Norwich Public Schools Board of Education Meeting - 6/10/2025

001Okay, we will be open. We do have a quum and Kevin, could you lead us in the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, just wait a moment. Carlen's just uh entering the building. All right. First order of business will be approval of the minutes of uh May 13, 2025. Um take a moment to look those over and see if there's any additions, corrections that need to be done. Any uh additions or corrections anyone have? None. All in favor? Oh, I'm sorry. We got to do the motion first. Could I have a motion to approve? I'll make that motion. All right. So, uh, Ella, seconded by Kevin. Now,

002we can all vote. Um, all in favor of approval of the minutes of May 13. I I It is unanimous. Okay. Uh, turn it over to the superintendent for the recognition awards. We're going to start with the key is me. Cat Rouso. Is she here? [Music] Okay. The key is me, Cat Rouso. This was she was nominated by Megan Yanovich as a school psychologist at Morardi. Cat stepped into her role as Morardi's full-time counselor this year and from day one has brought energy, vision, and heart to her role and turned it into something extraordinary. Cat is deeply committed to building meaningful relationships with students. She set a personal goal to meet every student in our school this year and she has already hosted over 250 students in her popular lunch bunch groups. Her student mailbox

003is often overflowing with requests and yet she makes time to follow up with each and every child. The connection she build is not superficial. It is intentional, lasting and rooted in mutual respect. Her sense of humor, her quirky charm, including her now famous chicken nugget necklace, honor, and her genuine belief in every child, make her a her beacon of positivity in our buildings. Cat is a true model of what a school counselor can and should be. And I will tell you that I was at Morardi for the 50th. Thank you, Greg Veloci. Is he here? The 50th. There you are. It was a team effort. Team me up. 50th um what was it called? For the 50th annual not anniversary birthday celebration. Thank you. And Cat came out in her rollerblades and she did I

004was grateful that she had on her knee pads and her elbow pads. I did say that I wasn't paying more women's comp if she got injured. So, so Kat, thank you for all you do to this for the students and for the staff at Mority. Congratulations. All right. Next. I make a difference. Michelle McCracken. Come on up. [Applause] I make a difference. Michelle McCracken. She's a PAR educator at Stanton School. She was nominated by Anna Eno, um, who was also a PAR educator in the Strive classroom. Michelle is the most kind-hearted person I have ever met. As a new employee, she was very welcoming and accessible to me. She made me feel very supported in my new role at Stan School. And then Kelly Campbell, who is the special education teacher, right there she is

005in the back. Michelle works with our most vulnerable students. What sets Michelle apart is the care and thoughtfulness she brings to everything she does. Michelle creates a classroom where every student feels safe, supported, and valued. Her kindness, patience, and dedication have a lasting impact on our students and our classroom community. She is a true team player and an essential part of our Thrive program. Heat. Heat. [Music] You are director of it working on it right now. That was for you, Michelle. Next, we have You Inspire Me. Can Zie or Chin come on up so I can give this to him? You inspire me. June 2025. Xavier Chin nominated by Principal Mar Huntington School. Where is Principal Mar? Would you like to come up too? Come on up. We would like to nominate Xavier Chin for

006the You Inspire Me Award. Xavier is a fourth grade student in Miss Mrs. Avero's class and he exemplifies what it means to be a well-rounded student. At Huntington, our school values are known as pause. Practice positivity, act responsible, responsible, work hard, and stay safe. Xavier does this each and every day and serves as a role model for his classmates. As a friend and older brother, Xavier often takes a leadership role in his interactions with peers and strives to make the right choice as well as inspired his classmates to do the same. When faced with a challenge, Xavier never hesitates to make the right choice, even if it isn't a popular one. We are so proud of Xavier and all his accomplishments and can't wait to see what he does in the future. All right, these

007are all always the longest writeups, these these nominations for our volunteer of the month, which I think is awesome. So, our June volunteer of the month, and this person doesn't even know it. She's here and she doesn't know that she's being nominated. Yelina Brooks, come on up. Your mom told me I wasn't allowed to say anything. So, Elena is a warm, familiar presence at many of our schools and district events. Always showing up with a smile and generous spirit. She never hesitates to step up. Whether it's a school fair, community event, or district-wide celebration, Elena is always there, ready to lend a hand and bring her unique warmth to every moment. Her dedication is unmatched. She shows up to every single event with genuine enthusiasm and a can do attitude. What truly sets her apart

008is the joy she brings to children. Her face painting isn't just an activity. It's a magical experience that lights up every child's face and creates cherished memories. She takes the time to make each child feel special, turning simple moments into unforgettable ones. Elena's presence uplifts everyone around her. Her kindness, reliability, and passion for giving back inspire not only the children she serves, but also her fellow volunteers and staff. She just doesn't volunteer, she makes a difference, and her impact is felt across the entire district. And she was nominated by Nelly, who is our teen outreach and extended learning program coordinator at Kelly. So, congratulations All right, we have our retirement recognition as you can tell by the crowd out here. Uh, the first person I'm going to read is Lou Allen who is actually I'll

009leave Lou because he Lou, you're not here. We thought you might show up like you said no, but you never know. Allen. So, he's not here. Okay, we'll do left. Uh Wendy Mclofflin, come on up. [Applause] They surprised Wendy. If anybody was not at our Kelly Middle School promotion today, uh they surprised Wendy with a really nice giveaway. So, that was really nice. And Brandy, where is Brandy? Is she over here somewhere? Is Brandy here? She Wendy began her journey as an elementary teacher at Morerti School almost 39 years ago. And she did tell me that one of her teachers was Mr. Iabino. Oh, thank you. Her passion for science soon led her to teachers memorial where she inspired countless eighth graders. Continuing her dedication to teaching science, she moved to Kelly Middle School where

010she remains a beloved and inspiring eighth grade science teacher, shaping curious minds with enthusiasm and kindness every day. Congratulations, All right. Next is Robert Mleski, our PE teacher at Encus. Robert here. He's with Lou Allen somewhere. Okay. Cheryl Shidell, come on up. I know. I'm looking at the years. Did you have Mr. I know too. [Music] Cheryl is retiring from the district after 38 years in education. She is the current music teacher at man school having begun her journey in the fall of as a long-term substitute. I told you in January of 1988 she was hired as a music teacher at teachers memorial. Over the years, her passion for music education has also taken her to Stanton, Huntington, Unus, Vets, Greenville, Bunky, Bunky, Bucky, and Wacoic schools where she has inspired countless students with her

