Board of Education Meeting

001Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to call to order this regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education this Wednesday, April 9th at 7 o'clock. Would everyone please join me with standing and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. SO WE HAVE A COUPLE OF THINGS TO DO BEFORE WE GET TO HEAR FROM ALL OF THESE COOL FOLKS WHO HAVE JOINED US TONIGHT. AND SO IN TERMS OF THE ROLL CALL, THE ENTIRE BOARD IS HERE, INCLUDING OUR STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE AND THE EXECUTIVE TEAM. THANKS, EVERYBODY, FOR JOINING US. AND THANKS SO MUCH TO ALL THE PARENTS FOR COMING OUT. THIS IS REALLY EXCITING. IF IT'S OKAY WITH

002EVERYBODY, CAN WE DO THE, WELL, I'D LIKE TO MOVE THAT WE MOVE THE student spotlight up to item four second any discussion all in favor of moving the student spotlight up aye any opposed all right so it's unanimous so with that Mr. Renda you're on tell us who you brought with you brought a couple of my friends with me today We come, we got a lot of kids here, and I'm very excited. I didn't know at the beginning of the year. I just wanted to remind people at the beginning of the year how excited I was and we were about the number of students that we have participating in our band and chorus. I know this looks like a lot, but this is not even half of it probably. What we wanted to show you

003today was, I know March was Music Appreciation Month, so we're right at the cusp of that month, but we wanted to show you we have an advanced chorus and we also have a jazz band. So even in those numbers, as you can see, are pretty large. But without further ado, I want to introduce Emma Henning, who is our chorus director. Give her a nice round of applause. And we also have Miss Grace here. She can wave. She's out there. And Mr. Robinson couldn't make it, but again, they're our band. So give a nice... Oh, Adam's here. Oh, my bad. I didn't see him. So they're here, too. So give them a nice round of applause for them, too. All right, Miss Henning. Hi everyone. Once again, my name is Emma Henning. I'm the choir director

004at Whiskeynear. I have with me our advanced chorus and our jazz band ensembles, along with Leah Grace and Adam Robinson. They're the band directors at WMS. Before we share our performance with you, we would like to recognize students who performed in the Western Region Music Festival this past March. Here to talk about their experiences are Natalie Scatino, Lila Nicholas, Mackenzie Lynch, and Yena Hyun. The CMEA regionals are auditioned music festivals for high school and middle school students in Western Connecticut. To audition, you have to be enrolled in a school music program and be selected by your instructor. Once you get selected, you need to learn how to sight read, learn, and audition song for weeks and know solfege and arpeggio. After the audition, you wait several days for your score out of 200. Hundreds of

005students audition for this festival, so chances of getting in are slim. There are different required scores for different voice parts and instruments. If you make it in, you have to practice the songs for the show. For the choir, there are four songs to learn over six weeks. You independently practice and memorize the music. It is an injurious process, but highly rewarding. Then, on March 14th, you go into Wilton High School for your first rehearsal with the whole group. You practice for two hours, and the performance is the next day. Once you get there, it is amazing to hear a whole group of students at your same skill level singing in harmony. Another thing that was amazing about being in the choir was that everyone had wonderful voice control. The sound of the music is truly

006mesmerizing and the experience as a whole was one not to forget. My favorite part about CMEA Regionals was getting to meet and perform with students from different places who had common interests and similar skill levels as me. It was amazing to hear everyone harmonize and come together. The end result was prodigious and something I will never forget. One of the best parts of regionals was that everyone was indescribably loud and it sounded beautiful like a group of angels singing. It was so loud that I could have started singing something completely different and you would not have heard me. It was also so amazing to be in the same room with people who work just as hard as you to get to this place. I love the fact that I got to meet people from different

007towns in Connecticut who have the same interests as me. I also loved having the opportunity to watch the band, which Sofia Galarza and Anervin Strenoth performed in. This experience was so rewarding, and it is an experience I will never forget. My favorite part about CMEA Regionals was having the opportunity to sing with more amazing singers like all of us. We all loved it. It was an amazing, inspiring, and very amusing experience that none of us will ever forget. All in all, CMEA Regionals was a fantastic experience that we would participate in again. It made us more responsible because we had to learn how to practice, organize, and prepare for the festival. Those are traits that can be used in life and will be helpful in the future. It also made us feel included in something

008because choir is something we all enjoy and there are not many opportunities to broadcast our love, appreciation, and talent in choir. Regionals was an amazing experience that I hope the music program at WMS continues to send people to. I learned how to work in groups of people I had never worked with or met before. The overall CMEA Western Regional experience was amazing. We all had so much fun. All of this would not be possible without our music teachers who are all amazing. Thank you to Mrs. Grace, Ms. Henning, and Mr. Robinson. Thank you all for listening. I just want to give a quick shout out to two band students who also went to this festival, Sophia Galarza and Anervin Srinath, who both could not be here this evening, but put in the same amount of

009effort that the chorus kids did. So I wanted to make sure they get some recognition as well. Thank you to the students for being so hardworking to help make that possible. Thank you for the parents who spent 48 straight hours in Wilton while the kids practiced. So it was an awesome experience, and we are very happy to have the kids share. that tonight with you. So without further ado, our jazz band and our advanced chorus kids would like to perform Can't Take My Eyes Off of You. One more time, thank you very much. I want to give a quick shout out to the students. We did this very spur of the moment. We've been practicing it for a while, but jazz band meets on Fridays and advanced chorus does meet every other day, but this

010was the most recent piece of music we got. So this was a... We only had three or four combined rehearsals that were maybe 20 minutes long. So I'm so proud of the kids for how they stepped up and just did that. So thank you guys. Thank you to the parents for bringing them here. Thank you so much, parents. Kids, you did wonderfully. All right, Whiskey Deer, let's get out of here under control. Let's go. There's still only two, right? Did you grab that comment? Yeah. There's still only two, right? Three. Yeah, okay. Are they both first? Yeah. Well, two are first. Two first. Two and one. No, one. Two and one. Are you guys almost ready? You good? All right, and we're back. That was a heck of a concert. So next on the agenda

011is the student representative report. Melissa, what do you have for us? Hello everyone. Starting off with athletics. Senior signing day for committing athletes will be on April 23rd in the cafeteria at 630. So if you have an athlete that is committing to a school for athletics, make sure that they talk to Ms. Negri and get that all sorted out before then. Likewise, spring sports have officially started, so best of luck to all of those teams as their seasons begin. In terms of student government, they had their first ever spring pep rally and March Madness event. It was very, very successful, very fun-filled, and congratulations to all the winners who won in cornhole, badminton, and basketball. And junior prom was also held on March 28th at the Amber Room, and that was really fun as well.

012In terms of a lot of club reports... During the week of March 17th and 21st, students in both Best Buddies and Unified Sports promoted the Spread the Ward campaign at lunch by having students sign up for a pledge. Best Buddies fundraised by selling friendship bracelets while Unified Sports had their Penguin Pledge on March 22nd, and they fundraised over $2,500. That was really great. And then last meeting I mentioned that we had career fair and all students had the opportunity to participate in that. So you guys will have a presentation on that later by the youth commission. But for me personally, I think it was a really great way to hear from multiple different professional fields and being able to just gauge the different opportunities that I have after high school. Peer counseling held their annual

013St. Baldrick's event. last Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. in the cafeteria. It was extremely successful with 16 shavies, and we raised $3,300. And donations are still open through our linked website until the end of April. So that money, the number will hopefully keep climbing up. Also last Thursday, the middle school was participating in their French exchange program, and some of these students had the opportunity to visit here at the high school. I think it was over 50 students all in eighth grade. I got to experience them during ILT in my classroom, and it was a really good cultural exchange opportunity that we wouldn't otherwise have because they only really stay at that middle school and talk to middle schoolers. So it was very fun for us. And then yesterday, the music department just got

014back from Los Angeles. While in California, they did instrumental and vocal workshop at Disneyland, attended a tribute to John Williams' orchestra show. toured the backlot of Universal, saw the Chinese Theater, Griffith Observatory, and Hollywood Sign, and of course went to Disneyland and Universal for funs, but they had a really, really great time. And then... For upcoming events, there's a few things that National Honor Society is currently planning. We're working on our We Care 5K with our co-sponsor Sweet Scoops on Mother's Day morning. So if anyone's interested in running or walking the event, that's going to be happening soon. We'll also have raffles and food. And then we're also planning a spring workshop at Candlewood Lake Elementary School on April 23rd from 3.30 to 5 where students can partake in different stations like crafts and games.

015That's pretty much everything. Now, I have a question for Melissa. Yeah. Is this the big one? Do you want to ask the question? No, mine's a little question. You go first. That's a good question. You're talking about everybody else all the time. You knew I was going to ask this month. I did. Where are you going to college? What's the decision? I'm going to UConn for political science. And then once I'm there, I'm going to try and get a major in journalism. Great. Awesome. Congratulations. That's quite an achievement. Thank you. My question is where do people find more information about the 5K? The 5K, I believe it's on the NHS website that's like through the Brookfield Public Schools. Yeah, the school website. And there's the links to like sign up for the 5K. Great. Congratulations

016and thanks a lot. All right, then we'll move next to public comment. Mrs. Correa, you are signed up to talk about the budget and healthy start times. 45 West Whiskeynear Road. Tonight the BOE will review the budget and information from the Healthy Start Times Committee. Sorry, I didn't mean to touch that. I attended the CAPE meeting before the BOE meeting tonight, and the K-5 math scores are not good. Unfortunately, the board needs to remove funds from the budget, and the biggest bang for your buck, without affecting student instruction, is to move up the high school start time and save approximately $250,000 from the budget with the possibility of saving more money in athletic transportation. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Correa, you are signed up to talk about... Policy 9325. And also just public comment in

017general. So my comments today were about those two topics as well as how that affects, is this on? Yeah. as well as it affects BOE governance in general. Just for a way of background to see the FOIA response from a friend, that was 1,482 pages of a BOE officer's emails, and it reveals significant and conserving effort to date to stifle the little public... a little public parent engagement the BOE enjoys to date. So if you look at page 940 of this FOIA, an officer sought to seek advice from multiple Connecticut board officers asking, have you ever had to limit access of a member of the public to your public comment session or meant more generally to your board meetings? If so, what was the tipping point? If you got to that point, what did you

018do? Put in a time restriction like six months, a year on this action? The officer concluded, how do you handle this? And more pointedly, have you ever had to effectively ban somebody from attending your meetings in person? The overwhelming response cited the First Amendment. And of course, it advised understanding the commenter's concerns. Despite this, the officer unilaterally removed the standing second public comment section of the agenda. This action followed my comments criticizing the district's administration for failing basic duties, safe school climate and legal compliance. This officer prioritized the feelings of underperforming staff over the well-being of students. On page 305 of that same FOIA, this officer's communications with the FOIA's C. FYC Commission's director asked about relief from a vexatious requester. Shortly after, I publicized the CLEs survey data revealing serious concerns ignored by administration

019and half of the BOE. This is a disturbing pattern of aggressive subversion of BOE governance. It is exemplified by this officer's activities, including the apparent coordination with administration, union representation, and the former BOE chair. The emails reveal a petty personal and partisan focus like an obsession with censoring a fellow Board of Education member without cause. The file in its total lacks a focus on students and actual governance. For instance, a $55 million budget went unchanged for three months by even a dollar while celebrating numerous budget blasts. THEY WERE ESSENTIALLY WEEKLY EMAILS OF SENDING THE SAME EMAIL THAT NOBODY READS. BUT THEN THERE WAS A TON OF EFFORT GOING AFTER OTHER BOARDS OF EDUCATION, MEMBERS OF EDUCATION, FOR PUTTING OUT A PRESS RELEASE EXPRESSING THEIR CONCERNS WITH A FOCUS ON HOW IT VIOLATED THE POLICY. SO

020WHEN WE LOOK AT THIS IN TOTAL, THE BOE GOVERNANCE IS CRITICALLY ILL. THERE'S A CANCER IN THE OFFICERS OF THE BOE, AND MY RECOMMENDATION IS THE BOARD OF EDUCATION EXCISE THAT CANCER. THANK YOU. OKAY. MOVING NOW TO THE YOUTH COMMISSION AND BHS CAREER FAIR. MR. JEPHIE AND MS. MCNIPH. MY UNDERSTANDING, MRS. KAKASE, IT LOOKS LIKE IT SAYS SECOND PUBLIC COMMENT. OH, OKAY. THE WAY IT'S WRITTEN IT'S VERY DIFFICULT TO READ. OKAY. SO ARE YOU GOING TO SPEAK ABOUT HEALTHY START TIMES? SURE. only be three minutes. I'm kidding. I remember first hearing about the late start time back in I think around 2017. I was all for it because at the time my babies were young and I was like extra sleep for mama. However, I think it was 2019 right before the pandemic. We got

021the survey about the late start time. Again, I was all for it, did my survey for it, and then COVID hit. and everybody changed life as we knew it. Everyone did business differently. My kids at the time were a lot older. And then the inception started for the late start time, well, the healthy start time. It did affect my Wisconeer students, even though we said it would just affect the high school students. For me, I look at the start day of when my kids actually get on that bus to start their day. And I have to tell you, most of my... friends children in wisconeer as well as my own that was earlier than prior so because they commingled buses and longer routes and the whole business as we know then um one of my

022biggest things to date oh and then also i know there's a lot of chatter about the healthy start committee and we need more you know information and we need more of this we need more of that but i didn't really find that prior to the inception of the Healthy Start that not a lot of due diligence was done prior. Because we actually started during when CLES first opened and it was also a bus driver shortage during that time. So it was a hot mess during those days and that year with the Healthy Start time. And then we worked out some of the kinks, but a lot of the kids, especially the high school kids, thousands of educational hours were being missed because they were being pulled out of their classes i am totally against that

023i think that we need to go back to the time prior as well as it would be saving a lot of money in the budget so that we don't have any teacher cuts thank you thank you all right so um now let's move to the youth commission and um mrs mcniff Good evening. Thank you so much for having us here. My name is Marnie McNiff. I am the chair of the Brookfield Youth Commission, and we are here tonight to talk about the career fair that we hosted on March 26th. And if you know anything about the Youth Commission, the students do the work. So I'm going to turn it over to them, and I'm here as backup. Let's just say our names real quick. So my name is Evan Lucas. I am a junior here

024at Brookfield High School. Hi, I'm Maria, and I'm a junior at Brookfield High School. My name is Alice Chan. I'm a sophomore at Brookfield High School. My name is Samar Chireset. I am a junior at Brookfield High School. Back to me. Okay. That's better. Okay. So... Who are we? What is the Youth Commission? Well, we provide an advocacy and information platform for youth representatives to get more engaged in town issues. But what do we actually do? Beyond the fancy words. So we basically identify gaps in services to youth and their families. We recommend and organize new programs and events, such as this one. We craft initiatives in partnership with other town boards and departments, and we suggest ideas for new policies or regulations for the town to consider. So we as members we also help

025share news and information about important town topics and programs with the youth of the community So some of the prep work that went into the career fair. So members of the commission reached out to people in town to cover a variety of professional occupations that students would find interesting. And a survey was also sent out to Burkefield families to see if they were also interested in being a presenter. And we gathered information from the two career fairs before because this was our third career fair, which is a huge accomplishment. And just to get feedback about... how to maximize student engagement and we ultimately received a diverse range of career opportunities that students would like to hear more about and we would just like to thank Dr. Burrell and Dr. Mann for being presenters because it

026meant a lot to us and it meant a lot to the students that got to hear your stories so thank you. Okay so There's some basic information about the career day basically on Wednesday March 26th from around 10 20 a.m. To 12 p.m. At the Brookfield High School The high school operated on an adjusted bell schedule because we were doing the career day and the purpose of the career day was to inspire and guide our students about the different professions members of our community represent So basically, there were like three 30-minute sessions for each student with different groups of students from grades 9 to 12, basically the high school in each one. Each classroom hosted a different one of our 40-plus presenters. Of course, of course. As always, the directory of presenters was provided along

027with what their occupations were. However, this year we changed it. So instead of IELTS teachers registering their students, this year students were responsible for registering themselves through Google Form. Registration took place over the course of two different weeks. So 11th and 12th graders got first choice, and then 9th and 10th graders promptly after. Students selected exactly one presenter per session with a total of three different presenters. And students had to log into their school account in order to access the Google Form, so random people did. and it fell out the Google form. And full sessions automatically disappeared so that things weren't as messy. All right, so student feedback. The event was overall received positively by BHS students. It's a good thing. After the events, students were emailed a follow-up survey, and nearly all the responses

028indicated that they would like to see this event return in the future, next year. Now, this form also provided a place for students to leave constructive criticism and suggestions, so this would include shorter sessions, student surveys beforehand, in order to identify in-demand careers. I would also just like to mention that some students had reached out to the presenters that they listened to during the career day and asked for shadowing opportunities that they could participate in like within the next couple months and within the summer and I also just want to like take a moment and just appreciate some of the photos that we got as like during the day oh sorry thank you do you guys have any questions We just want to, and we really want to thank Mark Melanda who helped us tremendously

029because we had to make some changes with how we put it together and how students were signing up. And without his and Eric Conklin's help, I'm not sure we would have pulled it off this year. So a big thank you to them. And if you have any questions, I'm going to make the students come back up and answer. So what questions do you guys have? I have a question. It can be all of you, but which career did you find the most interesting that you hadn't really thought of, been on your radar? Was there any presentation that was really unique and interesting that you kind of felt like, whoa, I didn't know that could be a job? Yeah, so Robert Marconi came. I think this is, he's come for all the times we've done this

030event in the past. I really wasn't sure what a JAG was, and then he showed up and started talking about it and his experience in the military. And for me, I've always been like, I'm never going to join the military. I'm never going to be involved with it. But then I learned about being a JAG, and I thought that was just such a cool option, and now it's kind of changing my trajectory and what I want to do with my life. Me personally, I've always been interested in law, but at career fair I actually got to learn about what a public defender does and it gave me a different perspective on things I could enter if I were to go into law because frequently and as my presenter had said herself, people typically look down

031on public defenders and say they're not real lawyers, but she gave me a different perspective on like how important the work is that they do. Something that I found interesting during the career day was nonprofit. Honestly, prior to the career day, I didn't really know what nonprofit organizations really did. But after hearing what Logan Solander had to say about it, I'm really interested in learning more about the BEF and other opportunities with nonprofits. One presentation I found interesting was Mr. Dembowski, Mr. Greg Dembowski's presentation. Hearing how he played a role in shaping some of the new projects that were going into Brookfield to help make it a better place for everyone really inspired me than possibly changing my course-like path a bit as to what I want to do in the future. Anything else? Mr.

