3-8-21 Groton Board of Education Meeting

001Kayn, do your do your magic. Miss Joan, do I have a quorum? >> Yes, you do. >> Awesome. So, I would like to call the Graten Board of Education um committee, the whole meeting uh to order, and it's uh March 8th and it's 6:01 um in the evening. I was going to say in the morning, and I would prefer not to have this day go again. Um the first the first order of business is the um the approval of the minutes from our last committee of the whole meeting which was on um February 17th. That was one of our attachments. Can I have a motion? >> I make a motion to accept the meeting. >> Thank you, Rosemary. Have a second. I've got Jane. Any discussion? All those in favor of the committee of the

002whole meeting minutes on February 17th, please say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Abstain. The motion has carried. >> Lee, are you not on video tonight? >> I have chose not to. >> Okay. I just want to make sure that I know which one you are because there's just one. There's a number and I I just I assumed it was you, but I want to make sure that it's you that in case you have a question, I know that I need to kind of get to you. Okay. >> Yeah, Kaitlyn I think can put my name there if she wants to. >> Oh, I just need I just wanted to make sure you were there. >> Super. Um, so as I had mentioned in my uh email and I think Susan is that we got a

003really packed meeting. Um, so we're going to kind of kind of go right into it and I appreciate our first guests. I believe are here. Um and um um and that at the end of this meeting, please stay on to know that we are going to be going into a special board meeting um where we are going to vote on um the uh um the um technology plan that will be presented to us um by our the architects for the elementary school. So, it's actually very exciting, but just really kind of jam-packed. Um, so the first uh first thing is um Jerry and I see that he's here. Jerry, thank you for coming. I'm so glad that you're here. And I do believe um that you've got some of your members of your um field

004committee here along with Jay who is one of our board members. Um and I just want to say thank you to to Vin wherever you are for um uh sharing our slides ahead of time um so that the board could kind of take a look at that. So I appreciate you doing that. Um so Jerry, I'm going to sort of um send it off to you um the the discussion and once again thank you for coming. >> Okay. So thank you uh Chairman Watson. U I I would just ask that we give whoever's got the controls to give Chad Frost the ability to share his screen so he can um share his presentation. Um, I'm really not going to say much other than to introduce the chairman of our athletic fields task force, Frank Nuroski,

005and he'll take it from there. And just give Chad Frost the ability to share screen, please. Thank you. >> Um, that that wouldn't be me. Um, I have no technology skills. >> Yep, he has permission. >> Awesome, Chad. You got it. >> All right, thank you. I am looking for it right now. uh sharing >> Chad, did you want me to open and then while you're fighting it? >> Yeah, you Why don't Yes, why don't you go ahead and I will uh I'll try to get it pulled up on the screen. >> Okay. Um good evening, Madam Chairman Watson. Um and I am Freight Noski, the chairman of the athletic fields task force, and I would like to thank the board of ed for having us here tonight to present. Um, our task force members

006include various stakeholders from the schools, our sports leagues, the board of ed, town council, RTM, and other interested groups. Um, speaking tonight for us, as we mentioned, will be Chad Frost, who is a member of our task force, and also from Kent and Frost Associates. Um, he does this type of stuff for for his day job and and his his help has been um instrumental in getting us through what we're doing. We also have Jerry Lokin from Grton Parks and Recreck and Vin Veric Keanu, the Fitch High School AD. He's also here to respond and he'll be here and he sent you the slides already. As you may have seen in the presentation and the video that were sent to each of you, the AFTF presented our findings from a year-long study to the town

007council in January. Uh there's a broad consensus that Graten is behind the curve in terms of providing athletic fields and the town of council directed the ATF to move forward. And we're analyzing the following issues. Cost of the project, prioritization of the fields, and analysis into the pros and cons of natural grass versus synthetic surfaces. Our analysis will include cost, maintenance cost, initial cost, safety, and environmental impacts. We also learned during our discussions that we are also wfully behind in other issues um including disabilities and gender equality. So, here's Chad Frost, who will provide a quick overview of the ATF findings on proposed solutions to the Grten Athletic Field shortages, and then we'll be here to take questions afterwards. Chad, >> thank you. >> Perfect. Thank you. You You should all be able to see

008the screen at this point, correct? >> Yes. >> Excellent. All right. Um, I'm going to skip through some of the >> history uh and the members just so you have all this in your files. Uh and just briefly again the history does go back at least to 2013 was the first time that Graten really started seeing a shortage of field space. A number of studies and plans have been done between now and then with one of the most recent recent ones back in 2014 uh with athletic fields need assessment. And I'll just point out there that uh at that point we also hired an economic analysis to be done and found that if we were to build fields in a way that would uh facilitate uh events and and larger uh e you know sporting

009events um that we could bring in $2 to5 million annually uh of new economic input from those tournaments going on. Um so just wanted to point that out quick on a past study. Our methodology uh is that we went and updated the numbers from past studies, updated the needs assessment from 2020. We interviewed all the user groups that we that are using all the fields currently. Then we identified the commonalities between the assessments and the user groups, determined the field recommendations, presented to all those different user groups, got their feedback and uh and then have presented to town council, the RTM and now yourself and continuing to solicit feedback. So the supply and demand of fields uh you might have seen this we've been doing it in the town now for quite a while. Uh

010this was our updated needs assessment. And so if you look at that the the colors of each the solid colors of each category is the supply. So that's how many fields that we have currently. And that hash uh bar is is the demand. So that's how many athletes are trying to get on the fields. And as you can see, baseball's quite a significant demand over supply. Uh both sizes of baseball. Softball is pretty close to being met as it is currently. Football is a little bit underserved. And then the recreational among these fields are underserved. Um and I should point out that this supply also includes the full 2020 buildout. So again, when we started looking at this about a year ago, the middle school is still under construction, but we assume the full buildout

011of the middle school as it's now occupied and being used, as well as the full buildout of the elementary schools that are still being worked on. So those fields are counted in our our existing supply. Again, without belaboring on it, but we talked to all the different user groups, uh, youth groups in the area that use the fields, and kind of our short takeaway, uh, is that it's actually worse than we all thought. Um, all of us kind of are in our own silos as far as athletics go. Uh, me personally, I'm heavily involved in lacrosse in the in the town, and I don't have kids that play baseball or softball, so I I wasn't aware of their problems as much as the ones that we face. um when we all come together and look

012at it holistically, it's definitely worse than we thought. We have significant equity issues, especially at the high school, some gender equity issues, significant ADA access, significant educational access um at the high school specifically with the amount of busing that has to happen to practice and to all uh events. It makes students have to choose whether they go to, you know, get extra help after class or if they're able to make it to under the bus to get to practice and to their games. um access to support facilities, the bathrooms, the storage, the lockers significantly lacking across town. Even our good fields need a lot of work. Um and that really we haven't expended significant capital in the last 20 years despite the demanded um the need that's been demonstrated over those 20 years. And we're

013we're I don't want to underell the gratefulness that we have at the middle school, the new middle school and the new fields that are there. Tremendous asset. We're very happy to have them. Um, you know, don't want to knock that at all, but but there's definitely significant need for more. Um, and 20 years ago or 25 years ago when we built Pquonic Plains, Graten was kind of the leader in athletics in the in the region. And now it's notably that we're significantly behind all of our surrounding towns. And we'll show that in just a second. Uh when we talked to all the the users of the ball fields, what we found out is they need three full-size baseball fields. They need one what they call intermediate baseball field, which is that intermediate size between little

014league and and high school, which is a 5070 field. They have extreme difficult time trying to get sufficient practice time and game time there. And like I said, there is no intermediate youth field in town. However, softball appears to be sufficient with the fields that we have in town. From a multi-use field perspective, uh the the demand was that we need three new full-size rectangles. Significant need for synthetic turf. Um and that's basically because of the amount of use and the weather restrictions. When you think about when a lot of the school sports are being played in the early spring and in late fall when the weather's not great um and and the amount of times that natural grass gets shut down, there was a significant ask for synthetic turf from those different groups. They

015need lights and all the amenities to fully utilize the fields. And then the smaller fields, the youth fields are in definite need of some additional maintenance. When we talk to the high school, um this is important obviously why we're talking to you guys tonight. Um it's interesting when you look at the athletic fields and the athletic complex that's there. That's what was built in the 1960s when the high school was built new. It was built at a time when Fitch didn't have any girls sports. Right. We have a football field built for men. We have a baseball field built for men. We don't have any sports facilities that were intentionally built for women at that time. Um, now obviously we can have track and field. Um, but most of them are really male centric. The

016fieldhouse at the end of uh the football field is only serves men. It's not there's no women's locker room in it at all. Um, and this truly is a football field. When I you know I call this a football field. It's not a multi-use field. It's too small to has both soccer and lacrosse and field hockey. So, it really only serves football. Um the track around it and the and the surface of the football field does need significant significant work. The track around it has been redone. However, the surface will need to be redone in another four to five years. Uh the baseball field, this was a shocker to me. Again, my kids don't play baseball, but I remember hearing all the stories of it being renovated uh and the amount of the donation that

017came in so that it could, you know, be renovated up to AAA ball. Um, and what we found out was that most of that money was spent doing the bleachers, the concession or not the concessions, but the bleachers, the press box, the dugouts, and kind of the support amenities that go along with the field. But the plane surface itself actually didn't get that much work. Um, and what we hear from the coaches at the high school is that the playing surface, especially the outfield is in need of significant work. Um, tennis, tennis was just refinished. The six courts that you have there are great. They're in good condition. Um, even though this this is an older photograph showing the the pre-existing ones. And then we have the football practice area and the field event space.

018Again, the area needs significant work. If any of you have been out there, it's really just it's not even fair to call it grass. It's just a really lumpy area. Uh definitely not safe or conducive for play or for practice. And that's where the band has to practice, football has to practice, and track and field try to do their field events. As I mentioned kind of at the beginning, um you know, it was really meant for only a handful of sports. Sports over the last 60 years have increased significantly at Fitch, which is a great opportunity. However, we haven't increased the opportunities to house them on on campus. And so the list on the side is all the teams that play in the fall and in the spring. The asterxes to the sides are the

019the teams that have to leave campus. And notably 13 teams have to leave campus for practice and games through the course of this of the year. Um and that's a lot of busing. That's a lot of coordinating getting teams back and forth. But as I mentioned, it's also a lot of students that have to make the choice right after school if they can stay for extra help or if they have to get on that bus to make it across town. uh to get to practice. So, we see that as a significant disadvantage for our students. A quick look at the surrounding high schools and and their amenities. This is Stonington. Stonington has a full-size multi-use synthetic track or synthetic turf field surrounded by a new synthetic turf or synthetic track and full amenities with bleachers

020and press boxes and concessions and restrooms. They have a full-size baseball field, a full-size softball field, and they have two full-size practice fields and two smaller practice fields, as well as the tennis courts and sport amenities. In Ledger, this is a little bit of an outdated photograph. Hopefully, you're all familiar with Ledger kind of had a similar problem to what Fitch has currently where they had just a football field. It was too narrow and couldn't hold other sports. This is an older photograph, but they recently within the last year put in a full-size multi-use synthetic turf field surrounded by a new track, uh updated bleachers, and all support amenities. On campus, they have both a JV and varsity baseball field. They have a a varsity softball field, a practice softball field, and then they have

