Hampton BoE Zoom meeting recording 07 28 2021

001okay do you know it gives us the choice now to leave the meeting if we don't want to be recorded that's new oh okay so we'll call to order at 702 verizon time and we'll start with our audience for staff and citizens okay we'll move over to correspond sport correspondence to the board frank you have a letter and then i think i i just have one i thought i had two but i just see one here okay i do have a letter um it reads it was oops hold on okay thank you it was uh dated july 6 2021 dear uh dr ola and ms roberson it is with mixed feelings that i must write to you my letter of resignation i respectively asked to resign from my kindergarten teaching position as of august the

0029th 2021 while i have only been with hes for a short time i have always felt welcome and i am so glad that i was able to end kindergarten on such a great note for some great students unfortunately due to budgetary concerns i felt that it was best at this point in my career to see permanent employment i thank you for your support and graciousness during my time at hes sincerely rachel porter thank you and that that comes up as a item on the agenda now i have to whom it may concern it is regret that i am writing to inform you that i will be resigning from my position with the hampton board of education effective on august 31st 2021 i will in the near future no longer be a full-time resident in the

003town of hampton or the state of connecticut this would not allow me to perform my duties as required i have very much enjoyed being a part of the attempt to provide the best education for our students as well as taking into account the expenses to town taxpayers please do not hesitate to reach out to me for any assistance i could provide to you or the town best regards neil moon so we'll miss you neil i'm sorry to see you go um i'm going to put under additions to the agenda um to discuss uh being one board member short okay so that's all i have for um correspondence now we have approval of the 6 23 21 minutes and i will jump right in with a huge mistake that jumped off the page when i read

004it after i printed it out under number three correspondence to the board the last sentence said rose bisson read another letter from raider raider and that should be robert raider know the last name rose please r-a-d-e-r thank you you're welcome does anyone else have um yes i do susan lovegreen um i don't know if this is important and it might not be a big deal but i notice on um number 17 it has the time that you entered public oh never mind i just reread it okay great never mind it's fine rose are these the minutes that had me present i believe i wasn't there they sure did let's remove that anything else pros yes one uh i think under the minutes we should have something said about the discussion concerning uh the critical race

005theory just at least mentioned that the board discussed it the pros and cons and we didn't really act on it but that there was a strong discussion involved at least that should be reflected thank you i i personally don't agree um so when i submitted the minutes i didn't put that where does it even where was it on the agenda did i skip something on the agenda that that was the correspondence with robert rader i think that was a letter we were we discussed so but it we did we added to the agenda we must have because i know we discussed it for like an hour [Music] it's number eight oh yes it is number eight um so since the the person who put the minutes in uh does not believe it doesn't go there

006if the board chooses by vote to put it there it will go in as a correction i'm not hearing a motion i make a motion that we uh correct the minutes no it has to be specific one okay then it should i make a motion that we correct the minutes to reflect that there were opposing and supporting views towards critical race theory and there was no decision made but there were concerns raised and they were very strongly voiced thank you you know it occurs to me we didn't make the original motion to accept the minute so um uh if if juan and russ will agree their motion can read motion to approve the minutes [Music] um of june 23rd with the following corrections and we can put um juan's first but i'll admit i did

007i got reflect that there were supporting and opposing views views concerning critical race theory we say more that's good okay and that would go under eight so under item eight and then we had um under i under item one call to order business coordinator sally lahu was not present and then under um correspondence to the board wrote rose bisson read another letter from robert raider um did anyone have any other corrections would you please read the um the statement that one made before we vote i didn't catch it matthew do you want me to read what i wrote or do you want to read what you wrote well i i had that just one asks for the minutes to be corrected to reflect that there were opposing views concerning critical race theory under item number

008eight one did he get it the way you want it opposing and supporting okay and supported there were views supporting and opposing critical race theory uh being implemented into the school systems in uh connecticut i think that was it you could excuse me russ is that okay with you yeah it's okay with me okay what what you just said yes one man make a friendly amendment saying not the schools in connecticut but hampton well i think the discussion did cover connecticut neil were you referring to just hampton or were you referring to connecticut well uh connecticut is uh what was his name carlos yucci he's the gentleman that sent it in conjunction with cabe that came down from the state board of education basically saying this is what they're going to start doing they didn't

009say how they're going to do it what your curriculum they're going to use or any of that stuff but so it definitely affects hampton it affects all the towns i don't know how you would word that what do you think mary ellen does that answer your concern well yeah that's fine but i i just um meant that we only govern hampton so that's why i thought of it but i i don't have a big objection to putting it under you know saying connecticut and anne's trying to talk hold on go for it okay okay so i need to say just point to clarification that corliss is a an administrative assistant she was the one who typed the letter she did not compose it and her her name was on the document but only as somebody

010who put it together she didn't compose it at all just so you know she's the secretary administrator yeah i believe the document was robert rader and patrice mccarthy um any other um changes to the minutes hearing none oh all those in favor of the motion oh i'll do the i'll do the role based on where you show up on my computer russ yes neil yes mary ellen yes ann yes mark yes okay susan i'm gonna abstain matthew i also have to abstain one yes the motion passes unanimously um minutes okay on to superintendent's report dr ola um frank ola um my report really is a rendition of what we are going through in terms of the sr-3 funds and it's part of the funding process that all stakeholders have a part in the development of

011the plan and um so basically it is it is a review of all of the um timelines the recommendations and those recommendations that are listed were the result of the first meeting that the administrators had plus the first meeting that the administrators had with hea and hea in the administration had a second meeting and um the second meeting um they unanimously um agreed that the items that were listed were the ones that they felt were critically important and you received on tuesday a budget grant document that showed the generals pieces of that with the priorities listed about as hard a figure for the dollar amount as we could come up with and um we have been cut from 151 000 that was way back about three four months ago when we were first told of

012the grant down to 114 528 so we've had to do a number of cuts so the first piece of of material that you got it was entitled esther 3 arp grant with the number 114 528 in dollars and then the second paper that you received was the budget details and those details simply explained how we arrived at those figures these have been reviewed by the aga as one of the main stakeholders on august 2nd according to my timeline the reopening committee will also be looking at this they have received um these numbers none of the stakeholders have to vote for it or against it but they all have to have input in the grant application and i would like to ask that either during my report or at another point in this um which is

013number 10 the sr3 grants if you just get that document out and we can review it and discuss it so that i can prove to the state department that we have in fact asked you as part of the main stakeholders for your opinions on the funding process and the choices we are making the um issues and and i have to apologize to all of you i forgot that i had said in the ethanol meaning that i would ask that the unit that is the ac under the ac quality air quality piece which is number six on your list i was supposed to ask for not just the air conditioning function but these splits can also do heating functions and i was asked um by mary allen to find that information out and i totally forgot

014about it uh i called over and left a message with the company and hopefully they'll get back to me tomorrow or the next day so i can update the number not so much the idea of air handling system so that's my report unless there's some questions um frank i have one question yeah i'm just looking over all the paperwork and i just wanna you had said something and i was doing a little reading somebody and i think that's our august second meeting needs to look over these um priorities that you have listed and just say yep that's is that what you said uh when you said someone needs to give that okay that was that meeting not the board correct that's correct um what we've done if if you as a board feel that there

015are things that are not appropriate or other things that need to be added to make it more appropriate um we can do that i will just simply write that down and then the hea would have they have a scheduled meeting in case you guys have made choices um different from what's on this piece of paper that i had sent you um so that they can review it and then the stakeholders at night on the second from the reopening discussion group will um review all of these things and then the final um copy will be my um application for the grant itself the other piece to this grant is that if you as a group or that rose as the chair of this group we need letters of affirmation in other words yes the board of