032Jeffy and Ms. McNiff, thank you for the good work you do. Thanks a lot. This is really awesome. Thank you. To the students, thank you, too. It's one thing to get the overview, and then your answer to Stephanie's questions, I think, were really insightful for us. Yeah, please. I would love for you guys to figure out a way, and I think we've talked about this in previous years as well, to bring things to the board that you feel like you need, that what, you know, we're parents in most cases of littler kids or kids in high school. it's one thing for us to think what our kid wants but what are some things you're hearing what are things that are important to you how could the board help you succeed what kinds of things do

033you need that you feel like are not being discussed. I would love for the Youth Commission to have a more active role in bringing things to us. Maybe we make it like a monthly spotlight or something like that, but it would be great if you guys could figure out how to interact with us a little bit more because it's always so great listening to how intelligent and thoughtful and well-spoken you are, and it's so important that we engage with you guys. So thanks for being here. Right on. All right. Thanks, guys. Great job. Thanks. With that, let's move to the next item on the agenda, written correspondence. The following people have emailed the Board of Education since March 19th. Jeffrey Dunkerton, Jennifer Pink, Sandra Augusto, Jennifer Augusto, Jessica Tanger, Melissa Yeager, Tara Carr, two emails,

034Christy Rondini, Dylan Tanger, Erica Sorensen, Baja Merkinski, I apologize, Denise Rice, and Andy Correa, two emails. Now let's move to the approval of board minutes. I move that the board approve the minutes listed below as recommended. Regular meeting 3-19-2025, special meeting 4-3-2025. Okay, so we have a motion and a second to approve the board minutes. Is there any discussion? Okay, all in favor of approving the board minutes, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, I believe that's unanimous. Okay, great. Thank you. Now it's time for the superintendent's update. Dr. Burrell. All right. Thank you, Wendy. A couple of nice things going on here. Certainly a hard act to follow those students tonight. They were incredible. Oh my gosh, what great presentations. They were amazing. Just to let everybody know, kind of under

035our teaching and learning focus, kindergarten registration at this time this week, we have 89 students registered. This is in alignment with years past, especially last year, right around this time, we had about 89, 90 kids. So I think we're on target. That's always a number that we watch. We say the same thing every year, really pay attention to kindergarten. SATs took place on April 1st. I wanted to make sure everybody knew that that's beyond or past that now. Smarter balance testing for grades three through eight. The window is open in the state for smarter balance assessment. Our students at both the elementary and middle school will start that after the break. the French exchange trip to kind of pile on to what Melissa shared we had 48 French students come to Brookfield Connecticut America and

036four chaperones visited 25 Brookfield families hosted which is incredible and both mr. Johnson and mr. Bray go who facilitate both the trip to France and the host here in Brookfield with Wiskin here plan to provide the board with an update next month I believe it will be the May 21st board meeting they'll bring some pictures and they also will request that they want to head to France next year and continue this this exchange that we do Under business and operations, the MOAs that the board authorized me to execute with the nurses and the paraeducators, we finalized early this week. Matter of fact, I think the paras we finalized today. That's for the end of the year and the contracts and those days of work. The Whiskeyneer Portables, the plan is to have them demolished over

037the April break. That is finally going to occur. Back and forth with lots of paperwork and with Bill Babiak doing a great job over in the building department. It's finally. So let's hope I can share that information with you at the end of the break that that job is complete. Following up on what Eric has entered into, I mentioned district cybersecurity assessment. That is actually... at the last month meeting, it is going to take place on April 15th, and that's run by the military department in partnership with CEN. Security Task Force, we meet on April 24th next week when we get back, and we actually will have on the agenda voting security plans. That's kind of executive session material. I'll share a little bit more tonight what the SRO, the police chief, and Dr. P

038are working out. but can't go into great detail because it's security, so you don't want to broadcast that all over. But the Security Task Force will get a look at that as well on the 24th with law enforcement there. And finally, under school climate and engagement, budget engagement, we have started to move through Parent Square with the Get to Know Your School District posts. Stephanie will talk a little bit more about that during Policy Communications Report. Also, the high school has developed a comprehensive end-of-year cell phone survey. I took a look at that with Mr. Belanda today. It looks really good for students, staff, and parents. That's an end-of-the-year survey, probably parallel to when the end-of-year climate surveys go out, but it'll be separate for the high school, focused on the cell phone question, just

039to keep them clean and separate. We decided we're going to go in that direction. And then... The other piece I forgot to put on the report, but I did want to mention, we had our SEPTO meeting last night, and I want to thank Mrs. Farias, our Director of Instruction, who did a great job with the intervention presentation to the parents, and Mr. Rowland was there with the parents as well, and I just want to thank them both for their leadership and the SEPTO organization for being on top of things. So anyway, intervention was discussed, and if anybody's interested, I believe we'll be posting that presentation. When did kindergarten registration open? It usually opens in February, but I don't know the exact date. Letters have gone out and that kind of thing. Erin, is the question,

040do we need to get the word out more? Are you hearing anything while I have you here? I didn't hear anything, so minor wailed. Yeah, we could always post again on Facebook. There's a lot we can do. So let me know if anybody is hearing that people aren't hearing about it. Otherwise, I haven't seen anything either, so I was just curious. And that's all I have. Thank you. Sorry. And it has been in the CLES Facebook page and, like, word around that age group. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Let's move then to subcommittee reports, starting with policy. Okay. So the first thing that I need to do is amend the consent agenda because I didn't catch this before I told Lisa to send out the agenda. The last item on the consent agenda says

041policies for a first reading, and there's the 4,000 series policies. Those have already been on the agenda for a first read, so I move to amend the consent agenda that all policies listed tonight and bylaws listed tonight are for a final read. Second. Is there discussion on this? Okay. Then we have a motion on the floor to amend the consent agenda to show that all policies listed are for a final read. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, so it passes unanimously. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you for that. Sorry for the overtone. Okay. So we have had two policy committees since our last Board of Ed meeting. The policies on the consent agenda tonight are all from the February and March Board of Ed meetings. As I

042mentioned before, the way our policy meetings fell in between our Board of Ed meetings, this is the first opportunity to bring all of our discussions and all of our recommendations to the board for a final read and adoption tonight. You will notice on the chart that was sent out and that is in your packet that there are a few policies that we are still working through. Thanks to both board member feedback and several great points that were brought up during our last policy committee discussion, we felt like it was important to address some of those issues before moving them forward. Not issues, but we still had some outstanding questions. So you'll see those policies on the bottom of your chart, and it will say... It's this one that we were given tonight. So the second

043last two pages will give you why policies, and I'll go through them really quickly, why we're holding some of them back. Okay, so for policies 3524.1, which is the pesticides policy, this policy is now going to require an email to be sent to parents and staff who opt into notifications. And so we wanted to talk to Eric Conklin, the director of technology, to make sure that we have the system in place. We were thinking of the library form that we get at the beginning of the year where now you have to opt in or opt out. you want access to the books. I don't remember exactly what it says. We're hoping to put together something that you would fill out in your documents at the beginning of the school year that would allow you to

044opt in if you want a notification. The policy doesn't fundamentally change how we operate when it comes to spraying pesticides or disseminating information. It just requires a... essentially an email notification to people that want it. But we don't want to put a policy in place that we don't have a system for. So also, if we do adopt this before the next school year, we would make sure it doesn't go into effect until the next school year so that we could have that system in place. So we're just going to circle back. with him before the next meeting 31 20 which is budget procedures and line item transfers so casey's getting us some more answers regarding the threshold in our current policy versus what the s g policy would change it to it's likely that the

045policy committee will recommend staying with our current threshold but we just wanted to have another discussion about that get some more information and circle back to that in our next meeting so that we're holding off on and then 3543.31 which is hold on destruction of records which is the litigation policy we asked casey to go through this policy with us a little more in detail at our next meeting to just assure that we have all the systems in place that this policy will require the other policy that is on uh for destruction of records which is 30 3570. This policy is the comprehensive policy that essentially puts a policy in place. So our current retention records policy is from 1992. So it doesn't include any electronics retention. So this is the Shipman and Goodwin policy

046that essentially establishes, like it's a brand new policy for us. It establishes... the legal requirements of records retention. This other policy that we want to hold off on, which is the hold on destruction and records of litigation, is essentially the regulations and a little bit more in-depth of making sure these systems are in place, who the records retention responsibilities are going to fall to. We want to make sure all the buildings have the same consistency, so we just want to take a little bit more time with that policy. And then we have 6162.51, the PPRA student privacy policy, which also is the survey policy, and 9211, which is the removal of board officers' policies. We have a couple of outstanding legal questions on those that we want to circle back to as well. So those

047have been taken off for final read tonight. Two things I wanted to highlight. Let's see, 9325. That is the, it's called meeting conduct. It's the comprehensive policy on essentially how our meeting will run, public comment, you know, various, there's various sections in there that refer to. the conduct of our meeting essentially. There was a section F under number two that we had added from our BPS policy about recording and streaming meetings. We've actually taken that section out of the Shipman and Goodwin policy, the one that will be adopted tonight. And we opted to keep it as a separate policy. It has been advised that since this is a legal, since 9325 is a legally required policy and recording and streaming meetings is not legally required under FOIA laws, that we do not add it to

048this policy, that we keep it as a separate policy. Additionally, as you recall, a couple weeks ago, we had three blackouts in one meeting. And logistically, it complicated things because if we had not been able to get back online, we would essentially have had to adjourn our meeting. So one of the things we want everybody, and we hadn't really thought about that before. That hadn't happened, and so it didn't seem, you know, things aren't an issue until they are. So one of the things the committee would like is for specific feedback or just everybody to think about that policy specifically and how we can tailor it to. Make sense make sure we're you know, it's not legally required. So there's no laws. We have to follow. There's no FIA FOA restrictions So what do we

049wanted to say? That's a policy that we will adopt separately since it's not legally required and we'll think through that as we As we move forward in the policy committee So that's one that we just want to make sure is on your radar know that it is not being adopted within the legally required policy But it will remain the separate Brookfield policy as is for now. And we'll revisit that later. Okay, and then that policy number was, it's in the 93, oh, what's the streaming policy? You know, I should have looked that up and I didn't. I have it somewhere and I will send it to you after the meeting. It's written down in eight places, I'm sure. Like 1311 it was a policy that none of it was legally required and several things got

050absorbed into policies that we've already adopted So it was kind of piecemealed into shipment and goodwin policies that we've now currently adopted and that Particular part of it was kind of left on its own And you know, we just didn't didn't want it to be you want to not have it but it was advised that we don't put it in this legally required since it's not legally required um Stephanie before we move on can I want to say two things about 93 25 yeah first of all with the meeting the filming of meetings that requirement is that in the charter have you guys been crosswalking this with the charter no there is no requirement that's what really yeah so that's in the state of connecticut okay state of connecticut does not require under any law

051or foia commission laws does not require any kind of legally now it is recommended by um cave not foia and not are not stripping a good one that you have some sort of language some sort of policy where you share your meetings. So whether that be live streaming, recording, and putting on your website later, minutes are essentially the only required reporting of our meetings. Okay. And then there's one more thing that I noticed that would be a change from our kind of general practice here in 9325 in, I think it's section six. For it's like the last line it says that there is a requirement that people provide their address Yes, so we discussed that and that would be well actually we didn't discuss it because we forgot but we had prep we'd previously discussed

052that as being Acceptable in the written minutes so that we have a written notice like we have a written record of it when they What's that called sign up? Sorry. So the sign-up sheet and writing your address on the sign-up sheet is the reporting of that. We voted that they're not required to state it at public comment. Or put it in the minutes. Or put it in the minutes, yeah. Okay, that's good to know. So we decided that that section specifically, it's not specific. It literally just says public address must. provide their name and address. And so it was general enough that we felt like the sign-up sheet adequately covers that. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Were there any other questions or comments about that? And then I'm going to... Does anyone have any questions or

053comments before I leave that document? Okay. Because those are all the legally... Or those are all the consent agenda policies that we will adopt tonight. And then Erin, Joy, and myself chose the next set of policies to begin reviewing. There are going to be 10 policies in the 5000 series that we'll be discussing over the course of the next few months. We also are continuing our work on the fundraising and student activity policies. Those are very cumbersome. I've said it before. They're going to take some time because we want to make sure we get them right. A lot of our current policies get absorbed into those policies. There are new things that come out of those policies that we don't currently have. We have the regulations in the school, so we just want to make

054sure that we're, you know, all of our I's are dotted, T's are crossed, that, you know, we're ready to adopt those policies. So we're going to continue our work on those. Casey's been a great partner in that, helping us understand where the nuances are and developing sort of a guide for each school. We want it to be consistent, so we will circle back to that. And then the communications part of our committee. So hopefully you've all seen the get to know your school posts, your school district posts. We decided in trying to figure out what came next after budget blast and trying to communicate with parents and the community in not just like the budget and please go out and vote for our budget, but fun things that you don't tend to think about or

055that might be surprising. Things like how many languages are spoken in each school. We have 12 total languages in addition to English spoken across the district. We have how many meals are served. We used the number from last year, which shows how hard our kitchen staffs work. Bus runs, thank you bus drivers. Student participation in sports and arts, and we've seen that over the last couple meetings, which has been really fun to see all the different groups performing for us. After spring break, we are going to transition that into get to know your school budget. And similarly, we'll have sort of fun little tidbit highlights, but we'll get more into the meaty part of the budget, highlighting facts from our district. And we're also thinking of highlighting sort of things from around the county, things

056in our DERG. It's always fun to learn about your neighbors and kind of see where we stand. So you can be on the lookout for that. We're going to highlight some of the special education department. you know facts fun things to know and learn so if you have any feedback on those i would love them i'm you know we're kind of collaboratively creating we're thinking of what we could do and we had a couple meetings where we wrote down a bunch of like ideas and bill roland was great and trying to help me figure out what information to use from the special ed department because it's you know there's so much we could tell but we only have a finite number of weeks and then right before the budget um referendum we were hoping to

057kind of transition into a how does the school budget fit into the town and we i intentionally wanted it to be you know visually um easy to see and read tidbits that are easy to digest so It's not overly complicated, but if you look at the posts, you'll see a ton of links. And so for people that do want to explore more or find out what the next-gen presentation, what that rating means on the first slide, or the next slide that's going to go out tomorrow is on free and reduced lunch, and how many students in our district qualify for that compared to statewide, and there'll be a ton of links on how that eligibility is determined and how that's grown and how we can take care of our students. Stephanie, thank you very much

058for all the work on this. It's also important to recognize our teachers and parents that were at the last speaks meeting. They gave us a lot of information on content they thought would be interesting for people to consume. Several of our slides came out of that meeting and things that I didn't think about and that we hadn't come up with. Thank you for that. That's all I have. Thanks very much. Healthy start times. So we met for the Healthy Start Committee virtually on Monday, March 24th. Joyce, Sarah, and myself were there, Dr. Burrell, Casey, and Steve Baldwin. We were discussing old business. the two to three tiered bus system and what a cost savings would be to the district. If we did go back to the high school starting earlier and the number was $247,884.