021two practice uh multi-use fields as well. Waterford. Again, this photo is slightly outdated, but they have a brand new synthetic turf, multi-use field surrounded by a brand new track and all new support amenities. Beautiful bleachers on both sides and all the amenities to go with it. Full-size baseball field. And what you can't see, but what's right here, what they just built is a full-size synthetic turf softball field uh for softball. And then they have two practice fields down here as well as their tennis courts. at East Lime. East Lime has a full-size multi-use synthetic turf field. They have the full-size synthetic track around it and all the support amenities. You will know that East Lime is a little bit space challenged close to the field, but they have managed to find some dedicated places for

022the track and field events. They have a full-size baseball field. They have all the tennis courts, and then they have another two full-size practice fields and a full-size softball field all on campus. and New London, which we think might be a decent example for Grten. Um, New London has a two full-size multi-use synthetic turf fields, the championship field surrounded by a full synthetic track with brand new large bleachers, uh, away and home and all the the concessions, the fieldhouse here in between the two, the practice synthetic turf field and the main field, uh, as well as handicap parking and handicap accessibility. And then the property line between the high school and the neighboring city park is right here along the fields. But what's great is that the city park, which holds a full-size baseball, full-size

023softball, and then another practice facility. Uh basically functions like an extension of the high school. So all the high schoolers can walk through while the trails connect, all the sidewalks connect. Uh so it functions as one campus. And we see that as a possibility for Graten as well. to remind you quickly of the amenities that we have at Fitch. This is the fieldhouse at Fitch. It's the the only, you know, the restroom facilities, the gang shower. It's all men's, uh the football offices, uh kind of the meeting room and the training facilities. This is the public facilities at the high school, right? And I'm all for uh team spirit, community pride. Um but this is this is this is what we have. This is our public face when people come when our visitors come to

024a competition. Uh this is the restroom building, right? And this is a photograph looking into those restrooms. This is the men's room. I'm standing outside in the public space with as the door opens. This is the view in. You have a straight view in of all the restroom facilities. Um definitely not what we'd want to have in a normal situation. Our neighboring facility, neighboring towns, facilities again, East Line, New London, Ledger, Stonington, all relatively new. Uh, full concessions, restrooms, everything up to code at the high school. The press box, uh, again, built decades ago, kind of cobbled together, kind of made it to keep working, doesn't meet any kind of codes now. And you can see the bleachers, too. This is a good example of how you can see straight through the bleachers. That's completely

025against code at this point. Um the neighboring facilities press boxes just to give you an idea. I mentioned the bleachers. Uh the amount of codes this just not even close to meeting the required codes for bleachers ADA access. There's no handicap access up there. If you come to graduation, uh, and you need, you know, any kind of mobility challenge, you have to climb up some really rickety stairs that don't meet the code, the railings don't meet the code, the fall protection is just not there, the uneven surfaces. Um, we just really need to do better than this in the town. These are our surrounding, mostly surrounding. This is Stellington, obviously, fully compliant stadium. You can see the ADA access. This is Ledger, so this is the new field and a new track. Um, and just

026renovated bleachers. They had quite a bit already there, but new ADA access. Waterford's brand new stadiums. And this is Fitch. This is the Fitch baseball field. So, we do have one on campus. This is what they should look like. Uh, we just need them down at the at the football field as well. Um so our our high school athletic needs what we heard talking with Vin um and all the coaches was that they really need the main field needs to be renovated to be a multi-use ideally synthetic turf field complete with amenities all for track and field and a fieldhouse for both male and female and well as well as storage. They need an additional two to three fields, ideally one of those being synthetic with lights uh and bleachers so that we can run

027a primary game and a secondary game at the same time. We need a softball field on campus so the girls can stay on campus and practice and play and not have to be busted away. We need two additional tennis courts in order to house both the men's and women's at the same time effectively. the baseball field uh needs renovations. So, the amenities for the most part are pretty good, but the field surface itself needs some some help. And then also very important is the access to amenities. We heard stories of, you know, events in the summertime where there might be an all day baseball competition going on and the referees or the umpires have no access to bathrooms. The school's closed and locked for the day and and you know, they have nowhere to go

028just to go to the bathroom. So we really need to think about amenities and access uh both during the season and then in extended season when other people are using those fields. So to summarize kind of what we did talking to all the different user groups including the high school um we think the addition of lights, restrooms, storage, scoreboard and bleachers at the new middle school are very important and we understand that there's a process already in the way uh to get the lights and possibly scoreboard and possibly bleachers uh there which we think is fantastic. We fully support that. We need to upgrade Fitch football uh into a multi-use field full of synthetic for all sports. Um, when you think about how many more sports could use that that one area, it's significant. And

029upgrade all the amenities. We need to renovate the baseball playing surface. We need full four full-size multi-use fields throughout town, ideally most of those synthetic. We need two full-size baseball fields, one intermediateiz baseball field, two full-size softball fields, and two tennis courts. Um, as some of you are probably aware, we did get uh a letter from the GR Graten Conservation Associates with concerns um about synthetic turf. Uh when we talked to all the user groups, we didn't hear anybody bring up those concerns and everybody was actually asking for synthetic turf. Uh since kind of going out in public and and talking through this presentation, we've heard that there are some concerns about it. Um, and we're fully aware of those and are interested in continuing those discussions. Um, because we know there are multiple options.

030It's not just one option. It's not kind of a gray or black and white issue. It's more of a gray issue. We need to talk through it. Um, I did include in here the link to the Connecticut Department of Health. Um, they have a whole web page dedicated just to synthetic turf and the concerns that go around with it because there are both environmental and health concerns that have been brought up. Right now, the Connecticut Department of Health does not recommend or does not have any restrictions on synthetic turf fields. They do have restrictions on natural grass turf, natural grass fields and both, you know, the pesticides and herbicides that can be used on them, but as of now, they don't have any restrictions on synthetic synthetic turf either from an environmental or from a

031health perspective. Um, and there's a lot of studies that are up there. That's why I put the link in there just so you can look if you're interested. However, the town council has requested that we do a greater analysis and and have a greater depth dive into the issues even though we think it's a little bit premature at this point, but we're more than committed to fully explore those issues uh and report back to the council. And just to kind of summarize our primary rationale for why we were recommending synthetic, it's what we heard everybody asking for. uh we know that it can handle a lot more use in inclement weather and that if we don't use synthetic turf fields, we'll actually need a third more fields than what we're recommending. Um so we need

032to find, you know, a third more fields for every synthetic turf field that goes away. And that all weather use is critical. As I mentioned, when we're early spring, um Pquonic Plains we all know, floods quite a bit. And we heard stories of a field hockey team that didn't get to have a Fitch field hockey team that didn't get to have a single home game uh because every time the field got shut down for rain and every single one of their home games had to be at the last minute rescheduled to be an away game uh due to weather. So we really need that all weather playability. So, our proposed solutions, um, kind of obvious where we're going, but with the Fitch High School, renovate the stadium to be a full-size multi-use field. I won't

033go through all the amenities, but it basically is is everything. We need all new amenities there. Uh, we need two full-size multi-use fields that support that main field. We need a softball field on campus, the two additional tennis courts, and the renovation of a baseball field. Um and I do do this as as my day job. Um we have looked at it very at a high level. We do know that it can fit there. Is it easy? No. We don't have any flat ground, but it can definitely be done um and and be accommodating. Then as I mentioned kind of how New London used the adjacent city park uh as kind of an auxiliary part of the high school. We think the same can be done with Sutton Park. So, right down at the bottom

034of the hill, which is now connected very easily through the middle school and the road that leads down to it, uh we think we should redesign Sutton Park so that it houses a full-size baseball field, possibly with with lights, possibly with synthetic, uh new field, new dugouts, all the amenities, as well as then a full-size high softball field. So, again, you can have the teams that might have varsity playing up at the high school and JV playing down the hill, but everybody's still within walking distance. And then Sutton Park becomes an ancillary athletic complex that basically functions as part of the high school. Athletes can walk back and forth. Uh students can spectate practices and games without having to be driven across town. Uh we think it's a significant improvement to academics and athletics for

035all our students. Then we're looking at Claudechester property which um once that school closes, if the school was to come down, we could fit two full-size multi-use fields with all the amenities and the intermediate baseball field that's been requested. Uh we really like this location because then Claude Chester becomes an extension of Aquanic Plains Park and we can integrate those two parks together, have a total of five fields and really be able to host amen host tournaments. Um, and that's where that economic imput can come from. Uh, now I'll just skip through that. So, back to the the bar chart that I showed you at the beginning. This is how it would look now with our current demand if we were to do the full buildout that we're requesting. And you can see that we

036effectively meet demand through everywhere, all the different sports. And this is the existing on the bottom and the proposed on the top. And I will point out where it looks like we're exceeding the the the demand or the demand is yeah the supply is exceeding the demand. Um really that comes down to the optional or optimal scheduling for the high school. Right now the high school has to schedule fields where it's being scheduled from right after school until quite a long time after school has let out multiple teams coming on and off a field instead of being able to have all teams practice right when school comes out. Um, and so this analysis doesn't take that into account. It just looks at every usable hour of a field from sun up till sun down, which

037is what makes those anomalies happen. So far, we've received very strong public support from everybody we've talked to. Um, I will say even the the Graten Conservation Associates, although they're not in support of synthetic turf field, they're definitely in support and they understand the need and and have supported the need. Uh we've gotten a very positive response from both the council and the RTM. The park and recck department currently has in their CIP request for next year uh money for field designs so we can do detailed designs and detailed cost estimates to know what we're really looking at. Uh and as I mentioned, we've uh agreed to continue the analysis and exploration of field types field types, especially synthetic turf. And then recently at our last meeting, we had all of the state legislators uh

038come in and talk with us. They all showed very strong support for the project uh to help go after bonding to help share that cost so it's not just born entirely on the taxpayers of just graten. Uh, and that's also how Ledger was able to pay for their field renovations is that uh, Representative Connley was able to get part of a bond package put through for them to pay for part of that uh, construction process. And we're really here tonight seeking the board's support and then also a discussion about partnership or how we go forward. Obviously, a lot of these uh fields are on school property and so how does that whole thing work? If if the board is in support of, you know, an understanding that this is how many fields we need, how

039do we go forward doing that? Is it school projects, park and wreck projects? Is it a combination? Who oversees it all? And how do we make sure um everyone works together and we get everything that we need at the end of the day? Um, and it's worth noting that doing nothing isn't an option, right? All of our fields are are extremely outdated and and definitely in need of just money just to keep them usable. So, we're going to be spending money on on athletic fields. Um, so we think it's worth investing a little bit more money getting the quality fields that really represent our community and provide safe, compliant, equitable access and could pro provide additional economic value to the community. We really want to stress, you know, live here, work here, play here. As

040EB is talking about bringing in all these employees to town, and we're talking about additional housing areas and stuff like that, we really want people to come here, live here, work here, play here. I can say personally when I bought my first house here in town almost 20 years ago, it was because I loved seeing people just out for a run, right? I love driving by Puquanic Park or Pquonic Planes, seeing people out walking their strollers or the athletics going on. Before I even had kids, I loved how active this community was. Um, and I think over the last 25 years, we got a little complacent with aquatic planes because it was such a nice asset and we didn't invest anywhere else. Um, and so it's time to really step back in and reinvest that