016education or rows or individuals however you would like to do it support the grant application hea will do that um the members of the reopening discussion group hopefully will do that and hopefully you or the uh or rose will do it for the board of ed uh does that help you yeah yeah great thank you mark uh i'll probably discuss it later anyway but what's the difference uh on the second form the total is 193 was that just based on the previous thought one one total is 114 and the second page it's 193. i was just wondering what the discrepancy is i'm not sure i think you may have do you have one dated uh 727 or do you have a one that's dated well there's a summary of activity sheet yeah but at the

017very bottom of that sheet it has a 193 on it that was the total that we uh were estimating um and then we had to cut remember i said that they reduced our budget and so we had to cut out uh air conditioning and that kind of stuff and got it down from 83 and by removing air conditioning from a number of classrooms and putting it only in the classrooms which are occupied um all day every day so the uh the three team areas um uh we're getting the um air conditioning um and the art room so that um we got it down to that 40 000 mark so it went down to the actual grant number which is 114 528. the first document we had the we had to cut that's what the hea

018and the administrators talked about cutting and where we could cut and so the the result of that discussion is the the one that stated 727 does that help okay i have a question for our um for the chair of our policy committee so ann okay i'm here thank you and could you look in the policies and see what our policy about um grants is um i'm wondering if the board is supposed to be voting on grants my first thought is like well i i can do that you know after the meeting but yeah that that's what i mean yeah it's it's um i don't believe that that's something that we've done on a routine basis but there are some differences from grant to grant i i don't think we have a blanket policy that covers

019all grant proposals but some of them do need a blessing from the board of ed and some of them may or may not specify that but um usually the grant would would stipulate and my understanding is that in lieu of the whole board reviewing and approving usually it's either the superintendent or the principal or both or whoever is involved with the particular project would be um given the power to act on behalf of the board so i don't know instance when the whole board reviewed a grant proposal so we've run into several problems in the past couple of months um before i recommend a change in our policy i'd be interested in being sure what the policy is so if you wouldn't mind um finding that out and if you wouldn't mind forwarding it to

020me that would be wonderful okay i can look for that um i think it's quite possible that we don't have a single policy that government bless you okay then that's what you'll find on my machine i can send it out right now if you'd like oh yeah if you'll send it to my email thank you sally nevermind ann wants to know if sally said we have a policy sally is sending me what we have so i'll be able to look at it and know if i want to make any recommendations yeah thank you yes you're off the hook okay thanks okay did anyone have any questions for frank other than what's been asked already okay hearing none we'll move on to i'm sorry we'll move on to uh principles report i'm going to speak um

021for the principal's report um sam is actually um in uh on a ferry boat at this at this point um on vacation and she's unable to get a whole uh come into um the meeting um so her report is a relatively small short one listing of her activities but the numbers um i sent you a list of numbers of students in our school and the principal's report is was done on july 17th and um at this point there are a couple of changes because of students who have come in between the time the port report was made and the date of this meeting so i sent you something dated the 27th and that's the most updated number of students could we review those numbers frank uh we could i believe the changes now okay um

022i just have to find a document i printed it out but looking at it i noticed the two bottom lines are missing so i otherwise i would i would tell okay um sally do you have that report because i don't have it right in front of me at this no it's not the report we need it's the email no no i know the email of the that came from lisa right uh here i just oh do you want me to read it i have it okay yes mary ellen thank you thank you it says hi frank there are five special ed students that have moved on to seventh grade the upcoming year student count as of today is 75 not including stem students there are five students entering or already and attending stem we have

023six pairs in school and two open positions now i'm going to read the grades and the numbers pre-k nine k eight first eight second twelve third ten fourth ten fifth six six twelve okay and we have one outplaced and five at stem and i'm sorry go on frank i'm sorry no um the para positions um so let's stay on enrollment okay okay sorry yup so the students attending school at hampton elementary school will be 75 and there will be six outplay students so our district will be 80 children as it stands right now as it stands now no 81 okay plus the 75. oh it's not five it's six okay that's right yeah you have one outplays plus the five stem okay so we have so the district just respond has 81's children the school

024has 75. physically in the building as of the 27th of july thank you yes i'll put that down here um 7 27 21. okay now now you can go on thank you the um the pair up there's it says two open positions she used the word open kind of uh lisa used the word open uh loosely um we have one para position that's no longer required because the student has moved on to seventh grade who had a one-to-one para um and the quote-unquote open position is because at the end of the year we had a pair who has left us it has to be repaired we uh replaced okay so um the position is still needed in the school correct okay great okay thank you um those numbers are always always a big deal for

025us okay um i think we inadvertently left off the special ed director's can i ask report quick question of course i'm sorry mark just all right mark becker uh dr ola can you just talk to samut or uh maybe you can help but um a couple parents have asked and pointed out that the school calendar for this coming year is not on the website or hasn't been sent out so parents aren't really sure the first day of school okay so we will make sure we get that down to the i will certainly do that um i didn't realize the first day of school is believe it or not august 25th which i think is consistent with paris shelby yes well that and it's east con so the first two days of faculty or staffing of

026the 23rd and 24th pd and preparing the classrooms the 25th is the first full day for the school children there is another issue that we may have do not have to address at this point but we have a new holiday which is juneteenth but because our school year ends very early because labor day is so late this year okay that um the 19th of june which is a sunday so it's a federal holiday and a state holiday on the 20th which is monday does not impact students unless we have snow days so as we get closer to the end of the school year we may have to modify the calendar if we have um snow days that then bring us way past uh that 20th day uh not twenty day the june 20th which is

027federal and state holiday okay but thank you i didn't realize it's not there and i will make sure it's there and then it can go out on that email blast thing yep great thank you if you ever see those kinds of things you know um i don't necessarily always daily look at the at the website so anything that you see please let me know whether it's a meeting or just you know text me or email me and we'll fix it right away the sir grant will be up there okay juan you have a question for um frank no i don't well your hand is oh wait a minute no it isn't that was my my um cursor was on your space i'm sorry um okay so we'll move on as i said that there it

028was an oversight we left out the director a special services report so i don't want to i don't want to drop one on her real quick uh to do off the top of her head but if someone has a question this would be a good time to ask her a question are there any questions for judy apparently not you're off the hook there judy thank you okay business managers report mrs lahu i'm here does anyone have any questions that i can answer well i'd like to say i like this new format i found it um i found it easier to read and very informative thank you does anyone else have any questions i think next month is going to be the big month when we find out how we closed out the year yes we're

029not quite there yet yeah so we'll look forward to that okay we'll move on to discussion and possible action on the resignation of rachel porter do we have a motion that we accept the resignation of rachel porter um with appreciation for her service do we have a second i'll second susan lovegreen any discussion hearing none i'll call the roll rust i'm sorry russ if you want answered i didn't yes yeah okay neil yes mary ellen yes ann yes mark yes susan yes matthew yes one yes the motion carries unanimously [Applause] and um the position has been posted where has it been posted frank uh ct reap uh our website um indeed sally any other ones uh the cea ocean as well as you know to all our arcs in uh house staff as well yes

030the house it's posted internally okay um and i think this is a great time for our um i can't remember the name of the committee the committee that juan is now the chair of that's going to help us increase the diversity of our staff this is a great opportunity minority recruitment you what minority recruitment oh thank you very much matthew um so we'll look forward juan to your helping us with that yes ma'am thank you okay any further come up mary ellen mary ellen you're okay and that notice to uh the chair of well i think she's an associate dean or something at eastern because they have an early childhood program and many of the teachers here actually has some connections with eastern so i just wanted you to know that i did that and