011love of music. Congratulations. You got it. All right, [Applause] Patricia Luan, are you okay? You were my Trish. Trish. Yes. And I had Mr. [Music] Trish is retiring from the district after an inspiring 19 years. 19 years of dedicated service as a PAR educator. Throughout her career, she has been a steadfast champion for students. First as a read 180 pareducator at teachers memorial. What was that? Was a reading program for me. That's what I was wondering what it was. Okay. And for the remainder of her time, a special education resource PAR educator at Mahan School. Her commitment has truly made a lasting difference in the lives she's touched. Congratulations. Nancy Tanway, are you here? Nancy, here she is. Hi, Nancy. How are you? Nancy is retiring from her position as the school nurse at Wacoanic

012School. Where is Sarah? Do principal Dusso at Wuquanic School after working in the district for the past three years. She has nearly 30 years of nursing experience. Her extensive background in healthc care has been a valuable asset to our school community, ensuring that students receive knowledgeable and compassionate care each day. Congratulations on [Applause] I think that's everyone. And now I want to say a little thing about Lou Allen who couldn't make it here today. Um, as you know, Lou Allen came about four years ago, um, after being a principal and a lot of other roles in New London. Um, I actually met Lou Allen on the sidelines. I used to do, uh, I used to collect all the stats in, uh, East Lime on the football and that's where I met Lou Allen on the

013sidelines originally 25 years ago. So, Lou Allen is retiring after serving the district as athletic director for the past four years. During his tenure, he successfully reestablished the district's athletic program, participation in fostering a renewed sense of community pride over his impressive 49year career in education. Did he have not? He has been a dedicated mentor, leader, and advocate for students, leaving a lasting impact on countless lives. His commitment and passion will be deeply missed by college, students, and the community alike. And I also want to read Jamie Bender actually sent me something too. She couldn't be here today. She said, "This is from Jamie. Tonight we bid a heart heartfelt farewell to our incredible athletic director Lou Allen whose leadership has has reignited our middle school sports programs and changed the trajectory of our students

014and our community to once again celebrate our student athletes. He has shaped not just our sports programs, but the character of countless students. Your unwavering commitment to excellence, sportsmanship, and student growth has left a lasting legislate legislate legacy. Can even talk right now in our school community. From organizing sports seasons to mentoring young athletes and coaches alike, your impact has gone far beyond the playing fields. You've been a steady presence, a source of inspiration, and a champion for every student who wore a jersey. As you step into retirement again, know that your influence will continue to echo through the halls and hearts of this school. You've taught us that success isn't just measured in wins, but in teamwork, perseverance, and integrity. Thank you for the years of dedication, the long nights, the pep talks, and

015the belief in every single student's potential. We wish you nothing but joy, relaxation, and new adventures in your next chapter. You've more than earned it. So, thank you everyone. [Applause] Uh, next on our list are middle school happenings. So, if the representatives from Kelly and teachers could come up. I guess I'm the happening tonight. Yeah, I know. [Music] That's right. I guess you come with me or what? Impromptu. There you go. We thought this was going to happen. Maybe. Well, we just had a promotion ceremonies yesterday and today. Outstanding job by our students. um a great job recognizing 150 kids from teachers memorial yesterday. A lot of friends and families. It was an awesome experience um for our kids. I don't know if you want to talk a little bit more about that about your

016we had uh two ceremonies today, A team and B team. Um it was well attended. The students were really really excited and happy. Um had some great uh performances as well. Um thank you for attending. Um, and yeah, we're just really excited to see their their next steps of of success. I wasn't expecting this. It was just great. Thank you. Well, we weren't expecting this either, but we were talking earlier, so you know, like I don't know. So, I mean, I guess if you want a little bit more information, let's see if we're going to see. Let's see. Global this year, teacher memorial, we've improved our daily attendance rate from 77% to 92.2%. our chronic chronic absenteeism rate has gone down by 14%. Um from last year um we've seen gains both in um I

017was just working on my end of year evaluation so I know it's not but we've seen gains both in our ESPback scores uh through all three cohorts. We had some major gains with our um our science and GSS scores this year which we're very proud of and the work we've been doing um commitment for next year not just do my end of year this morning. Uh we have our daily attendances uh currently it was about 93%. Um our chronic absenteeism increased by just a little bit but not as big of gains as I think that we were anticipating. Um, and with the new uh ISL program, we are seeing our students making great gains and lots of growth in reading and math. Oh, nice. And just tell them, come on. You beat us in the

018cook off, which I did. I still think our food was better. Bob, I'm sorry. Uh, we made kebabs, they made cheeseburgers. You tell me what you want to eat, but that's what we got for you. Well, I will say that we all voted and Ed just like he should voted for Teachers Memorial Global. Everyone else voted for Kelly, but you voted for your teachers. So, what's up next to you besides getting taped on the wall? Who knows? I've gotten hit with water balloons. I hit um whipped cream. I don't know. You know, we have some people sleep on roofs. Who knows what's next? Maybe I'll jump Maybe I'll jump out of a plane. I don't know. You never know. Some tough competition going on. Yeah. Well, we tried. We have to have a friendly competition.

019Well, I I attended the Wuanic graduation this afternoon and Sarah, is Sarah in the room? She is. It was what 52 you had for perfect attendance? 51. 51. And they get not a water balloon, but they get the slime herb. What an incentive you don't know about slime. We'll see. Maybe a duct tape next year. I'll do it. In the minutes. It is now in the minutes. [Music] Way too young. Yes. Uh all right. We'll take a five minute recess recess for photos out in the hall. Uh retirees also and the principles whoever you want to lead that's fine. Thank you all for uh next item is the presentation by UCFS. I got to restart this computer. It's not working right. And let me see if I can All right. Let me see if I

020can get it up. So, we're not on YouTube right now. No, it's it's been acting up the whole time. Sorry. All right. Just kidding. Yeah. I understand. Okay. Okay. I did hear a different language. I was like Yes. Mark said under budget instead of smile everybody the pressure is not on so good evening everyone um I don't think we're ready yet we're not ready that's all right yeah so we can just keep I'll have to figure it out tomorrow all right go ahead was here and now it's gone Is that on? Yes. So, good evening everyone. My name is Cara Wescott and I am the chief operating officer at United Community and Family Services. Um, and I'm here uh today to talk to you about our school-based health centers. Um, it really is a great

021PowerPoint, but it it is going to probably not cooperate, it seems like. So, um, and one thing we're we are UCFs is flexible. So, um, I will, if you listen carefully, I will tell you what I'm about to present to you today. It's going to be one of those nights. I'd rather just stand. It would probably be easier. However, you you usually you know I I I'm known for uh doing Friday karaoke at UCFs. So I I won't sing to you tonight. So um so UCFS we are a community health center. We're a federally qualified health center. We have been in this community for 145 years. We were founded in 1877. Um, and we provide uh medical, dental, behavioral health services um at five locations throughout uh southeastern and eastern Connecticut and 10 school-based health