041in the rest of the athletic fields that we need. Um, and that community pride and quality of life really does drive economic development. And so with that, happy to take any questions, Chad. Oh, great. Thank you. >> Great. Um, and so it I've got Liz and I've got Rita. Why is he first? >> Who do you want to go first? >> Liz. Okay. I have three questions. Okay. Um and they're rather brief. So, was this um did you evaluate the fields for both the city and the town or just the town? >> Uh the city and the town? >> We did all fields in town. Yes. Including the city fields, you know, including Washington Park. Uh and all the uses that go on at Washington Park. Yes. Um, what's the status of the what used

042to be the skating rink in Washington Park? Because that's to me that park right part right there is is wasted space right now. And if we could do something with that, there's space right there. Just a suggestion. I'm not sure what the status is if that's a possibility if you know to to convert that piece. So, um, that was my question. And also the question I had about you said something about the girls softball team needed a place to play. I thought they were going to be playing at the new softball field at Grten Middle School. So, we need an additional softball field as well. >> Well, we were planning they they might be planning to do that for this uh upcoming season. We were hoping to be able to have a field on campus

043so that the high school team can practice at the high school. Middle school that might have their own middle school softball team can practice on their field. And you don't have two competing teams that basically need to practice at the same time. And then when you add in JV softball, you need a place for them to play at the same time, which is why we're looking at the field down the hill at Sutton Park. So three three different teams all practicing at effectively or should be practicing at the same time and not be overlapped. >> Okay, thank you >> Rita. >> Yes, >> I come with some more history for those of you that haven't been in in town as long. Um when our younger son um when we went to the town council in

044the early 90s, we begged for them to put fields at aquatonic plains. At that time it was only used as um a fairground actually. And so we had our little six-year-old get up and speak in front of the town council. And my husband brought soccer to the town. And so thankfully um that was done. Our older son when he played soccer at Fitch in the late 90s, they played on the baseball field. There was no puquanic plane and it was very awkward, you know, because you had the dirt patches and so forth. So we've lived with this for way too long. It is time for Grten to really step up. Um I believe we've had CIPs over the years requesting a turf field at the high school and each time it's been denied by the

045town council. So that has been an ask of the board of education and also for women's restrooms where there is track and field. There is no place for the public to go to the bathroom. I've sat through years of of track and field meets um and there is nowhere to go to the bathroom. you have to walk up, you have to go into the high school if it's open and use the facilities. And that's for the visiting teams, well parents. So, um I'm hoping that this goes through. I fully support it and I'm sure the whole board of education does and thank you for all the hard work you've done. >> Liz, I know you have another question, but I want to see if there's other people on the board who also would like to

046have a chance to talk. Oh, you are just waving. Oh, hi. It's good to see you too. Um Dean, >> um excuse me. Some years back, uh the people who were living in the northwest corner of town above 95, um were pointed out to me, they said, "Take a look at a map of Broaden. This this is this goes beyond ball fields. Just look at the look at the northwest corner of the town. You'll notice that there's a distinct lack of playing fields. Obviously not by design. I don't think I think the way we have our fields set up they're typically school centered. Anything else is kind of an oh by the way there happens to be a field nearby or a basketball court nearby. Is this just intended to this study just intended to

047for the task force just focused on school sports? >> Um so the short answer is yes. Um but we we looked at all sports. We looked at all youth sports that use a field. Um and my office was also involved in that park and recck master plan that's probably now 10 years old. Um when we did do a full assessment of all recreation activities and access to those activities and at that point looking at how do you disperse fields um and even access breaks like 95. If you have a field right under 95 but you have no way for a kid to be able to get there on their bike or by walking, you know, how do you solve some of those problems? um this, you know, won't solve some of those problems. It won't

048help, you know, get bikability from the northwest down. However, by doing them centrally located um you know, it's directly adjacent to Pquonic Plains neighborhood, which is a great way to be able to get people there. The town just got, you know, a new grant uh to be able to fund some better bike ped access into that area. Um so it was it wasn't necessarily a conscious decision as part of this task force. Um, but we wanted to look at the fact that we know, we've talked recreation destination for a while in the town that the Mystic has got a brand associated with it and we know tournaments when they're putting on their summer travel leagues, they're looking for a place to go that they might not have been before and a place that parents are

049willing to go, right? And if a parent if if somebody's putting on a tournament can say, "Oh, we can have a tournament in Mystic, Connecticut." somebody from upstate Vermont might be much more willing to drive to Mystic, Connecticut because they've heard of it and they kind of turn it into a mini family vacation versus somewhere that's not a destination. And so we we really think that if we kind of capitalize on that recreation destination, we'll get those summer tournaments coming here. And that way at least then the the money that we're having to spend to build the fields, we have the potential to get some of that economic impact back. I will say my understanding at least as far as the band goes is that we could host tournaments but the football field is not

050artificial turf. People will not you don't think of this kids will not put their instruments down on wet natural grass. Um one more thing and then I'll leave this. When we're you you said well we're there's no there's no really zero option. We're spending money now on maintaining the fields. It's worth investing a little more money and getting something more modern. I would hope that when the costs are estimated that we take into account the maintenance picture of the new fields, well, we're if we do this, we'll have more fields. They they'll probably need a little more care, less care, I don't know. Um, but very often the the maintenance portion, the long term, the life cycle costs are kind of skipped in the initial enthusiasm. I I agree. So to to quick on both

051those, I'm glad you brought up the band because I'm remiss for not mentioning it during the presentation, but we did have the band involved uh throughout the whole discussion with the task force and we heard, you know, the band's phenomenal. They they've they've won amazing things. Um and they were effectively asked to host a regional tournament and they were once they found out that we didn't have a synthetic turf field, they weren't allowed to host it anymore. they can what we've found out is that they can host local tournaments and they do um but they can't host the big tournaments and they were asked to right and so that's that's a significant disadvantage to our kids again who now have to travel somewhere else um and don't have the amenity just because we never built

052the field >> we lose we lose the concessions and the traffic. >> Yep. Yep. And and then uh maintenance I couldn't agree with you more. We have to maintain things. I think park and wreck has done a phenomenal job of maintaining uh pquantic planes. Like when you think about that field being 25 years old as a natural grass field that gets a tremendous amount of use because >> yeah the amount of high school teams that have to go down there for all of their games and practices all the youth they've done a phenomenal job. So my I think they have the system worked out um you know and if they have a good field they can maintain it and hopefully now that we have the one synthetic turf field and some of the machinery to

053maintain that at the middle school you know we can get the same system for if we have more synthetic turf fields or more natural fields. Um, but I agree it needs to be part of the budget. >> Thank you. >> I can't speak for the whole board, but Chad, I'm in. Um, I would Oh, Rosemary. Rosemary, do you have a question? >> Um, no. I have a statement. Um, I support this 100%. I have sports jeans on both sides of my family and um but it's my uncle Jack Cruz who used to be the sports editor at the day who's whispering in my ear from heaven saying go for it um because of many reasons but um because it supports also it is very supportive of graten 2020 a little late But hey, it's co

054>> Well, it it though, Rosemary, your your point isn't lost on me. One second, Liz. Um is um is that the reason the reason why we we had to get the grat in 2020. It's not because our our schools weren't well maintained by our maintenance um department. It really was. But we had very old buildings that we needed to kind of move on. And it feels like we have switched this. we have turned the page and now we're taking a look at the fields which is what I sort of feel like how you presented it is that we now need to kind of take a look at at the fields. I personally am all for a community center with a pool but that's my own personal bias. Um I had three swimmers and two who

055swam in college one at con college. So I like I really think that but um I'm putting that aside. I feel really overwhelmed by what you presented, Chad. Like because there's it we are and it feels like it's the same situation we were in the schools when we were having a list of all the things that were going on with our elementary schools and why they needed to be replaced and why we needed to have things done. And I'm glad to hear that the town council and the RTM are in um are sort of in in in wanting to have this happen. But my sense is is that um unless we got a huge bond um we would not be able to do this all at once. And I guess for me it's the understanding

056about what you know what what's the plan? What's like a five-year plan? What's a three-year plan about how do we move this forward so that we can then take a look at sort of financing um and we could put in the CIPs um for whatever that is. But I think it would be much better if we had RTM town council and board of ed working together around funding around that. Um because the the the the board of ed owns the programming um that happens but we don't own the the facility or the fields. And so um and so in in terms of that it's the it's the need to do that. And Jerry looks like you need to clarify a mistake that I have made. >> No no mistake there. Um uh but just just

057maybe a little um that that's the same questions a lot. The question that you were just asking was the same question that the town council asked us. you know, what what are what are the priorities and and so we can maybe phase this out and and to be honest with you, um you know, the the task force has looked at that quite quite extensively and come to the conclusion that doing it through a CIP peace meal, we're never going to get there. >> That's right. you know, and and so I think most most members, and I guess I'm not going to speak for everybody on the task force, but most members of the task force view this as a um a bond issue where where the town steps forward and says this is an issue

058in the town that we want to address. Um there it does get a a bit complicated because a lot of the work is is you know happening potentially at the high school and then the other part of the work is happening at uh parks. You know some of that uh funding is reimburseable perhaps by the state. Um you know and and the board of ed might be more successful than the town in general in getting um funding for those projects that are um you know related to um the the high school. So yeah, I think um yeah, CIP projects, I just don't think we're going to get there. Um but you know, your your point is is very well taken. >> I I guess um I guess for me it's the sort of what's the

059next step, right? And so you presented it to all the bodies and you've gain you gotten public input um or or you have or have not. Um but like you know I always feel sort of like time is a wasting. So what's what's the first step? is the first step is that you get members from each one of those bodies together again. Um is it a different task force um where you you're where we're looking at sort of delineating what what comes what are the what are the needs how what needs to be addressed first and then looking at the funding sources and and I guess for me I need structure um or some scaffolding around it because I I am like I am like breathing like oh my god there's so much that needs

060to be done and I would love for a wand to just be kind of waved and all a sudden you we have what we need that that is not going to happen. I I have lived in Grten, not my whole life, but I have lived in Grten long enough to know um that that doesn't happen that way. So, um so I see that this this time, Jerry, this was just reallyformational that um I think that the board now sees that as an as an issue. Rosemary, I got you in one second. Um I um and and Liz, I'm doing Liz and Rosemary because that's the order that I have unless there's someone who has not come on the board that has spoken yet. Um, but I guess for me it's the tell me what the

061next steps are so that we can then um put people in place that need to be put in place to have those larger discussions because it looks to me like we're now um and now that we have Vincent who is not just the athletic director for um the high school but he's also doing the campus of the middle school and high school campus. Just want to make that clarification. Um uh because I think that that's going to help us um because it is a campus. We are talking about a campus and what is our campus field needs? Um so I I'm being a little bit of a stickler on that. So I think that that's where I'm going with that on Jerry. I'm going to um I'm going to recognize um Lee, do you have

062a comment or question? Andrea Jane, >> I do not. >> Okay. Thank you. Jay, I know that you are a member of this task force. >> Yeah, I just wanted to um mentioned this was discussed uh extensively about you making this into a five or 10 year plan. And I have to agree with Jerry. I mean, I think this um the the idea is um we got them involved. Uh we got Rich Costa who's on tonight who has a wealth of information. Um, if we uh uh approved this concept, I think the idea was the town was able to look at at how it would be financed as an overall project. Um, and um because I I I agree with Jerry, you know, we've tried cops over the CIPs over the years. It just didn't

