually having an access road because i thought that was the entire we've discussed with them but the actions that we're going after right now are the right turn in right turn out i don't know if there's additional work that needs to be done and i can certainly talk to the consultants

189about it but we're right now i mean not right now but for the last three months we've been pushing to get the ada parking lot in and unfortunately it was a tough tough road to hoe so as far as no pun intended no there was a lot there um well i would love to know what else we need to do to really push for that road because it's something that the community not not just uh those that live on hillside have been asking for uh for a really long time i mean it scares me to think about what would happen if we needed to get to the school uh in an emergency and that that road was blocked um trying to get in and out with safety vehicles would be uh would be uh okay

190anyway christina you had a question yeah just sorry following up on that it it seems to me just hearing this i kind of it was my impression originally that we were further along in the process with the state on this roadway and i am concerned that we're talking about spending money on something that we don't really have any kind of timetable or plan it's it's kind of reminiscent of the western fields um i think we need to before our our vote they have a better handle on this because if we're not even if you know i don't know how dan it's taken months to get to this point on the right turn and right turn out correct so we're talking about months for that if we're looking at we have we don't have a design

191we don't have a process with the state yet i don't know how long this is going to be and i don't want to allocate millions of dollars to a road for our next budget year that might be two years in the making so i think there's kind of two elements to it i think we really need to get a handle on the uh the process i don't know if it's going through pnz or whoever the consultant i don't know who's the person who would have if it's the process um to do with it tony and um and second of all this also goes to the six million um how much is the soil testing how much is the road how much is the visitors bleachers you know kind of a little more of a breakdown

192so that we can really make an educated decision about what we can what we can afford to do how much what the feasibility is of getting it done in a timely fashion i 100 agree the state project is going to make for a mess but we like joe said we have no control over that um but if but if getting a road a secondary road is going to take us two years of approvals with the state because as we've found with other elements of the state things do not move quickly i think we need to think about the budgetary impacts of that i agree and i think it's i mean we know that the first question we'll get when we get to the vet is what's the breakdown of the six million so um and

193then potentially more if we're adding um or thinking about the feasibility study for the ice rink on top of the tennis courts so and i don't know i mean not to open the can of worms as we've every time we've dug for soil at the high school it's been a problem and i don't know if there's a way to do soil testing before we even go down this road i don't know if we you know i don't have the economics of that as well but just you know we have to kind of if it's opening up a huge can of worms i think we have to decide um what our appetite is well dr jones reminds me we have a lot of the detail from last year well testing for testing is a little complicated

194so you test to see if the soil contaminated you don't really test the test so so anyway i think i think you understand the question and we'll pull out of the detail from last year so we can have some of the detail for phase two um karen just a real refresher question and joe you may know this right off the top here what does phase two specifically include like what are the components i'm sorry i don't know it off the top of my head that's okay that's the uh visitors side team room uh and we i believe recently just taken out the visit to side bleachers and put those off to another project dan have we done that is that what we've done in a project i missed the last meeting i know not yet

195but that has been the talk about leaving uh the bleachers which dr jones has pointed out have some life to him i believe uh that those uh those visit aside bleachers have a lot of life to them so the fiscal responsible side of myself says leave those there because uh number one it's the visitors sitting over there not our own home people and uh and number two they're not gonna fall down they're good and solid so i'm not worried about that but what it is it's a it's a building uh that uh that could uh uh could uh will be the team room for the visiting team to go into no i understand so it's so i put all the pieces together the phase two includes the bleachers the team room and the road and

196the moving of the tennis courts yeah because you the road's going no i understand is that those are the four pieces to the piece so okay so that's why we're asking for a little more breakdown in case we're picking and choosing but do we know who is like who is the person who can give us the answers on the state approval of the cut of the secondary because basically we need state approval because it's going on to a state road so who is our person to get us the answers to that in the next two weeks i'll handle that because basically we're not far away from giving up for municipal improv municipal improvement and mi uh for the town so we were not far from submitting that we had some pre-war initiatives which were working