022centers. Um, and what I'm going to talk to you tonight about is our partnership with Norwich Public Schools um with Superintendent Blessard and um that started um in uh January of uh 2017 um prior to UCFs coming into schoolbased health centers. child and family had been providing those services to you. Um actually uh a little history uh when I started 18 years ago at UCFS UCFS provided the social workers and child and family provided the medical and through the years um uh we've we've stayed in touch but so when child and family u made the decision that they weren't going to be able to continue services due to some decreased funding from the department of public health um they came to us um we partnered um with your then superintendent Abby Doliver and um began

023to uh collaborate on how we could o reopen these centers and bring them back to your schools. Um we started um with behavioral health um and uh we've uh continued to expand over the years. Um I'm happy to say that in the last uh three years um additional grant fundings now we have close to $700,000 of grant funding that we've been able to put into our schoolbased health centers um uh here at Orange Public Schools um through the schoolbased health alliance. Um and that was some federal some funding that came through the legislature and um we were uh we were pleased to partner with you to continue to expand services. So today um in this the the 30 centers that I'm going to talk about, we provide um all of our services. We provide medical

024services, dental services, behavioral health services, and to any uh Norwich public school student who is enrolled regardless of whether they go to that particular school. What's really great about the our center here at at Kelly Middle is that we do have uh an a separate uh entrance. Um and so we see a lot of those kids um especially at the beginning of the year or as we do physicals and uh entry um school entry exams so that we can get the kids into the classroom as soon as possible. Oh, there we go. [Music] So today we have um close to a thousand students who are enrolled in um in school centers across all schools. All right. So probably wondering what is a school center? So a school health center is essentially um your primary care,

025your pediatrician, your behavioral health counselor or your dentist in your school. Okay. So we provide those services that provided by pediatric physician assistants and hygienists and behavioral health clinicians. Um we can do annual wellness um visits. We can do sports physicals. You can do school physicals, immunizations, um sick vitamins, dental cleanings, behavioral health assessments, and counseling services. So, it's really great for parents. Um I am a parent of a 23-year-old who went through these hallways and then went on to NFA and was able to take advantage of the uh school health centers. I didn't have to leave work. She was able to go get a flu shot there. she was able to get um a sick visit and it was really convenient. Um and what happens is you can still stay with your regular pediatrician.

026What we do is we send um notes to them and let them know you know Cara was in the schoolbased health center today. Um we gave her you know some ear drops and um you know she and she'll follow up with you. So um we do have a number of students who also um we at UCFS because we have a pediat our large pediatric practice they are also um seen um at our health center at 47 Town Street um which also you know provides a nice continuity of care. Um the the great thing and since I'm talking to the board of education and I know um that you're uh uh probably as I am in my role interested in in costs and budgets um the services are um at no cost to the school. Um

027the services are paid for um based on the students um health insurance um or our sliding fee scale. So we provide services regardless of ability to pay. It's an income based uh and family size scale um which we then um the devil uh that that we then um provide. We don't collect fees obviously from the students. We we send those um bills home to the parents if they are on a sliding fee. Um but I have a team who work really hard to if families are not insured to get them insured. um including you know our families who u may be a little bit more apprehensive in getting um in and getting insured and we have a family engagement specialist who also can go out to the home and and get forms filled out and

028things like that. So we do our best to try to get the families connected to the services um that they need. So, um we are located at CNN um at uh in the elementary school and um in this past uh school year through May 30th um we saw 25 uh students with 40 visits um and 37 um behavioral health uh uh patients and 390 visits. Um so for a total of 61 students that were served at Canton. Um, one of the things that we found was interesting is um that the uh middle schoolers um actually use the primary care services a little bit more than than the younger students. Um, which you know makes sense. You know, as a if you're a parent of a younger child, you might you you uh are more uh

029wanting to be there for that child if they're going to the doctor. So, um we've actually been able to make some adjustments um so that we have those services where the demand is greater. So if you see at uh teachers, we are at teachers as well. Um and we saw um close to 80 students. Um and in behavioral health um we saw uh 32 students. Those the behavioral health services are usually a little bit longer um length of time um which is why um there's you know they they're seen u more often um but less students. So for uh close to 100 students being seen at uh the uh teachers and then finally um Kelly um where we have a a full-time um uh family practice uh uh provider providing 5 days a week now

030of uh medical care. Um she saw 239 patients um through uh the end of May. And in behavioral health we have a full-time clinician. We have a full-time clinician at each of those uh schools as well. Um but uh the clinician there was able to see 51 um students um for a total of 280 students being served. All right. So I want to just highlight um a really great partnership um that uh was really successful this year. So, we partner every year with um Laura Dietrich, your director of nursing, and all the school nurses um across uh the district because we know that immunizations um and adherence to immunizations is um a really uh a a really big uh uh goal, right? To make sure that all of our kids are immunized and that they're

031ready to learn and at school. So every year um that that can be a struggle. Um and you know especially with the mandates around flu vaccines and things and despite you know lots of communication back and forth with parents and nurses and and our staff you know in in past years um the compliance has been over 100 students that were not in compliant with that those immunization rules. And um I recently um met with uh the team and I was pleased to to hear from Laura that in this school year 2025 we have less than 15 although last week I was told it was five. So it's going it's continue at the time of making this PowerPoint it was less than 15. So um and I said to Laura and I said to my team

032I said what do you uh what do you equate that with? You know why do you think that that is we've made such a big difference this year? and she said it, you know, it's the it's the constant communication. It's the collaboration. Um Laur Laura and the nurses all know that they can contact our our uh provider and our medical assistant and get those kids in to get those immunizations. Um so, you know, it's really a a great example of how we've been able to partner and and make a real, you know, solid outcome difference, you know, for for uh you and your students. Um the other thing I want to just highlight is some supplemental funding that we also partnered with you on to receive. Um it was uh focused on food insecurity. This

033was also from the schoolbased health alliance. Um they uh as you know sometimes happens they had some additional funds. Um they uh we we wrote a grant last fall. They told us February 17th that we were going to get $41,000. and they said, "But here's the caveat. You have to spend it by May 9th." Um, thank you very much. Um, but we rallied um and uh to kick off spring break April 14th, um we had a a event uh with a drive-thru event to provide um distribution of uh non-p perishable foods, perishable foods um ground wheat, potatoes, carrots um and hygiene products as well. So that was at Santin on April 14th. Um and we had um uh many many students over 150 um bags were given out. Um and as well as we were