063it didn't work in in a peacemail fashion. Um and I think the other thing that was made uh clear during this was you know maybe there are other funding sources through the state or through grants. So Rotten needs to just say this here are our needs and they went extensively they spent a year talking to all these uh stakeholders about what the needs are. I mean they this was not just a you know one or two meetings. they they really did their due diligence and then Chad brought all this together with the plan. So, I think they're just looking for the board to agree that that this meets um our needs. Um and then it goes back to the town council for them to decide on the funding mechanism. Um but I just want to

064recognize, you know, all these folks, they've worked really really hard uh with Frank uh chairing the group and um I think we've come up with a really good plan. Thank you. Andrea or Jane, >> I know I shouldn't say this, but you're looking at a girl who never went to school on Tuesday afternoon for throughout junior and high school because that's when we got we had Jim. I got cut my senior year in the last week of school. So, I was I faced a regret. But I am totally behind this. I am totally for this. And we need to move forward in one package and go for it. Go for it. >> Jane, >> you're muted. >> We haven't lived in Graten that long, but I saw the same thing happen over the years in

065South Windsor from whence we come came and um this is very exciting. uh this will help the town and city move forward as a popular place to live. Obviously it is in educ for education and this is kind of a gap in the moving forward. This is very important. I would support this totally. >> Thank you Jay Liz. I just I I think Jay you addressed the u my question was about I mean of course I'm like 100% and plus behind this absolutely but I want to know the bottom line is you know funding who's going to be responsible for that and I think Jay you answered my question so I just wanted to say thanks Jay because I was that was my big concern okay do we have to add money to the budget

066now seeing we just gotten it to a you know, 0%, you know, I was like, "Oh my gosh, now what's what's the impact? What's the financial impact?" So, thank you. Um, >> all right. Good. >> Really psyched, >> Rosemary. >> Uh, I just wanted to, um, say it was an education about the artificial turf. Um, mostly because, um, I'm surprised how many people want it and, um, prefer it. Um but um so I would prefer to I would like to know a little bit more about that but um you know the advantages and disadvantage especially long term but I'm again 100% and it will also help um one of our deficiencies which um in the high school really reflects the community which is we need more opportunities to get physically fit. I'm not saying that

067as someone who is physically fit, but we do need to be and we need to encourage it and we need to be more um out there encouraging it for everybody. >> So, even >> I have a quick question for Vin. When do the girls at Fitch when do they play tennis? Is it in the fall? >> Uh Everybody hear me? Okay. >> Yes. Yes. >> Okay. Good. I just unmuted for the first time, so I hope uh it's a spring sport for both boys and girls in the >> It is a spring sport. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Oh, wow. I thought we had a play in the fall. Maybe we didn't because we didn't have enough courts. And we also lost two tennis courts at Cutler with this renovation of building a new middle school.

068So, it it really makes sense to add two more to the high school since we lost two. And there's one more park that you didn't mention. I believe it's Farquar Park. And they there were two tennis courts there at one time. I'm not sure they're still there off of 117. Are they still there? >> Yes. >> Are they are they maintained? >> Yeah. >> Okay, good. Thank you. So, um, Dean, >> yeah, I I'm wanted to say, and Jay already said it, too. I I I tend to agree with Jerry with respect to funding, even though that's not our it's it's not going to be on our plate. Um, yeah, a series of CIPs, even if you had all the bodies committed in one or two years, a series of CIPs may not do it.

069you're gonna have to present it as like a like a road project or a school project or the animal shelter or something like that, >> right? >> In which case, your sales job is not to the town officials. Your sales job is to enough of the public. Uh so, >> right. >> Um again, my advice is the school projects have to come in under budget and we have to, you know, throw send up the balloons on that one and say, "See how well we managed your money on that one. Oh, by the way, there's another little thing you ought to consider to make this package complete." And uh because I whatever it is, it's not going to go in the school budget. This is going to be a huge uh not huge like like the

070schools, but it's going to be a relatively large I imagine capital item. >> Um but I'm just thinking ahead to what the sales job is going to be to the public who definitely is not tuned into this seeing as a lot of officials already are not tuned into it. Imagine the public. >> Um Dean, really good point. maybe um when we when you guys get to that point, maybe to get that group that did the referendum for a middle school and two elementary schools in the same referendum and same project. That might be a really good way of finding out what worked for them because it was the first referendum that got passed on the first time. So, that would be an an interesting piece. Um um Jerry and Frank um Frank as the chairperson

071of the of the task force and um Jerry as the as the town staff. Um I just wanted to say thank you very much for coming and doing the presentation. I I think you have this is not a voting meeting but I think that you've heard from every single member just about every single member to say that we are absolutely in support of that. Um and um let let's move forward um as we as we can. Um, and I'm, you know, I'm looking forward to hearing about how this kind of not gets broken down, but how did this get scaffolded, um, so that we can present it to the public and I would be more than happy to be one of those people that helps um, get the word out um, about how to make

072this happen. But thanks again so much for spending um, an hour of your time um, with us on a Monday night. Um, and uh, thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. We appreciate it. >> All right. >> Thank you. So, we're going to move on. Um, Susan, did Steve M is Steve Mansfield here? I just don't see him. >> Yes, he's been here since the start of the meeting. >> Oh, good. Steve, you got to hear a little bit about how we want to improve recreation and physical activity. >> Yeah, it sounded great. I really appreciated being on the call. I I will give everybody a warning. I'm uh unfortunately now in transit, so I hope you can hear me. Okay. >> Um, we can absolutely hear you. Okay. So, Steve, um, and

073probably Susan probably would be best to kind of start the conversation, but since our mouth is open, I'm going to continue. Um, we really just wanted to hear, um, we had been, um, as obviously as a school board, we've been thinking a lot about, um, school safety around COVID. We are very appreciative of the fact that you have been an active um, participant throughout the whole um, experience, but also um, the reopening committee specifically. Um, and I didn't know if if I I'm I think that the board just kind of wanted an update about what's happening um sort of in the town um in the district. Um uh am I missing anything board members? Susan? No, I think I think um Steve was gonna give you a brief and he really reassured our committee about

074the safety protocols and especially now that you know I got my vaccine this weekend at Foxwood and saw so many of our colleagues there and Steve gave us another update of more vaccines being delivered next week and I sent that right out too. So, I'm feeling very confident that um you know, we're getting through this. So, Steve, I'll let you go on after that. That's my intro. >> Thank you, Susan. >> Great. Thanks, everybody. And I'll start by saying I agree with Susan. I think things are going really, really well. Um I'll start with an overview of what's going on in our respective communities. As you probably know, Ledgeite Health District covers uh 10 municipalities between Rhode Island and the Connecticut River. Um and although every municipality and every school system does things a bit

075differently, the trends are what's most important. That's what we look at uh to make decisions, decide what is most appropriate for our students and our staff and so forth. So, um the data looks really good. We've had six weeks of significant decline in new cases and hospitalizations throughout our district. We've also not received any reports of COVID related deaths within our jurisdiction in the last two weeks. And that's really great to hear. Um one of my unfortunately one of my jobs is to notify our chief elected officials whenever we have fatalities associated with COVID. So when our public health nurses reach out to me and say, "Steve, nothing to report this week." Um, it's definitely a feel-good thing on a Friday afternoon. Um, most Legislate Health District schools are moving into a more in-person learning

076model. And although we're we're really just at the beginning of this implementation um of this new model, both the community and school-based infections among students and staff have remained relatively constant. So, we're hoping that doesn't change as we move forward. There are obviously a lot of curve balls that could come our way, but um but I think uh we're hoping that things remain level or continue to decrease as we've seen with the data. Contact tracing remains a really big part of what we do daytoday. We have, excuse me, three full-time contact tracers and also a cadre of state workers who can pick up the slack if if we get overwhelmed at the local level. Um but it remains manageable our contact tracing activities and we're cautiously op optimistic that the trends will continue. Um I

077mentioned curveballs before. So one of the biggest ones are the new variants of COVID. We don't know what that is going to look like in our jurisdiction. We don't know if how and when it's going to manifest itself. So, um, if we have new variants in our jurisdiction that cause CO 19 to be more transmissible, obviously we would have more cases in our community and probably more cases in our schools and that may change what we do in terms of the learning models, in terms of sports and so forth, but we won't know about that. And so far so good. Um, we haven't seen uh that in our communities, you know, having any significant effect. So, um, the other curveball that we were just thrown by the governor's office were the easing of all the

078COVID restrictions. Um, and that's pretty much across the board. Travel restrictions are now voluntary rather than mandatory. There are no longer, I should say, uh, as of the 19th, they're voluntary and not mandatory. There are no penalties associated with it. And I think human nature being what it is and the fact that everybody's been cooped up for so long, I don't think a recommendation is going to have uh much of an impact on people's travel. So I think people will begin to travel more after the 19th. Um despite the recommendation also the restrictions on businesses has been relaxed relaxed pretty dramatically. Um there are no longer occupancy restrictions in restaurants for instance. Although uh social distancing still has to be employed and appropriate uh maskearing is still mandatory. Um there are no restrictions on the

079number of people who can go into businesses. So that's something that could affect our community based transmission and subsequently our school-based transmission. So we're keeping a close eye on that. Um, vaccinations. As everyone is aware, last week, Governor Lamont announced a new plan for prioritizing vaccination of our residents. This included assigning the task of vaccinating our more than 6,000 educators and child care providers to local health districts. Um, I'm smiling as I say that because I think it's important for everyone to note that we became aware of this assignment uh from the governor's office to local health districts on the same day that the media did, which as you can imagine resulted in my organization being inundated with calls from newly eligible childcare providers and teachers asking where and when can I get my shot?

080Um we weren't uh 6 hours into um into the allowance to vaccinate educators um where we had dedicated three of our staff members at lelight just to answer the phones and give them updated information. So as always we encou we encourage the department of public health and the governor's office to give us heads up when things are coming down the pike so we can put in place mechanisms to deal with it. Not the least of which is the IT infrastructure in Connecticut. It was absolutely not prepared to have tens of thousands of people become eligible overnight. So that did overwhelm uh every registration system, Ledgelight, Hartford Healthcare, the Yale Health systems. Um things are smoothing out now, but I think we learned something. You know, we have to ease into this. We can't just say,

081you know, let the gates open and let everybody in because our infrastructure wasn't designed to have tens of thousands of people trying to register for the same vaccination clinic in the first hour. Of course, everybody wants to get their vaccin their vaccine as soon as possible. So, although we weren't ready for a lot of the things in the tight timeline, we were prepared to make sure that we could meet the challenge. We've been meeting regularly with our vaccine partners in southeastern Connecticut, Hartford Healthcare, um, Community Health Center, Yale New Haven Health Systems, um, and a lot of others. We've been meeting, uh, weekly for a while now. So, we did have a draft plan, uh, for vaccinating educa educators that we were ready to implement. Um, we didn't know if it would be our responsibility,

082but we figured we better have a plan in place in case. So, in cooperation with the Mashant Tucket, Peekquat Tribal Nation, and Hartford Healthcare, we were able to roll out our plan within about 24 hours. Of course, there are always glitches when you're trying to rush something through. Um, but it worked really, really well. And fast forward to today. Yesterday, we were able to vaccinate more than a thousand educators and child care providers. And we have two more clinics, as Susan mentioned, available this week where we plan on vaccinating another 1500 educators and childare workers. So, um, that's great news. I can't say enough about working with Hartford Healthcare. They're really, really great partners. Um, and it just it makes everybody's job a lot easier. And, uh, when I toured their clinic yesterday, um, with

083their director of operations, one thing they have over us is room. Um, if you haven't been to the clinic, um, it's on two floors. There's, uh, it's really an optimal space, plenty of room for registration and vaccination. And, uh, as you're probably aware, if you've been to any clinic, there's a mandatory 15minute wait period after you get vaccinated where we need to observe you and make sure there are no adverse reactions. Um, they have plenty of room for that. So, it just makes the whole job that much easier when you can spread out and obviously you want to social distance as as much as possible. Um, let me see what else. Oh, I should mention um Cadam Health District. Uh, Russ Melmmet is the director of health in Chadam Health District. He's my former epidemiologist.