059I know that we were around that, but we do have a target number now. So Casey's been probably Dr. Brill too. I mean, thank you for all the conversations you've had with all star. I know it hasn't been easy to get, you know, all these plans or answers, but thank you for following through and getting them. We also talked about athletic transportation. It's a growing number every year. We did. We were actually this year we had to put more money in because we knew we were over budget. So just talking to Steve Baldwin about what athletic transportation looks like, what issues they're having with it as far as getting buses. It's bus shortage. We're bringing in bus services that we wouldn't necessarily need to utilize. If we could use All-Star, we haven't been that lucky.

060So right now in this school year, which I thought it was here, but we budgeted 180,000 and we're at like 69, using 69% already as of February. So we're there, you know, and I'm sure. So, and we continue to talk with Steve Baldwin about how. were not dismissing kids to lose instruction at the high school level and would bringing the start time back earlier help with that and he said that it would if it would push back a half an hour or even 25 minutes it would reduce the dismissals by 80 percent which was a pretty significant number I know that Mr. Belanda and Mr. Baldwin and Mrs. Negri have been crunching numbers and trying to figure out where they can get time in the schedule to see if we can shorten stuff and work

061it out and they haven't been able to find any time. So here we are. And then we just, I copied you guys. I know that we asked Dr. Brill to speak with the medical director. He did finally get back. to Dr. Ruehl that's copied in there, what his response was. And then there's just some questions that were asked at the last board meeting that we assigned to certain people to answer. So we'll be bringing a recommendation forward later. That's where we're at. And facilities. Apologies, about four pages worth of notes here. All of us were there last time. We met on April 2nd. We had myself, Sarah, Casey, and Dan Caldwell were present. For new business, we discussed the, we had a discussion. Where are you? Oh, my gosh, I missed your name. My apologies.

062Stephanie as well. Sorry about that. In the cafeteria, I remember. I was there. We had a discussion of non-priority grant applications for BHS and the oil tank replacement at BHS and WMS roof replacements. For all of these, do I have to read all of these? I didn't think so. For the recommended motion, that's what I thought. I DID MAKE A MOTION FOR THAT THE FACILITIES COMMITTEE ADOPT THE MOTION AS PROPOSED IN STEPHERDY, SECONDED THE MOTION, PASSED UNANIMOUSLY, THAT WE RESOLVE ALL OF THOSE. Issues, I forget the term, sorry. We talked about VHS food service and the cafeteria upgrades. Some really good news on this. Our cafeteria grew, our fund grew exponentially during COVID. And we're getting some really good upgrades to the cafeteria. Upgrading equipment for the main serving line. A sono station being built

063with a deli currently stand, which will serve options similar to what you would see at Chipotle. A deli station will be moved to the room that is currently designated as a school store. So they're moving that around and it has not been operated as a school store. So we're gonna move that and change that into a deli. Once the renovations, excuse me, are complete, we'll have three points of service when they come in. It will speed things up for students to come into the lunchroom. They won't have to wait so long to get their food. And can I add to that too? Yes. Really quickly. We met last Wednesday, and our plan that we submitted to the state for our spending down that fund was at the state. We hadn't received word yet whether or

064not it had been approved, but on Friday it was approved. So all those proposed changes can move forward. Excellent. Well done. More good news. I like that. Discussion, we discussed the athletic department request for the weight room equipment and for the scoreboard. A couple of, I guess, hurdles for that. The scoreboard at the turf field, 53,000. Weight room equipment, 30,000. Neither request was approved by the town's capital committee, but we do have other options on the table which we are going to seek out in future meetings. trying to figure out, maybe reach out to the Booster Club and get donations as well as possible donations. The scoreboard it was, right, Casey? What was that? How did we discuss that? Sorry. There is a vendor that Mr. Baldwin has been in touch with that actually provides

065the scoreboard itself free of charge. It's an electronic scoreboard, and it's free of charge because there is advertising on the board. The Board of Ed has a policy against prohibiting advertising on anything on school grounds, on property. The scoreboard is on the turf field, which is owned by the town and maintained by Parks and Rec. And so we do think that that, you know, it would also be a revenue stream from the advertising. That's why it's... because the company will profit share in that revenue stream for an amount of time. So the next step on that is to meet with Laura Murphy from Parks and Rec, Mr. Baldwin, and Marsha Marion, and the four of us. I'm going to get a meeting on the calendar for the four of us to just make sure that

066we're, you know, communicate that for the first time. It may be the first time that Laura is hearing that now. But hopefully that would be a good solution to this issue with the scoreboard. At minimal cost. There would be the cost of installation, which would certainly not be anywhere in the neighborhood of the $53,000 for a new scoreboard. And a key caveat in that is the kind of advertising. Exactly. So it's not going to be a blank slate to do whatever you want, obviously. So we will be on top of that. That's a very proactive contract that we would run by legal and make sure, to use a phrase, I don't know who said it, but every... I is dotted and every T is crossed in that regard. So we're already thinking about that. Would

067we be able to use capital, like unused capital funds for installation costs? That will be part of the conversation we have with Marsha at the town. All right. We also discussed the weight room, and unfortunately the weight room equipment would need to be put off until a future year. We do want to take care of it, and it could be considered in the capital plan. As for old business, we had seven pages of school due reports that were completed, one page of new reports. Shout out to Dan again and his team for doing a great job. We talked about the update of capital projects. The plans for the Sally Port have come through. Just waiting for the others' work to finish so they can start this job. Library roof, we need resolutions for non-priority grant

068applications to pass so the application can be started and then the planning meeting can be scheduled. LIBRARY AC, APRIL 15TH IS THE APPROXIMATE FINISH DATE. BATHROOM SUMMER PROJECT UPGRADES TO STAFF BATHROOMS AND A SECOND FLOOR GIRLS ROOM. I THOUGHT THAT WAS BHS. I'M SORRY. I DIDN'T ADD IT TO THE NOTES. AT WMS, WHISKINIERS STARTING NEW WORK OVER THE APRIL BREAK AS WE KNOW THE BOILER AS WELL AS THE PORTABLES ARE GOING TO BE TAKEN DOWN. The cafeteria floor is going to start this job on June 13th. They should be done with that over the summer. Athletic storage room at WMS, we haven't heard back from the contractor, and Dan is talking about possibly moving on to another. uh demolition of portables as we mentioned uh for miscellaneous discussion uh an email came in and we

069discussed um a couple of things 16 of our staff members were trained during uh regarding cleaning materials uh friday evening 328 insulation came down when a volleyball hit the ceiling causing some debris to fall the hygienist was on site that evening tested for asbestos all the results were negative cles monday afternoon the ac kicked off for the first time and there was a weird odor throughout the building that turned out to just be dust on the um units which is expected pesticide policy with a slight change to our policy we will keep the database of parents I want to be alerted as Stephanie mentioned in the beginning we're gonna work with Eric on that policy 3260 the sound disposed of obsolete materials we agreed that the shipment of goo and policy was appropriate as written

070and we adjourned at 7 I think it's the same heat story as always with the heat this cold weather and obviously we were thinking there'd be a transition with the warm to cool so I mean that that's the age-old challenge at the high school I haven't heard widespread reports about the building in general being very hot. I have heard a couple of reports of a couple of classrooms. And when those reports come in, what happens is Dan and Joe, they go look at all the data. We have data on every classroom and what the temperature read is. Important to remember that the heat coming out of the registers is very different from, you know. in the classrooms, right, they're big bathrooms, temperature being read on that side of the room is very different if you

071have a desk or something set up right next to the register. That heat is going to get very hot, obviously. But all the readings were normal. So, you know, 71 degrees might feel really hot when it's like warmer than normal, but I haven't heard anything widespread. And we don't have a lot of air conditioning in this building. We'll have it here finally. We'll have it here after spring break. Yes. So I just want to make sure everybody knows there's very limited spots with air conditioning in this building. So in the springtime, it's going to get very hot like it always does, unfortunately. I have a question that's not related to your last meeting. But I know that we kind of stopped looking for vendors for the Wiskenier seminar room seating. Is there, like, any way

072that we can start talking about that again? Just, I know that there's no, maybe no local vendors that will do, like, a small portion of a room, but can we go out of state? You know, can we kind of... I don't know if there's a way to sort of put out an RFP nationwide. Yeah, of course. Of course. So I think the seminar room at Wiskenier is a couple years out on our capital plan. Okay. I believe it might be year four. Year four. Okay. Thank you, Stephanie. So we do have time. We're in year two. It's coming to referendum in May. It would be year two. So we do have time for that. as we're moving forward with all these non-priority grant applications to the state, auditoriums are reimbursable. So that's another thing to

073keep in mind, how that space is used and categorized as a space could have implications there. But we will, that's in year four. So we're gonna find a solution to that space because it's a great, it could be a very beautiful space to use. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks. Yep. I wanted to address policy 3260, which is the sale and disposal of obsolete materials and equipment. I forgot about that when I was giving my update. We had had some very valuable feedback from the board members who reminded us about the complication we had at the beginning of last year with the equipment that was being stored at BHS in the... Container, thank you. And so it brought up like, oh yeah, that wasn't on our radar. So that was very helpful. This is why we do, we

074want all the board member feedback we can get because it was very helpful and as a policy committee, we decided to take it to the facilities committee because we felt like that was where it generated. So it was a great conversation and we really appreciated the feedback that we were given. And it does, the shipment and goodwill policy as written. essentially changes the board involvement in the process, which across the board universally we all felt was actually a good thing. So that is why it is on tonight. We all felt going through the process of asking those questions and looking at it in detail and with the help of our admin and reminding us of all the ways that that worked. So yeah, it's going to be a very essential, I mean a very streamlined

075process going forward. I just want to give a shout out to Joan Reynolds who has been instrumental with the food service and submitting those plans to the state and the renovations and the communicating back and forth. So thank you, Joan, for all your hard work on that. Thank you, Joan. Yes. Thanks a lot, Joan. So let's move to the consent agenda. And before we get down on... to business. We have a pretty weighty item here. Dr. Mann is going to be leaving us and I just wanted to take a second and invite you guys if you had some things that you would like to say. I just wanted to say in the times that we've overlapped, I really appreciated your vision and your leadership, particularly connected to strengthening tier one instruction for all learners. making

076the transition to the new teacher evaluation system, helping build the foundation for the portrait of the learner, and all your groundbreaking work with NEASC. And I think that Brookfield is in a stronger place. You guys have worked, from what I've seen, really, really well together, and we will miss you. So good luck. I'm going to hold a grudge against Westport. I'm bigger now. But did anybody else want to add to that? I will just say that I will have something more substantial planned for both of you at your last meeting with us because I am not looking forward to it, but yeah. But thank you for now. Thank you very much. This is very bittersweet for me. I mean, this has been, I've grown a ton, you know, from a building level administrator to a

077district level administrator. It is, it's a big leap and I've felt very supported and it's. you have amazing educators here. The infrastructure is very, very strong. So thank you very much. And if I could just say a couple things for Anna and our retirees as well, if you don't mind. Do we have a motion yet for consent? Okay, so I'll wait for that. I'll wait for that. I move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda as recommended. Resignations, Dr. Anaman. Retirements. Bylaws for a final read, yeah, for a final read, 9325. Policies for a final read, 5145.44, 5131.911, 3517, 3524.2, 3541, 3542.43, 3232, 3260, 3280, 3570. Okay, so we have a motion on the floor and it's been seconded. Any discussion on this? Thank you, Dr. Mann, for all that you did.

078I wish you nothing but the best of luck. All right. All in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say. I just want to thank Dr. Mann for leadership, intelligence, wisdom, integrity, and joy you have brought to all of us. Thank you for everything. Your three years here has been greatly appreciated and very remarkable. Great job. Thank you. I'd also like to thank Aggie Burns from Whiskeyneer Middle School. Aggie is retiring. She, over the last few years, has been our instructional coach. She's been a curriculum leader. She works and helps in intervention, curriculum writing. She's a mentor. She's a coach. She is an assistant to the administration. There's just so many things she does, and she is an absolute inspiration and a ball of energy. So we just can't thank her enough for all of

079her years. It's been a joy working with her. And similarly, working with Fiona Dockery in the business department. We brought her in nine years ago as the, when we... moved from one to two business teachers. She really revitalized DECA. And then we had some hiccups obviously with COVID and we're bringing that back now. And she just did a great job for us and did a lot with student leadership. And I thank her for her service as well and wish everybody a lot of luck as they move on in their lives. Thank you, Wendy. No problem. So we have. Oh, and then, gee whiz, there is one little correction. For Anna, her resignation final day of work is effective for June 30th, not the 29th. So that's just a correction we can correct in the months.

08029th is a Sunday. Yeah. We're making a comeback on Monday. Are we good then? We have a motion on the table. Now we're good. And it's been seconded. All in favor of accepting the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. That appears to be unanimous. Great. So let's move on to new business. And so I want to first start by doing a little bit of explanation, which we as a board also needed. The language of this agenda item is enough to potentially cause alarm bells to go off for people because it... with the establishment of personnel search committee for the assistant superintendent of schools, it sounds like this board is bypassing our policies, circumventing the superintendent and just putting out a want ad for an assistant superintendent. And I just want to

081make clear to everybody. And again, we needed this to be explained to us by the folks from CABE and our attorney. that using this language allows us to, as a board, to have confidential discussions about applicants for this position and about the procedure of searching for this position as an exception to the FOI rules. So we will have, similar with the superintendent search, we will... have meetings where we have confidential discussions and they are not noticed and we do not take minutes. But they are limited to just this topic of discussion. So that's the purpose, but I think people thought that we were going to just like, you know, put out signs and hire an assistant super. And I want everybody to understand that her policy... 2151, we appoint qualified persons to all administrative positions

082in the school system based on recommendations made by the superintendent. So the superintendent remains integral to this process. He's the one who runs the searches and makes recommendations. And then we, as a board, say yay or nay on that. And if anybody from the public has questions about that, I'm happy to answer them. Please email. if you'd like. Okay, so with that, we actually need to amend this motion because we need to add in, as we did with the previous one, we need to add in our names in the second sentence. So. You can just say, the motion is whatever you say it, so you don't have to amend it. I guess I need non-legalese amend. So, Stephanie, are you good then with that? move that the board establish a personnel search committee for the

083purpose of recommending to the board one or more candidates for the position of superintendent of schools I'm sorry for the position should I start over yeah okay scratch that I rescind that fake motion I move that the board establish a personnel search committee for the purpose of recommending to the board one or more candidates for the position of assistant superintendent of schools. Said board will be made up of the following people. Stephanie Sikora, Rosa Fernandez, Wendy Youngblood, Joy Greenstein, Sarah Devine, Aaron Scalera, and Rob Fischetto. Second. Is there any discussion? All right, all in favor of establishing the Personnel Search Committee for the Assistant Superintendent of Schools, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? No, it appears that this is unanimous. Thank you, everyone. Now let's move to the resolutions for non-priority grant applications.