034able to provide um along uh since then we were have been able to provide uh food gift cards to uh families who are in need as well. So, um it was great, um to see, uh all of that, uh you know, come to fruition and be able to get the those needs met. Um so, just a few testimonials, um from uh you know, the families, um I I won't read them to you because you can see them, but you know, going above and beyond to help multiple families in the communities facing similar, if not worse, circumstances. Um we know that food insecurity is um uh really a crisis in our community. Um and you know we were uh we were we were uh pleased to be able to partner with you to be able to

035get those uh that food out to families and to continue to help them along the way. So um that was a a great success. Um so any questions? Yes. Yes. Can you go back to the slides on the behavioral health services? I can't. Yes, the numbers. Uh yeah, go to teachers first. Okay. Okay. So, we're saying there were 32 students. Yeah. And they made 572 visits. And tell me, you can't tell me, but what sort of behavioral issue? What sort of behavioral things are we doing 572 visits to? Sure. So, um the way with behavioral health services, um we we what we we provide, you know, kind of a a a a course of treatment. So, it's a a specific beginning, middle, and end. So, we provide with that assessment. Um we come up with

036uh treatment goals and um and then we work on trying to reach those treatment goals. So it can be things uh like grief, it can be depression, it can be anxiety, um it can be attentional issues, it can be um I'm you know having uh trouble at home and not getting along with friends. It's a really a myriad of things um that that kids are struggling with. Um and generally uh in you know kids will be seen um you know in schools probably a little bit longer but the course of treatment could be you know 12 to 18 sessions. So you know they're seeing you know weekly sometimes bi-weekly sometimes they'll go into groups. So you know that's that's why the the number you know the number of students um that that partake in the

037sessions because they have a number of sessions throughout the year and some of this would be like bounce back is more bounce back because that's a bounce that's how many weeks is bounce back um I think bounce back is 12 weeks maybe a lot of success with students the bounce back of course can have go explain so kids refer it out if a um to a a different program or whatever or facility if the need be if they need something more extensive. Yeah. Yeah. So the bounce so the bounceback is our program that works with um students around uh trauma. So working with them on, you know, things maybe experiences that they've had um you know, and working on how to cope with those things, how to um work through that, you know, coming up

038with coping strategies and things like that. So it's almost like a curriculum. Yeah. It's basically they go through just for just for me seeing some of my students at Stanton go through it, it's um a really amazing um process for them. Yeah. It's an evidence-based practice. One behavioral specialist that teaches. Yes. Yes. try quick. It's doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, similar similarly um you know they would be in a a course of treatment again a very a specific middle beginning, middle and end um you know which you know in this case they're they're middle schoolers. So I I was an adolescent therapist. So those those kids probably the the the little ones probably stay in therapy a little bit longer. the middle schoolers are like, "Peace out." So, you know, they

039that's probably why she's able to see, you know, a little a few more students. And is this uh individual uh one-on-one sessions or are they like a group session? So, we do both. Um we we do um individual sessions um primarily and then uh and then you know and also some group work. But a lot of kids especially in middle school you know it's you know even though we talk about you know things staying in here and confidentiality and things like that. Um some some students are more inclined to to have that one one-on-one um sessions with with the counselor. Um we do involve families. Um again the middle schoolers it's a little bit trickier because you know they are you know exerting their independence. Um but certainly on in in uh at Stanton in

040the elementary schools um we're we're involving parents and having parents involved in um even if it's through uh virtually through tele medicine and things um so that we can engage them in the treatment planning. And on the vaccination end, uh how connected are you or the level of cooperation between uh UCFs and health district? Um we work closely with health district. Um they you know they're one of our partners as well. Um I know that we provide um you know we we pro we provide here through this the centers. um you know flu flu vaccines we can do that you know even you know you know just as an independent visit um and do different you know uh flu clinics and things like that um and what we do is once we know what the

041you know regime of the immunizations are we will um be able to schedule those and bring those over. So um you know we but we do work work closely with the health district. Yes. Thank you. Um are all of the visits happening during um the school like the five during like oh my goodness I specific school hours. Um in in general um I mean we do you know we do offer flexibility. I mean if there is uh if there needs to be a later session or an earlier session depending on you know if um you know if if we are trying to work around maybe a parent schedule if we're trying to engage them. Um we also provide services throughout the summer. So, um, on a little bit more of a an abbreviated basis, um,

042because, you know, kids are not real keen on coming in for therapy in the summertime, but, um, we do, uh, we we have a we have a counselor, actually, our our Lynette Roas, our counselor, who's from Kelly Middle School, um, works all summer. And so we kind of keep track of those kids throughout the summer and obviously you know get them in for services as they need um you know if if they're needed and then reconnect with them in the in the in the fall. So Okay. So that's incorporated into that. Yes. Yes. And then the way that this all happened that I asked them to come in and do a presentation is that when I was at Stanton for the um for the food um and it was just talking to Pam Kinder, not

043Kinder. Um and we had talked about all the great things that were happening between us, North Public Schools and them. So I wanted I knew I wanted to have someone come here just to fill you guys in so that you would know what was happening in the schools. Um and that was such a great event at Stanton School. Um the the cars were just pulling up and everybody was putting the food in it and then we Lauren Dietrich called me up and said we really have to talk talk to the board and tell them how great this um collaboration has been in this partnership because um they have we've had so absenteeism uh we all know that that's uh correlated at times with immunizations and thanks to you we appreciate that that work with Laura

044Dietrich. We've just been so happy to see that go down so that our kids can come into school. Absolutely. Absolutely. Over the next few years as we're building our new schools, you're going to be expanding your services into each of the elementarymentaries, too, right? Hopefully. Yes, we're we're in talks on that. Pim Kinder's on your building committee, so she participates. um there uh you know and I know that that uh from day one has been part of looking at the the the uh plans um to make sure that there is um availability and space um to be able to expand services. So we have we've had um Pam and her team come in and look with their plans and make sure that it fits within their nursing needs and the UCFs so that there is

045a spot in each one. And I did get an email, I think it was from Pam, or maybe you car, I forget who sent me an email saying that we you need to apply for those upcoming schools to be able to get into each school. So, we're going to be working on that. Yes. Yes. Each school is each center within your school is independently licensed by the Department of Public Health um as a primary care clinic. And so there is a there is a process um that you know goes into um getting that lenture as well as some of our regulations as an FQHC. But I mean, you know, with your planning, you know, we have time um to look at that and also to, you know, be assessing sort of where where is the