031i got a response thank you they've been focusing on diversity wonderful thank you thank you okay now we'll move on to discussion and possible action on reductions of the board of education's approved 2021 2022 budget so mrs lahu got additional information from parish hill and based on that she believes that we will meet um mbr with the budget that was passed and since we're meeting mbr it's time for us to um discuss and hopefully act on the cuts so that um we can get going on the budget so we had two documents that came to us um two documents that came to us one is the administrative proposal for 2021 2022 budget reductions and it's dated july 26 2021 and um we've had two additional students accepted into stem so instead of cutting a hundred

032thousand we need to cut a hundred ten thousand does everyone have the um administrative proposal that document yes okay great the second document well it's not a document i guess we had an email um the board at its last meeting chose not to reduce one bus so i didn't think it was reasonable to come back with recommendations to reduce that included that i'm not saying we can't change our mind and reduce the bus but i think we need to know if we don't reduce the bus what else would be cut so that is what is in that email does anyone have any thoughts on what we should do uh rose yes frank um just frank ola just so that um everybody is aware i i don't remember to whom i said this i think it

033was the fno meeting um but i did call east con and if we cut that third bus and parents uh find that they are objecting to that and you choose to put the bus back in the budget let's say in october as the um it gets darker and colder um they could arrange for that they need enough time to know that but um there is that possibility problem of course is where how do we pay for it but um which um i think is a piece of information that's important when you make discussions about going from three to two buses i think that's a clever um a clever option that we can try it and if it doesn't work out uh we can go back because that's been our worry that if we cut it

034there's no way to get it back until the next year so thank you for pursuing that frank what we assume is that as it gets colder and darker uh and parents realize that their children are getting home in the dark some of the parents um will choose to pick up their child at the end of the school day so um there may again even though it might have a problem there may not be a an issue because parents have stepped in and taken charge of picking up their child mark just a question dr did you have a chance to talk to the superintendent from eastford by any chance eastford was i supposed to do that too yeah just um you said you were gonna have an upcoming meeting and i had mentioned that they had

035gone from three to two buses recently and had some learning curves so oh yes that they had um i'm i they had a problem uh it lasted uh a couple of months and then the parents basically which is where i got the idea the parents basically adjusted and most of the children who were of concern were very young and so the parent the mother was at home anyway um and so that's what they found their experience to be but it did take a full year for them to get um everybody attuned to that change the other other tune uh thing that they need to understand also or you need to understand is if we do that it there is no impact on the high school runs because the kids get on and off the bus

036in seconds all right there's no dilly dallying um as there are with the little kids who have trouble just getting up the steps of the bus and mommy waves and those kinds of things so um the algorithm that east kind uses to determine the bus runs is longer for the younger the students so that's a piece of the puzzle and then the other part is that we would have to extend as um a document that we i sent to you that was developed by mary ellen that showed the opening and closing of school um about 15 minutes later in the morning and later in the afternoon for the closing okay so does anyone have any ideas on what cuts we should make to come up with the one hundred ten thousand dollars that we have

037to cut this is the board members mary ellen can i yeah can i ask um if we try to reinstate the bus i notice that some of the items um on the other list the additional options involve putting some of that money over to s or three but can we do that if we've already submitted the grant um no we can't so where would we come up to close the fifty thousand dollars it would seem to me i'm sorry i it would seem to me you'd have to go back to the town i don't see any other way to do that unless there's something that we have not anticipated um like a family of five kids leave um three of whom are special ed i don't you know who knows i just don't know that's

038what i'm saying it's gonna be they can do east con can do it where we can find the money is the huge problem for bringing the third bus back into service so i'm not thinking it would be close to 000 that we'd have to find um because we'd already have a certain amount of days into the district um but we could do things like field trips uh right we could we could cut field trips uh how much money would be left in pd if we cut 6850 sally i think we do have a lot of pd that we're looking at at esser funds too so some of that um pd could be dropped if we needed to okay so we'll let's add it quickly so that's 5 000 now wait i'm sorry not yet it

039will be when i say i thought we don't need to pay for a coda supervisor this year we don't so there's 3780 add to that the 1300 and we've got 5 000 there um let's if we add the let's say 6800 what did i say we had five plus six is 11. so um 11 850 there equipment maintenance what kind of equipment is that frank well um one never knows um uh the the problem is anything within the building equipment that is not covered by the m core m core is our hvac and systems um repair people we have a contract with them anything above and beyond the normal contractual time of doing um anything that has to do with belts the furnace those kinds of things that's actually a different line um the equipment

040maintenance is actually uh the tractor the i think the microscopes the scale and the nurses office um that's usually about it so it's mainly tractor maintenance which we could the the problem is if we have large expenses other than that line just remember lines can be moved we have other repairs that need to be done like the ansel system we didn't know that we had to get that done that's not covered by the emcore piece it's a totally different piece uh we've had trouble with our fire alarms um and for the high humidity up in the attic has caused false fire alarms um probably about four or five so far this summer wow um and we had to get those things um repaired i haven't yet gotten a bill from fast which is the company

041that repairs that stuff so um i i am dubious about um taking away from regardless of what the repair dollars are meant for they have often been used for other lines and therefore we ask you to move it at the end of the year okay so if we leave that in we then so we're up to oh so i went ahead took out the general supplies and that put us at thirteen thousand two hundred fifty i'll take the five hundred instructional supplies that's eighteen thousand two fifty expendable equipment supplanted to well if if we lose expendable equipment we're up to 2250 and 6000 on textbooks we could still have 26250 to go toward the bus if it didn't work and if we're thinking that [Music] um it's not going to work because of the time

042the children get home then um the spring wouldn't be a problem so i would think we would have plenty if we cut all this stuff i'm not saying i'm happy about it i'm not saying i think it's a good good idea i'm just saying it's doable right now we're making choices about bad things to cut correct we don't have any happy thing to cut here so that could be an option does anyone on the board have a suggestion what we what we do rose juan yes okay i i think that we should at least try to see and adapt to the schedules of the buses if we only have two darkness is always going to be a problem it's normal for winter time i also feel that we can cut the teachers of the art

043teacher and the and the gym teacher more and i was going to ask when did we put the business court coordinator on 40 hours what i i have a piece of paper here before the hampton board of education 12-month non-union employee benefits right juan what that's saying is that um any benefits that that position receives is based on 40 hours so any benefits would be prorated from 40 hours okay but how many hours are you actually working now 29 and three quarters okay because this is reflecting 40 hours and i understand what you're saying to me now okay thank you but i still think that we can we can adapt with the bus and i can't do nothing about winter and i think the parents will adjust as we go along but i i think

044the our teacher and the gym teacher shouldn't be teaching reading or writing they won't be okay this coming year yes that's correct but i still think they're there more than they really need to be thank you so i guess what we're looking for right now is suggestions of what we're going to cut and i wasn't clear juan you're saying we should reduce art and pe but you didn't really give me a figure do you have a figure in mind well i think we could reduce them to half of what it is right now and we'd still the kids would still have all the a lot of time to do art and to do gym and that way we could use the person who's doing uh the computer stuff to help in the classrooms more because

045he's qualified to do math he's qualified to do other duties besides what he's doing right now so i don't believe we can reduce art if we have covid restrictions and i don't i don't think that we can count on not having them because children cannot be vaccinated um and pe isn't just pe it's health so all the kids need to go to both pe and health so i'm pretty sure that that's cut to about what we can cut it okay but a classroom teacher couldn't couldn't they also teach health if it was built into the schedule i don't believe that i think we need to have someone certified in health at the state department uh regulation i have to check on that thank you oh thank you if you would check on that that'd be

046great well just because of information just remember that by contract every teacher has to have a planning period every day so therefore we need to be able to cover every teacher um team um with some activity for those students which is why um for example in art you do half the class because of covid the other half goes to health and then vice versa and remember none of our students are immunized or vaccinated i guess is the right word and so therefore we have to continue that and our plan is to continue that and review it so as of january 1 2022 if there are any changes in any um vaccination changes or masking changes or cdc directives that change we can do that right now we cannot so the 0.4 and the 0.7 are