084And Stephanie, do you need a glass of water? I move that the Board of Education request the following resolutions from the Board of Selectmen. Number one, resolved. that the Brookfield Board of Selectmen authorizes the Brookfield Board of Education to apply to the Commissioner of Administrative Services and to accept or reject a grant for the oil tank replacement project at Brookfield High School. Two, resolved that the Municipal Building Committee is hereby established as the building committee with regard to the oil tank replacement project at Brookfield High School. Three resolved that the Brookfield Board of Selectmen hereby authorizes at least the preparation of schematic drawings and outline specifications for the oil tank replacement project at Brookfield High School for resolved that the Brookfield Board of Selectmen authorizes the Brookfield Board of Education to apply to the Commissioner

085of Administrative Services and to accept or reject a grant for the roof replacement projects at Brookfield High School and Wiskenier Middle School. Number five, resolved, that the Municipal Building Committee is hereby established as the building committee with regard to the roof replacement projects at Brookfield High School and Wiskenier Middle School. Six, resolved. that the Brookfield Board of Selectmen hereby authorizes at least the preparation of schematic drawings and the outline specifications for the roof replacement projects at Brookfield High School and Whiskeyneer Middle School. So we have a motion and it's been seconded. Is there any discussion of this? Can I just add a little context to some of this? So this is in relation to the non-priority grant applications that we will be submitting to the state for reimbursement for these capital projects. The timing of

086these is going to be, you know, not tomorrow's Board of Selectmen meeting that we're going to request these because funding does need to be in place, local funding needs to be in place for these capital projects prior to. you know, them saying that approving schematic drawings, right? Funding has to be secured locally. But I want to make sure that we get. this board teed up and ready to submit these requests to the Board of Selectmen so that when that first month that funding is secured, we can submit those applications. Again, the funding window is open the first 10 days of every month. So based on the timing of when all the different boards meet, I wanted to make sure that we have this secured in place so that we can send those requests off to

087the Board of Selectmen as soon as we can. Thank you. That's a very important piece of context. Okay. So without... We didn't vote, did we? No. All in favor of approving the non-priority grant applications, please say aye. Aye. All right. That was everybody. So it's 7-0. Unanimous vote. Great. So now we're going to move to old business. And, Stephanie, we're going to hear from you about the superintendent search update. Maybe we're not going to hear from you. I don't know. We're going to receive an update from the board secretary regarding the superintendent search. It does say that. So, Casey, what can you tell us about the RFP? I think we said we were going to add an outstanding... Please. Do you want me to update on the RFP? Yes, you are correct. And the way

088I just read that, as you said that, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're supposed to say we... Go ahead. Yes. Casey, would you update? We assigned you that task. Yes, we did. And I am just simply, I have all of the information right here in this folder, actually. It just is the way it was written. It confused me. So we had asked Casey to put out the RFP for the superintendent search. Rose met with her because Wendy was. preoccupied in her job as a teacher and we wanted to get it out as soon as possible. So Rosa and Casey met to discuss the terms. As we were, it was reported to us, it's a fairly standard RFP. You guys can speak to that. And we have requested that all applications come in by

089the 22nd of, no, it's Tuesday the 25th. 24th or 25th. I have it written down somewhere. It's an application for firms. For firms. Yes, let me clarify. The RFP is for consulting firms because as it was, I don't know if everybody saw the chart that went out, the first step is that we have to hire a consulting firm, and that consulting firm will advise us on the next steps going forward. So we are in the process right now of not even step one on the chart, which is hiring a consulting firm, and the RFP that went out. for the consulting firm so consulting firms will apply to work with us we as a board are going to meet the week after spring break to essentially we they're sealed envelopes we all sit in a room

090and we open them we discuss we figure out who we want to interview who we want to bring in for an interview we pick an interview date we bring all the firms in and then that is step one figuring out who we want to work with to proceed. So the RFP, I don't know if Casey and Rosie, you want to speak to more details about what went on? I'm pulling it up right now. I did know I had to speak about that. This is a weird way it was written. Do you need the RFP? Yeah, I'm just trying to get the, I can pull it up. I don't think we kept the 22nd, though. I don't think this is. Tuesday the 18th, yeah. I thought that the bids, if you call them a response, is

091by the 22nd, right? The bids are due by the 22nd because the 18th is Good Friday. Okay, good. Yes, yes, yes. This is the move, right? So the 22nd, correct. Originally it said the 18th, but it's Good Friday, and so we decided. Yep. And then we have in the RFP the timeline of events will be April 28th to May 2nd will be interviews with the finalist firms. And then on or before May 7th, which will be the next Board of Ed meeting, the contract would be awarded to the search firm to engage in the process. I have reached out to my CASBO group to find out what search firms they have used for any superintendent searches that have been conducted in the last year or so. I did get the names of nine firms that

092have been used by various districts. So those firms will be specifically invited to bid just so that we know we're reaching as many folks as possible. But the bid was posted publicly on Friday. Julian Capodose assisted with that. I thank him for his help there. Yeah, so pretty straightforward. Yep. And then that chart that we put out. last week, I believe. But basically it's a graph that looks very confusing until we move through the process. And as we move through the process, we wanted to make it clear that some of those steps will be combined, overlapped. We might not go through every single one of them individually because as we sit and talk, we may accomplish three things at once. So that little B at the top, we came up with the idea of moving

093that through. And so you might see as we have meetings and re-release that chart. that it moves not at all, quite far, but we wanted to be able to, we wanted to have a way to communicate with the public and parents where we are in the process, make sure we're transparent about what we're doing behind the scenes. So that's where we're at. And I promise I will now recognize that agenda item as this. And where can people see that? So it was posted in Parent Square. It was posted on the Brookfield Public Schools web page. And then we're putting it in the town spotlight as we can. The town spotlight might not fall in line with, like, actually updating it. But if you go to the Brookfield Public Schools Facebook page, if anyone has any

094other suggestions as to where to put it, that would be great. I feel like there's not really another location that. gets to the public online. I mean, I guess we could put it on the school website, but I feel like that's probably just as accessible as the Facebook page. The other thing we could do is if you want to have a small press release and attach that, I could send it to the Times. We could do that, too. Every time. No, no, just interested in the initial. Oh, if you're interested, go to the Facebook page. Yeah, that kind of thing. And include the chart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe that could be published by Sandy or something like that. And if you want to see updates, you can continue to check back on the Facebook

095page. Right, right. Could be. That's newsworthy for sure. Other comments connected to the superintendent search? Okay, let's move then to the discussion of voting in the schools. So as you guys know, we were meant to have Steve Dunn here this evening to answer our questions. And obviously you've seen the emails that we've gotten a whole lot of CLEs parents with lots and lots of important questions, but. Mr. Dunn was in surgery yesterday, and so he sent a letter. He couldn't be here in person. He sent the letter to us, which we've each had time to read, but you might still have questions. And, Wendy, the letter for everybody is at the very back of your packet, just in case you need a hard copy of it. After all of those policies. Yes. So I really

096feel like we still haven't had a chance as a board to have all of our questions answered in a give and take kind of way, like questions that arise for you. And we haven't been able to hear from the registrars as well. And I think that's really, really important. So. We did have the registrars scheduled, but they're out of town, I think, right? Yeah. Isn't that the issue for tonight? They are just driving back from a conference, I guess. or registrar's conference. And so the timing was just kind of not wonderful. And we only have the one meeting, official meeting here. So this may be necessary for us to have a special meeting because the referendum is in May. Well, that's a great questionnaire. I'm glad you asked. So the Board of Ed. the Board

097of Selectmen and the registrars do not select the date for the referendum. The people, the voters who show up at the town meeting on May 6th, they determine the date of the referendum. And it has to be, there's a window of time, so it has to be between the... eight to 14 days after the town meeting. Yeah. I just think that if we're going to, you know, talk about it, that we have to get a special meeting on. I mean, they have 30, if they have to change, right. A venue, they have 30 days to do. I think it might even be 45. But, I mean, I have to say I was shocked to get CLES parent feedback in the email because CLES was never discussed and it was not on the table. So I

098feel a little bit blindsided by it, to be perfectly honest with you. Obviously, I don't have children in that school, but I do share safety concerns at that school in particular. At our high school, we can separate, right? They're separated from our students. Even if we did it at Wisconeer, they would be separated. These are our youngest students. They're our most vulnerable students. That school is large. There's no way to segregate. How are the kids gonna go to recess? How are they gonna get lunch? I don't see it working. Personally, my opinion is that I know there has been conversations back and forth, but I had no idea CLES was even an option. So your comments echo a lot of what we've been hearing from parents in the last couple of days. But CLES is

099one of the schools, and when we were talking about the schools, CLES is among them. But had that been discussed, I mean, I think we always knew the high school was on there, right? CLES and Huckleberry have been off the radar for five years, right? There's not even a permanent CO at Huckleberry. at CLES, there's all these outstanding punch lists. I did not think that that would have been an option. So, I mean, I can speak for myself that I am dead set against voting at CLES. You mean while kids are in school? Which, so when are kids not in school? Yeah. So, if I might, can I give a little perspective on this? Because, Erin, I... As the superintendent, it'll feel very interesting when I say this, but I'll say it publicly, that last

100Monday I was informed by Dr. Pepsoski when he received an email from the registrar that CLES was going to be the venue for voting. So he forwarded that to me and said, what's going on? I didn't know that this was the case. he was under the impression st marguerite's or maybe um moving from st marguerite's and putting all the voting at bhs which was the last communication the week prior to that so i inquired to mr dunn he had talked with the registrar and that was what they intended to do to use cles now to be very very transparent here in the design and the selling of cles we did talk about voting in in that building and there is ways to isolate The cafeteria can be isolated, and there is a plan that I

101can, again, share a little bit with you. But I prepared some remarks that I want to read because I don't want to leave out any detail because my comments are in direct alignment with Chief Puglisi. We talked again this morning. The SRO and Dr. P have been working on a plan with law enforcement. The registrar is scheduled to meet on Friday with Dr. P, with the SRO, and I think it's going to be Officer Donatio. from PD leadership will be there. But it's important to know that the chief and I, along with the administration, okay, and this goes back to my time as a teacher and as a principal of a high school that was used for referenda and so forth, with school in session, still having voting there. and this Board of Ed, we

102are not looking for voting in school during the school day, for sure. That's been voted on. It was amended. The Security Task Force was all a big part of this. So, again, the chiefs approved of my remarks tonight. It's very important to understand. So we have discussed all of this prior to the November presidential election, thinking about the referendum in the spring. knowing that the presidential election was a closed school day, obviously. So it's not a problem to use the schools. We don't have a security concern. And we did this because we knew the registrar would need time to adjust and move the voting likely from St. Marguerite's to CLES if that was going to be the case. So this has been a longstanding conversation. Security task force unanimously voted, brought it to the board,

103unanimously voted to not have voting in the schools during school. That was amended about a month later when the board was being flexible and cooperative, realizing that the registrar needed more time. And so there was kind of this one-time dispensation to say, for this spring, we'll figure it out and we'll allow the voting in the schools. So that's just important because there's timing in state law and there's a lot that goes into the voting. And we agree that the schools are great venues for the voting, but can we do it somewhere else? So given all those concerns, the board took up the issue again, as I said, a month later, and this one-time event this spring, okay, we'll have a referendum. for whatever reason the the registrar was not able to secure other locations and

104mr dunn outlined some of that in his letter that he just recently sent to the board we're now a month from the referendum the chief and i agree that voting is critical component of the community obviously and we want to be cooperative while maintaining safety of students and staff We have plans developed at both schools to ensure the referendum can take place and meet their statutory requirements that they must comply with. The SRO school administration, starting to involve the actual security teams, meaning our security monitors, are going to be collaborating with the police leadership and also... The plans are including designated entries, designated exits, locking of doors, isolating areas, all the things you were just starting to allude to, Erin, and ensuring that. I actually walked through that with Dr. P in the SRO yesterday.

105Stephanie happened to be in the building for parental reasons. Dr. P invited her as part of the Security Task Force to take a look at those from a kind of parent board perspective. And at this point, if we have to have voting in the schools, we're comfortable with the plans. That really is a decision beyond. We're comfortable with the safety plans we've had. We've always had BHS in the mix. We used to have voting at Huckleberry. Like you said, it was offline probably since COVID. It's been at St. Marguerite's. Security Task Force will get a look at the plans in an executive session on, I think it's April 24th. So that's just some background on where we're at with this. And I understand everybody's concerns as well, of course. But I continue to maintain that

106this board has been nothing but flexible and cooperative, but also putting safety first for everyone. So, you know, it's a conundrum right now because now we're a month away from this. And it's a sense of incredible frustration. Why does it have to move some St. Marguerite's? I think Wendy knows the answer to that. I don't know the answer. I don't want to put words in the mouth of the registrar. So please, like, take this with. a grain of salt, but it has to do with problems that have been encountered over the last couple of years, including the communications there at St. Marguerite's and at all the voting locations. There has to be assured, instantaneous communication, like when a ballot gets challenged, for example. They need to be able to have reliable communication. was interrupted a

107couple of times last year and was really difficult for them. I mean, these aren't casual things. They have to be resolved, like, in the moment. I think that the selectmen and the registrars want voting to happen on town property where we have the tech infrastructure. We have ADA compliance. Parking infrastructure. Yes. Parking spaces. Yes. And then it's also not subject to the, I don't want to use the word whim, but the decisions of somebody who doesn't work for the town, of a private individual who can say, no, we've booked our building that day and you can't use it. They want to have more. town control over this important operation. And I think that they would be open to joining us at a special meeting so that you don't have to listen to information that comes

108through me about this. You can hear directly from them because they own the details much better than I do. So, Erin, I share your concern. I have been a very vocal opponent of having voting removed from schools. I share safety concerns, logistical concerns. I, through the security task force meeting, through the meetings that we have had as a parent with a student at CLES, I have been. You know very confused concerned where did you know? I think part of the problem is we as board and I take full responsibility for this made an assumption when we were talking about schools because we've only always had it at VHS and we did not clarify and I think that opened the door for The town to I just think that was a massive miscommunication that aside once

109it came through there's no way i'm sending my child to school in a building where the public can just walk in when we have to you know sign paperwork to go read in our child's classroom that being said because i have been such a vocal um you know my concerns i've vocalized my concerns at the security task force meeting at this meeting and with the school directly as a parent you know i wrote um the email that I felt I needed to write to the principal and the concerns that I had when Wendy asked us to send them directly to Steve. So with that in mind, when I was at school, Dr. P was, you know, He said, hey, do you have a minute as a member of the Security Task Force? You want to

110switch roles here? And I know you have a lot of concerns. And after he walked me through, I had talked through a lot of the sort of logistics as a parent with a child at CLES. You know, we're going to serve 1,100 kids lunch in their classrooms. How is that going to work? Like, there were a lot of things, as all the emails that we've gotten have said. After today and walking through with him, I am not saying that I'm, you know, oh, yeah, let's just vote in schools if kids are there. The concerns, the safety concerns, the logistical concerns that I had have been alleviated. I will continue to advocate for no voting in schools while kids are there. I will continue to advocate for the town moving voting to Saturdays for the referendum

111specifically. but all of my anxiety and and You know fear and concern and that I shared with a lot of the very vocal You know emails and people that have talked to us I do have to say when we get the report and the Security Task Force meeting I've been as a board I do feel like a lot of those Concerns about how this is going to work and actually keep our kids safe and keep the public isolated from our kids They've thought Dave and dr. Dr. P and dr. Burrell and chief of Lisi along with officer J at CLES have really thought this through they really I mean Dr. P was not you know the biggest fan of this either as I talked to him, but he was very reassuring and of course our

112administrators have nothing but the kids safety and the concern. My other safety is obviously a huge concern. One of my other concerns is if anyone's ever driven to CLEs between 2 and 4 p.m. or tried to put, right? So there were like a lot of logistical concerns. They thought through everything and when he walked me through exactly how it was going to go today, I was like, okay, I can see why this would work for this. you know this right i still don't think it should be something i think it should be something we continue to advocate for being removed but to dr burrell's point i do feel like they have come up with a plan that will work um hearing that we have the opportunity as a town to set the date on a

113saturday we have to get the word out to as many people because when we went to the person i went to the finance meeting there were six people there when the finance committee presented the um the capital committee presented to the town so if we can get the public organized enough, whether it's to vote on Saturday or not vote on Saturday. Like, if we want to hear, right, because we're only seven people and, you know, the Board of Selectmen have the town's best interest at heart and we're really, we all know that voting is, you know, a fundamental right and we need to have it accessible and it is a staple of our democracy. None of that changes the fact that we also want to make sure that, you know, we are the Board of