046need going to be the greatest and you know, perhaps, you know, as we saw when we first came in in 2017, you all said, you know, the need is really in more so in behavioral health, you know, and so, you know, those are conversations we can have with you about where you're seeing need um and how how best, you know, especially in the elementary schools um to see what that would look like. And just, you know, just from working at Stanton and having this here since I became the principal there, um it's so great because not only do they see these children during school hours during once a week and so that the parents don't have to worry about picking them up and dropping them off later, but also there are times when they're available

047when that student that they have is struggling in school and they need some therapy on the spot. There are times when that therapist will take them um and see them for a little bit during the school day at times when needed. Right. Absolutely. Now, like Stanton, we're building a new building. Does the new facility have to be uh rellicensed? Um that's a great question. Um you know, I don't think it does the last email. I don't think we do. I think we have to do it for for we talked about Greenville because obviously Greenville is already a new school. Morardi has never had UCFs in it. So they have to apply for UCFs there and also right I wonder if Department of Public Health though will still want to just they may want to come

048into Exactly. but not have to do all that paperwork, right? Yeah. We I mean we we um we have routine licensing visits um that you know so as we're getting you know closer to things being open and things we can work with you on making sure that there's not any um you know stopping service. Last question. Yeah. Is there a collaboration or overlap with knowledge public schools uh staff I'll say it that way and your staff? In other words, 51 students at Kelly, 674 visits. Um are those 51 only seeing your folks or are they involved in seeing other folks as well? Um I don't know the exact on that. Um we work really closely with the with the social workers and you know with uh with all of the counselors that are in the

049schools. You know ideally in terms of of of reach um my answer would be no. you know that they there's not um but at the same time what we provide is um you know is a a counseling service that's that's related to something different than their school you know their schooling their education things like that so it it's it's entirely possible I don't I don't know um you know if uh ho how often that happens um generally the school social workers are the ones who are are sending the referrals to us um that's how we would get to the students. And then the other thing too that's important piece is that I call it onboarding, but when the the initial time that the student comes in, they they're there with their family and their parents

050and they they have to go in and they all sit down and I believe it's an hour long and they it's not called an onboarding. What is it called? Assessment. Thank you. It's assessment. So the parents come in or the parent comes in with the student. Um so we think that's a really great piece um to support the child. Yeah. And just to add to John's question, if there's um if they're using your service, uh are outside provider, private providers, are they available or can the student see those people also? So it depends on um what the student is would be looking for. Um I it if they are going to an outside provider for say uh a different service something that we're not providing um say you know they need to go into a

051specific therapy or a specific group um that only that outside provider provides then in that case you know the the dual treatment would make sense. Um, in general, um, you know, it doesn't make sense to have an an external therapist and an a a UCFS therapist, whether they're a school-based therapist or whether they're a clinic therapist, um, just because of uh, you know, the treatment models, but it it could happen. So in your service um you're able to get the students on some sort of insurance coverage so that they're covered by you or if they need those outside services also. Right. So part of part of what we do and we're going to be gearing up um at the beginning of next school year is um we're going to be at all of your back

052to school events. We're going to be at all your parents nights. Um, we're going to be uh there with with our staff. We're going to be if we in the we're going to be out in the parking lot and maybe dressed up as to um uh and talking to kids and getting things out to them. Um but we're so that parents know how to enroll their students. Um and if they need insurance, we get them connected to that as well. Um so we're we're looking to provide them, you know, a a whole a whole host of services. um and truly collaborate with you um so that they can um get get as you know be as successful with their education as they can be. Okay. And if anyone has any further questions, how's the best

053way to contact you or someone from your staff? So I have um I think on the end of this I have my contact information. Amber send that out to the whole board. Yeah. And also Kelly Brown is our um she's she's our operations supervisor for the schoolbased health centers. Um I do also have in your packets um our direct schoolbased line. Um this this is in your packet. Um and I'll leave some up here if there's anyone who um would like to take any. Um but certainly you know welcome any questions that you might have um you know after the fact and um appreciate uh you taking the time to to hear about our services. services for they were a lifesaver for me when my kids were here. They already had one and you know

054they were both athletes so it was nice for the physical this year I was my daughter gets smooth as can be time at work. Thanks everybody. Yeah, we're we're we're big in when there's volleyball. We're like, yo, we got to get those kids in. So, we're we're good. We're good with the sports. Is anyone signed up for public comment? Amber, I don't have anybody. Okay. Does anyone want to uh comment, make a public comment? Anyone here wish to uh participate in public comment? And finally, last time, anyone wish to make a public comment? Hearing none, I now declare public comment closed. Okay, I will go on to reports. Uh, reported the chair. Uh, good evening to all assembled here and at home. Welcome to your Norwich Board of Education's last regularly scheduled meeting of the

055academic school year. We'll meet next in September 2025 to start the new academic year. Uh today is National IC Tea Day, which is practically a high holy day south of the Mason Dixon line. It's also the day the first Dutch settlers arrived 415 years ago to settle the island of Manhattan and start the settlement of New Amsterdam, which later became New York City. Important birthdays today are the actress Hattie McDaniel, the first black Oscar winner for Gone with the Wind, and Judy Garland, who played Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Also born on this day was William Rosenberg, the founder of Dunkin Donuts, a proudly New England institution. There more than 10,000 outlets in 32 countries. I attended last night's city council meeting where they finally adopted a budget at 11:50 p.m. just 10 minutes

056before the midnight deadline. Hard choices were made for a lean budget, but reality set in when it became obvious that despite a lastminute effort to enact a zero but increased budget, the pain of reduction in services to meet such a goal necessitated a mill rate increase. We will vote on approving the 1% increase to the education budget this evening, far below the nearly 5% increase originally proposed. Uh I attended many spring concerts the last couple of weeks and I was most impressed by uh one school whose fifth graders played a truly hard classical piece from Hond's water music. Uh alas, no oos. So far we've uh graduated our students at uh the Norwich Transition Academy and as you heard earlier the eighth graders at both teachers and this morning at Kelly. We've also uh had

057graduations at Mahan Vets and Line. Tomorrow we'll finish out the uh the promotion schedule with uh events at Stanton, Morardi, Unus, and Huntington. All scheduled between 9:30 and 10:00. Please check with the school if you uh need to attend one of those events. NFA will also have its year-end graduation ceremonies at 4:00. Uh, anyone who's interested, uh, also tomorrow at 12:00 noon, uh, Kathy Austin will be honored as the Norwich native daughter and there'll be a lunchon at the Holiday Inn. For that, you have that's a ticketed event you have to sign up for. Uh, she's very instrumental in getting uh, grants for our school building project. And that concludes my report. Uh on to the report of the superintendent. Thank you. Okay. Uh just want to start with uh if you look on the