047required that's why we put that down as cuts the other cuts that the administrators have given to you is they are basically um positions um and health insurance and those kinds of things that we know because of changes in the numbers of people or in changes in choices that teachers are making relative to their insurance um are we know that we can cut those so um the biggest nut to crack here is is going down to two buses i think we all agreed that art and pe health needs to be cut down and the para position is another concerning position but with other cost factors and we have to get down to that 110 000 mark i think that the eight lines that we have recommended are the best and least impactful lines that we

048can use to cut to that hundred and ten dr ola juan uh so here's here's the problem i have these kids are together in class all day why can't they just take gym and art like the norton they would be normally together anyway and basically in those great levels what you're teaching whether you're a fifth grader or a sixth grader or a second grader or third grader it's basically almost the same concepts that it can be fine-tuned if you wanted to do that so i don't understand why we have to separate them for their special when they're together the rest of the day because they're in a double classroom our room is too small so everyone is too small to have all of the kids at once and do covid distancing but but okay health

049can be done in the gym you have lots of room in the gym with on cold restrictions and i'm almost done and the other thing art could be on a cart and that way they could stay in the classroom and the kids would just be already spaced out thank you uh i think juan is um making suggestions i think that that would be um i personally would say that that's inappropriate but um certainly you as a board can make those decisions what's an appropriate prank uh cutting uh in half um so that an art teacher only comes in one day a week and the pe teacher only comes in one and a half days a week if we cut the 0.4 and the 0.7 ftes then um that i believe is what he is implying

050and i don't i would not support that at all as your superintendent but it's your decision is that what you're suggesting juan that we cut the 0.4 to a 0.2 and the 0.7 to a 3.5 or 0.35 i'm not doing points what i'm doing is i'm just like off the top of my head these kids are together if you put art in a cart they would get their art like they were supposed to be without being separated without having to have the need to have that person there to do the other half of the class after the once one set of the class walks out so that's what i'm not understanding what am i at i am understanding also is that basically they're there to provide prep for the other teachers and i'm like oh

051we can work around that or we have to find a solution to that problem because that shouldn't be why they they're there because we're covering other people's preps i i agree with you there mark uh one i i just want to well one i just want to say that the the health health curriculum is different per grade i mean uh you the fifth and sixth graders are getting different curriculum from health and you might not be wanting to teach one grade what the other grade is being taught because it's age appropriate and it's the same it goes down multiple levels i mean you can't be teaching the same thing to a third grader that you're teaching to the sixth grader so it's definitely different curriculums for that but also like you know i just uh

052get frustrated when we only ever talk about cutting uh you know why can't we talk about enhancing you know i i talked to some people over the summer where they moved to town because at one point we had a spanish program we used to offer in the elementary school and yet every single year we caught we cut more we cut a teacher we cut this we cut it out we got to cut a bus you know it's just it's it's regretful that this board is getting to a point where we are actually recommending just we keep gouging gouge and gouging you know i joined the board because i am a proponent for the students and i want to see the school strive not that i want to continue to go so i i would prefer

053not to make any additional cuts to teachers but i will say that you know um i was holding out and i probably was not in favor of reducing the bus at the last meeting because i did not think that the hundred thousand dollars was um in compliance with nbr at the time and i you know appreciate sally looking into that so you know i instead of cutting additional programs and additional parts of that budget i you know i i would probably prefer to go down the discussion of reducing a bus i mean i can't bring myself to make a motion for that but i wouldn't probably oppose it for this meeting uh rose my answer um you may but please make it brief so other board members yeah the part of the problem and why

054we're doing all these cuts and i i too i was the school teacher i understood when we had cut it hurt but the the thing is we have to be sustainable and we have to have more kids because we're like under a hundred and that's really hard to to try to push your agenda when when our population is melting thank you mary ellen yeah i also want to say that i believe that the health curriculum is age specific and would not want to reduce or combine um different grade levels um in the health curriculum but i also want to make mention about the bus um i haven't decided which way i'll vote on it because i know that that's a substantial amount of money but i do want to say that if there's children on

055the bus that are going to be picked up by their parents i want to say that i kind of think that it may be those families that have parents who are home who don't both work and that have a car available and in some ways i kind of feel that it's discriminatory who gets to shuffle their kids home and maybe that will shorten the bus ride for everybody but i'm going to read the times now and this is not my figures this is based on the figures that dr ola gave us back in um march so um the afternoon run i know we're not concerned about perish hill but um the afternoon run for parachute would be one hour 49 minutes um on bus one and we'll still be 58 minutes uh going to school

056it's so it's about an hour for each of them one hour six minutes one hour from nine minutes coming home for our students the hampton elementary students one hour 17 minutes and one hour 26 minutes and to me that's very long um oh i'm sorry i misread something para shall run in the morning one hour 21 minutes one hour three minutes it's our elementary kids that have one hour six minutes one hour and nine minutes right to school so our kids would be on there an hour and nine minutes and an hour and 26 minutes so that's two hours and a half um for bus two and um two hours and about twenty twenty some odd minutes on bus one and that's a lot of time to spend on a bus um i think it's

057our obligation to get kids to school i know it is that's part of the state statute um i don't know where else we'll get the funds um i do think some parents will start shuffling their kids and i feel badly for those kids who don't have that resource in their families or their neighbors that's all yeah anne wants to speak and this is not worse but i'm listening to the discussion about the buses and i think we need to keep open to the possibility that if we were to reduce the number of buses that we would end up needing to hire personnel to monitor what happens on a bus because we're talking some cases very young children and you know there have been times in the past even with three buses when we've needed to

058provide some form of support on the bus and that is to pay somebody to help on the buses but overall i i am saddened that we're in the situation of needing to cut such large numbers um and i i think it is going to hurt no matter what but we don't want it to hurt the children primarily and i think you need to remember that the circumstances are a dynamic process right now especially with kovis i mean there are many factors over which we don't have complete understanding and nobody does so we need to be prepared for anything and i think the school has done well in sustaining quality programming for children in spite of covet last year and i would hope that we can no matter what we cut and how we do it

059that we can maintain those priorities of providing for children and families thank you does any board member who hasn't spoken yet wish to speak uh rose matt flared i'll just say i kind of to reiterate what mark said i'd i'd rather see us cut a bus than to take any teachers or anything away from the students at this point thank you russ you have to get closer we can't hear you like having a monitor on the bus i think that we're going to probably have to have it anyway because of the cobra they're requiring the cdc is requiring mass now so monitors are going to have to oversee that the kids are wearing their masks properly anyhow and i don't know how that'll be covered or that'll become uh money from the from the feds

060or not to cover that but thank you so neil yes yeah um more of a question than a comment how many uh students did we have on the bus that were tallied that we figured are actually taking a ride on the bus i know we have 75 but i'm thinking that we're we're in the 35 or 40 range or something that we're actually qualified taking a ride i don't know what that means qualified taking a run that they not qualified but how many do we know for sure are are actually taking the bus every day i'm just thinking of schedules um we could do a different schedule and cut the rate of time down a lot that's my assumption i don't know that for a fact but if it's 30 35 kids on a normal

061continuous basis we could contact the parents and say listen do we have to go to your place or um every day or whatever and when we're only getting 38 out of the 75 kids on the bus um frank do you know the answer to the question do we know about how many kids right rode the bus most days um last year um i you're asking me for a number and i can't give you a precise number anywhere from i mean there was were as little as um seven at one point and then there was as many as um 18 if i remember correctly um so um and that's because every kid had to be six feet apart if you remember correctly and therefore um lots of parents chose to bring their child to school and