084We have a very good relationship. He reached out to me um I get my days all mixed up now. I'm sure everybody else has the same complaint, but reached out to me a couple of days ago and said he had a couple hundred vaccine appointments that were unfilled. So, we reached out to our school systems and said, "Hey, if your uh if your populations that are eligible are looking for a vaccination clinic, we have one tomorrow morning." And at least a couple dozen uh teachers from Graten School System were able to take advantage of that clinic. So, it's just a good example of the cooperation that we have in Eastern Connecticut. Um, overall, the feedback we've received from our educational partners has been great. Um, I've received a ton of emails and phone calls thanking

085us for the efficient registration and vaccination process. So, that's great to hear. Um, you know, I think in the very beginning, people were nervous that they weren't going to get their shot quickly or they if they didn't act very very quickly that uh um they would be at the end of the line and perhaps not get vac vaccinated until uh much later on. But so far, all of my school systems have reported that they're hearing very little from their staffs uh you know, and their employees um about not being able to schedule a vaccination. So that's really great news. Um I should mention also that our partners at Ankus Health District established a very similar arrangement with Yale Healthcare Systems. Um and they participate in these weekly calls that I was describing before. So we

086all collectively have this plan. Um we just decided we decided to partner uh to partner with Hartford Healthcare and and Patrick McCormack at Ancis decided to part partner with Yale just based on the number of people and their capabilities. we happen to have a lot more people in my jurisdiction and Hartford Healthcare had uh the resources uh at least in the short term they were able to provide more vaccines in a short period of time. So um so we've got it pretty well covered in southeastern Connecticut and that's that's a really good thing. Um, one other thing, really an ancillary benefit of having Hartford Healthcare assist us with all of this work is the fact that because they do the actual vaccinations, we do the coordination and we help everyone with the registration and and

087do the outreach to all of our educators, um, but they do the actual vaccinating. So that frees us up to utilize the relatively small amount of vaccine that we're receiving to focus on our local vaccination efforts on underserved populations. So that may be uh treat drug treatment centers, it may be the homebound, it may be groups of people that are traditionally underserved um by the health care system. So, we'll set up small targeted clinics in neighborhoods um that are underserved and uh and we're able to go in there and vaccinate those populations. That's another one of the mandates from the governor's office that we spend 25% of our actual vaccine allocation on those underserved populations. So, the fact that Hartford Healthcare is taking care of more than 6,000 people in our jurisdiction just frees us

088up to do that work. And we do that work utilizing uh our strike teams, our mobile strike teams, which we've been um drilling and exercising for more than a decade now. So, we actually set up our mass vaccination trailers and trucks and go right out into the community and deploy our medical reserve corps members and our staff to get those uh populations vaccinated. Uh I know that's a lot of information and believe me, off the top of my head, I think I covered most of it. Um, but obviously if people have questions, I'm happy to stay on the line and and try to answer them as best I can. Thank you very much, >> Rita. Um Steve, what is the what is the proportion now of um people at Harford Healthcare receiving J&J as opposed

089to Fizer and Madna which is you know it's the quicker turnaround in terms of the two weeks with the one dose >> right so we don't have any control over what we get the the allocation committee at the state level determines what vaccine providers get what specific vaccine so across Connecticut uh public health departments received primarily Madna. There are a few exceptions to that. Um but with the uh introduction of the J&J vaccine um we have only seen 200 doses of the J&J vaccine. We utili utilize that when we go into the communities to vaccinate the underserved populations. Uh for instance the homeless population. You may be able to go give them one vaccine and never be able to find them for their second. So we utilize that very small allocation for those populations. I

090don't know what Hartford Healthcare has received, but I know that they are vaccinating our educational uh um employees and our child care providers with the Fiser vaccine. So um the actual vaccine delivery is out of our hands, but Hartford Healthcare is getting uh um the Fiser vaccine, we're getting Madna. they do have the ability to use um both Madna and Fizer if they need to. But from a logistical perspective, we've learned it's much more difficult to handle uh from a pharmaceutical perspective to handle two different types of vaccines because um they both have very separate and distinct refrigeration requirements, setup requirements, draw up requirements, and so forth. So, if you go to uh the Mashantucket tribal nation to get a vaccine, you'll more than likely be getting the Fiser vaccine. Well, >> thank you and

091thank you for everything you've done to have our help, our educators, our custodians, our health and everyone connected with the schools become vaccinated. Thanks. >> Thank you. actually just to partner with our school system the whole pandemic. Steve, your guidance has been um amazingly and I probably have not slept in the past year would be my guess. >> We're actually getting used to it. My staff and I were just we laugh a lot. We have to laugh a lot. That's you know it's a prerequisite especially this far into the pandemic. But it's really the new normal you know. It's um we all want time for ourselves. is I want to go ride my mountain bike with all my friends. I haven't been able to do that yet. Although I have received both vaccinations, so I'm

092really eyeing that up. The sooner the better, but um it is the new normal, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that's what I keep telling everyone and I see it every day. We see it in the in the numbers and the statistics and um and I think that optimism is contagious. So um yeah, I'm really looking forward to the uh this pandemic winding down. Yuri. >> Well, I can't thank you enough, Steve. You've been right by my side. And Dr. Grineer said, um, whatever you do, make sure you meet Steve Mansfield right away. So, you were one of my first calls. >> Well, he said the same thing to me, Susan. He said, "I know Susan's going to give you a call, but make sure you contact her and

093make sure you know we're all on the same page." So, that's good news. >> She's always watching out for us still. >> Yep. For sure. Steve, once again, thank you for your time um for being with the um the board. This was a I I'm so excited that we're that this was your conversation because a couple weeks ago or maybe a month ago, I never knew where were we going to be, right, with this with what was happening and and the especially with the surge that we had in January. So, the fact that you're talking about we've got lots of our staff vaccinated, we have a actually going back to school plan that you've been part of. Um, and that you're telling us that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Um, I'm

094glad that we waited because this is such a much better message than what we would have gotten a couple months ago. So, thank you so much. >> You're very welcome. And, uh, everyone, please uh, if there's a question you think of after this meeting tonight, don't hesitate to reach out to me directly. That's what I'm here for. Thank you, Steve. >> You're welcome. I'm gonna sign off now. I do have another meeting in about 15 minutes. >> And you are you are free to roam the country. See you. >> All right. Thanks. Bye-bye. >> All right. Um wow, that was a lot of information for a fast um hour and a half or hour and 15 minutes. And so Susan, um I don't know if you and Rick want to sort of um introduce oursel

095introduce the board to our our next group of people. That would be great. >> Okay. >> So more good news. Our schools are being built and um I'm going to let Rick kind of orient us because we will be voting on a technology plan. But the board had also asked if the architect and I see Joe Banks is here on the call could like take us for a virtual tour in these buildings. Like this is so exciting. We haven't actually been in the buildings. I can't wait, you know, um for the real tour, but um so I'll let Rick orient us and then Joe can take us away on the virtual tour. >> Okay. Well, thank you, Susan, Madam Chairman. I'm happy to be here again with you folks. Um you've asked Joe, our architect,

096to come talk to you about what's going on, show you some of the uh renderings again. If you haven't, we can he can do some explanation. I've also brought uh Kelly Nelly who's the project manager for both those schools. We're less than four months away from completing them. We're looking at the process of of establishing some tours starting in in April, if you will, because the majority of the inside of the building will be finished and and uh Kelly will be setting up a schedule and pass it on to Sam so you folks know uh what's going on. They'll probably be on on a Thursday afternoon or something and if there's something we need to do specially, we certainly can do that. Um and again we you know this is the first part. The second

097part will deal with the uh technology just to bring up to speed. We have uh we're issuing all the the documents to purchase the furniture in the next couple days. So we'll start that. We're right on track and schedule for that and and the completion of the buildings. Uh I think we're in a lot better shape than we were if you will at the middle school, but things are moving along and if you drive by the site certainly you can see that and the outside of the building's nearly finished and they're working on windows. So I'll turn it over to Joe and Kelly can answer any questions about uh the construction side of it and I can answer the questions about financial or philan. So Joe, if you want to take it away, be my

098guest. >> Sure. Yeah. Well, first of all, good to see everybody again. Um, it's nice to have see the same faces throughout the throughout the project, which is going on for years now. Um, so I'm I'm just going to try to reorient you guys uh briefly uh using some of the renderings that we did uh in in some of the previous presentations just so that you see you know kind of the main parts of the building and I can walk you through how they how they work and then we've got some photographs of of actually outside and inside of the building to show you the progress that's happening there. Um the one first of all everyone can see my screen. >> Yes. Okay, >> good. Thank you. Um, the building that's on the screen is

099Cutler. So, this is the this was a three-dimensional rendering that we did Oh, yeah. probably like eight or 10 months ago. We we've been using most of our time uh getting the building built as opposed to doing new new uh rendering. So this is this is what uh hopefully you all have seen before, but I wanted to just walk through the the main parts of it and then I'll show you the plan of it and then I'll show you west side the same thing. Um so the the deal with these buildings both of them have a large threetory classroom wing and that's that's essentially just a lot of classroom spaces. It's very efficient. It's a very uh good way to divide up those those classrooms. And that's always kind of in a three-story block here.

100Then we've got this sort of onestory block here. And what that is composed of here at Cutler, you you see right at the entry. This is this is how you enter the front of the building. This is all the administrative wing over here. So, this is the reception and the nurse area and all those other administrative functions that go into into that. We've got the media center here peeking out the back to the courtyard. And then you have what we call the big box spaces. So, we've got the the gymnasium right here on the corner. And then we've got the cafeteria and servery on this side. Excuse me. On this side, we've got a few art rooms and also the boiler room and so forth. And I'll show you all that in plan here. So,

101this is this is what all this looks like in plan. I wanted to show you the three-dimensional first so you kind of get an idea of where everything's located. This is that administrative area I was talking about, the media center. We've got uh arts and you know uh music here. This is the boiler room. This is the gymnasium. And this is the cafeteria and servery here. Then over on this side you have that threetory uh classroom building if you will. Um I will now do the same thing for west side if I can get there. Um so you may you may feel like you're looking in the mirror with this one and that's that's on purpose. Um so the the way that we we built Westside is very similar oriented to Cutler. So the programs

102are very similar. Um the number of children and staff attending both schools is very similar. And so our approach to the building was also similar. Difference being on west side we have about a 35 foot drop from the road down to where this classroom building is. So, this classroom building sits a little bit lower in the landscape than it does in in Cutler, but it too is a three-story building here with the classrooms here. Have this little connecting bridge between the the main one-story area and the classroom. This is the administration area. Again, you get get the administration eyes on the front door right here. This is the gymnasium. Again, oriented very closely to here. We know that's important. as well as the cafeteria and the servery back here. These in this in this configuration,