058dock, I won't read all the names, but we have the districtwide recognitions for teacher of the year, rookie of the year. Um and you can see Kelly Middle School, Annie Busby won uh the district teacher of the year. Rookie of the year was Brian Olivia, who is our music teacher at Stan. And tomorrow we will announce the pair of dealer. So I can't say who it is because we want to surprise this person tomorrow. Sorry, what was that? I'm having trouble hearing you, Susan. Sure. We're on the part right now, Christine. Districtwide recognition, the teacher of the year, rookie teacher of the year, and pair of pair educator of the year. So, so far we've announced the teacher of the year, right? Uh rookie of the year. And you'll see on the board docs, it

059lists all the schools with who the who they who received it for each school. And then tomorrow we'll be doing PAR educator of the year. So that's a secret right now. Stay in school ground breaking ceremony took place today for those of you who could make it. It was a really nice uh celebration. Um I think one of the things that I said was team Norwich. It felt really good to be in that uh in Stanton. We didn't have it outside. We did the shovels outside, but we did the ceremony inside. Um and it was great to see all the members uh and it was so many people that really had a big part in uh the school project. So um it feels really good to get that behind us and look forward to the

060Greenville ceremony and we'll give you the uh we'll let you know when that will be. I think Mike, do we have a date for Greenville yet? Not yet. We're working on that behind the scenes when we do. How are we going to publicize that? Because I had some parents asking me. It's on It's It's been put out to parents on Parent Square. It's been on Facebook. Parent didn't know. Is it on Parent Square? Because everybody told her to check on Facebook. Probably hasn't seen it. Okay. We'll make sure we do a better I'll tell you, Liz, we'll see if we can get that out there. And I would like to head to Susan that not only are the adults uh in the uh gymnasium who are excited for the new construction project, but the students

061who got the pledge of allegiance, they're all lined up uh for the American flag. Um they had the um the image of what the gymnam the future uh gym will be like in the cafeteria. You hear the little church in the background. Oh, this is what going to be our new uh cafeteria is going to be like a new gym. Wow. So cool. See the students um you know get excited uh for this uh new future, this new evolution of u of school building. Thanks for bringing up. So Carolene did a nice job making sure we had some students there because it was 4:15 for after you know so the parents will pick them up. So we're happy to have them there. Also prior to that during this week we had all the classes go

062out there with their hard hats and their shovels. So I was out there with the kindergarteners I think on Monday or Tuesday and um they just thought it was the coolest thing ever to be out there with it. So we got them get them all excited for that and they can actually see outside some of the construction obviously that's going on. So Karolina has done a great job um with making sure everything's safe over there and Amy Edwards who be the new assistant principal was there as well and she'll be taking over a lot of that that job. So that's exciting. Uh substitute staff placement um it's actually not called educational support services I found out Amber really. Um so we are moving towards for the last few years we have been doing it inhouse.

063We had Kelly services which is a substitute um that wasn't working for us. So we went to our in-house and um each year we kept telling them this might be the end of we we give them a very good salary uh per per day um to do this we call them floss um and they're assigned to different buildings but sometimes they move around based on where the need is. It's become um very hard to manage um and with the principles. I used to do it when I was a principal. We'd get together at 6:00 in the morning and start shuffling where people need. Um and now we're finding you know some we don't know where they we don't know where they are all the time. So we we didn't want to go back to Kelly.

064It didn't work out for us well. So we spoke with uh I spoke with the superintendent in New Britain and he said that this was the greatest thing. He actually said you have to at least listen to them. um some of their hardest schools to get um sub coverage for that. They have a high 90% um placement in some of the the most difficult schools. We brought Bob in um to talk about um the the budget process of it and we know that it's going to save us some money going to ESS. Um, what I like about ESS is that they what the people that work there's going to be a teacher who is a former teacher that will be on we will have a space for them in in central office and that's where

065they're doing their onboarding and they'll do their interviewing. Yesterday we met here with all of our other subs so that they could go into ESS and made it very seamless for them. They talk to them. They offer health care, dental care, they offer 401, they have it's it's a very big company. Um, so they'll be doing all of that for us. Um, so if anybody wants I have some booklets if you want to look at it, but it I did ask them today, yesterday, it's just called they just pick ESS. It doesn't stand for anything. So, but they get they get it confused. They said everybody thinks it's called Educational Support Services because there is a company out there like that. So, we're excited to work with them and um we're going to see how

066it does. We they wanted us to do a five-year contract. We decided let's do one year. to see how it goes. Um, and they'll build up. Uh, they have par, they have nurse subs, they have par educator subs, um, school psychologist, any kind of staff member, they do have a sub for. So, if we need a sub, if the teacher needs to call out, what's that process? Front line and they're taking over our front line, too. So, they take over the whole thing. They do they do everything. So, we'll know exactly where everybody is. Um, so we're pretty excited. I don't know, Bob, if you want to add anything to that. So I was we met with them yesterday. Yes. And I was very impressed with them. They had a team of five people here.

067They were very knowledgeable. Um we're doing this for multiple reasons as Susan said. Cost savings is one of them. But um placement and higher fill rates is obviously another one. But I I did a look back and um the road of substitute dolls has been a very rocky and funky one. It's probably one of the hardest things to budget. So, I just went back two years ago in 2223 school year for certified subwine. We spent $2,75,000. It's a big number. Um, we've made a conscious effort to do what we can to reduce them. Susan's been a champion of that. Uh, and Lisa has as well. And, uh, the environment's changed. We have more stability with our staff. This year we're probably gonna end the year at$1,450,000. So that's a reduction of $1.3 million as that's

068a big number. So if we can use them to manage this into a more predictable expense and provide better service to our schools, it'll be a great thing. And the other thing, too, is we just we're down somebody in HR, too. So we really can't keep up on it. So when subs aren't there, we can't it's hard for us to have the time for them to have the time to on board and then if they're not showing up to make those phone calls to say, "Hey, are you still available to sub?" They take care of everything. If they see that subs aren't grabbing um positions, they will have a talk with them. Um if there's any kind of issues in the schools, they go out. They will actually meet with the principles and if they're

069having any problems, they will they they're right there. So we're pretty excited about that. We also don't have to keep track of the sick time. Yeah. reduces our payroll taxes payroll taxes tax and basically we don't have to deal with that. Wow. So I'm hopeful this is really going to work out well for us from a operational standpoint and a budget standpoint and they really want to impress us. So I think and because they want to grab some partner schools that we have good relationship with. So I think they're they're ready to go. So we're excited about getting into this niche here. Yeah. So, that's ESS. So, look for that. And I, like I said, I do have some U manuals here if anybody wants to look at them. I want to talk a little