197through our friend the tree warden at it again and uh and and basically just as as dan said down if i can sir if i can have you once again elaborate on something from what i understand the parking lot right turn in and right turn out is the same uh that we had designed for when the road was put in place because basically i believe in the original plan uh the uh handicapped parking lot the ada parking and the right turn in a right turnout was just going to be a portion of the future which we're calling uh cardinal stadium phase two uh the same sort of layout that's correct but you were asking me if the if the dot had weighed in on the roadway with the bridge correct which we have not so

198they they're we're not when once we do make it into a roadway and bridge if that's approved the right turning right turnout stays the same that does not change so the d.o.t still has still has to uh opine on the bridge and the actual road itself i think there's more than just a dot that has to opine on that yeah there's there's a there's several layers uh that i don't know where fuss and o'neill is with kgd right now well i've got a couple of things and we'll talk offline maybe i'll give you a call tomorrow or beginning of next week and we'll talk a little about that now i'll supply the information that the rest of the board is asking for the potential breakdown and changing the project to the ghs safety road project

199which uh about the reasons i just talked about before we can separate like we did before we could separate some of the things that don't have an urgency and take the the road itself which is the urgent issue and highlight that itself and change the whole plans to be just this ghs safety road i like the marketing job okay so um i imagine there are other questions for capital karen um again i knew i had asked this before i know we were looking to do a study as to what can be done with central um [Music] unfortunately i missed the tour earlier so i'll be getting to take one later but um you know i i know we're putting quite a bit of funding in over the next few years which is absolutely necessary but

200when are we going to have a better idea of what actually because we have a lot of funding put forward in the next few years and i know you had said we really need to start thinking three five years out right so it would be very helpful for us before we just make some decisions on this budget um as to knowing what we really need to do here if we need to redo and replace if we need to move the building to a different location on campus etc um you know what we can and can't if we're putting in a lot of money for uh windows and doors if we can replace use those again etc i mean i just i know this building needs a lot and we really need to be very considerate

201as to you know what we are going to do here and how we can do it um because it uh you know i know we looked at it at you know 15-year master facility plan and you've said we're already five years down the road and and things certainly do change so i'm just wondering so in this um proposal that we have in the budget book um that it is building new and not trying to go in and piecemeal this building there's so much wrong with um this building and it would probably cost us much more to even try to do that uh just based on you know everything that we know today so we are what we proposed to you is a very aggressive five-year plan to take care of the building issues in greenwich

202um that the most you know pressing ones and that includes central yeah so is it on central so i want to stay on central for a second okay no i'm just going to say so i'd love to be able to see the the information that you have that went into that just at some point because i think we really need to have a good discussion about that okay i don't know who's up to doing karen and christina karen um just a quick um if we if we as a board decided that let's bring the priority because it kind of ties into what the other point i was going to make is a e takes a while for any of these buildings any project particularly having seen it just for example on the high school entryway

203and that's just an entryway and how much time the a e um is so like i think doing a e and we're only slating it for one year for some of these projects i i don't know if that's realistic um maybe it's only then you can maybe shovel hits the ground mid-year or things like that so that makes it feasible to do it on a one-year basis just i think the practical is a e for the scale of these projects is certainly more than a year um because you're gonna we're gonna have to form building committees um they start in the summer they have to be approved by the rtm you know now a building committee isn't really starting till the fall so i'm just kind of this is the realistic and the organizational person

204in me saying i love the idea of a one year but i think we have to maybe change our thinking cap on that but ties into central one thing i think with central that given that we're talking about a feasibility study it's only probably three hundred thousand dollars depending on how the rest of the board comes out on some of the other issues um i would consider accelera if you're talking about accelerating why not accelerate the feasibility for central into next year if we're talking about only 300 000 um i just i think it's food for thought we keep talking about this building um and it i think everyone's very concerned um i took the tour earlier this evening um you know we don't want to patchwork things but i think it's food for thought