114Education and we keep our kids safe. I also just want to comment that I had some emails shared with me. And it's not true that all of us didn't know that CLES was being used or considered being used because it was actually sent, an email was sent by Mr. Belden in December and again in January to Mrs. Youngblood. Stephanie and Rosa. And Dr. Brill was copied on it on January 17th as well, stating that CLES was being considered. Well, we had always known it was being considered. We have been fighting that tooth and nail. Well, I'm telling you that I had no idea CLES was being considered. It was never a conversation or a discussion. No, it was because we talked about it after when we made the vote after the executive session. I remember

115it being something that we had. CLES was never mentioned as a voting. Site I'm in district one. I had no idea Celia's was being used I do I do have to say and I will share these with the rest of the board. I am very I say it every time, transparency, it's just not here. And there is not transparency among this board when FOIs are shared and four members, three and an administrative member, are copied on conversations about voting in schools with the rest of the board not privy to it. I have a major problem with it, and I really think it's a conflict of interest. So I don't remember getting sent an email saying CLES was going to be used. I remember getting an email saying it was in consideration, and we fought back

116on that very hard. But what I'm saying is you were privy to that information that CLES was being considered. So I guess I was under the assumption we all knew that CLES was, because it is a school within the district, the Security Task Force Committee had brought it to us. You said the school? Were you aware that CLES was being used? Were you aware CLES was being used? No, so we never, my understanding and the way it was presented to me is the schools included CLES. So it was never that we were going to continue voting at BHS and CLES. As it was presented, we all fought back on it. Yeah, well, I mean, on this one from Mr. Belden, dated December 17th, the high school gym, you know, is pretty separable. For CLES, one

117of the design points was that the voting would occur there, even if school was in session. It's dumbfounding to me that now that the school is built, we decide that the design has insufficient safety points for our students. But were there any replies to that? Because that was just him giving us his opinion. I don't remember there being. I mean, there's pages. I mean, I will scan them and send them to everybody on the board because everybody on the board should have been privy to it. He's a former chair. I understand that. He's actually writing at the bottom of that. I hope you're sharing it with the rest of your board, which didn't happen, and that's what I'm saying. I didn't catch that part. I guess I missed it. I want to know what the

118point of this was because I am 100% on your side right now, Erin. Like, I don't see the point in bringing up, personally, I don't even remember these emails. But if I did receive them and I neglected, I 100% will admit, I guess I was under the wrong assumption as well that CLES was not going to be one of the schools. When we all voted unanimously, we all took a very strong stance that we were against having voting in schools when students were present. I am 100% with you on every single one of your points. So I don't understand what this is. So if you're going to tell me that there's a conflict of interest that I have, please point it out. The conflict of interest is that information was provided to you, was told,

119was expecting that you were going to. Where's the conflict? How is it not a conflict if you're privy to information that you're expected to share with your board members? How do I have conflicting interests? Rosa, first of all, you're told. Rosa, point of order. When we're voting in January and you have information that we don't and it's not as detailed in the vote on January 15th, that's an issue. Well, then that is absolutely a lapse in my memory, but I voted with you. So to me, I vaguely remember that email as like an opinion email. I don't remember it as like a conversation. I don't even believe I replied or have talked to Bob since then. So that, I think that was just him sharing his opinion in the same way Steve shared his. I

120never, I mean, he's, from what you say, he said CLES should be considered was designed that way, but I don't remember it being like a, oh yeah, that's a great idea. We'll definitely. do that. I remember the next meeting us all having a conversation about how we want voting out of schools. So when I say I was under the wrong assumption that when we said school, that we were going to allow school to continue for the referendum, that is how it's been done in previous referendums. So I don't ever remember CLEs being brought into that conversation. I apologize if you feel like there was information not shared. Literally, vaguely remember it being an opinion email that I don't even remember responding to or having any conversation about. Guys, I think we're at a point where

121we're kind of talking in circles. It would appear that the next step forward with this is for us to help the public understand that if there is an appetite to have voting. to use the site that the registrars have chosen and to have it be on a Saturday, then that's a campaign that the community will need to get involved in. And we know that there were about a dozen very fired up community members who reached out to us and expressed strong opinions, and so maybe they'll be at the vanguard of this movement. But are there closing? Yes, go ahead. And maybe, I don't know, I'm just kind of grasping if you guys have any information on this, but what authority do we actually have? That's unclear right now. The question is out to Mr. Beecher.

122It's not even clear that we have the legal authority to bar voting in schools because they are town buildings. It's not clear, so we're asking. the way it happens on a Saturday? Is it the public votes for it to happen on a Saturday? So the town meeting that's going to be on May 6th. So this happened about 10 years ago. I don't know if you guys remember. Maybe it was eight years ago. And there was a suggestion to move voting to Saturdays and people came out en masse. Maybe that means 200 people. I don't remember. I was there, but it just was like, whoa, there are more people than normal. And it was overwhelmingly against it. Some people viewed it as voter suppression. But maybe the tide has turned. And maybe people, given the current

123situation, maybe they will express their opinions differently. And the tide is turning at the state level. They're encouraging to not have voting during school hours, perhaps Saturdays. New Fairfield's a town right next door. They don't seem suppressed, and they're having voting on Saturdays forever. That's their... at least in recent history. So, I mean, I've been here 10 years, and to your point, I mean, that occurred, I think, within my tenure here, that it was okay to go vote in schools during the school day, and if you did anything else, that was, you can't do that. And people did come out in mass. Since then, maybe the tide has turned, and people are more mindful of security. And also, our chief of police has been more vocal about his opinion on this, so I think that

124brings a lot of weight as well. John, is there an opportunity for the registrar to give the calendar committee the voting dates for the next however many, you know. however many votes, their primary, regular election, referendums. I believe they scheduled these many years in advance. Again, flexibility based on our town charter and how that works with voting on referendums specifically, but they should have an outline of that for sure that they can share with all of us. Yeah, perhaps that could be a longer-term solution as we work with them on, okay, we know that we're scheduling these dates. Can they be PD days? Right. Or just non-school days, whatever it has to be. However we can make that happen. Well, the issue with that is some of these days are not static. So, for example,

125in the fall, if there's a primary, right, or if there are multiple referenda, right, then it makes it all the more challenging. But primaries, I think, have to happen on Saturdays, right? I mean, have to happen on Tuesdays. So this is. We will be solving our immediate issue, hopefully, and that's why we have to have this conversation with the town leaders and with the registrars. I mean, and we discussed this in January. I mean, here we are April. There's been plenty of opportunity for them to speak to it, too. I mean, there has been. Well, that's what tonight was supposed to be. All right. Then can we move on to the next item? All right, let's do it. Healthy start, a healthy school start time recommendation. Joy, would you like me to share the? Oh,

126you got it. Yeah, please have it. Thank you. Okay, so at the subcommittee meeting we did. bring a recommendation to the full board to change the healthy start times to 725 for BHS 810 for WMS and 855 for CLE s So that's the motion that we're bringing to the board We also want to give another option for proposals So the proposal number one is the one I just stated You can see here the start and the end time and how that compares to what it is currently for each of the schools and All-Star did mention that they need 45 minutes between each school run. So that's where we Started with the book field high school and then use the 45 minutes to determine the whisk in here and then 45 minutes for a candle Lake

127Elementary And then proposal two would be we did task the administrative team to consider shaving off a minute from passing time, thank you, at the high school to gain five minutes to possibly start at 7.30 with a 2.15 end and then the 45 minutes reflecting after that for the other schools. And then the next slide is the two side-by-side, which is an easier visual. Yeah. The second proposal, we can keep the 210 end time with the shaving off of the passing time minutes. Right. Or if we don't shave off the minutes and keep the longer passing time, we would have to go to 215. Correct. Yeah. Mark did right. We had some concerns to speak to, you know, would it... be hard for some students to from one side of the building of the high

128school to get to the other side would that be enough time four minutes and he said you confidence that the team here well I mean it's very straightforward we the high school I was principal of was is the same size as Brookfield High School in terms of student population was actually more square footage as I recall but definitely end-to-end was an eighth of a mile and the kids were able to do it in four minutes so I've always kind of wondered about our five-minute passing time and I know mr. bland has thought about this for years but wants to give the kids plenty of time to and students will find ways to tell him that five minutes is not even enough and I need 10 minutes in between classes. So, you know, it's up to

129us adults to lead that. And I know Dr. Mann has spent the majority of her career at the high school level as well and actually had a high school with about 1,500 students. And if you want to say anything, Anna, I don't know. I mean, I agree. Same kind of thing. It can be done. Absolutely. There are definitely, structurally, there's areas of congestion. That's going to be the case, whether it's four years, yeah, whether it's four minutes or five minutes. There's always going to be that kind of congestion. The other thing Mark can do is, I think you might have mentioned it in his comments, is work with the lunch periods a little bit, too, and he can find some time there. So he's confident he can make the four minutes work if that's what

130the board wants to do. And our biggest push for the recommendation was the loss of instructional time for so many of our students at the high school having to dismiss early for sports and other activities, not just sports, clubs and extracurricular activities. That was the biggest driver of, well, yes, and of course the cost savings given under budget. That was at the forefront of our thinking moving forward with these proposals, with the two proposals. But we feel like we really tried to not let no stone go unturned and reached out to all parties of the administrative team to look at every possibility. to investigate further and we took your concerns and got answers to them the best that we could seeking guidance from Dr. Garcia and then Stephanie your question and Rosie your question and

131we have all of the information from the previous committee, all the work that they've done on the medical information research out there. But not updated. I mean, realistically, we had Dr. Burrell contact the medical director. I don't really know that if somebody would come in and, you know, take a look at it. I mean, that's an option, but we asked for the medical director's opinion, considering, you know, we've used him for COVID and everything else. So his recommendation was provided to you guys. Yes, I understand that. I just meant the scientific literature that's been updated now that COVID is long past us. The studies there are quite rich, as are those around teen sleeping. But I digress. How many less buses will be used going from three tiers to two tiers? I mean, two tiers

132to three tiers. Three buses. And have we explored any other ways to reduce three buses per run, staying on a two-tier system? Stephanie had brought up something one time about combining bus stops. So that was part of my question. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. So part of this is also we also provide transportation to Region 12, our AgSTEM, and Henry Abbott Tech. the charter school in Danbury as well, AIS. So part of this would also involve, and this doesn't have a budgetary impact, but part of the timing of all of this would require that all three of those schools have a combined one-stop bus stop for all of those students. So that is already happening for AIS students. They all come to TSO, to the parking lot there. and one bus goes there and brings them

133to their school. The same would have to happen for the Ag STEM program and Henry Abbott Tech as well. So that would be one difference in combining those buses. The trick is CLES is our biggest school and it's really, so. and forgive me, but it's very convoluted. We had to have them come into and meet with us to sit down and go over the planning with all the stops and the routes and the timing of it. Right now, CLES requires the most number of buses. I don't know that it's not quite 30, but breaking it up into three tiers allows for We can reduce three buses because we don't need the extra. They have three buses for CLES and then these additional buses for backup, essentially. It's three buses across the board for three tiers.

134That's it. Was there any more on that? The other thing people need to know is there would be no layoffs of bus drivers. That was really important. It was very important to know. Number one, we still are working through a shortage, and bus drivers get sick like everybody else and have family obligations and have to miss work, so you want to have backup drivers and that kind of thing. So that was something. Yeah, that's a very good point. So there will be no layoffs of drivers, and while All-Star cannot guarantee that this will help athletic transportation, I am not proposing that we bring down our budget for athletic transportation because they are adamant that it is the bus driver shortage that is causing that additional expense and the lack of availability for those athletic runs.

135But if we have less buses needed, it would just logically ensue that we would need less drivers. They won't lay them off because they always need to have backups. And so that is why it could potentially assist with athletic transportation. But, no, with shaving, the minimum requirements was that we have to have the 45 minutes in between each run. The number of runs, the amount of time on the runs for BHS and Whiskeynear. could potentially likely be shortened because we will have more buses to use for each of those school runs um if that makes sense because we have the most number of buses for cles now we can and and we needed those also for bhs and ws when they're all going at the same time now we don't need as many buses for

136bhs and wms separately but we can use a little bit more on bhs and a little bit more for wisconeer so those runs themselves can be shortened was the idea of having bus stops throughout the route explored? For example, my street, we have two extension roads. All of us have to go to Wisconier and it's a good half mile from my house. Is there a reason why a bus has to stop at six houses on one road when it could potentially save? Six five six minutes and have a bus stop at the end of the road that was where my question was like I feel like part of the concern was that the buses are leaving at the same time and dropping off earlier and Bus routes can be combined What where was there any

137exploration of bus routes themselves turning into bus stops? So we did not, that wasn't, I'm sorry if I missed that, the full board conversation, but we did not explore that with All-Star. I will say for any stops that are combined right now. It is very difficult to hold on to those at the start of every school year. I get dozens of phone calls from parents wanting the bus to stop. It would require us to have a new policy. Which is okay. Which is okay. And I'll spend the time and I'll go out to the stops and I'll see what the concern is exactly. And I've gotten out of the car and walked on the road to make sure that there's a visual, you know, all these different things to, you know. I can find out

138if we can condense anymore. There is a board policy of requirements of walking distance per grade and age and all the site distances and all that stuff. But I think all of that is worth exploring before we fundamentally change the way our district runs. If there are things we can do that can reduce, I mean, if we're going to reduce by three buses, how can we combine routes? How can we have bus stops? I feel like that's a really important way to explore. a more long-term solution. The other question that I think is really important for the public to understand, because it took me a little bit of time, how, with going to three routes, are we actually saving money? How are there less stops, and how is that saving money? How do we need...

139So there have been a lot of questions of like, well, if we're going back to three routes, don't we need more buses because of the way they're running? How is that a reduction of cost? And where does that cost savings come from? Because if we're not laying off, if the bus drivers are not affected. So we're charged by the number of buses. Our contract is based on a per bus cost. And All-Star, this is why they would need a decision soon because they will need to know starting. very soon within the next month to you know through end of July early August to really calculate very specifically all of these these routes so there's a science involved in planning all these bus routes as you can imagine I can just report what they have reported

140to us which is and I gave them all the parameters that we spoke about which was go to three tiers make the runs as compact, close together in terms of start time as possible and make BHS start as late as possible without extending too far out the third school. Those were the parameters that I gave them and they reported back that based on those parameters, we could reduce our fleet of buses by a total of three. don't guarantee any impact to athletic transportation. And that's what I can report. So the science of high five minutes. I'm sorry. No, no, no. I'm just curious why we have not thought about exploring. That specific. Yeah, and I do know, like, in terms of the stops and how those routes are planned, I know for a fact that

141Deb Jones is, she will combine stops based on streets and all that stuff as much as she possibly can. I know that she already does that. Hold on, hold on. Sarah had a question. I was in question. And the 45 minutes in between was crucial to them. I just wanted to point this out. That's critical to have enough time to get back to the next school. Yeah, that I understand. But I do know that there are buses running with very minimal kids on it. And I don't know if that, I'm sure part of that has to do with geography. But there's, I mean, Brookfield is. I don't know, I think like 15 square miles. I mean, we don't have like geography like Newtown has geography. Like these are solutions that I feel like weren't creatively

142explored. I think I feel like, you know, the committee was sort of like, okay, well, there was an endpoint, I think, to the work of this committee. And the only proposals really that I see are I mean, we're talking about five minutes between the two proposals and no other real, like, exploration of any, how can we, you know, this initiative, if it's gone, it is gone. Like, you do not, this is just sort of like an age-old thing with boards. You know, if you get rid of an initiative, it's never coming back. And a lot of work went into bringing this to the community over years. and meetings that were longer than a half an hour. And to be honest, I feel like we are saying, okay, well, in this one budget, we need to

143save some money, so let's just get rid of this program that took a long time to get here, that parents support, that students support. And so I'm just, I'm very disappointed with the lack of the breadth of how, of all the options that could have been explored. And I don't know if we can audit bus routes. I think that's like not our job, but like. there has to be a way that it's more efficient. I mean, I hear constantly on this board, we have to get creative, we have to be more efficient, we have to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and yet we're not requiring that of our vendors. So that's a big sticking point for me. So if I can comment on one thing that you said, which was that you observe many buses that are

144sparse. There's not a ton of kids on them. And that very well may be true because we have a lot of parents that drive their children. But irrespective of that, we have to have enough seating capacity to bus all of our students. And so that may mean that some buses are very, very light, but there's a lot of kids that if that bus were to stop at their houses, that bus would be full. So, yes, I do. I just want to know that. Yeah. And I do also remember a few years ago when we were talking about we were looking at rising transportation costs and we were like, how do we get this more efficient? Because it was I mean, we're talking millions of dollars. And at the time, I think I talked to Dr.