103these are all art and music rooms and the boiler rooms down here in the in the basement of the thirdstory building. And the way that that looks in plan, here we go, is this. And you can see they're they're basically mirror images of one another. This is the arts area that we talked about here. doing the wrong series of clicks here. The administration, gym, cafeteria, etc. Um, are there any are there any questions or anything at this point in terms of the buildings and how they're configured? >> I'll go through you, Madam Chair. You would think I would have gotten used to this, Joe, after like a year of like seeing which the boxes are, but do we have are there people This is just like amazing. Like I'm just like, wow. Um, Vita, do

104you have >> Yeah, I have a couple of questions. How long is the walk for for children that are in the far end of the classroom building to go to the library or to gym class or to the um you know to the cafeteria and h how is that handled for someone that is handicapped? >> So I'll answer the first question first. So we we have an elevator in the building on the on the story side >> just on the third story side. Yeah. Right here. >> You can see my cursor >> here. >> Yep. >> Um so that's right in the middle of this. So that provides access up and down that third floor, that threetory building. And then there's a connection in both buildings. Uh one on the first story and one on

105the second story for uh for west side. and and the first story is on Cutler and that connects to this area which is the arts and media and gymnasium and so forth. >> Um but I thought it was three levels. >> Let me clarify. Um I think probably in three dimensions is the place to go. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> So this is this is Cutler, right? So, we've got that elevator on this side accessing all three floors of this and then uh we've got access all along the first floor here. This is all one story space on this side even though >> and about how long would it take a child though to walk let's say a kindergarten class to go from you know down there all the way through here through here you

106know that I mean it's quite it's quite a ways I would think for some little children. >> Yeah. I mean the I you know I don't I don't have the measurements on on me right now but it's it's you know the the length of the building is probably I don't know I can make some quick calculations probably >> around 300 ft. Joe, I don't want I don't want to interrupt, but don't forget we do have a a special kindergarten and pre-K entrance, >> so the the little kids won't have to walk as far as the upper grades. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> And that's right, that threetory area. >> That's right. That's this area right here. That's the That's the pre entrance >> and that's the overhang and and >> Okay. So that so they

107are going to you know it's just that lots of times our physical education our media they're all backtoback. So we're going to actually in their schedules we're going to have to allow you know more time. These aren't these aren't small schools like our other ones. So for for children to travel to get to an art class or or the or the PE class. And where on these diagrams are the play gates for children? >> I can show you. I don't have the the diagrams here. I can I can pull those up later. But for instance, in Cutler, those playcapes are over on this side and they sort of surround the building on this side on the lowest lowest story. West side, there are two different uh hopefully I can get to it. Yeah. So, west

108side there are two different areas. There's there's areas here that are that are right adjacent here. And then there's a playground specifically just for the the littleer kids right down here. >> Right. >> At Cutler, is there also one for the younger children? A separate >> Yeah, there's there's playgrounds for three different age groups in each of the schools. >> Yeah, >> that's great. Thank you. It might help orient us to what we know with um CK and NEA where they have the two floors for the um you know the academic wings and it's kind of a split and then we have all the art and music and the cafeteria and the gym on the other side and then kind of our media center and our um offices in the middle. So, if you were

109a child in a K class all the way at one end and had to go all the way to the gym, to me it's kind of very similar um that walking pathway, you know, it's walking all the way down that main hall of the academic wing coming into the main lobby and then walking all the way down the specials hall. So, it seems very similar to me. >> Thank you. >> Y >> other questions. What what is the roof going to be on these buildings? What is the material? >> Uh the roof is a is a rubber material. So it's a >> it's going to be rubber. >> Yeah. >> It's it's typical of of what you have in the rest of the schools EDPM is what it's called. >> And again, will they be,

110>> you know, anything that in the future if we want to put solar panels there? Are you making any allowances for that? Joe had done some of of some of that for us earlier. They had looked at the weight potential the weight on the roofs and the ability to put some of that there because they would have to be a ballasted system primarily. So we had looked at that previously on on west side. We haven't well th yeah river we hadn't been able to do much because we it's a different system than everource with brought utilities and I'm working on that right now on um Mystic River. We've put we've actually put some conduits in the ground uh to prep for that. So, solar panels, I know you're all interested um where both for uh

111Mystic River and the middle school, we've been working with the green bank and they need to go to what they call a ZREC, which is zero renewable energy credit auction here in starting in April. And we didn't we weren't successful last year. Hopefully, we'll be successful this year. But once we know about that, we'll know where we stand with the solar panels or whether we have to do something different. >> Thank you, >> Andrea. Roof was what I was going to ask about as well. What are the statistics, the new the latest findings about flat roofs? >> Uh, they're not they're not really flat. I mean, they're flat, but they're not level, if you will. They're required by the state to be tapered a certain amount. Um the problem being is if you put a

112peak roof on any area undercover is counted as area or square footage against the building and not uh potentially not reimburseable by the state. So they really put towns in sort of a an awkward awkward situation if you will. you know, we'd like to have all our utility uh stuff, you know, the air handlers and all that under a a peaked roof, but if we do that, then we lose a lot of classroom space. So, we're kind of in this catch 22 situation, if you will. >> So, in terms of leaking, how does that look? >> So, terms is what? Leaking the roof. >> Yes, that's been my my experience. No. Uh >> well, right right now they're they're closing in the buildings and we're not seeing leaks in those areas that are closed in.

113>> Okay. >> Yep. >> Looking at this diagram, where is Brandy Road? >> On the left >> towards the the uh >> Yes, right there. Okay. >> Over here. Yep. So the road that you see here is is actually the parent drop off, right, Joe? >> Yeah, >> that's correct. Yep. >> And then the bus loop is on drops off at the front. >> It's on this side. Yep. >> And we're not seeing the hill. Is that correct with the what with the James River? Uh thanks. Well, the hill is between this building and and the one on the right side. So Okay. Okay. >> So it does it does taper down. I mean once uh >> we're we're all anxious to get windows in that bridge because the view once the windows are in

114the bridge are going to be tremendous uh out that direction to the south on that site. It's it's it's a much prettier site, if you will, in the Cutler than the Yeah. Mystic River site. Uh, but they're both going to be uh, I think very, very good-looking buildings and sites when it's all said and done. The playscapes that you asked about are in and finished. We have to do a certification before they can be used, of course, but uh, when we're able to get you on a on a tour, I think you would be very happy when you see those. I thought the board might be interested in looking in a couple of the classrooms just because you had done the furnishings with us, Joe, and you could just kind of get a sense of

115what a classroom would look like inside. >> Sure. Yeah, we can uh do a quick uh look at some of that stuff. So, these are these are some renderings. I don't know if you guys can see those on my screen. >> Y >> um these are these are kind of the entry areas as you're walking into the building. This is the administration area. These little windows uh look into the gymnasium at kind of the right height for kids to be taking a look and so forth in there. This is a rendering of the gymnasium where we've got, you know, all the wall pads, some light coming in up above. Um artistic license with somebody doing a jump shot there. Um Joe, um are there bleachers >> at all? >> No, >> there are not. No.

116>> Um I'm gonna move to a different presentation that shows more of the classroom areas here. So this down here is a is a typical arrangement in the classroom. You see a lot of this furniture is movable. You can arrange it in different ways. We've got bookcases against the wall, teachers desks, that sort of thing. >> And and you saw the Prometheian boards on the walls in there. We did get approval from the permanent school building committee to go with the larger boards. So, those will be ordered. We did a Sam helped us do a a fit check of of the boards in the room, one of the rooms today. So, I think we're in in good shape as far as being able to mount those and uh that that was uh you know a

117fairly significant cost, but it we had money in the budget to be able to do that. So, we'll be looking at other things that we may propose to do. >> What will um where will it be the special needs sort of um classroom? Is it is that going to be in like the first floor? So it depends on the building. >> Okay. >> Um yeah, so uh we we've tried to keep those as accessible as possible. Not noting that a lot of those students have some mobility uh issues that we need to accommodate. Um, so you can kind of see some of the the three-dimensional renderings that we put together looking at, for instance, the su student services suite and the offices that compose those. This would be the hallway with some lockers in it.

118>> This is the media center. Yep. We've got uh we've got some display areas. We've got a lot of furniture. So, this can be reconfigured in a lot of different ways. If you wanted to, you could host it sort of a half of a classroom here. And we've got a Prometheian board here as well. Um, so that you can use that. We've got most of the bookcases and so forth are on wheels. Uh, so these could be reconfigured if you have a big community meeting that you want to host in this nice space. Um, I'll also point out these are all windows that uh that point out to the courtyard in both areas. So, this is this is a really nice sort of reading nook with a lot of natural light and natural views out

119of here. It's so cool. >> I think you guys are going to be really excited when you're able to walk through just Yeah. One of the one of the things we were looking at at uh Mystic River, uh the recck department at one point had a plan to put a bridge across uh Fishtown Brook. We're pricing that out. Um it's it's something that's uh an add to the project outside the scope. So, I need to get the permanent school building to weigh in on it committee. They're very supportive of it. I'm I'm trying to get a cost. The original cost was around 30k. I think that was uh kind of a pie in the sky. It may be a little bit more than that, but it looks like a tremendous opportunity to have walkers come

120in from uh that neighborhood either for recreation or whatever because it it basically dumps into the corner of the the ball field, if you will, on the northeast corner. >> Great idea. >> Yeah. So, uh so that that's uh those are some of the kind of value added stuff we look at as as we're going through the project. We don't have that much of an opportunity right now because how many weeks, Kelly? 16 15 now. Not not not very many to get the building completed. So, the concentration as Joe has said and they're doing a tremendous job helping us with the issues that sort of come up um to uh get those resolved. And Kelly's uh doing great managing the two jobs. So, we're we're looking forward to getting those buildings completed and and uh

121being able to showcase those. Also, >> you know, Rick, um that bridge would be an asset for Grten open space as you walk across Graten >> when you you don't you wouldn't have to walk through the whole neighborhood do Judson and everything to connect >> to the next property. So, that would be an absolute plus. So, maybe Graten Open Space could get involved with that also. Well, they they would be happy if we did it. I mean, we've already there there's already a plan drawn up by our engineering department from 2018. So, that's the basis for what we're looking at. Um, so there's really nothing >> go right to BB Pond. >> There there's really not much to do other than to build it at this point. >> Great. Thank you. >> Is each of

122the cafeterias um look look alike, Joe? Um, I'm sorry. I didn't quite understand. >> That's because I had food in my mouth when I was talking. My doctor has told me never to do that and I still do it. Um, so you can all tell Virginia Gene on me. Um, so do both of the cafeterias look the same in each of the in both elementary? >> They look very similar. Um, so basically they're they're oriented as multi-purpose spaces. Um, you know, we we we are trying to squeeze as many uses out of every square foot as we can. And this is this was uh one of the early suggestions and I think it was a good one. So, this area doubles as a music performance room. These are these are actually um there's an operable

123partition here. So, it can be closed off to the cafeteria. So, you could have events happening in here and a classroom happening here, music classroom here. But then you can also open it up and have this more as a focal point. Um, for instance, as is shown in this rendering here, you can set up the chair. So, it's really more of a more of a performance space. And and the decision early on um through the board board through the Brontton public school staff and of course superintendent was was to look at how we constructed like the blackbox theater and to have it all at one level because if you uh need an ADA ramp here 18 in you talk about an 18t ramp and that takes away from from space in the building. So the