062to pick them up after school because of covid um this year it's only three feet apart so we could put 35 on each bus of the two buses and still be um within that three foot limit uh because the the three feet um you stagger the kids from in other words um if you have double row and you have a um aisle in between the aisle is is um almost two feet two and a half feet and then you have the three foot bus seat and the three foot plus seat so but if one child sits right next to the aisle on one side of the bus the other student sits next to the window we can put um enough students on that bus to make it up to that 30-35 mark however how many

063parents will choose to have their kids on the bus based on the covet issue without vaccination i can't answer that question with any certainty i have a question mary ellen has a question rose i'm sorry i was i was muted because my dog worked um mark had his hand up first so can we go to mark first then you marry on do you remember having your hand up mark um yeah as the conversation went on i either got my question answered or was all set so thank you okay mary ellen okay so quite a while ago uh judy benson clark mentioned that other systems were allowing parents to transport and subtracting the kids from the bus list and somebody was going to check with the state to see if we could um do that like

064to say that we do not have to transport certain kids did we ever get an answer to that um mary ellen i got just the state guidance and forwarded that to dr ola i did not go into that specific questioning and i i don't have the expertise or knowledge it's it's a good question i forwarded him something he probably already had available i don't think i was that helpful now i think rose was gonna ask our attorney um our school attorney so she's she's muted now not on the screen so i'll wait for that answer okay because that would really solve it and i dropped the ball so i'm sorry um i i have questions into her that she hasn't answered so i will call tomorrow and do my two questions and help me phrase

065the other question you'd like me to ask you want me to ask is it okay parents to um let us know that the bus doesn't have to go to their house every day unless they contact us yeah okay yes and if we can drop the requirement that we provide transportation to all students no we we cannot you know we cannot well whether they can i think the question would be if it's acceptable to have a waiver i think i think the question is is it acceptable if the parents know they're going to drive their kid for us not to send the bus there that day i we cannot have them sign their life their rights away i'm sure that um but we can say if you if you need the bus to come to your

066house please give us you know 24 hours notice or i don't know 10 hours notice whatever notices um and then we will go there but if they know the child isn't going to be on the bus i'm hoping that we don't have to send it there i think that might be perfect okay rose juan i i think the original question was to find a legal document that would allow us or or notify us as to whether the parents were waving the kids taking the bus or not i think that's what we originally spoke about yeah but that we cannot do um we parents cannot be asked to sign their lives their rights away so they could sign the waiver and then have every legal reason to take us to court if say mom broke her

067leg and couldn't come pick up the kids and we said oh you signed a waiver so um it we can't is and if other districts do it i'm sorry uh i know districts do a lot of things that we would not do but i will talk with the lawyer okay one thing i i do want to say that i don't want this to affect attendance in any way because that's been a big issue with the state about kids not going to school so i hope we can work this out i agree that it should not affect attendance but let's see if we can work it out okay so i am interested in entertaining a an emotion about how we're going to cut 110 000 from our approved budget does anyone have such a motion roseman

068asked a question real quick yes i've been taking a few notes and i just want to double check something that you had just want to verify something that you had proposed in the beginning when you were proposing your cuts i'm just going to give you a few for examples like um maybe the coda supervisor which was three seven thousand three thousand seven hundred and eighty dollars when you totaled that up were you your suggestion or you were alluding to just repair for that dollar amount was that to replace the bus is that what you were looking at yes what i did was i went to the list of possible cuts if we did not cut the bus okay and you all right cool that answers my question and then if so in addition to the

069bus which is 54 000 because there's a few documents um that's only 54 000 out of the other 110 and i apologize for missing the last meeting but we're talking about the bus in 54 000 but what about the rest of that is that what we're trying to figure out now or are we looking at that um proposed yeah this is the um document that was sent with the board packet i have that okay so i was assuming all this was me i was assuming all those other things would go as written so when i did the exercise i did in my mind i was assuming we would make the cuts as proposed by uh dr ola dated july 26 2021 yes reduce one bus is number one number two reduce art from point five

070to point four okay yep that's how i understood it i just wanted to make sure thank you and then if we have to bring back the bus for an amount of time we could go to the items on the other list um that we would then have to cut in order to bring the bus back okay thank you rose juan you can can i make a motion that we have a straight up and down vote on what was presented by the superintendent on july 26 2021 absolutely make your motion there you go i make a motion that we have a straight up and down vote to see where everybody stands on this hampton board education administrative proposal for 2021-2022 budget reductions may i i mean i said you do it and that now i'm going

071to ask if we could just change the wording a little sure that you move we reduce the 2021 2022 budget um as proposed by the superintendent on july 26 2021 i'm good with that in the amount of 110 yes um would anyone like us to read in well you know what we can do we can send to matthew a um a non-pdf copy of the list and he could include that in the motion as well okay do we have a second for juan's motion can you just repeat it so i make sure i have it good for the minutes please sorry sure uh juan move to um reduce the 20 21 2022 approved budget according to the recommendations of the superintendent dated july 26 2021 for a total amount for a reduction amount of 110

072000. do we have a second i'll second season love green okay thank you any further discussion hearing none we'll call i have i have a discussion mary ellen um i just want to know um what about the things in the additional options list that we now know we don't need like the coda supervisor also the transfer to the cafeteria of 7550 and equipment and repairs which we can take out of capital non-recurring um i mean there there are other items and and i i don't understand um i know i know the the bus the 54 000 is the big problem that those things do not add up to fifty four thousand but um so it's a criterion that we're going to use for legislating the bus i mean is it the parent complaint what is

073it point of order i'm sorry juan what's your point of order uh we were going to vote up and down uh on that and right now we're discussing other things that we didn't put on the motion i'm my my question is about that it's like how do how how are we voting for one thing and ignoring the other i guess i don't i don't understand it so i would like to suggest that the students move into town and will cause us some costs we could use some of the other the other things for that we're allowed to say we know we don't need certain items we're not allowed to say oh by the way we had an expense pop up we need to add to the budget but those expenses do pop up so i'm

074thinking if we have a few of these that we're not going to have to spend they're going to have to go to those other expenses did that answer your question somewhat i guess oil is one of those things so okay got it okay so to answer juan's concern that we vote let's take the roll does everyone know what we're voting on cutting the 110 000 as recommended by the superintendent so we'll start with russ yes thank you neil yes thank you mary ellen i'm standing in i'm about mark yes susan yes matthew yes juan yes the motion carries you call it unanimously when there are extensions so one two three four five six it's unanimous and it's a quorum of the board okay although if i would like to say i am i'm not happy

075about making any cuts and i feel like we're choosing between a bad scenario and a worse scenario so i just feel like we should say that we're saying yes to budget cuts that i'm not really happy making but it has to be done and i suppose we have to do it so yes if we want to say that if we had the choice to not cut we would never do this but we don't have the choice yeah okay i'd like to say i i would like to say that i never am staying on the board i i just don't make that a practice at all but i would like my vote to go down as an abstention and not a unanimous vote well then you need to vote no it won't go unanimously i did

076see extensions in other minutes but i'll go with what you said okay well it's been my practice if someone abstains i don't count them toward whether it's unanimous if i am wrong in that i'll i'll ask the lawyer that well i've got her on the phone then we will certainly go back and i will eat my words how's that um before i forget to say that i will write it on my list so i don't forget okay um 10. discussion and review of the sr3 grant proposals and timeline as required for the grant application process so i thought i printed out everything i needed but i didn't print out that did everyone get a chance to look at that great um is there any discussion on the items do we agree with the items do