145Burrell and I said, you know, I know we have to have a seat for every butt, right? Like that was sort of what we were always operating under. But, you know, I think and I don't think we ever really finished like a good, robust conversation about it. But is there a way that we can? sort of assess how many students really need buses and then granted like we are legally obligated if the if that parent says hey I'm not driving my kid today my kid needs a bus we have to go pick them up totally understand that Is there a way, though, that most of the time we're right about it? Like we're right about we don't need this many buses because we're pretty sure that either they're driving themselves because they go to the

146high school or parents are driving them. And is there a way that we can creatively explore, you know, reducing the number of buses that we need? And that's a long-term solution. That's not just helping this budget. That's helping every single budget beyond today. i could share with you that you know talking with superintendent colleagues in right in this area one or two have risked one or two buses for that exact, you know, kind of doing the survey to see who's going to go on the bus and who's not. I mean, it's an age-old question, and we talked about this years ago. I've never been comfortable with that risk, to be very honest with you, for the exact reason you say, because as soon as the parent says, oh, I've got a job now and I

147can't drive my child anymore, you need to have them on the bus. If that bus is now not going by there or we've reconfigured the bus routes. It's problematic, and that's just a risk I was never comfortable with, but certainly that is something that can be explored. Casey, who decides if we're able to really combine the bus stops like Stephanie suggested? Is it us or is it the vendor? Because wouldn't they get a better idea? They would have more of a strategic way of doing it. Steph Jones knows every stop and every street in this town, of course. And, yeah, I mean, we could give her direction, give All-Star direction to combine. We'll see what happens. More stops I suppose and she could but I I just I just I caution only because I don't

148know how much more could be done It's very possible that there could be more efficiencies found I just know that it always is at the top of her mind to make sure that buses are running as efficient as possible Doesn't mean that more efficiencies can't be found so I can certainly talk to her more directly about that. I did talk to her about the high school too because I was interested in as kids start driving and they get parking spots and she said that she talks to the administration all the time to make sure what kids have them so she has room on buses. I can speak to my middle schooler, his bus is totally packed. He loves when he gets picked up. So that's just my bus route but it goes through quite a

149few neighborhoods. Can I ask another question to the committee? And forgive me for not knowing this. Is Dr. Garcia a sleep specialist or a child psychologist? No, I genuinely don't know. I'm asking that genuinely. He's a pediatrician. He's a pediatrician. Okay, he's a pediatrician. Okay, that was a genuine question. Sorry if it came off wrong. And I don't think anybody in this committee is discounting the work that was done. And we don't have an agenda because that was implied. You know, we really tried to leave no stone unturned. We asked for your feedback and suggestions. At no point did any other board members come to our committee and make suggestions and try to help us to be creative. We, you know, seeked guidance and help from the admin team. So we're not discounting and not

150taking consideration into all the work that was put in. But as with any initiative, you have to be reflective and deal with the repercussions or the outcomes of that initiative and reassess. That's what you do. That doesn't mean if it goes against the initial initiative that that's horrible to do. I don't discount anybody's work, committee work. I don't think it's fair to put that out there. We appreciate that. But like you said, come back, make a motion, and we can vote on it. No, I do appreciate that because we have something to act on. Was there additional research? Like was there new studies? Are there like new things that have been released? It's not that we're not looking for the new research. We're looking at what's currently happening now. And we're not, as a committee,

151we weren't comfortable with our high school students losing all this instructional time. We're just not comfortable with that. So that's what was driving given the situation that we're in. And that is a valid concern. And we had talked about it at the last meeting as well, making sure that we have the feedback required to know that our kids are not getting behind academically. And if I recall, across the board for the most part, the parents and the students both expressed that there is no... Most of the kids are not falling behind. There's no concern about their academic day being cut short because they are able to do homework on the bus. Or a lot of the feedback that I recall was that parents and students do not feel like their academic performance has been affected

152by having to leave. Now, I'm not saying that isn't true for some students. I just feel like there's so much that we have to consider fundamentally changing the way the district works. I mean, something to consider about CLES. My kid has 4.30 and 5 o'clock activities. The way the pickup and bus, the way the buses are, the way the pickups are, we're not getting out of that school. We're not driving off until 3.45 or 4 o'clock. So now you have all these little kids that have to rush to activities or shove food in their mouth before they go to their 4.30 practice. So it's not just that the high schoolers are affected by having to leave early. I think there's sort of a ripple effect that happens, and we have to look, I think, at

153every... part of the picture. I totally appreciate the fact that we have to figure out how to, you know, make our high schoolers less affected by the sport that, you know, being pulled out from the sport. But I feel like there are so many other things. And to your point, there were no creative solutions offered. I apologize because I assumed that's what the board meeting was for. So I would happily come to the next meeting and talk through like. you know, where can, I know you said that Mr. Belanda had explored, you know, maybe putting programs at the end of the day that aren't highly academic, like calculus and things like that, and that was challenging. So, right, but I feel like there need to, if there's a full picture of like, okay, this is

154not just, it's not just about the bus, the... the sports schedule and having the high schoolers leave. I think there's a ripple effect across the district that if we can plug in different things like bus stops, how does that affect? And getting, you know, I don't know. I feel like we... I don't know that there is a good faith effort to try and keep it and figure out something else as opposed to let's figure out how this works with a different proposal. I think that's the part that I'm having trouble with is because it's going to be such a monumental change to how we do school. And I think that sets us back personally. And to be honest, just... I just want a couple of minutes because I was talking to myself earlier today and

155I had my phone transcribe my thoughts. And so I just I would like to read to this because I think like as I'm going through it again, I'm like, this is really what I wanted to say. But, you know, obviously, it's very clear I'm not in favor of returning to an earlier start time. And I don't really personally see the difference between 725 and 730 as being. very different from our original start time of 7-15. And the overwhelming research in this field corroborates that that is not an appropriate time to start school for adolescents. And I'm again disappointed that the committee never looked at any of that. However, if I can't convince the majority of you to see the importance of sleep and also when it occurs as it relates to adolescent health, then I

156mean, I really can't. Instructional time is obviously incredibly important and we don't have enough of it. But let's be clear. Students are not missing. instructional time because of a later start time. They're missing it because they chose to do a sport that requires it. Now I understand that that may upset a lot of families because the majority of students in BHS participate in a sport and in a couple years my daughter will be one of them. But it's an important part of a high school experience. It's not above school and certainly not above health. Personally if my child's grades were suffering because they were missing class for a sport, I would tell them the choices are to give up the sport or find a time to study elsewhere. I would not be telling them, I'm

157sorry, you have to wake up earlier and we'll arrange the entire school day so that you can do it all. And that would really force her to make some adult-like decisions, but I think that is actually the point. So anyways, those are the values that influence my decision on the board, but that's really all I can say. I can't convince the committee. If you wanted any kind of information to work on in the committee, it was your job to seek it. It was not my job as a person who was not on the committee to bring it to you. I'm going to evaluate the work that you did and make my decisions based off of it, but that's just where I stand on it. So are there other comments before we proceed? Yeah, I thought

158it was important to mention Dr. Garcia because the work that the committee did was prior to the pandemic, and a lot has changed since then. His recommendation was that parents need to talk to their teens about the importance of limiting screen time, so that's a huge factor since the pandemic, and avoiding screens at least an hour before bedtime. has been shown medically that improves sleep quality and encourages person-to-person engagement with family members. So he felt that that was one way that we can encourage our students and our children to get longer and better quality sleep. Establishing rules on the use of screens was a recommendation by the AAP, FDA, and the CDC. So again, I just want to say that We value instructional time and yes, students are choosing to participate in a sport, but

159for a lot of our students, that's their only option to excel and to be involved, to make healthy choices and to steer away from making bad choices. And clubs, right, it's not just sports, it's clubs, field trips, things like that. We seem to be mining the same territory. So just to summarize, we have two proposals here. This is the recommendation from the Healthy Start Times Committee. We've discussed pretty exhaustively the rationale behind these and also what some members here feel is other important priorities of better adolescent sleep and more maybe plumbing with the bus routes to find creative solutions. So with that... Wendy? Yes. Casey just mentioned something to me that she has an answer to one of the questions. Yeah, I just want to answer... the question that was asked very directly and my

160mind went blank when you asked this Rosa and I apologize but as I've had a moment to reflect. So the reason we can reduce the three buses is because CLES is our largest school. So we know that we need a certain X number of buses, I think it's 23 to transport all the students at CLES. With VHS and WMS combined, That becomes, because of the geography and the two locations of where the schools are, we need to add to that 23 buses, we need to add three more to have those two schools at that one tier. So by reducing, by now separating those two into two separate tiers, we still need the 23 buses for CLES, but we don't need those additional three because the other schools are combined. So I'm sorry, I got it

161confused. That's why you need the 45 minutes in between. Exactly. You split the 23 buses and one goes. Yeah. So that I just wanted to be clear. And so we would have then 23 buses for BHS if we needed it. So those runs could be shorter. Right. No, I'm just talking about like we didn't talk about any risk that we were comfortable taking. We weren't talking about combining stops. None of that was explored. So that was the part. I hear you. And so that's, I'm sorry. The other thing is, so really when you're talking about. could we reduce any buses regardless of changing start times? The question is really only going to be about CLES. Can any of those stops be combined? Or can parents say, I definitely never, ever, ever do a survey type

162thing, which Dr. Brill has said is not too comfortable with, but it would only be really CLES that would be impacted because that's the largest school and that will drive how many buses we need. So I just want to know. Because I flubbed the first time. Has there been any discussion with, and this is kind of one of those outside the box creative things that just came to me. Has there been any discussion with any of the bus drivers about what they're experiencing? And is there a direct, you know, a lot of these bus drivers have been in our district for years. Have they seen benefits or is there any, you know, feedback that they can give us on how the change. has affected the kids, what their route looks like. Is there more chaos?

163Is there less chaos? Do they have a preference? I don't know if that's something that... can be explored, but that could be an interesting take and conversation because they're the ones that are living it. I can tell you that as an administrative team working with All Star, we did not talk to them. We assume they work with their bus drivers. We never had a conversation about that. Yeah, of course, but it would be an interesting take on feedback for us. The only other thing that I was sort of... I just lost my train of thought. Well, why don't you ask about the driver's opinions? You cut me off because you wanted to move on. I'm sorry, I thought you were done. Opening the floor. So we're either moving on or we're not moving on. Well,

164um. Oh, sorry. So, Joy, what would you like to add? So I'll make a motion. So can I also just make a suggestion that maybe we table this topic till after the budget discussion? Because the way that one of the budget items and one of the proposals is that we cut the bus routes to save the money, and that's kind of directly tied to what we're talking about. Is there a way to have the budget conversation and get that feedback and kind of encapsulate the two? Because one directly affects the other. And maybe make whatever motion you guys want to make after that. Maybe that could, things that might be discussed in the budget conversation. So are you talking about tabling this conversation? Yeah. And moving on to the budget? Just in motion. Yeah, just

165having any action or motion or anything that might be about to be presented. Is it, are you guys comfortable with maybe making that motion after the budget conversation? Because there may be information revealed that has. weight one way or the other. It's just a suggestion. So one of the budget proposals is that we cut the bus routes to save the $247,000, right? So I'm not prepared to make a decision about healthy start times if that is the precipice of our budget conversation. You know, there could be things revealed in the budget that... To me, they're tied together. Even though we're talking about healthy start times, the reduction of the buses has been discussed as a way to help the budget reduction. There are three scenarios I provided on Monday afternoon that we'll present tonight. And

166Casey has a lot of laptops, so she'll walk us through those. Okay. So I'm just asking if you're comfortable with that. Until we do the budget vote? Okay. Then let's move on and let's talk about the... And we will return. Let's talk about the budget options. Oh, I'm sorry. Hold on just a second. Sarah, please. Thank you. Stephanie, I wanted to thank you for asking us what we did and asking us questions instead of telling us what we did and those little underhanded insults, Rose, that were not appreciated. And I would really like to shout out to Mr. Bland. Point of order. Mr. Belanda went extensively to answer our questions. Mr. Baldwin did so much research and got back to us, so to make little comments that we had a 30-minute meeting is just not

167productive, and I appreciate you, Stephanie, asking us what we talked about and what we did. Cool. In case we get into the budget, the scenarios that were sent to you electronically on Monday afternoon are coming around hard copy. They are stapled. It might be easier just to pop them apart so you can look at them side by side when the time comes. And Wendy, forgive me, was there an actual motion to talk about the budget yet? I apologize if there wasn't. No. An action, excuse me. Just an action. So you, please, there's no motion. So, as I indicated, we provided, and when I say we, this is the district leadership team really worked together on this over the last, since the last board meeting to have some comebacks. Like always, have been listening to feedback

168from public comment, from parent emails, from staff emails, et cetera, throughout the process. And you'll see in one of the scenarios, we actually are able to. revisit something from my budget priority and assumption document from back in october about intervention so um you you will see that and i hope you had a chance to look at this because i didn't want to present all of this information in fine print and everybody expected just to see it on first glance so i hope you were able to get a dive on this and get some understanding in addition to the three scenarios if the board is not satisfied or wants to explore some other options casey has a sheet that you can see on the screen where we could put in different options and scenarios so we've

169prepared that as well for the conversation the other thing I'd like to say is I think it's important to vote on the budget tonight but it is not a have to we have our budget number from the Board of Finance that's the number that's going to the referendum there have been times over the years where we haven't had a final plan of the exact implementation or where we might cut as a board going into referendum referendums been voted on passed and sometime before june we figure out as a board exactly what we're going to cut or replace or reallocate or whatever to meet the number that we have from the board of finance i think it would be helpful if we did have a budget because we can talk about that through do you know

170your school district or other parents square updates to let families know what's stayed in and maybe what's reduced that kind of thing so as they prepare to cast their vote in mid-may So, Casey, please, can you take it away and walk us through? Sure. So I will walk you through the very top section of each of these scenarios you'll see is exactly the same, not this part up here where it tells you if the reduction has been met or not, but this first section where it says budget changes based on updated information and estimates as of 3-26-25. So those are the items that we know no matter what we have to fund. Those are real changes to the budget. Either we have to fund or they are realized savings or reductions based on new information.