124thought is just like the middle school to use risers if you will in that area or be able to close it off as Joe said and and use it for a classroom if necessary. >> I can remember saying early on you know being a principal myself how the cafeteria was often just a wasted space. Some of our schools have cafeteria gyms but then they can't schedule as much gym. >> So how can we use that cafeteria throughout the day? And I would say that Grant Middle School has learned a few ways to use that space because of the design. And I hope this will be true too for the two elementary schools. >> Yeah. Yeah. We hope so. We we hope the decisions that were made along the way as part of the design that

125>> that Joe helped us with and you folks at Gren Public Schools helped with will >> stand us in goodstead when the buildings are actually open and in use. >> Right. >> Yeah. Um, I know it's been a long meeting, but we do have some sort of show and tell of the of the buildings in construction. Are you guys willing to take a quick look through those? >> Sure. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Of course. >> Can I Can I ask a question? >> Oh, Lee, absolutely. >> Uh, thank you. um all of the renderings that we're seeing, anybody can be seeing that we are now at a point where one of the schools is called Fames River, the other is now called Mystic River. Um we're not using Cutler and we're

126not using Westside anymore. >> So if those those uh could just be changed for things people who are going to be seeing these, >> right? and and we understand that, Lee, these were made uh as part of the educational show and tell to the state, in which case we have to use the original names because that's the way the grant was written. But certainly >> Thank you, Rick. I appreciate >> Certainly, if we start putting stuff up on the website, we ought to use the names that you folks have adopted for the schools. >> Thank you so much. >> Yep. You're welcome. >> Yep. Uh thank you for bringing that up. Um, and so this is this is uh what what we in our our shop know as Cutler, but uh is now Mystic River

127Magnet School. Um, and we just wanted to show you some progress through here. And you can see you can see almost all the masonry is up. This is a stair tower that's waiting for some of the glass to go in. And this is this is on that threetory portion that we were talking about earlier. So this these are these are all the classroom blocks here. Here's the little bridge uh to the academic area that's happening over here. This is the back side of the gymnasium here. Um I'm sorry, the front side of the gymnasium. I'm I'm not used to seeing it. So the road is out here. This is the tree that we're preserving. And this is the this is the gym with these high bay windows that'll let light in uh up high. I

128think when you do your tour, you'll be really happy with the light into the classrooms. The windows are tremendous in those areas that we're able to see. Right now, you'll see a lot of temporary structures in there, and those will all be coming down and the windows put in as you saw in the last view there. >> That's right. And um again, we get very excited about this. This isn't the finish obviously that you're going to see. But what what you're seeing is what's called ABB or air and vapor barrier. Um it's not very exciting. It's not very interesting to look at, but it's a hugely important portion of your building because it means it's keeping um the moisture inside of the building where it needs to be and not condensing in the walls and

129not creating all those things. So um as you're going around, you're seeing the flashing and everything else like that. So, you'll imagine the final product, but this is this is really where a lot of the guts of the project happen and making sure that everything is the way that it's supposed to be. Uh, we've got some painting of accent walls that are going on inside uh what we call building C, which is that big threetory classroom area. Um, you can see up above here, too, we've got all of the utilities that are installed, and pretty soon we'll be getting uh ceiling on in this area. This is what the administration area looks like right now. So, you see all these stud walls that have gone up, all this uh plumbing work. Uh we've got sprinkler

130lines going through there, all that stuff. A lot of activity happening. Um now I'm going to show you Westside, which again is the is the one in the city of Graten. uh the one that has the the big steep hillside. So someone asked earlier about that sort of uh that grade change if you will that's happening. So just for perspective this picture is standing here pretty much where you would walk in near to the the front door of the building. And this is the grade all the way down to this big three-story building here. This is these are the uh those windows that Rick was talking about. This is the bridge between the buildings. So, these are pretty much floor to ceiling glass overlooking this area. This is where the uh the smaller kids play

131area is going to be. And this is the entrance down here. There's a separate entrance in both schools uh for the younger kids as well. So, we we sort of separate that traffic out of the of the younger and the older kids. As you can see here, the air and vapor barrier is going up along here and most of the masonry is in place. This is the entry to uh Westside. Again, you you see a similar kind of canopy as was on Cutler. And uh again, we've got the brick going up on the gym in the background. And this is the onestory administration building that's getting roughed in here. Kelly, when remind me again when we have when we're getting our windows in place. window start window started today actually um on the classroom wing

132and then they're going to start on the admin area probably towards the end of the week. >> That's great. That's really the final closing in of the building. >> So you see the the the gym at Westside again very similar. We've got these these uh big windows up high let light in. Oops. This is a pretty dramatic picture of looking at that three-story classroom wing all the way down here to the uh to that bridge we've been talking about. And you can see sort of the steepness of this slope up to the up to the regular area. This is the electrical room. Um again, these are all the panel boards that are going to be filled pretty soon with circuits and circuit breakers and all that stuff. And I'll leave you with an accent wall

133in one of the classroom uh wings here. Uh and again, ceilings are going to be coming pretty soon. And you can see all the outlets for all the Prometheian boards and all the stuff that we're going to be putting into the room. Um so, thanks for your patience. I'm happy to answer any other questions as I'm sure is Rick and and Kelly if you've got them. Any other questions about that before we go into the technology plan, >> the fact that the fact that we're like, we got the light at the end of the tunnel with the pandemic, which means that we can really fully enjoy the middle school because though some of us went in at last summer, but we were having to be distant and wearing all of our masks and stuff like

134that and not really be able to go into the schools at the present moment. So, the fact that we're going to be starting and being able to look at these these three beautiful buildings and these two elementaryaries specifically is just so exciting. Thank you so much and proud. >> Yes, we are. >> It's a good team. It's a very good team putting these together. >> Okay, the tech stuff. Joe and it's >> Yeah, >> segue right in. you were going to join this meeting first or we going to talk tech first. >> So what we're going to do because um Rick we um I think we have well board um do we want to um go to the rest of what's on our agenda and then and then adjourn the meeting and then have them

135talk about the tech the tech stuff? We don't have a lot that's left on our agenda. Can't we talk about the tech stuff and then just have a short meeting after it concludes? >> That's what I was planning, but I wanted to open. >> Sounds good. >> All right. So, actually, if you guys could just go into that, then we could then um do as Rita just said because I'm not >> Okay, Joe, you're on again. >> All right. Yeah. So, I'm I'm just going to take you through one of the schools because it is pretty repetitive and um you know, just as a confession, my eyebrows begin to touch when I I see too many acronyms and you know, equipment that I don't quite understand. So, um you know, bear with me, but I

136I I think um I think it's a good design. Uh first thing I'm going to show you are just the drawings. And what these drawings are going to show you uh when it comes up here um it's going to show you basically how we're configuring just the technology portion of this. So we we covered the the furniture and stuff in a previous submission. This is just the technology. So this covers um for instance wireless access points. It covers monitors. I'll show you um a few areas like that. So, let's take a look at the uh this is the administration wing. So, this is the this is the main vestibule in here as we're going into west side. And this is all the stuff that we've got. So, we've got, for instance, monitors on the wall

137here. We've got an access point in the ceiling. We're accounting for printers, all that kind of stuff. So, it may sound it may sound um detail oriented and it is, you know, because we've got to make sure that there's power and data for all that stuff that we need um as well as some of the other equipment. But what I'm going to show you now is uh kind of the list of the this is this is twofold. So, it's going to show you all of the a list of all the stuff that we're buying and it's also providing a cost estimate. And as I'll let Rick as the as the numbers guy uh go over this. Um, and we are we're in the process of of uh of uh getting this whole thing ready to

138bring to the state. Uh but you can see we've got uh LAN network switches, we've got wireless access points, we've got uninterrupted power supplies, we've got uh display monitors, charging carts, visitor management systems, servers, and we also have point of sale systems for the cafeteria. >> So, so to pick up on what Joe's saying, you know, we did want to make sure things were the same. For example, points of sale would be the same as the middle school, which we asked uh for um charging carts are really the same for all of the schools. So, there all be a consistency across the three schools, if you will. Our our biggest uh surprise and uh I think uh surprise in a good way is really the budget for technology. We had in originally we had set

139aside a million dollars. So, we're going to be able to return in the neighborhood of $400,000 to the owner's contingency, which would help us look at other things, potentially sing the fields or providing uh irrigation, if you will, those sorts of things that uh we would have to take out of the owner's contingency. But it gives us a lot more flexibility. And unlike the furniture, uh most all of the furniture except for maybe one or two items were bought uh on government or state contracts. We have like two or three items here that actually have to go out to bid and the rest of them will be bought on state contract which typically gives us a better price. So, so we're really very happy with the budget that came in. Part of the reason for

140that is the Prometheian boards were included in the electrical contract. So, that saved us several hundred,000 that would have normally been in this budget. Um, and I don't have anything else on budgetary stuff if people have any questions, but uh I we appreciate the work that was done to put this this stuff together and hopefully this building will operate as well as the uh or both of these buildings as well as the middle school is right now. At the risk of someone of Rick that you want to drive me out of town, can you walk me through why the board needs to vote on the technology plan? Like >> the state, >> I'm sorry. The state requires it. The state requires uh the phase all of the phases to be approved by the board of

141education permanent school building committee even though they're they're an oversight and don't uh build the buildings per se and don't control the budget necessarily but you have to approve and the both the superintendent and the chair have to sign first the construction part. Um, typically if we did playcapes as a separate phase, they would have to approve and sign for those just like you you had to sign for furniturees, fixtures, and equipment. And now you have to approve the technology budget. Um, some of it seems a little antiquated, if you will, but that's the state requirements. So that's that's why we're here. >> So th So we're just voting on a phase of the project, and it just happens that tonight is the technology phase. >> Yes. this would be the last phase of the

142project. >> Okay. I I appreciate that. I um you know, I just sort of said sure, we'll vote on that. But I just wanted to make sure that I understand um that this is part of the state systems requirement that the board understands that this is the this is the this is the phase that's happening and this is what this is what our >> because we we're required to go again to the office of state grants OCGR again on Friday. with all the appropriate signatures. We had to get the fire marshall to sign this. We had to get the ADA officer to sign the document. >> Okay. >> We really have no play in technology, if you will. >> Okay. >> So, so it's it's kind of a cumbersome system, but it it is a

143state requirement and we'll go to the state on Friday to make this presentation and hopefully gain approval at that point and be able to go out and buy the buy the equipment. So, so what the board needed to know tonight is is that the two new elementary schools, their technology plan is very similar to each other even though they're different sites, but they're very similar. And um Joe was able to talk through a lot of like really great names um that some of them I understand. >> Yeah. Some Yeah. Some some we all don't. Yeah. >> Right. Um, but I just I and I am sorry if the board if you all knew that and you all understood that. I just I wasn't quite sure about why we were doing that. And it's always a

144good reminder. >> And just another reminder that our staff has been involved and collaborated, >> you know, with the architects and with Rick Norris and the building team. So that Dennis Cola like he did for us for Grant Middle School, he's been involved with his team looking at this to make sure that we have the right access points and all of that. So people who have expertise in this area that I trust have done a lot of that leg work. So um you know which I'm grateful for. And now Tom Ldale is taking this on while we're in in flux. So >> sorry to interrupt but thank you. That's the rationale. Okay. Well, >> Joe, did I ruin your flow? >> No, no, no. I I I have no flow. >> I So, you know,

145this is this is the list of the stuff that we're purchasing. Um, and as as Rick pointed out, some of it's most of it state contract, a few items are bid, couple direct purchase and so forth. Um, but uh I'm I'm happy to answer any questions or or take a look at any of the plans or anything if that's useful. Um, other than that, I think we would just request a vote >> and that vote will happen once this meeting is over and we'll go into a special um board meeting. >> Rita, I saw >> is there are there any um outside lights um security cameras involved in this? Did I miss that? No, there there's a whole security system in there, if you will. >> Okay. >> All the cameras in the construction project.