077we think they could be um they should be something else what are we thinking i'm just bringing them back up again real quick we talked about them a little bit earlier okay um well i feel as oh i'm sorry may i speak rose yes of course susan susan love green apologies um i believe frank had said earlier that in meeting with um the stakeholders that he's met with up until this point that these are the recommendations that they're making um i see that there's the enrichment program for uh next summer there's the after school program a little bit of professional development which would is probably going to be needed and then i see the rest the educators workforce the projectors improving air quality and then the playscape to support the school community um if frank

078and his team and the other stakeholders at the school are saying that these are their priorities and that's what they want and i'm fine with that thank you okay any minute i i went to that page too is there anyone else mary ellen yeah um i agree with susan if this has been worked out and with you know the administrators and the teaching staff that's great um the only thing i would say is try to get those mini splits to also heat as well as cool so that we can maybe save a bit on the oil and if we need to look at individual thermostats for those classrooms we can do that also not neces not out of s or funds but frank you want to say something i just want to apologize i did

079uh email you back i apologize that i didn't get that information from you um like i said i would from the fno meeting each of those mini splits in each room has an individual um thermostat and an individual controller so um heat and air air quality can be controlled by each teacher and i will get you a number does the mini split help does the mini split what to include it can i have you weren't sure if if it could heat uh you were talking only air conditioning rather than heat and air conditioning which is what i always think right it's a different unit that's why i have to get a pricing for that different unit the one that we went for is only air conditioning there is another unit that is dual and um

080so i have put a call in i left a message at um the company and hopefully they'll get back to me tomorrow so we can put we can go ahead so that we can uh see what the numbers are so if we if we um if we once we get the difference we can look at sources of funding besides esser or see if it if it's low enough if we can put it in the s or three correct but um yeah okay thank you and wants to say something yeah well i'm concerned because mark had his hand up first in and i'd like to uh go in the order i saw the hands go up but we'll i'll get to you uh mark i said is the esser it's covered related right it's it's a

081grant to help supplement covert but because of covert that we get the money to improve the school and the environment of the school yeah okay so one area that maybe i would think about is just like the outside of the school um i know in the back playground where we paved um only certain amount of painting has been done so far so i don't know if it's worth trying to figure out if we could re-instate like the hopscotch in the foursquare um i mean i can try to get to it but ultimately that might be something that would enable the children to be outside a little bit more and then also the the field in general um the the field is not up kept i mean um the the baseball area and stuff like that

082is completely overgrown and not really that usable so these are areas i mean i know right now um all the different cohorts are split up at recess into their different teams and they have to be at the different areas and they can't co-mingle so um you know when they are outside if they had some better facilities you know it would help enable that so that would be maybe one area that i would think that we might want to assess whether that was a priority or not just um to respond is uh frank holler the problem um is the um or our solution to that would not be to go to esser um but to use the um we just talked about and sally clarified in terms of mechanical materials we put money aside for the

083tractor and so forth that money can then be put towards rather than in that line we can put it towards um those kinds of improvements in the baseball field uh painting lines those are not huge expenses like the ac and the other kinds of things here so those are probably you know probably somebody to come out and paint uh with the spray cans is probably 500 and that gets somebody to come out and redo the field um a couple of thousand dollars so those are not huge expenses those are the kinds of things that we would be able to use um our current funding now that i know what our budget is um and i can um make that happen as quickly as possible i think it's a good point and i you know it's

084a point that none of us have thought about and i think it's a very valid point especially the baseball field and um you know the painting yeah thank you okay ian okay okay thank you i just wanted to connect the dots in terms of procedure um my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong here but my understanding is that this particular grant does require the stakeholders become familiar and sort of give the grant the blessing of the stakeholders that accurate correct that was my superintendent report right right that's that's what i thought i just wanted to put it on the table because not every grant requires that but that you know in in reading through things preparing for tonight's meeting that was my impression so i just wanted to say it out loud thank you

085do i hear emotion in well yes the way we give our stamp of approval is we make a motion and you just said we need to give so um i move that we approve the recommendations as presented by the superintendent for the sr-3 grant do we have a second do we have a second season of greenhouse second okay kathy donahue had her hand up and i called on board members first and she had to leave the rooms so um we i well i just wanted i just want to say i would have called on her if she comes back i will yes mary ellen um are we in discussion now yes okay so if we vote on approving this which i do approve but um and then we find out that we can fit in

086for a very reasonable cost the heating it says on this improved air quality by installing air conditioning units in the classrooms if we change it to mini splits it'll cover both heat and air my question is if we approve it like this can changes be made afterward because we're looking for the endorsement of the board and the endorsement of the reopening committee should we instead of move to approve should we move to endorse i don't know i mean can it be changed i think frank had a stand up to answer yeah i i would prefer that you not uh which is why i wrote it wrote the um piece as i did um discussion review you don't have to approve it you need to just give us input mark for example just gave us some

087input um in terms of what he thought would be appropriate and then um if there if if you feel that what has been discussed and you feel that it covers what the uh not only the faculty but the administrators feel is appropriate under the grant um priorities um then uh a vote of of um consensus or consensus vote something like that you don't have to actually approve it because once you do then it's going to be very difficult for me to then go to the reopening discussion group and say okay here's the approved plan and um there's nothing you can do other than say oh yeah that's a nice idea so i would prefer to leave it open i would disagree with you because we can have a special meeting if the grant changes so

088yeah it's up to you you're you're you guys are in charge here so i i want to know if ann would like to change her motion to say what's the word endorse support support well ands endorse ands gets to pick the word um i i'm fine with support okay and susan is it all right okay yeah that's fine yes okay so we're still in discussion kathy you left the room when i when it was your turn so you didn't get a chance to say i usually wouldn't ask for audience participation in the middle of the meeting but um this time we will so i'm sorry i was just pointing at steve to turn on the fan he had come in the room i wasn't raising my hand to speak i'm so sorry okay um in

089that case do we have further discussion from the board hearing none matthew would you read the the motion for me again so i get it right uh yeah certainly i had that uh in greenberg moves to support the sr arc 3 grant as presented uh by the superintendent thank you okay i'm calling the role russ yes neil yes mary ellen yes ann yes mark yes susan yes matt yes one yes and uh mark when you paint the the four square and hopscotch i'll be glad to help you i think mark said thank you i didn't hear it come through but is that what you said mark yes thank you okay great okay the motion passes as an aside i quickly googled robert's rules and i believe i am right that an abstention is not a

090vote so it doesn't it does not interfere with um a unanimous uh vote excuse me rose yes um i do want to encourage anyone that's willing to write a letter of support for any piece of the grant or the full grant we're asked to submit those with the grant application okay and who should they be addressed to um [Music] send them to me perfect and i'll just forward them as part of the grant application itself um sally does that need to be on letterhead hgs letterhead if it's coming from a board member does it matter no just sign it you know you could put your name on the top and then at the bottom when you sign it uh member the hampton board of education will be fine you don't unless you want a letterhead

091no just asking okay thank you i'll write a letter frank i'll i'll email it to you great thank you how are you going to email your signature i'll just pick a uh font that is in script okay all right we'll go on to item 11 discussion of new policy requirements as requested by dr gruenberg dr gruenberg would you like to talk about this and you're not muted okay yeah i thank you for putting that on the agenda and i'm not envisioning needing to spend a huge amount of time on this but i thought it was important especially at this juncture and even this week with the changes the requirements for math wearing changing just just a couple of days ago so i think it's time for us to be aware of the changes and at

092the same time to stay focused on what we know to be best practice because we did not always um we i i'm trying to figure out how to say this diplomatically we followed the guidelines but i think we actually many times um implemented strategies that were on a higher level than some of the executive orders so we we did not assume that we had to follow everything lockstep but i'm really wanting to hear what you all have to say i did uh schedule a meeting policy committee meeting in the library the fletcher memorial library and i spent a lot of time there i'm just being there being available to community members and i was by myself but i didn't feel lonely exactly because i was exploring the internet using the the devices that were available