205so i'm going to give you a really honest answer and this is my answer dan may have a different one um i think we waste a lot of money and feasibility i think we go to feasibility we do some kind of design and not a design we do a rendering of sorts and then we start all over again with often a different even architectural firm so i think there are different ways to actually accelerate it that would not only save money but it would save time as well such as that's what his question was i well and it depends every locality approaches us differently but the way that we do our feasibility where we go in and start doing renderings and all that really happens when the building committee starts all over again so what

206you really need is what is it you want to build and what are the spaces which is the the ed spec and you know i'm going to use fairfield as an example who's just up the road the staff do the ed spec they they actually bring it to the board you know you need an auditorium you know you need a gym you know you need i mean it's pretty simplistic as far as what you need to build the ed spec then goes to the building committee and that's when you start and it's it's much more effective because you've got the architecture firm you're actually talking about what you're really going to do we spend a year kind of dreaming about what we might do but then often it changes when it goes to the building

207committee doesn't necessarily look the same or you have different issues that emerge and i know those of you that have served on building committees could probably speak to that but right and then there's time spent hiring an architect for the for the feasibility study and then you hire an architect for the building committee so yes it does create layers um i don't like what processes we have in town what why do we do the feasibility studies to give this the end specs it's a little historical i think we need peter bernstein here i guess but i mean i think it's one of those things that's kind of like that's how it was always done but why are we doing it then right let's reduce the uh the red tape if you wanna and let's you

208know let's get it done okay staying on central karen okay um on that point we have there's a hundred thousand dollars in esser arp esser um for cms engineering what do we in what's the intended product that we get from that yeah that's what's happening right now i mean we're working through that and i don't know dana if you want to speak to what the engineering firm what they're looking at in this building and dan or sir if this is um what we talked about earlier i think it might be helpful for everyone to hear it but i think i know what you might be saying so we've done some studies on the building already going back two or three years we know we had an issue with the masonry walls and the gymnasium and

209the auditory and we have documentation on possible details for rebuilding those walls since that time we've seen some different areas in the building that need to be addressed so the engineering firm who was looking at the outside walls of the gymnasium and the auditorium have been tasked with doing a overall review of the entire building not to the point where they're beginning going to give us detailed documents to rebuild but they're going to give us an idea of the status of the building they're going to be looking at exterior walls they're going to be looking at all the all the structural elements including uh the exterior walls and the roof so the entire envelope is going to be looked at we should have a pretty good idea from them and they'll give us a prioritization

210of those items should we decide to piecemeal the project and they'll also give us costs and you had mentioned that that was coming the end of january if i recall i hope to have it by the end of january there's this is the same company that is overseeing the crack monitoring i'll have a final uh review of all that and and give a report to the board probably by the end of this month it may take longer to do a review of the building we're still kind of limiting uh vendors into the building during school day so it's kind of extended our timeline a bit but if there's a need to push it forward i'm sure we can make arrangements so on that point and i took the tour um earlier this evening and i

211saw the multiple cracks in foundation cracks in walls sinking floors the ability for students to drop notes to students in the classroom below them because there are gaps that big which might take some of the fun out of going to school but is certainly a potential problem i'd like to know what it would add to the budget to the capital in order to move up central middle school and whatever steps it is i think i'm in agreement i don't think we need a feasibility study per se i think we know what's essentially wrong we have an engineering report that's coming but move it up in the process in order to get the ed spec and move forward so that we can elevate this project and next year be you know voting on yeah a and

212e and what you know this process better than i do but um i don't think this can wait any longer i'd like to add that to this capital budget i want to know what that cost and add it to this budget well so i think i'm just going to interject here for a second so i think the also the other question is is do you eliminate the 21 million or so on page 228 below which you're doing to keep the building alive can you eliminate all that if you can move the 67 million into like 2024 for example but if we're talking about a new school and if we're talking about a new building i think getting it right i mean where are we going to put the kids in the meantime so i guess