171So that's sort of like the status quo that we have to work towards. The top box up here tells you exactly what the Board of Ed approved budget was. THE BOARD OF ED ADOPTED BUDGET THAT YOU ALL ADOPTED ON JANUARY 15th, I BELIEVE. AND THEN THE BOARD OF FINANCE ADOPTED BUDGET. SO THE REDUCTION THAT WE NEED TO FIND IS $342,901. AND THEN YOU'LL SEE THAT ALL THREE SCENARIOS DO MEET THAT REQUIRED REDUCTION. IN THIS FIRST SCENARIO, THE TOP BOX TELLS YOU THIS AREA UP HERE, THE LINE ITEMS MAINTAINED FROM BOE ADOPTED BUDGET. TELLS YOU SORT OF THE ITEMS IN THE BUDGET THAT OR SORT OF THE NEW, NOT NECESSARILY THE NEW INVESTMENTS BUT MAYBE REALLOCATED FTE'S OR THE ADDITIONAL FTE'S, THE .5 BILINGUAL, THE .2 FRENCH. I DO HAVE IN THAT BOX A NOTE FOR

17250 CLES SECTIONS BECAUSE AT THE LAST BOARD OF ED MEETING THERE WAS AN INTRODUCTION OF ONE FURTHER REDUCTION IN SECTIONS FOR CLES. SO THIS IS SORT OF THE STATUS RIGHT NOW IS THE BOARD OF ED ADOPTED BUDGET OF 50 CLASS SECTIONS AT CLES. AND RIGHT NOW WE HAVE THE TWO TIER BUS SYSTEM. SO THIS SCENARIO DOES ELIMINATE SOME FTEs. IN FACT, IT ELIMINATES THE 1.0 FTE FOR THE CLIMATE COORDINATOR. WE DO KNOW THAT THERE IS A RESIGNATION THAT WOULD BE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS FTE, SO WE KNOW WHAT THAT SALARY IMPACT IS, AS WELL AS THE HEALTH INSURANCE SAVINGS WITH THAT FTE. THE ADDITIONAL SECTION AT C.L.E.S. IS ANOTHER 1.0 FTE AND THAT WOULD ALSO BE A RESULT OF A RETIREMENT AND SO THEREFORE WE KNOW THE SALARY ASSOCIATED WITH THAT. the health insurance that correlates

173to that. This would also require an elimination of the .2 French, the .5 bilingual, and then the savings down here that says six-month interim plus September 1st start. So this is a, there are so many different combinations of scenarios that could happen as of July 1 with, as it relates to the superintendent and the assistant superintendent position, whether or not, so the way this is set up is that six month interim refers to the replacement of the superintendent position and then the September 1st start relates to the appointment of the assistant superintendent position. So in this scenario, this is the anticipated savings. And again, this is all based on assuming a salary, assuming, you know, rates on things, right? So there's a lot of assumptions that go into this, which we can, you know, if

174you want the details on that, can certainly provide. So this would assume a six-month interim placement for a superintendent and a September 1st permanent placement. for an assistant superintendent and we would realize just under $20,000 estimated savings for that. So that would get us to the required budget. We'd have actually about a little under $5,000 left in that scenario. Questions on that scenario? Yes. So the reduction of the CLES section, that would take it to 49? Correct. Okay. Yep. And then obviously that would have an impact on class size, which we can see a chart on that. And it's how many now? Well, right, so currently 51. We voted, we adopted a budget with 50 sections, and then when we talked last month, it was maybe we can reduce another section, and that's reflected in

175scenario A. So we already adopted a budget that... puts us over the class size. I assume the ones in red are the over. Yeah. Under, under. Those are just, those are just outside of the class size. Okay. Over or under. If you take a look. Okay. So, cause that one would be under on the right side. Right. Oh, duh. Okay. And then if you, yeah. And then we put a column on that class size chart. If we reduced one in each of those grade levels, that's what it would look like. So it was just, again, so people could see the data, how you might make an assumption. So, for example, if you reduced in grade one, you would be over the class size guideline. Right. But we don't know where we'd be reducing. No, yeah,

176I know. But we assume you'd shuffle around. Yeah, yeah. That column that says number of sections with a 44 at the bottom, that's reducing in every single. there's no plan for that that's just a show it's just yeah yeah yeah it's a work right kindergarten's been pretty steady like I said with the registration numbers but you never know right that's always the volatile one so scenario B okay scenario B does contemplate the reduction from or the the change from two-tier bus schedule to a three-tier bus schedule, which does realize the savings of the $247,884 for the three buses. It also does contemplate a reduction of 1.0 FTE for the climate coordinator position and the correlating health insurance for that, and then a six-month interim and a permanent placement. So if there was an assistant superintendent

177replacement as of a permanent placement as of July one, um, you know, that could be importantly the savings for those, um, base salaries for the superintendent and assistant superintendent are already accounted for up here with this $40,000. So this is just above and beyond that base wage savings, um, that we could, we could potentially expect. Um, THIS SCENARIO, I DO, SO WITHOUT THIS CHANGE IN TEACHER TURNOVER, WE DO HAVE, WE WOULD HAVE, WE WOULD BE $51,414 UNDER WHAT THE ADOPTED BOARD OF FINANCE BUDGET NUMBER IS. The reason why I would say I would recommend, and potentially you could make the argument that it should be done for scenario A as well, given the FTEs that we would be reducing, but I would suggest potentially taking that $50,000 and reducing our teacher turnover, only because when

178we're reducing the FTEs based on retirements that we know now, that just means that next year that's less teacher turnover that we can anticipate. And now if we don't have any reductions in FTEs, then we would realize certainly that turnover savings. But because this does contemplate the reduction FTEs, I would recommend the teacher turnover savings. If that is something that the board would want to consider doing in option A, we would then need to think of further reductions to offset that. So questions here on scenario B. Yeah, it starts getting very weedy. That's why I tried to keep it to three simple. That's not enough. I know. To me, it's too easy. We don't want to confuse people trying to keep it straightforward. But my question is, our options are reducing. FTEs or fundamentally changing

179the way our school district functions is what the three scenario, right? Because we're reducing that and there's no in between. There's also another problem with teacher turnover savings. Now, I would love to reduce that risk that we take, but I... I tend to think that it would just be mirrored as a different reduction when it comes to the Board of Finance looking at this. Personally, that's just me assessing the environment, but yeah. Yeah, so it's just as easy to say. So it's kind of like a risk we take in another way. Yep, and it's just as simple then to just take it out and we can let the Board of Finance know that. we've met it, we've exceeded that number, right? That's totally fine too. Could I answer Stephanie's question? Yeah. So Stephanie asked the

180question about reduction in force and reducing teachers to get to a budget number versus the savings in the buses. From the leadership team, the thought process was the value of teachers in classrooms, small class sizes has... I mean, that's all I ever hear, you know, for 10 years. So, you know, again, I work at the pleasure of the board. I say it all the time. But we also listen to feedback from the community. And, I mean, that is just never gone away. We want as small class sizes as we can. We want to keep our teachers directly in contact with students. And I obviously get that value. And we looked at this as, you know, the half-hour adjustment and some of the concerns with students leaving class early. And so if we were able to

181reduce operational. concerns we wouldn't have to touch staff that was the thought process in developing um b and c yeah and i totally understand that it makes complete sense what i'm sort of like struggling with is there's no in between like what does it look like if we keep the start times and work More? I don't know. No, I know. It's really you start taking option A. I do. I feel like there's. Everybody always feels, and this isn't a criticism about the question, because you want to get there. No matter what we do, we have to reduce by the number. So something's going to be cut that many people don't like. Correct. That is just the business of doing this. And we have to have value in the eyes of the community. Yes. You've got

182to be thinking about that context. Absolutely. I always say this is not a community where, you know, six people from a board of Alderman or 12 people from a board of Alderman make the final decision on budget. The entire community gets to vote. I mean, this is as pure a democracy as you get when it gets talks, talks about the way we do it in Brookfield. So we have to have as much value as we can because we want to get a budget that. you know people are comfortable with 100 all that's part of the discussion we had as an administrative team coming up with these options absolutely and i am there and you guys are the experts in this and so i definitely defer to your recommendations and your expertise i just struggle with

183these two they're i mean they're i feel like there's got to be something in between and if there's not there's not and we are we're open and i get it but But it's such a large ticket item. Could you take us through scenario C? Sure. Sure. Yeah. It has a bus reduction. It also does have a bus reduction. It does. And I hear you, Stephanie. Unfortunately, when we're talking about this large of a number to reduce, it has to be FTEs, right? If it's not. Another large ticket item. Reminder for us here, but for the public who might be listening, 80% of any organizational budget, especially our municipal budgets, are staff related. So that's where you get the chunks. That's where you can get to these. A COUPLE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR CUTS. CASEY, WHAT DO

184YOU WANT TO HIGHLIGHT IN SCENARIO C? SO IN SCENARIO C, THE LARGE PORTION AGAIN DOES COME FROM THE REDUCTION IN THE THREE BUSES FOR THE START TIMES. BUT IMPORTANTLY HERE, THE CHANGE DOES NOT ACTUALLY INCLUDE ANY FULL whole FTEs for a position. It does eliminate the point to French, which is, again, as we discussed earlier, is not actually like a whole new person. It's just an additional section that would have been taught by a current staff. And instead of that FTE. being used for the climate compliance teacher. The thought here was that it would be reallocated to a 1.0 WMS math interventionist because that was also feedback that we heard from the board at the last board meeting. And it was in my original assumptions and priorities that I provided in October to the board.

185So that was something we did consider. I have a question on this scenario. So the point two French teacher. Like the .2 was being given because the class sizes are pretty large. Because there's a more interest in French, which is good. So in our eighth grade class right now, there's 48 kids taking French. So we're assuming that 48, maybe more. Like where are those kids going to go if we don't add .2? Yeah, so this is actually the .2 is more. They would still be going into French 2. Right, so it was when you take your first year of language over two years at the middle school. So they would still go into French too. The main issue is that kids are continuing on. So they, which it's great, right? We want them to continue

186on. They only need to take two years in order to graduate. However, many of them take three or four, right? And so as they go further in their exploration of the language, what the high school has been doing is keeping two classes in one, run two classes simultaneously at the same time. So honors French four and French three, I believe, or French. for CTE. And the teacher differentiates. Correct. So that makes, I think this year the teacher has 32 kids of two different classes in class at the same time. And so we're anticipating with this increase in interest in French that that 32 could balloon up to 40 or, you know, as kids matriculate through. So it's not so much that. the younger students wouldn't get their sections, it would be more that we would

187not be able to offer as many students. We'd have to put a cap on the number of students who could take that upper level of French. And again, as we... Which we really don't have an appetite to do because we want to encourage students because colleges are looking for that too, more years of which. And then my other question is scenario one, this .5 bilingual teacher. So we had talked about it. I know that we have a para doing it right now. Under the mentorship. But will that waiver still be in effect next year? And if we don't have her, then what do we do? Because by law, isn't that a position we have to provide? So we have to offer the bilingual programming, which we are, and we do have a, we have it

188in the budget already. This .5 here is an addition. to an existing .5 FTE that's in the budget. We just couldn't find the person to fill the .5 FTE for bilingual. So this was to bring it up to a lot. This was to make it to a 1.0. To make it more attractive. More attractive to a certified person. That's a tough cut, too, because you're never going to find someone. I was walking around Central. I took a day and went up and was walking around looking for a Portuguese bilingual. Anybody, please. I will say that at the UConn job fair, which Lindsay Marino went to two weeks ago with Dr. P, they were pushing some of these openings pretty hard, and they've got some interest. We shall see. But probably not for a point. So

189that's why scenario C doesn't contemplate the cut to the bilingual. And again, everything is weighing priorities. If you're 0.5, you don't get benefits, right? 0.5, you do. It's under 0.5, you don't. This would be an additional 0.5 to an existing 0.5, so it would make the bilingual position a 1.0. Right, in option C. In B, we reduce that. So is there, do we see a pathway to... Can I ask? Are we going to table discussion? Can I just ask one more question? Yeah, please. Anna, Dr. Mann, is there a scenario that you would lean towards if you were solemnly? in charge of this? I don't know if I can only make recommendations and obviously from my lens the recommendation is similar to what Dr. Burrell already said is going to be when it does not

190impact direct instruction as much as I would lean toward cutting operational costs. rather than cutting FTEs. And the reason for that is exactly like what we've talked about, and we talk about this at CAPE, and many of you have served on CAPE. particularly with enrollment changing, whether it's at the elementary school, middle school, or high school, and the needs of kids, it is important to maintain the flexibility with our FTEs so that we can meet the needs of kids, whether it is for graduation or for post-graduation expectations or for our neediest learners. The other thing that we have built in here that math science teacher at the high school. That is also because students have been, our physics numbers have gone way up. But the way that we have contemplated it is that it would

191actually increase the amount of sections for math intervention at the high school as well. Because right now the math interventionist. part of that assignment, I think point four of the assignment is co-teaching. So the idea would be behind, the idea would be this new FTE would be physics and that co-teaching, so the math interventionist could be full-time math intervention. So we're trying to get as creative as possible. I know that, and as my colleagues have already said, that's the hardest part about this is trying to get as much out of of the scenario as you can with the least impact on students. And so my recommendation would be operational costs. However, to that point, fundamentally changing the way our district operates is a direct impact to all students. So is there any, and I forgive

192my ignorance, and I know you guys have combed this over, and this is such hard, like, nitty gritty work. There is zero other operational solution than cutting the buses? Like there's not there's not even to get us halfway there at this point. I don't believe that there is I think these are our best these are our so meaning like that assurance or other like those kind of anywhere maintenance I mean that those are the kind of areas we have to look. Right so right right. I just wanted to ask there is there is an increase in in the maintenance budget that we've maintained right this year that we increased it last year we've kept that increase this year. um that was didn't get to apply to the things we wanted to do with the increase

193because we had things break and so that with hvac at the high school so we didn't get to do what we wanted to do with the increase so yeah i mean that's not fully but yeah exactly so so and that's that's about eighty thousand dollars um everything you know i can't i can't We've gone through everything. I mean, to the point where we're, you know, I'm being asked for $8,000 here and $12,000 there. I know, and I appreciate that. And I totally appreciate that, and I know that. And it's important for you. There's no concern. Can you squeeze the lemon anymore? That's the question you're asking. Once we move off of operations, we still don't go to this. We've been very careful about staffing. Correct. Well, that's always. parallel in the conversation or integrated in,

194we start to look at professional learning. We're, you know, extended duty. We look there. And we continue, you know, Dr. Mann has been extremely frugal, frankly, you know, and it's a compliment when I say that, to do your best with the PDEC team, what exactly do we need to talk to the principals and really get tighter and tighter there. You know, I think there's a point where we'll do damage, you know, and that's the, if we start. And the value of the community is always to have those class sizes. I mean, we had an effort to change up the class sizes to get kind of with the times. We did that, so we're doing our best to stay in those. I know. It's hard. Casey, did you want to say something? I was just going

195to say, at the end of the day, this budget is built on about 625 rows of... line item budget items. And a lot of them are between, you know, $2,000 and $5,000 each, right? And so that is what adds up, except for those big items, which is salaries, insurance, operate, you know, busing, transportation, things like that. There's only a couple of large areas. Everything else, all the insurance costs that we have, they're set. We know what they are. Technology, I did go through, we went through the technology budget with Mr. Conklin to just really see is there any subscription we don't think we're going to need. An expensive subscription at $24,000 maybe. Again, that's a drop in the bucket. I feel like we've heard that you guys have been super, super thorough. We need to

196tie two things up together. Tell me what you guys think of this from a procedural point of view. Can we do, would you guys feel comfortable with like a one-by-one voice indication of which scenario you're leaning toward? Or if you're leaning toward either A or B or C, because that sort of like answers the healthy start time question for us. And then we can circle back. revisit the motion if that ends up being the case that most people here are interested in B or C. Can I ask one more question? I think it's just a better use of time just to vote on the motion of the for the busing and then go from there. All right we can do that. Yes go ahead. Can I ask one more clarifying question? In scenario A there

197is no current person being removed from the district. We are simply just not able to fill the FTEs that we would desire. Correct. So it's not like there is a French teacher that is going to be fired or a bilingual teacher that is going to be fired. Correct. These are reductions in what our ideal is. Correct. Well, it's reductions in the investments. There have been no additional, like that climate compliance teacher was not additional. That was a reappropriation when we have reduced in areas such as going from the instructional coaches, because currently there are six instructional coaches. So that FTE was reappropriated. So technically it was reduced and then recreated, but we didn't go over and above except with the bilingual and the French. So those were new ads, but the other ones are not

198new ads. They're just reappropriations, if that makes sense. But there's not anybody currently in any of those positions. There's not a current climate coordinator who is going to lose their job if we choose scenario A. Correct. So this is my, like, really, I'm torn because obviously I do not want kids to be affected, and I do not have any desire to create bigger class sizes and not give, you know kids that want to take french their their advanced class but this is one year and we are looking at reducing completely changing the way our district functions reducing buses versus a really tight budget for one year in which we have to go through a little bit of pain and i think we've talked about this a lot i think everybody understands where we what the

199stakes are I just have a question. So one, you know, we have 50, right, 50 sections. Wait, you're talking about scenario A? Scenario A, yeah, sorry. And you have 50 sections crossed off. Does that mean you're going to this purple tier? Going to 49. So we wouldn't go to the whole purple. What you would look at is just one of the grade levels. Dr. P would have to look at all six grade levels, and if he was only given the 49 sections, then he would reduce. from the current in blue sections. So, for example, maybe fourth grade on a numbers basis. I'm not saying on the makeup of the students basis, you would you might reduce there because you would still be within class size guidelines. Yep. So for our current budget, it's a it's

200a two teacher cut because we already had one in the proposed budget. It's a two FTE. Right. Net. Yeah. But even in that scenario, you wouldn't. We are in a position with people with resignations and retirements that we wouldn't cut anybody. We just wouldn't fill. So that was Stephanie's question was no one would lose their job. We just wouldn't fill those. We've got a lot of crosstalk here, people. Rosa and Stephanie, did you want to bring up something? No, I do think it's, I don't want to piecemeal this. I think we should each maybe take like a little straw poll of like, you know, where we're at in terms of the scenarios. I think that's the best way to go about it. And then I think we can proceed with a little bit more clarity