070bit about the new prek model. It's called the local government governvernance partnership, which is not going to start next year. It will start the year after. Um, what did I do with that? Did I drop that one? I was telling um Amber when I came in and I went over here, all my files fell out into the water. All right. So, I'll talk to I can speak a little to it now. I had a write up on it, but um the way they're going to John actually said it the right way when I was talking to about it. It's more regionalized prek that they're moving towards. So you can't we can't be on our own anymore. So either we get people to do it with us. Thank you, Amber. Or they're going to assign districts

071to us. So we originally we spoke with Mayor Nestrom who's very involved in this and Linda Allen from Learn and we picked Montville um I mean Ledger to be one of them. So Superintendent Hartman, we have a good relationship with him. We spoke with his mayor and we had a nice conversation. Um, so we're in the partner, we're in the process of partnering with area districts to form local governance partnership. They're called LGPS. With the proposed name, we came up with a name of Southeastern Connecticut Early Learning Alliance. And the districts that we have with us now include us, of course, Ledger, we got Brisbol to join us, Lisbon, and Volunt. Um, so we, you know, very like minds around this, and we've met several times, um, before saying yes, we want to do this.

072So we just signed the paperwork. there's some transition money that they're giving us for this. Uh we will meet at learn at the end of June I believe after June 24th we have a meeting at learn and we'll all be together. So the initiative is is just a great potential to strengthen early childhood collaboration which everyone knows the governor wants to do right now across the region and um we're we're we're very appreciative of the opportunity and um possibly invite them to join us um even before that learn meeting. So um that's where that's where it's moving towards. So it's sort of like the learn rest for prek sort of. Yeah. Yes. And you you just said learn is going is going learn is going to help us. Yeah. Linda Allen works for learn and

073she does a lot of work in prek. No I know some does so and then other other uh towns have joined together as well but so we don't know. It's like they're building the plane when they're flying it. So we really don't know. There's some there's some um positions for parent liaison uh that are going to be there, but there's not talk of what there's what they need to do yet, but we will hear more as time goes on. And is there state funding behind this model? Yes. So that's that's the incentive to to form the model to to get the state fun. I think the other thing too is when we were talking about it with um these partners that we're talking about is that they have we have Kathy Austin, some people have

074different um state representatives and we figure the more state rep representatives that we have on our side that will go to bat for us during legislation hearings the better it will be for us. I'm not sure what are they doing in London. Do you know? Yes. Do they even heard? So there like we said we don't even know. that could say, "Hey, you need to take this town on because they can't by be by themselves. We really don't know what it's going to be like yet." So that so that begins to lay a foundation of working collaboratively with other districts, right? Yes. And that leads into some programs we have. That's right. We can sit with administrators collaboratively working with prek. I get that. I like Well, by the way Oh, I like working with

075these guys. So, by the way, we we have a something called the Rose City School program that you might be interested in. Oh, yeah. Establishing relationships and we're going to carry on. Okay. We'll give you a friendly. Yeah. It's nice. It's It's going to And like I said, we really wanted to pull in um the districts. We really work closely with them. So, obviously, Grizz is one of our partner schools are sending um sending our kids to. So, we're excited about it. Yeah. I' I'd just like to add this now because it's an appropriate time. In part of the legislative process, the state created its prek early childhood uh endowment fund. I'm not sure what the exact name of it is off the top of my head, but state's going to appropriate up to $300

076million per year out of general fund surplus money. So, we're not certain yet how that might tie in with the this element. Uh we started to read some of the legislation and there's one provision in there where families earning $100,000 or less will be able to attend prek free of charge. So we're not sure how that might impact because we have I'm not sure when it starts. I have to go through that. Not next year. That piece might because it's separate from this. This is completely different. So, it's sort of a a sneaky forced way to to begin regionalization. Yeah. I think the state's goal is to provide free, you know, universal prek statewide. So, we'll have to we'll learn more and that's all we know now. So, we're not alarmed, but uh we just

077want to make sure we don't lose funding in this uh because who will pay the difference if we have families now who pay these to attend? Thank you both. Do you know what the incentive was behind this to regionalize? The incentive is at well the incentive is so that we have areas that there we're working together um because the smaller towns really can't do it on their own. So Franklin or Spray a lot of the programs are underst staffed and a lot of the decisions about who's getting into programs or not are very controversial in places. So this should be able to expand access and also it is more about access. You're right. It is about access and a lot of these programs are church based too that are private providers and they three school

078three churches went bankrupt is the past few months in Norwich. So and there was one too. Yes. So it doesn't start next year it's the year after. So I'll keep you guys um up to date as we learn more. So, still very in the very early stages. Uh, transportation update real quick. Everybody knows that we're doing um opt-ins now. Um, we finally got the rest of the optin uh for um NFA for um Norwich Tech and for our preK through 8 and that information went out uh yesterday. Uh Maria sent all that information out to um transportation for student so that we can see if we're going to be able to save money based on the optins. Um, so we're hoping that there's less students. We already know, we've talked about this. We see buses

079that are half full, a quarter full. Um, so that's the whole reason that we did the optin forms. So, we'll keep you updated if there's a savings for that. Related to that, should we try to schedule a transportation committee like check-in um maybe before the school year? That's actually just to communicate where we're at. So like in our first meeting in September, we could do the report. That's a good idea. Now, with the optins, are they going to rejigger the the schedules or the pickup points? That's the whole point of it. We may not save as many buses, but it may save hours, which saves us money for transportation, but it could save us a bus. We're looking into that. But mostly, it's going to save us hours, which is great. So, I'll be in

080touch with you in August so we can look at when's the best time where we're going to have all the information that we need. productive. Sounds good. Budget update. Uh Mr. Pulo's talked a little bit about that. As everyone knows, we were there and I think it was adjourned at 11:57 p.m. So that was a fun night last night. Um and Bob will talk more about that uh preschool update. Uh we had finally Nyak came. They came yesterday and today, one of the last days of school. So they came yesterday to have this as I predicted last month June 10th. So today it was veterans and man that they went to visit today. So Cory's I'm sure Cory Beckwith is very relieved that that's all over. So that was a very big deal. We'll find