213i think we have a lot there's a lot of issues is i'm not sure is a quick answer no but i guess i want to see if there's a way that we could eliminate some of these ongoing maintenance costs right that we're basically putting in to keep the building going 31 million to be exact i i think it's 30 oh yeah 31. i guess that's right i only did the first two years there's another year so i would rather you know so i would rather not spend 4.5 million in 2023 16.8 and 2024. 16.8 million dollars is a lot of money to pour in and then tear this down and then another 10 million in 2025. so i mean it seems fiscally prudent to just move this project forward dan you want to speak to

214that or you want to sit back down new is always better i mean you know i i i'm tasked with telling you the concerns and at the same time i have to keep the buildings open clean you know a a good learning environment there's even if we were to decide tonight that we're going to rebuild this school there's still items in that budget that need to get done because you everybody here knows we're not going to put a shovel in the ground for three years let's be let's be honest three years so that's a whole whole class going through you know eighth ninth or what is the school sixth seventh and eighth grade okay that won't see the new school you're still gonna need life safety you're still gonna need air conditioning you're still gonna

215need heating now does that mean everything on that list needs to get done no but tell me what you're doing first and then we'll start cutting it out that's that's the whole plan i've we've identified things that need to get done you want to build another school or you want to renovate this school we're going to have to sit down and shake all that out that's just a list of what has been identified that needs to be touched okay so could i ask a question then and i hope this isn't too big of an ask which would be um if we were to decide like assuming for argument's sake if we decide tonight we're going to rebuild this school the question is i would ask what could come off this list could we get that

216number and i'm not asking you to do that off the top of your head but to give it some thought and say what could come off this list because i think that goes into the factoring process of how we do this and we need to be prepared for the answer because if you come back and say look even if we're not going to get a shovel in the ground for three years and i look at this i'm you're still going to spend 20 million dollars we need to be prepared that we're going to spend 20 million dollars to keep this school afloat while we're still building a 67 million dollar school that we should know about but i think it would help this board to understand what in fact if we speed it up what

217potential savings could we have by taking stuff off this this list karen other karen oh i was just going to say i think that you know we're asking a lot of questions that we're not going to be able to get exact answers to so it might be more prudent for us to share any additional questions that we have so that you know we can get something uh you know concrete to be able to have a more in-depth discussion at a later date uh prior to i guess you know no this is certainly something we could bring to the budget committee but i think you get the sentiment and the questions and and i i'd even like to think there's a scenario in which we don't have to wait three years for building schools i'm not

218sure why it takes us so long to do things people build houses around here that are pretty quickly and so i think we should better side schools so anyway sorry moving on any uh or if we're staying with central or another topic on capital karen so i'm trying to make heads or tails of some of the the hvac costs that we have in here so if i look at the s or arp funding we have um roughly 489 thousand dollars in here for hvac improvements part of which included at north mianis and i don't know how we get the 489 000 and this is relevant for my budget my capital plan question i don't know how we get to that number um when we say the hvac system for north mianis is 160 and then

219there's four other buildings at 325 a piece and no i'm sorry in total but that doesn't equal 489 so i don't know i don't understand the math there but building into my questioning here my understanding is that this is for that particular um it was defined in the is it what was it called the h light or something with respect ionization thank you um so you have that money there and then if i go through the book i see i'm understa i ask the question about well what is all these reoccurring hvac through all throughout the capital plan that's also the ionization so i'm trying to understand what is what is what i understand it's all ionization but where is this money because you have hvac in this capital plan you have hvac in the

220esser are there overlap is it double counting and then we also with respect to north mianis when we approve that school and the spending there there's 89 000 in that budget which we've already paid for uh with respect to hvac so i don't understand how the math works here so i'm going to answer briefly and then i'll let dan come up because he answered this question actually really good i think it was today or yesterday and um the the portion of north mianis is a portion that needed that did not it was not originally planned in the construction and so we were able to do that because of arp so that that's new for us um in terms of the hvac the 250 that is in the capital budget is kind of a plug number