093in the library and there are a lot of resources on covid and you know just poodles of resources many of which are coming from cape but many of which are coming from other sources as well so i just wanted to touch base about those and address any questions that anybody had has i so apologize i'm not clear on what you're asking ian i just want to sort of tip the hat to the need to stay tuned to this because if we as citizens who are volunteer board members are trying to keep up with what's going on you know with the different executive orders and mandates and differences of perspective and trying to decide what's best um recognizing that we're in the middle of a search and we're doing pretty well all things considered but there

094are issues not only with some of the states in particular i mean there there are real concerns scientifically about you know some of what's going on with the health community so i'm just i just thought it was important that we not forget all of this and right now we're we're short staffed um we we lost our trusty uh person rachel who was very good at um organizing a lot of the protocol for policy implementation and um monitoring you know to make sure that we're up to date okay thank you but i you know does that help at all not really well i think it does i i just want to add that executive orders for for us as a board of education it holds the weight of law so if an executive order says we

095will follow cdc then we're going to follow it i think any change please let me finish please um any changes we tended to have made up until now we've been tighter we've not been looser than what is recommended and i would assume that that would be what we would finish that we would continue right right right we would we were that's what i was trying to say in terms of our standards have been very high thank you so thank you for making it better than i did okay are there any further discussions then we're going to move on to discussion and possible action on the continued remote zoom board of ed meeting so there's two reasons why i'd like to suggest we continue on zoom one is that there is no vaccine for the children

096so if we're meeting in public and we have um you know we're bringing adults into the building who are not part of the usual building and we have parents maybe or citizens coming in in the audience we're introducing a lot of people into the environment that maybe we don't want to do for our our um for our students for our students and anyone who's unvaccinated um the second reason is on a personal level i'm not willing to make my health issues part of the town's permanent record i'm willing to discuss them after the meeting i'll share with anyone um i'll stay after the meeting if you would like but i cannot meet in a room full of people and i won't be able to for at least three months possibly longer so it would make

097it a lot easier on me if we could have zoom meetings and i'd like to ask if it would be possible for those three months if we could change to mondays again i can explain why that would be necessary after the meeting when it's no longer being recorded so it doesn't become part of the permanent town record but those are my two requests does anyone have anything they want to say about that susie gross um all i wanted to say is that's fine with me thank you both of them zoom and mondays yes zoom and i mondays are fine for me okay um the zan ready oh and you're unmuted okay um yeah i was wondering at some point if we might want to consider doing a hybrid version of the meeting or would that

098not be an option well it would be an option but it wouldn't address the first concern of bringing adults in the building when we have children who cannot be vaccinated in the building all right thanks okay i i'll just say ann said that answers her question thank you okay thanks anyone else and out yeah i'll say that monday's um mondays are fine with me and zoom is fine with me okay so rather than do a straw fall we can do a motion if anyone would like to make a motion i'll make a motion um choose an upgrade uh just for the next three months is that what we're going to set it for okay and and we can see if we need to go further all right if that's okay i can just do it

099all right so i make a motion for the next three months uh the next three word of ed meetings that they continue on zoom and we have them on the the third monday last last thank you monday trying to figure that out of every month thank you juan all right let's go through we'll start with can i oh can i yes discussion please um i looked at the calendar there is another town meeting on the fourth um monday of the month there is no none on the third monday of the month that's enough i know it makes it more and well of a commission on the fourth monday or commission schedule planning and zoning it has been my experience that other commissions don't worry about meeting on our days now so i wouldn't have a

100big problem but on august we could go to the 30th that's the fifth monday so there shouldn't be anyone there the motion reads the last monday of the month oh so that would be the 30th thank you matthew that would be the 30th so we wouldn't have to worry about that it would be september and and it would be october that the last monday is also the fourth monday well why don't we take a vote and if people don't like it okay thank you pardon mary ellen anne's got a question okay yes we want to stay with the seven o'clock start time or did we want to consider like starting at a different time uh ann asked us if we wanted to consider starting at a different time it doesn't matter to me is there

101anyone who would like to start at a different time why don't we leave starter and said go ahead go ahead and oh yeah i'd like to start earlier if we're adjusting the schedule and we could try it during this period of time but if we started it or something or 6 30 but i i would defer to other people's wishes here i'm just putting it on the table i i would have trouble starting at either 6 or 6 30. um how do other people feel i'd prefer to just leave seven okay kevin's fine with me all right let let's leave it as it is then but let's take the let's take the vote on zoom in the last monday of the month russ is russ there i don't see him you moved out of the

102frame i'm sorry i don't want him sitting too close to me is that why you're moving neil yes mary ellen yes and yes mark yes susan yes matt yes that is a yes and juan yes the motion carries unanimously thank you all um just so you know i'll publish a new calendar and send it over to the town and if you do that tomorrow they will be regu they will not be special meetings because um wait a minute i'm going the wrong way so if you do it tomorrow that's the 29th and our meeting would be august 30th so that's a month excuse me yeah so that's great thank you okay now on to committee subcommittee and liaison representatives uh communications nothing to report um and matt i'm remembering that you said that you're not

103able to be chair and we're going to have to uh uh get you some help for that and i i will you're welcome finance and operations yeah so we met last week um discussed some of the budget discussion that we had tonight as far as other things going on dr ola has ordered the first round of a playset and we'll play ground singles standalone unit and we're looking to add more of those first based on the esser funds as far as the front parking lot um alan kayla actually joined us and he's not willing to entertain a an idea of paving that right now um but we still do have the municipal funds and actually i gotta i don't know if sally if you can help out i'm not sure what's left in the municipal

104fund i guess i could reach out to ellen but i don't know about the top of my head but i can send it to you tomorrow all right thank you that was about it so i will once again state my concern that it is brought up at fi at board of finance meetings that that money was put aside for the board of ed but the board of ed isn't allowed to use it so i have trouble with it saying it's put there for the board of it okay policies okay um yes i posted a policy committee meeting in i believe it was uh june 30th and i was available to people and i've already reported on that um i do think it's imperative that we um continue to get organized and move ahead with keeping

105up with some of the policy requirements especially regarding covet and i've had some conversations with lisa sewell in the office so she's going to be doing some of the work and that's very much appreciated thank you who had the conversation with lisa i did well and you're not her supervisor oh just so you know i did follow up so frank you you okayed it uh yes lisa and i spoke about it and lisa has been directed to do um support for policy and special education okay i apologize yeah well thank you because i did i was very careful about um not stepping on people's toes yeah i mean it's been several months that i've been working up to this and and i so thank you frank for your support welcome okay thanks for your report

106in ad hoc minority recruitment hi uh i met with dr ola on friday the 23rd of this month and he i asked him for what resources that could be used i'm also going to talk to people at eastern i spoke with former teachers who have friends who have people graduating from college please contact us i'm going to speak with my former union president and see if she has any other ways that i can get get to this um i'm sorry i didn't invite anybody to the meeting i just wanted to see what was available and what could be done so we're looking forward to doing something about it but i had a question for dr gruenberg she she said that she had spoken to somebody from eastern and that she had gotten a response so

107who did she speak to and what was the response she's talking about it primarily was not a conversation one and i i worked at eastern for uh close to 30 years so i i had i had the email address so when we got the email note about job openings i forwarded that because that was a public notice my understanding it was not a private communication so i just forwarded it as is i didn't editorialize in any way shape or form it was more like an fyi communication so i didn't actually have a conversation i got it an email response thank you who is the person and that she shared she being a chair i'm not sure what her role is but i think she was chair of the education department and also associate dean so