146So, those have already been uh wired and they'll be installed during construction, so it's separate from this. >> Yeah. >> And but well, there'll also be lights around. >> Yep. >> Okay, perfect. Thank you. >> Not in this package. Yep. >> Yeah, we had to do that at some of our other schools, so I was just curious. Thank you. >> Yep. >> You're welcome. there'll be a room for the SRO or that sort of thing again for him that person to monitor if you will. >> Dean, >> yeah, I have a question on the lighting now that you brought it up. Um, do we think they might be the kind of lights that would um cause us to be bad neighbors? >> Um, >> so I can I can speak to that if you want.

147>> Yeah, go ahead, Joe. >> Yeah. No. So, we we've gone through um both of the local uh planning and zoning offices and as is as as part of what we have to do, we show a what's called a phototric plan, which shows how much light is being uh how much light is reaching the surface of the property. And basically, these are these are sort of zero lot line fixtures. >> So, no light uh goes off of the property onto somebody else's property. They're >> all cut off fixtures, you know, so it doesn't >> go out the side like the old street lights as you may recall. It's all shines down and >> and as Joe was saying, there is a there was a plan that had to be reviewed. >> All right. So, it's

148not going to be lit up like a like a refinery. >> No, no, no, no way. >> No. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions from the board? >> I have to ask, what was the $100 that was ineligible? Yeah, >> $100 was the the key cards themselves for the security system um for the you know to the card access system and the state won't reimburse us for those because they know that they're going to get replaced in two years. So it doesn't make sense to bond for 30 years for something that's you know going to be out of for two. >> Thank you. Anything else? Is it time? >> No, it's not because we've got a couple more items on the budget. But good good try, Andrea. We're doing pretty good for such an

149action-packed meeting. >> Yes. >> Y >> go Huskies. >> So, if there's no other, we are going to go um further into our meeting and so that we can adjourn and go into the next one. The next thing is the DoD supplement, Susan. >> And I think Ken can pull that up. >> Oh, there's Ken. The board had asked us to kind of go through a little history of the how we've used the DoD supplemental impact aid and kind of to look at what the beginning balance was back in 2019 to next year's 2020 2022. um and the expectations and then the amounts we've received um although 2022 is an estimate but as you see even the amount we've received and 2019 it was like 275,000 but then it went up um over a 100,000

150the year after and now another almost 100,000 um for 21 so we have seen increases in that so Jay's suggestion to use the 32 $24,000 was actually a good one because we have seen greater growth in the yearly the annuals and it's added on each year um some significant savings where um you know just a few years ago it was under a million and now it's over a million by 327 by 327,000 expected. So kind of interesting that number >> that the uh the amount that we receive from uh from this we typically get it in the July August time frame. So that that 260,000 that we're estimating uh will come in uh July or August. Uh but we don't know what that number is until we actually receive the uh receive the documents from

151the from the Department of Defense. And then you were asking what are some of the things that have been purchased over time and a few of you have mentioned to me that this has always been the graten way that they really have always allocated these types of funds or mostly for technology although um there was a year that you know a baseball field was in there but I think most of the time it is technology so as you see we really addressed that Chromebook onetoone initiative as you know we heard from a lot of people including Mike and I that our um front end boards were going on us the lighting and so looking at a Prometheian board upgrade especially at the high school and we have some of those boards um actually coming into

152us pretty soon to upgrade. So those are the kinds of things that we have really allocated on the most part and then it looks like we had paid dues a few years ago. Um, and then tennis courts this year. Tennis court. >> Jay, I saw you raised your hand. >> Yeah. I just wanted to to mention people ask why we we don't spend it down completely every year. And I I think that there's been a long-standing um thought that these federal funds are never guaranteed, >> right? And the idea was that if for some reason the funding were pulled, we would still be able to fund our technology plan, you know, for a couple of years. Um so this was, you know, this is why to try to keep it um uh sustainable. Um right,

153>> you're exactly right, Jay. this is actually part of our sustainability um especially for technology and um and I think we've been um very prudent in the way that we've spent it and careful about it and it really goes directly in the hands of students which we think is also a good thing. >> Any other questions about that? I think we had had that in a couple board packets, but we really wanted to be able to review it with you so you understood. So, if you have any questions, you know, >> well, especially as we're going to be going in front of the town council and doing a presentation for the public hearing and stuff, I think it's the more times we hear it, the better that it is. And >> that public hearing is

154on the 25th, and that will be the date that we do the presentation. at the end of this month. >> Right. So, um if we got no if we got no if we have no further questions about the deal um the DODIA um let's move on to the referral list. Um Joan, thank you for um updating. It looks like actually some of the stuff has actually made it, but I'm um always wanting to hear and if you notice, it came back. So, I'm actually excited about that. Um, any other comments about that list? Miss Joan, you've done such a great job. >> Kim, it's Liz. >> Liz, sorry. >> It's okay. I get it. Um, I noticed on the curriculum um, action plan that there was only two items mentioned and I really thought that

155we had talked about adding the um, the stuff about the AfricanAmerican, Latino, Puerto Rican studies course and to have Carina be able to come back and discuss that with us. So, I I thought that we had said that a couple of months ago and maybe I'm um maybe we have done that. It's been a while since we've done curriculum and I just didn't check my notes and I'm just bringing it up so that somebody can refresh my brain. >> Is that under the DEI um under the CO? >> No, it should be under >> you're looking at the action plan, right? With the the grid. It should be under curriculum. >> That's different. the DEI. I think what Liz is referring to is the state required >> the state required um Kamita now has it

156doesn't need to have our approval though Liz and I think that okay >> had her come in and I think you've had that conversation um Jane I don't want to speak for you or for Andrea around that but I think that the reason why it's no longer on there is because you've done that piece because it's not something that Graten owns necessarily in terms of that we don't we don't um we don't create the curriculum, right? It's it's a curriculum that that is brought to us, >> but I do believe that you all approved it officially at a board meeting, the same board meeting that you approved the DEI language. >> Okay. I I'm like I said, I'm sorry. I I just >> look that up. >> That's why we're reviewing the referral list because

157if you don't bring it up, then we don't then that we don't have that conversation. Uh Jay, >> I'm I'm not sure if you covered this at the uh the liaison meeting on on Wednesday, but um I had requested that maybe town staff project the number of students that would be anticipated to be um coming from all the new building projects around town, the Mystic Bluffs, the new one in the city, uh the one that may or may not be completed near um the submarine base. Um just so we can get an idea of how many potential new students could be coming into the uh the district and where they'd be coming from. >> So Jay, we did talk about that in the leazison. So I I had planned to report out at the regular

158board meeting. Okay. But I think what the mayor and I kind of talked about was that that would be if we were to ever do like a joint meeting between town council, board of ed, um, and RTM, I guess that's not more than a joint, but, um, the three bodies to kind of come together, that that was one of the discussions, but it seemed that the ones that the town had involved were more singleuse sort of not single use um, uh, singleerson, one-bedroom, um, apartments, but they don't really have a lot control over the ones that are not they're not not under they're just in terms of another developer. So is what I sort of remember that conversation but I'll make sure that you get that information but it was talked about. Um but if

159you still would like to have the town kind of come in that would be okay. Um once again I think that that would be a good joint town council board of ed. >> Well I would be interested in hearing from the staff. In other words, you know, the as elected representatives, we don't know, but the staff would know, well, that development is going to have one bedroom, so it's probably not going to have a family. Uh, or the these have been, you know, planned to have two or three bedrooms. So, I just was wondering if we could get their best estimate. >> I did follow up with John Bird and ask for the information. I have not received it yet, but I will. >> Okay. I just didn't know if we wanted to put a

160placeholder in the referral list. Uh, I think it's important that we be able to project, you know, where the growth's going to be in town and and know it now. So, that's >> I would too. >> So, >> and the city. >> And so, Joan, if you could put that as a placeholder underneath committee as a whole um for looking at projective um population growth, that would be D&D. Thank you. Any other further conversation about the referral list? No, there's some suggested future topics. >> Oh. Oh. Oh, thank you, Rita. Thank you. I >> I would like to add as a suggested um our our re-entry plan for the Graten Public Schools when we're bringing our children back the time plan at a at a CO meeting. So maybe next week >> whenever it's ready

161and and also the uh survey from the parents, the results of the survey, >> Kim, Liz, are we um and Susan put maybe this is a question for you. Um, I know we're looking at the reopening of schools for the the spring now, but are we uh planning anything about the next school year? >> We're really um working on what's going to be needed this year and in the summertime for summer school. >> I think we really need to see how this all plays out this spring. you know, kind of a a pilot of this situation and not knowing really um totally what the health situations are, but I'm hopeful that it's going to be five days a week and you know, we'll have everybody back safe and sound and you know, it looks it's

162looking that way as I'm optimistically. >> I'm very optimistic, too. I'm very hopeful. >> Me, too. >> So, and I go get my shot on Thursday. Good for you. Jay, >> I had another future um topic. I was wondering if Ken could come back and explain to us again how we come up with the out of town uh tuition rates. I was approached by a family that lives um out of town, but two u the grandparents live in town and the question was, you know, that our tuition rates are not competitive. And I know it's not going to be a large number of people, but um going forward, if we want to build the IB program and um also fill these new elementary schools, um I think it would be good to have a competitive

163out of town uh tuition rate. When they were looking at at private schools, they were actually lower than what we were offering. And so I thought could we discuss the possibility as we have in the past uh but never reached consensus on about offering some kind of discount especially if they have a connection to the town already um where they have you know relatives that live here um so make that >> okay would that make sense for it to go into the finance and have you guys kind of say that this is what what the rates the two rates would look like so that could come down to the um committee the whole >> I mean we could but um you know the the whole board is going to have to to vote on this,

164>> right? But I think that if you guys had the meat of the discussion about sort of this is sort of what this rate, this is how we came up with it. This is sort of why. And if you guys had done that um that leg of the journey, I think it would be easier for the for the board. >> Okay. Well, we'll add that on for our next one. That would be that would be super >> because when you're thinking of competitive rates, I mean, are you thinking of proial schools or private school like Pinepoint and the Williams School because that's our makes our rates look very inexpensive. So, I I was just curious what they what you were what your frame was. >> Well, maybe that would be something that the finance and

165facilities committee could kind of take a look at about what is what are the neighboring like what is old lime? What is what would be a problem? They mentioned they mentioned NFA for example. So, >> okay. >> So, I just think, you know, if we could be in in a ballpark, >> that'd be that would be perfect. That would be nice to finally get that issue resolved. That would be nice. >> All right. So, Joan, we're going to add that to finance and facility. >> Any other motion to adjurnn? >> Can I have a second? Uh, I'll second it. >> So, the so the discussion is is that please don't leave. We are going to be going into a special board of ed meeting so that we can um vote on the technology plan as

166it was presented um by Joe and where is my other um and right in front of me. Um um so that we can have that get sent up to the office of budget whatever they are. Are you are you saying that we do not leave and then come back? >> That is correct. Lee, if you could just stay there. But if I hear no other um discussion, I am going to um all those in favor of ending the meeting, please say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Abstain. Motion is carried.