221and dan you spoke to that really well about the difference in putting ionization into new lebanon versus one of our buildings that has like the individual units can you speak to that i'll try not to bore you but with what needlepoint ionization is is um you have duct work in the building needlepoint ionization is a it's not new technology it's relatively new technology and what it does is any particles that pass through this area that's the needle point ionization they track each other the the the um mold spores dust bores any any kind of particles that are in the air become larger because they attract and that allows our current filtration system to capture it and this system has been very successful it's used in hospitals at the beginning media covered we all heard about

222merv rating for filters and then everybody said oh we have to have merv 16 filters in all of our buildings so i'm good with that and that's not i appreciate the background but i think we can simplify it better which is are we trying are we offsetting are we putting some of the costs for the ionization in the capital budget and then some of it in esser is that how we're separating it okay if you read the esther i think it i think it even says four buildings we kind of eliminated to that we knew we could get into right away so which are those are those four buildings different which are those four building i don't i'm not sure who identified them yet um they're going to be the newer buildings so they're so

223if you're trying to do dwell down to is there any double dipping there may be there may be and we can certainly scrape that out but at this point you know we haven't been assured that we're going to get those esser funds so that's why it stays in the budget i thought dessert was approved at the time when we put it together i'm sorry we left it in there no that's fine i'm just because i'm trying to figure out if there's extra money in the capital plan because now we've got esser approved i think we just need to readjust the numbers that's a good point we also have to get better estimates on this needlepoint ionization because every building is different in particular like this building we have a difficult time with it because we

224don't have the same type of air system as we would in a newer building christina um i think the roof grid i just want a question was that sean did that tony um i think we can actually sorry sorry no not to torture poor dan um i just wanna make sure i understand it so basically this is kind of a revised roof schedule is that like that like when where they kind of were clumped together and some of them seem like they've been stretched out like kind of i forgot my glasses tonight like isd was originally on a 2024 but now it's saying we could do it in 2026. so uh we haven't done a real good job of keeping track of when roofs were replaced across the district and we also like to do

225roofs in sections which makes things very difficult to track what do you mean by sections like a portion of a roof correct and that's a cost savings so i went back and and pulled as much information based on warranties that we know we have if you look at there's some areas that i don't have information on warranties and i also cross reference that with the kgmd 15 year capital plan and the reason we had so much clumping is we've been pushing out roof work since i've been here so for four years we just kept pushing it out pushing it out so when the question came up i tried to do as much homework as possible to see where we are and i think that's a pretty good indication of what's out there how much time

226is left on warranties and there's a there's a couple there that were actually significantly beyond warranties right but but my other takeaway is that some of the ones that we said we need to do two years from now we actually have an extra two years but it works both ways right that's correct and we also did a visual on some of the roofs and and some of the roofs that may have three or four years on them they're looking a little ratty so that we may be able to do some touch-up work so it won't be a million-dollar we'll fix it right so so this the ultimately the roofs not for next year but like going forward those numbers are likely to be adjusted that's correct thank you i have to make a plug too

227since i'm on the energy commission now for updating roofs we have to consider solar panels not in my watch no it's just so ugly please no no no that is what we're talking about at the energy committee okay um anyone down there sorry i feel like we have to this is like a class where i need to make sure all the students are so just put a fine fine point on on karen's comments it sounds like we're we're going to get a um we might get a revised um um uh proposal here around around um ventilation um based on the possible that now that s is approved and whatnot that might that's gonna that might change next time what's in the actual capital to be honest we i mean we don't spend and i i

228don't want to speak for dan but we don't spend hours and hours and hours about what's going to happen four and five years out it really is about the the kind of current budget and what we're trying to get funded we you know we're looking at the five years out as far as the aggressive projects but we don't go through and necessarily i think what you're asking us to do is to start taking stuff out and that always makes us nervous and out years no no no no no not not five years out but in in for for next year so in in the current because in case there's things that we we now are approved in in the yes or that is now in this it sounded like we you need to do some