201with the start times situation. So, Rob, straw poll, would you be willing to start? Which one you favor? I mean, I like A. I just don't like the reduction of sections. I'd like to keep the two tier bus systems. Erin? And not lose what? Sarah, you? Well, we're talking about CLES, but. Oh, you're. Erin, your button. Okay, the French. It's all right. Sarah, your thoughts for now? I definitely don't want to adjust class sizes and do that, so I would go with B. So you would go with B, you said? Okay. Yeah, I would go with B. For those that are considering scenario A, because keeping the tier-tier bus schedule, I think you really need to take into consideration we have a need to add the additional .2 French teacher, given the numbers. And we're

202not going to find someone to be a bilingual teacher at .5. That's just not going to happen. And our demographics are changing, and we're going to need that position. So I think that's really important. we've had people write in, teachers as well, asking that we not reduce sections at the elementary level. So B for best. Okay, and Rosa, you? I think C is out of the question for me. But, you know, in light of what Dr. Mann said, I could, I think I would, I think in long-term planning, I think A would be technically a little bit more appealing because not because of the I don't want the I don't want everything to hang on that $15,000 French point two I understand that the point the point five bilingual is also super important I think

203we're meeting the needs right now so I think like next year if we revisited it that would this would be a great thing a great thing knowing that the second we touch transportation, that is never coming back. So to make that kind of shift in how we operate as a district to help out one budget is really, really not appealing to me. However, if it comes down to it, and I would hope that I could get some cooperation here, I would be willing to go with scenario B if... It specifically took out the words reduce three buses by changing to three tiers. And the reason why is because I would like to explore a way to reduce three buses without going to three tiers yet. If we end up having to go there, then that's

204what it is. But I really want, like, is there any other way that we can get to three less buses and stay at the three tiers? That, to me, gives us... If there's, you know, it might be a Hail Mary, but, you know, I'd like to explore that. So if that particular wording could be taken out of this, I would be in favor of scenario B. Stephanie? I'm sorry. I just wanted to ask a clarifying question on that, Rosa. So if All-Star were to come back and say there's absolutely no way, then what would happen? Then I think we would probably have another vote as a board to say, well, we're going to three tiers. That is what it is. It sounds like you would want to separate those two things tonight. And that's actually

205a really good point is there's a lot of things that can still be explored. I would, especially given that I want to, you know, we're bored and I want us to be united on this. I don't want to go rogue. And I feel like if B is where everyone is leaning, that's a great. sort of in between if we can explore, if we can table the healthy start time and explore other options for reducing by three buses. Scenario B obviously and with Dr. Mann's recommendations and with all the hard work you guys have put in obviously scenario B is ideal in terms of not cutting classes, not affecting class sizes and teachers. sort of day needed to be alleviated. So I would be in favor of trying to, if taking out the going to three

206tiers right now for the purposes of exploring how we could get a reduction in buses. Well, I mean, and I think that it's important to note that we're going to have to special meeting this. Like all start needs to know. I mean, unfortunately. And we're talking about this and we may in a month from now. Not even get a budget passed and then we're talking about more cuts when we get there But we might be there anyways regardless whether I change these words or not So I would be agreeing to cutting two hundred forty seven thousand dollars from the transportation budget Like I'm ready to agree to that tonight I would just want one more pass at just making sure that there is absolutely no way to get that level of a cut Without going

207to three tiers and I I'm fully aware that that may be where we are and I'm okay with that. If I could, I didn't, I'm really surprised. I would go with scenario C because even with the French situation, which is not ideal, because I think that we are very, very much going to need a climate compliance teacher. And exactly what you've expressed earlier. And I see that it's in blue font. That could be, that's a toss-up position that could either be a math interventionist at WMS. But, man, I think that the climate compliance position is going to be really important. And all of our other options cut that. So it sounds like we are kind of all over the place, but I heard a lot more B than anything else. Do you think, in your

208opinions, do you think that a climate, like, I know we're just like, what would you do? But I mean, in terms of like a necessity, right? Like French class sizes are huge. We have that. Well, one French section is huge at the high school for this year. And, you know, one of the things I did ask. Mr. yeah, well, it might be French three. I think that it's more the anticipation because of the interest. And this might be something that does have to get explored certainly again, right? That .2 might be .4 next year, and then you may grow into a 1.0, which would be great, right? That's what you want. I think that what we heard a lot about, a lot of the feedback throughout the winter was about more interventionists. Dean has come

209to us every year I've been here and said, I need another math interventionist. We wanted to prioritize CLES for sure because it's a big, big school. We knew that we needed more. and that scenario C. Okay, okay. And so that is, and also, you know, with that, again, we were very receptive to that feedback about needing that, really shoring up. You know, you hear me talk about Tier 1 all the time, and also I heard from the public and from, you know, from the principals, the Tier 2 piece. And so we want to make sure that we're providing that. With that said. I also support the climate compliance piece because I don't know, you know, we don't know the impact of that. However, we do know the current impact of our change in our math

210curriculum and our, you know, all of that stuff. So all the stuff we've already talked about. So, you know, there are ways that we can, that point two French teacher piece. that is something that can be explored. I don't know what the numbers are for next year, and that's one of the things that I would ask Mr. Belando, how that's going to settle a little bit. I have another idea. It's a little out there. Not really, but okay, so looking at scenario C, I would still implore everybody to maybe just take out the words to change into three tiers, but besides that, what if, and we're talking, the only other thing that's sort of a bugaboo here is the point to French. How comfortable, Casey, would you be taking just a smaller risk on teacher

211turnover, $15,000 worth? Like, can we force ourselves to, like, be tighter with that? Well, I mean, that would be a hiring. No, it's the other way. Yeah, I mean, that would be. So increased teacher turnover to 215,000. Well, I would say we would be on the hook for the 15, right? Because I wouldn't expect the board of the town to cover that. I think it's always going, it's always a goal to hire, you know, highly qualified teachers, you know, at the lower on the scale. I think I would be more hesitant to do that this year. Well, in this scenario, perhaps not, because we are not producing any FTEs, and we are already aware of three retirements, but two that would be impactful at the elementary level, perhaps. Can I ask a question? Yeah, please.

212Because it just goes to that. I mean, the other thing is, I mean, there's a significant savings, additional savings in the interim assistant superintendent and superintendent. Let's put the question out there. Is that an area we could move and save another 10,000 there? Everything's an assumption. Right. That's why, like, when we're talking about, like, such a small number. So when you're talking nitty-gritty 15,000, can we move that 5,000 and can we look for 5,000 in one place and another 5,000, like in three spots? Yes. Right. Probably could. Right. We could do that. Keep the .2. Even in PD or you know spread spread that that's 15,000 over 625 lines. Exactly. That is something that we could really want. I'm much less concerned if we're if we're concerned about 15,000. I don't think I would put

213it in teacher turnover but I would find it. I would find it elsewhere. That could be, you know, if you want to vote on a budget tonight, you could say scenario C with an amendment to the point to French piece. That's it for me. I also do want to reiterate the fact that the six-month interim and six-month interim appointments are based on assumptions of who we would be getting in and what the salaries would be and how many days and all those things. And that might be the wrong area to look. I just wanted to put it out there because it's in front of people. So could you include in that a scenario in which we reduce by two buses? and also three buses to see if there's how much we're off, if they're able

214to just get, like if we can get to two buses and also maybe this other 50,000 somewhere. Yeah, so my first conversation will be with All Star to see, you know, is this feasible? Can you go back to your software system and recalculate? You know, it might mean longer rides for, you know, some. or some schools or something like that. I don't know, I'm speculating. But that will certainly be the first conversation I have. So folks, if we have a special meeting to talk to the first electman and maybe the registrar the week after spring break, do you think that you could gather some of this information in the next two weeks? What date is the special meeting? So our current special meeting is at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 23rd. That's the RFP meeting.

215That's not even a special meeting. So there is no special meeting to talk about the vote right now? No, there's no current special meeting. Oh, okay. So there's nothing on the calendar. You're talking in scheduling additional to the RFP meeting or with the RFP meeting? We could make it before the RFP meeting because it would need to be open session. We also could wait until the May 7th meeting to vote on the budget. There still won't be a referendum by that time. So you could give us a couple of tasks to work on. If you're comfortable with that, that I feel like is the best case scenario because then we can get more information. Then you can definitively say, listen, this isn't going to work. This isn't going to work. We tried with All-Star. And

216we can be a little bit more prepared at that point. So we're talking May 7th or the 23rd or the 22nd? Anytime. Well, no, we're talking about having a special meeting. Wendy, correct me if I'm wrong. The way I understand it is we're talking about having a special meeting that would include All-Star and their feedback. Or no? I don't know how fast we can get. Right, that's what we're asking. Is that possible? We can commit to our part in this. Okay. And if you say. Reduce two buses. Reduce seven buses. We can do those calculations. We know our schedule, but I don't know how fast I can get All-Star to do this work. Do you feel like May 7th? We want to know if they would have information to us by April 22nd. Well, May

2177th would be... They can get it done soon, but if not, then May 7th. I will ask tomorrow if that's reasonable. So once we know that, then people will be prepared to vote on one of these budget scenarios. So folks, how about we... The one thing I want you to consider, please, like I said before, you don't have to vote. We have the budget number from the Board of Finance. You do not have to vote on the budget tonight. But one of the risks in not having it going longer, which we can do... and May 7th is prior to a referendum, so we still can communicate, and we've developed detailed fine-tuning of a budget after referenda before, so that's not unheard of. But there are two pieces. One, it's probably best practice to have exactly

218what you're doing with the budget before the referendum. The other piece is if we don't know exactly where we're at. it delays our postings and interviews as well in terms of trying to get the cream of the crop in terms of some of these positions. So it's just something to think about. Yeah, possibly, unless you're saying that it's really going to just be the operational piece, and so we can then move forward in the other part of the bill. It sounds like that's where we're all at. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We're all committed to not touching. Well, hold on. Joy, what did you want to say? What's the structure of the curriculum teacher leaders, the four of them? Two at the elementary school, a STEM in the humanities, and at the middle school, a

219STEM in the humanities. Correct. So at the elementary school. Two at each school. There are two at CLES full-time, two at WMS full-time, and two K-8. We're not talking about people. We reduced all the instructional coaches, right? We reduced them all, and then we built back, of the six, we built back four positions in the curriculum. So that's how Aaron, your thing about the net on total teachers. So if, but all six of those current employees are tenured teachers, so they would bump. If bumping has to happen, they will have a job. And someone less senior would be bumped somewhere else or be riffed, ultimately, if that happens. Okay, so it sounds like Casey's going to see what she can find out, and if we can hold a special meeting with more information, we would

220be prepared to select a budget scenario, which we could do formally at a special meeting, or we could wait until the May 7th meeting for that. And within that decision will be the answer to the Healthy Start Times. choices laid out by the committee members. So we wait. And I just, sorry, go ahead. So we're not voting tonight just because like we really just don't have consensus on a scenario? Because I feel like we're, we coalesced around. And then there is still a motion on the start times that's out there. No, there's been no motion. There's not a motion on start times? No. Oh, okay. I thought there was. I'm sorry. I thought there was. Make sure we didn't leave that out there. Yeah. Okay. Rosa, what do you say? I was saying, at first,

221I completely dismiss scenario C. But, again, if we can... If people are willing to work with me by taking out those words by changing to three tiers That's that's the piece that I would just like to hang out there for another couple weeks But I would be ready to commit to that level of a reduction with those words removed and We fight we figure out a way to not cut that French teacher. We get $15,000 somewhere else No, like I, she would, they would figure it out. We would say like whatever various line items. You know, it could be like $500 and a bunch of lines. Joy and Sarah, did you just both say that you wouldn't feel comfortable voting tonight? Correct. Okay, so we're going to, yeah, all right. So it sounds like we

222have some movement, but we need a little bit more information. Okay. I think we need concrete answers, right? So to say like if they can find out how you can get to buses, but I just... I don't see it. Look, explore it. Let's see what can happen. But to change the language, like we're going to stay at a two-tier, see if you can find two buses, but then we might not vote on a three-tier. I think we need all. I didn't say I wouldn't vote on a three-tier. Because if that's the only way to get to that reduction, then that's what we have to do. I just think we need. We've already voted to reduce it, the information. Okay, we'll go with that then. All right, so let's, where are we? Thank you. All right,

223so we are now at public comment. Congratulations, Mrs. Cacase. You are the lone survivor. Deborah Cacase. Is this on? Deborah Cacase, Brookfield resident. I wish, really, that all of this back-end transportation... was done on the front end before the implementation because it really squandered a lot of taxpayers' dollars. So I find it to be a joke that we're jumping through hoops and keep going back when I wish that it was all proven on the front end before it was started so none of this money was wasted. A lot of money was wasted, and transportation for children wasn't even provided. We actually got it cut back and reduced. Again, Wisconeer had no buses for their sports. I can tell you from August to December, my son for football, there's no bringing your books on the bus

224and doing homework on the back end. There's none of that. Okay, so we talk about the health of children, but not one person mentions mental health of children. They're not getting the 45 minutes extra in the morning because I can, you know, Casey, I'm sure you researched it for Wiskinier and the lower level schools. They're getting on the buses a lot earlier than they were. And I can sure as shit, excuse me, tell you that the kids are sitting on the buses for 20, even 30 minutes once they get to Wiskinier. So it just doesn't make sense to me at all. It's just complete waste of taxpayers' money if you ask me. Whether or not I'm for it or against it, it's just not panning out with money-wise for me. It's just not. Our kids

225are getting less, and it's cutting into thousands of hours of educational, instructional time, and it matters. And then also teachers are not happy. And that's a big, huge thing for me. I want teachers to be happy when they tell me that they can't even go for appointments that they used to. They can't coach like they used to. They can't pick their kids up or get their kids. And that's, that, that, happy teachers, happy students, just like happy moms, happy kids. I believe that. The other thing that I wanted to mention, just for budgetary. Was I right in seeing $115,000 for in all scenarios for a climate coordinator? Why? I don't understand that for salary. We have a dean of students in Wisconier. Why aren't we utilizing that dean of students? That was a new invented,

226I would say, position that was completely expendable in the beginning. If you remember, we were going to see how this panned out and worked. Why are we not using that dual action with that? I don't know why. We have three grades there. We have two principals, a social worker. AND A SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST AND A DEAN OF STUDENTS. RIGHT? AM I RIGHT? THANK YOU, MS. KICKASE. OKAY. AND THEN ALSO JUST SO YOU KNOW, TOO, WITH THE BULLYING, I'M JUST POINTING OUT THAT THE COORDINATOR WOULD HELP BECAUSE MY DAUGHTER HAD A BULLYING INCIDENT LAST YEAR AT WISCONIER AND THE COORDINATOR, EXCUSE ME, THE DEAN OF STUDENTS THERE WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN GETTING THAT RESOLVED. SO THAT IS ACTUALLY HER AREA OF EXPERTISE. SO THAT'S SOMETHING TO EXPLORE. Thank you very much. You're welcome. So three main points. So

227number one would be the student spotlights, both the WMS performance and the youth commission presentation, since that was an agenda item together. Number two, voting in schools and that conversation. And then number three, the Healthy Start Times and budget update. I want to roll that into one since they're tied together at this point. Sure. Do you guys agree with that? Upcoming events? Sure. CLES, Wednesday, April 30th at 5.30 p.m. The CLES band concert is at VHS in the auditorium. Wisconeer, Friday, April 25th is the Unified Sports Field Trip to Hartford Yard Goats Baseball Game. Thursday, May 1st at 7 p.m. is the Spring Band Concert at BHS in the Auditorium. Monday, May 5th is the PTO Meeting at 9.30 a.m. at Wisconeer. Thursday, May 8th at 7 p.m. is the Spring Chorus Concert at BHS

228in the Auditorium. And then district-wide, spring break is next week, the 14th through the 18th. Tuesday, April 22nd, is Bus Driver Appreciation Day. And May 5th begins Teacher and Staff Appreciation Week. And then the BEF Honor and Educator Program is currently accepting nominations through April 27th. For those that don't know, this program recognizes anyone whose contributions in the community positively impact our lives. So you can nominate teachers. staff, coaches, scout leaders, bus drivers, tutors, et cetera. A minimum of $10 contribution per nomination is requested with donations going to fund the educational grants of which Brookfield Public Schools has received several. And I will have all of the May upcoming events at the meeting on the 7th. Okay. So without objection. We adjourn at 1025. Can you guys please meet us for a very quick meeting?

229Super quick. In Mr. Belinda's conference room. It's for the executive search committee.