108we worked together for years and so she just confirmed that she received it that's all okay thank you that's okay so um from my taking classes at eastern i know that there is a um a public roster and you can look up who the the chair of the education department is juan um would you like me to do that and send you over the name and phone number sure thank you very much you're welcome okay okay ad hoc superintendents evaluation um we haven't met cabe is having an event um next week i believe it's the fifth of august in westbrook and it's free for members of cave express and that's us so it's usually a really wonderful event and i would encourage anybody to uh go if you possibly can it is professional development and

109it's covering some really crucial issues including diversity so that's just one of many events that are happening there have been webinars keeping up with the legislative changes okay i also know that they have they have upcoming a so you want to be a board member workshop for anyone who's considering on running for the board of ed and if anyone knows someone who's running who might be interested i'd be happy to forward to them the registration forms for that workshop and i believe because we're cave expressed people from our town can go for free do you think i'm right anne i believe so yeah that's a big help i think i know they can go to the westbrook event for free um but as far as the candidate i i think i think that might be

110free anyway because it's not a meal you know there's it's an outreach event and it's very useful um in fact matt i think i remember you from one of those sessions years ago is that accurate that you yeah four years ago i attended i attended yeah i attended one in 1991 when i first ran for the board and i found it very helpful good good yeah and and um i think they they do try to keep them up to date they're good opportunities for um advocating yeah does that think it might be virtual oh i was going to ask if it concluded your report i can i can conclude my report if you wish no i guess i meant putting it a different way is did you have more to report on i i'm giving

111you the short version just because it's been a long meeting okay thank you i'm willing to answer anybody has a question great anyone have a question for him i have a question juan uh when is westbrook and where okay when is hopefully the fifth and it's in the afternoon going through dinner time it's at the water's edge resort on route one i believe in westbrook so it's not a bad drive if you don't mind driving on the highway what time does it start to take back roads but it takes long what time does it start about one o'clock online so if you were to uh google it um it's a leadership symposium juan i think you've got an email from um thank you um i don't remember who sent it okay thank you i think

112lisa steimer has been involved with organizing it but it just is generically from cave so if you were to just it's under upcoming events we get emails that say upcoming events it's in there yeah yeah but it is right around the corner so if you're interested in going you want to act fast okay thank you anne on the east coast yes um rose judy has her hand up i don't know if it's timely to cave or not before we move on i i was just going to say um to ann and juan and the board that i've had the opportunity to go to water's edge a number of years and it's one of my favorite professional development activities it's usually very high quality the last one i went to was on all kinds of inclusion

113and diversity and the opportunity to really learn from other towns and board members in my opinion is um is suck into none so i i just was going to recommend that that that's all thank you jubi mary allen thank you so much for saying that i don't know if you heard ann said thank you so much for saying that um is currently working on evaluating the board evaluating the executive director and um new bylaws which will be sent out to all district superintendents board chairs and representatives currently going to the executive committee the new bylaws if um passed after 30 days of being out to those three entities would make a change in that there would no no longer be an executive committee that made decisions but it would be all board of directors which

114is all representatives for their alternates from the 36 different districts that are part of these kind so that's what we're doing now that's a lot of work it is yeah thank you okay we'll go on to additions to the agenda i just have one that oh wait yeah i just have one that we can add now or we could talk about it next month and that's that we will be one member short and what do we want to do about it um would people rather talk about it tonight or next or on august 30th susan's okay either way yeah i i don't it's fine okay and would like to say something yes we do have a policy for this for the replacement of um board member midterm and it's close to the election so it's

115almost a moot point because by november there will be new slates of for the board of uh candidates but um it's a relatively short period of time but we do have a policy and i'm going to recommend in that you send the policy to everyone and we'll discuss it next monday how's that our on august 30th how's that yeah the only thing is i i may have difficulty accessing it because of my limited technology temporarily and i'll ask lisa to do that okay thank you dr olga so we'll all get the policy and then we'll we'll have it on the next agenda in that case we're ready oh did anyone else have something they wanted to add i'm sorry when was the vacancy it starts august 30. 31st or it starts september first right did

116you hear that i did rose yes i heard that thank you okay we'll discuss it on the 30th um audience for citizens and staff since i didn't call on kathy earlier i'll call on her now okay um a couple different pieces of information the school capital fund has forty thousand two hundred and nineteen dollars and seventy nine cents will you repeat that forty thousand two hundred and nineteen dollars and cents that's the capital non-recurring yep that's the school capital fund um the reserve fund for the hampton school has 143 804 and 84 cents um this is on the balance sheet as of june 30th the towns people did vote to pass to pave those parking lots um that's unfortunately something that the finance board isn't in control of that money can't be moved out of

117that account and used for anything else without another town vote um and it remains in that account until the work is done and any balance we get transferred after i that's really something you have to bring up with the board of selectmen um the finance board isn't controlled up but that boat was voted on by the townspeople um i do realize that you know the parking lots i was there the other day and you know the grass is growing up through the side parking lot and you know that there are other areas in the front parking lot but that is something that you need to bring up with the board of selectmen that money is there is there an ordinance that says the board of ed has to have permission of the board of selectmen

118to use it well it was passed by the town's citizenry so so that capital fund is available um you know i believe mark has looked into updating the bids on that didn't you yeah we got updated bids this uh spring and then alan has not agreed to utilize the fund the bids did come in um they were higher than the 143 but there was probably enough that we could utilize some of the non-recurring fund to offset difference in cost i think it was 165 was one of the bids so so i have a long list for the or uh the lawyer i'm going to add that can we do it without the selectmen's permission i i think that i think that fund was put there was wording in the fund put together that i think

119alan has he wants to be the coordinator of the spending well wanting and being legally um in charge are two different things so i will ask the lawyer well he would have to sign off on the check you know the that's uh yeah would have to on the checks and the treasurer or whoever else is available that's eligible to sign off on the checks but the board of finance does not sign off on any of the checks at this point so unfortunately that's not under our control i just wanted to be clear on that right yeah if we wanted to ask for addition some of the cap or non-recurring fund um to be used as part of that i think we would just have to come to you guys and run it by you to

120take a certain amount of money out of that no we do not need permission to take money out we need permission to put money in but we're allowed to take money out without finance board permission yeah as long as it fits the conditions of the fund yes yeah yeah we can't go on vacation yeah so when we did the back park paving it required us i had to go to the board of finance for that no you didn't i i believe we did approve the back parking lot and i i don't know if you can and the other thing was um i didn't get a copy of the sr-3 grant the frank if you could send that that would be great the proposed sr-3 grant to me um there's mark you ordered the first module

121for the playground equipment um should be coming in but that would be on last year's part of last year's budget are well it came in too late for that so it's going to have to be esser fund um we can't use last year's budget because it's not it wasn't in on property prior to the of july or june 30th or whatever oh okay so it has to go it's going to be paper outside of something else and then we have five stem students now what does it cost us per student for stem tuition five thousand dollars five thousand five thousand okay oh and on the mini splits did we get multiple bids on that or do we just have our are we just out of proposals to put a number together as far as filling

122out the sr3 grant um we got we got the um we did not spend i'm gonna i'll have to get back to you on that specifically i don't want to give you uh yeah yeah wrong information that's fine because i know that they were i'm like the two different grants so maybe they weren't putting together so it was like there's a differentiation between the grants and sally and i will talk tomorrow okay that's great thank you that's all any other um citizens or staff who would like to comment hearing none i'm open to a um motion to adjourn a motion to adjourn susan lovegreen okay susan then juan i'll call the roll russ do it again do it again yes mary ellen yes and yes mark yes susan yes matthew yes and juan yes good

123night it motion carries were adjourning at 9 18 p.m good night good night everyone and