229figure we need to go back and make sure look at what schools were actually doing with what one fund did and measured accordingly karen so can i switch gears can we off hvac okay so tony i had a question regarding havemeyer um realizing it's not a school but we have 1.7 million dollars in for next year and maybe you can clarify the there are rumors going around town that the board of ed is being asked to move out of have meyer and people are looking at other retail space for where or commercial space i should say commercial space for where we could go could you provide a finer point on what those discussions have been and if we're going to move out a half mile because the my point that i'm getting to is if

230there is a position where we're moving out of half-mire i don't know why we would want to spend 1.7 million to fix an elevator we can leave that to the town to fix um so i am not aware of any discussion i will say um there has been one or two groups that have come to just walk through um havomar we didn't know they were coming with the first selectmen i think it goes back to what you know the town was talking about several years ago with the whole art center and things like that but there has been no active discussion that i'm aware of the one thing i would say even if you're going to move board of ed into a retail space is then um that i would hope that certainly would not

231be in our operating budget because i've dealt with that in my last two districts where you didn't have actually space and then what happens is you move into retail space and it starts to escalate every year because you're paying rent and it becomes money out of your operating um i mean there are ways to go in and work with them like an office building which they did in fairfield and negotiated it's it's like a 20-year rate really really low like a condo because they wanted to fill up a floor but still when you get to the end of that you don't have a facility so i would just share that with you but we haven't had any of those conversations i haven't okay nope rumors run around town and i'm putting an end to the

232rumor and i just wanted to know the status and it's best to hear from from the from the chief karen i think that the havemar building was deeded specifically for educational purposes so um if we gave it up i i don't i i don't think they could use it for something else so that's my understanding but i could be wrong i know we years ago had looked for the deed uh it's i know it's there somewhere but any other questions on capital no okay really okay i was going to the only thing i wanted to point out is that i was happy and pleasantly surprised to see such a large maintenance number something that we've been pushing for for a long time um as you know the capital plan had always suggested we had to

233be more around 20 million we've never really gotten north of 12. so to see 26 million um to actually maintain our buildings properly is encouraging um i think that the next oh gosh we have to go back to uh the public hearing did you have another question and there may not be an answer and i think it's along the lines so for example when i look at um um dan this is a question for for you sorry you looked very comfortable over there in those very uncomfortable chairs but i find honesty keeps choosing the furthest seat i know it might be helpful if you set closer um oh so with respect to julian curtis there's um 2.3 million in the budget for next year with respect to julian curtis is all of those must-haves even

234if we vote to approve to push julian curtis continuing through no so what part of that can come out it and maybe that's a converse you know you can answer that later there's there's 2.3 million in here for julian curtis for next year and my question is if you push it through what what part of that comes out you you've got to tell me what you're doing first with julian curtis is it going to be a brand new building are we moving into the middle of the field are we tearing the other one down what's what's the question for jc it's just the edge stacks that we've agreed to yeah the ed specs don't have a new building it has the addition on to it and all that's in the renovation if i may dan

235i i think that there is a number we can come up with but not off top of our heads right now absolutely no and i'm not asking for a number off the top of your head so i apologize i didn't mean to put anybody on the spot but the question is i would like to know how much of the 2.3 million as associated with julian curtis next year for capital comes off the table if that of we don't need to do if we're continuing moving through with that building as prescribed by the current expect that's all yeah yeah and tandeming to that well just because there's you know there's 2.3 1.3 3.4 over the next three years it's kind of like what's where the redundancies and that was i think why i'd ask the question

236saying assuming we do everything in the ed specs if you make that assumption then what can come out just to be sure that the back to double counting to make sure we're getting a really accurate picture i'll work with dan because you asked us to break out the ghs safety road and the other components in the same conversation myself and dan will work together on breaking those costs down for you yeah and i guess we'd have to do the same thing with old greenwich because i think it's hard so i'll just i don't know how we can as a board approve let let's say we just approve this plan as is right and say we're pushing everything through these numbers aren't actually accurate then because then some of this is double counting because a julian

237something for julian curtis came out there's only half a million in feral greenwich so maybe some of that needs to be done but i think we need a finer point on the number assuming everything goes through as planned what does that actually look like and what is that number we've already done that in-house so it'll be a 10-minute conversation with joe i just don't have those numbers with me right now no that's fine i think we just need to know that as a board so that we vote on the right number yep we're good i agree with that okay um so if i hear nothing else i'm going to return to the public hearing seeing no hands uh next up i don't know if she's online kara philbin kathleen i don't see any of the

238remaining speakers online unless they are there under a different name well i see the last speaker but let me keep going here um scott salborn good evening executive chair style dr jones gea colleagues that might still be here parents and friends of education i'm scott solbern a 25-year teacher at north myannis in the alp program and the senior gea rep for north miami my purpose is budget however with the around the corner reunification of north myannas i just want to throw out a few thank yous thank you to the custodial staff the maintenance department and dan who did the heavy lifting for us the food service that made sure that all the food was delivered breakfast and lunch our hosts in stamford parkway old greenwich costco were wonderful parents who directed traffic and beamed optimism

239every single day and finally the skilled professional bus drivers who shuttled their students for nine months i say thank you i'm concerned though with the alp staffing and the funding covid cohorting 90-minute blocks and dividing the alp amongst four coordinators has impacted the alp staff come january i fear our backs are going to be broken data is what you like 25 years alp full-timers carried the same contact hours as classroom teachers makes sense come january i'll be up five additional hours since pre-coveted how is that possible using the secondary school formulas i seat 110 academic students per day six to seven academic classes taught per day alp grade level science grade level science has increased by three hours there's no interdisciplinary alp language arts also three hours and come january the second grade program is

240going to kick in five and a half hours of straight instructional time with only a half hour lunch break typical for most alp staff members these additional instructional hours second grade starting doesn't add up to the 0.3 given to us the alp staff welcomes a conversation with all the stakeholders and i know there is a board of education alp document that spells out the workload and to my knowledge that has not changed so how did we end up here thank you have a good night thank you very much for staying um next up is sarah mcnulty but i don't see her online and i don't see her in the room well i actually don't know who she is all right mimi duff you're taking us home this one yep okay hi i'm mimi duff and

241tonight i'm speaking as an 18-year greenwich resident and taxpayer and as a working mother of four children in our public schools i have two daughters at western middle and two at greenwich high school and they all previously attended parkway i'm speaking tonight in full support of the operating and importantly the capital budget for the greenwich public schools i'm very concerned about the current state of so many of our buildings the lack of ada accessibility essential security and the many other issues highlighted in the master plan which was put out in 2017 four years have passed and we have made very little progress in terms of bringing our schools up to current standards while closing the gap on all the deferred maintenance that has put us that has been put off and is currently resulting in

242so many structural issues across a district greenwich is a beautiful town and for the most part it's a wonderful place to live we all look after our homes that our children sleep in at night and we need to look after our children's home away from homes where they spend probably the second greatest amount of time learning and thriving by that i mean our public schools simply put we need to ensure our schools are safe and accessible for everyone investing in the infrastructure improvements and the maintenance of the schools in town is of utmost important and i believe it will help drive the town's ability to maintain and improve property values and increase the general vibrancy and desirability of our town we should be moving ahead with the superintendent's proposed 2022-23 operating and capital budget thank

243you for your time thank you and that concludes our public hearing um only thing i wanted to note for the board is that well first of all we should probably keep sending questions and then you can continue to send us answers maybe in the form of a google doc or however you want to handle that um there will be we have to find a time for the budget committee to meet we'll obviously post that so we can uh people can join us there and then i think we also probably needed to schedule an executive session on the bus contract and i'd be looking to do that just ahead of the next board meeting and special ed i thought that we were going to have the discussion if you're going to do this i don't think

244we can do that before the budget i think i'd see if you do one you might have yeah no i think we'll just let's focus on the budget issues and then let's go to that next well not the out of district so anyway so let's stick to um december 16th um i'll send something around but just ahead of the actual board meeting we'll have the executive session um can i get a motion to insure you don't want that [Music] okay i have a second joe okay all in favor that passes 8-0 thank you so much thanks for hanging on good night