081we won't know if we passed for three months. Okay. Um so we'll we'll keep you updated on I missed that. I'm sorry. What did we mean? The number 30, right? NYAK is the preschool. Preschool had a test too, an evaluation. They do. They come in. NAK comes in and they look at um to see if you have 8 in of um wood chips. They actually measure to make sure you have 8 in of wood chip chips. They go in and they they watch the the classrooms and they just take they have like checklists and everything. And through the efforts of the uh education foundation, we found some donors who were able to there's a lot over from the get all the trees chopped down. [Music] It's got to be treated. Oh, I know. We were

082discussing I know. I was teasing about the piles. They were huge. Uh the other thing that I don't have in here that I added today uh I think what we've talked this about before we're going to the state board of education for the commissioners network for teachers uh memorial school. Uh so Mr. Lavoy and I uh two weeks ago went up to the state department of education and we had a present in front of half of the board. Uh tomorrow morning we will be Ed and I will be there at 9:00 in the morning to present to the full board. Typically what um from what we heard is once we get to this point if they didn't think that we were going to be a good fit we wouldn't even be there. So it looks

083like we will be commissioners network. The bad news is that the legislation if anyone was um knows this is that they're getting rid of the commissioners network. We were supposed to have four to five years for teachers now it'll be two years but we're grateful to have that. Um school is going to be a focus group which is very similar to the commissioner's network. Um but that's off the table now. So will not be um eligible um based on uh the fact that they're not they're phasing out commissioners networks for schools now. Uh and one of the last things, this is great news. Certified staff vacancies for 2526 is one. We only have grade seven science at Teachers Middle School and that's the only um vacancy. So we're pretty pretty proud of that. pretty happy

084about that. That's one of the reasons why the subline is there also. And that concludes my report. Okay. Jamie is not here. So, do we have any uh report from her? She filed some stuff, but I don't know. Just want to touch on the highlights. Sus. Yeah, I'll just talk a little bit. I just talked to her. as you know, um she sent out an email saying that um we we're still looking at the data. Um we are having uh our admin retreat typically we have it in August for 4 days, four to five days. We decided at the beginning of this year we spoke with the union and we will be having admin retreat on Thursday, the day after school ends so that we can review all the data together so it's fresh in

085their minds and they will make goals going into the next year. So, um, we'll have that and Jamie's going to present that and give all that all the details to you, but, um, like she explained, some of the data was still coming in at one of the, you know, the last couple days of school. So, we're working on that. The one thing I want to say that it relates to, um, the academic office is I think anyone that's been at our um, district-wide events or at our promotion ceremonies has seen the music that's been involved in the schools. It's been phenomenal. and I received this email um and I want to read this out loud. It's from actually this person is a a staff member in our in our district and she wrote to me

086today. Dear Miss Lassard, this is my family's first year in Norwich. We come from Manchester, New Hampshire, which is the largest city in New Hampshire. Last year in New Hampshire, my youngest daughter was able to join chorus as a third grader. She loved it but could not progress as a singer. For example, she could not produce the correct notes nor sing in time. This year in Connecticut, my jo daughter joined chorus. She can now sing a multitude of notes and stay in harmony with her teacher. She also joined band for the first time. She chose percussion and the bells. At the beginning of the school year, she could not read notes nor play in time. Now she can do both exceedingly well. This is because her music teacher, Miss Batsburg, which is umpus, has taken

087the time to cultivate her growth. Last year in New Hampshire, my oldest daughter began to play the flute for the first time. Over the years, she learned different notes at a small pace, but her teacher never challenged her beyond what the introductory music book had to offer. This year in Connecticut in Norwich, she has been challenged and has far exceeded expectations. She is a wonderful flute player who has chosen to perform in all city band, perform a solo at the spring concert, and perform at the eighth grade graduation. She is proud and competent because of Mr. Santoro's teaching. Dr. Santoro is the instrument teacher at Global. I am writing this letter to tell you how magnificent magnificent this program department is in knowledge and how grateful I am that my children are learning from teachers

088who are passionate about music. Excuse me. Miss Batsford at Mr. Santoro at teachers are br brilliant music teachers. They show spectacular dedication to their students and truly celebrate each individual. Music is the pathway to language development, literacy skills, mathematical thinking, and self-regulation. Music makes my children happy. I thank Miss Fatsford and Mr. Santoro for helping my children flourish with music. So, we should really be proud to I'm pretty proud and passing that around. You know, I attended most of the spring concerts this year and The music is just amazing. Both the instrumental and the chorus. I think the most important line is the end pathway to language development, literacy skills, mathematical thinking, and so forth. And they're singing not just English songs. They're singing in African languages. It's amazing. I know that too. Like Michelle

089retiring, but she's already making sure kids have their for next year and she's making already making that gives me shares instrument and that's it. Uh, next director Dr. Hughes is good evening. Um, my daughter is an ooist, Mr. I thought I should mention that it seemed proposed since we were talking about music. Um, however, I'll get to my report. I just wanted to mention that music is amazing and it does amazing things. So, I'm really proud too of our district. Um, in my report, as usual, I have our monthly out of district placement report. Um, we are at 114 for out of district placements. If you remember from last month, we had some students who had moved in already in placement. So, there's not much that we can do um necessarily when that happens. So,

090um, last year we ended at 119. Um, I do anticipate some growth in this area next year with our new programs. Um, I did some highlights just for your um, information. Um, and you know, a big one of course is our expansion of Rose City School. Um, I uh, didn't uh, get the pictures in time of their field day, but they did a wonderful field day over at Rose City. had a lot of great games and all kinds of things uh for the students and it went very well. But as you know, we started with an initial enrollment of two students and we're ending with eight students and we're doubling that for the start of this coming school year um with expanding into the middle school as well. Um we're developing our school resilience program.

091Um we met today about that. Um we're launching that for grades 6 through 12 which will incorporate credit recovery for our students in some of our really um expensive placements who are not attending again bringing them back to their own community instead of you know um other placements. As Mr. Iino said this is a perfect opportunity to think about regionalizing and um bringing in more partners to do this work as we're um uh really trying very hard to figure out um creative ways um to serve our students. So just add one thing to that. Sure. Quick. So we did meet on that. Jack Fields, if anybody knows Jack Fields, he's been in our district. He's a retired math teacher and he works with our um kids that are expelled. Um works so great with them.

092He has agreed. We met with him today and he has agreed to take on these kids um and it could be at the hybrid apex learning plus in in house. That's what we want to do is bring them back and then slowly integrate them back into school. And the other thing is that we know that we want to have a social worker attached to this program um to support these kids and Jack in that role. So we're excited that Jack Fields wants to keep doing this. Yes. It's that's he has such a great relationship with kids. Yes. And there's so many examples that we discussed about that today. Um so we do anticipate growing that program. Um we anticipate there will there will be a need for that program in other districts. We know that

093that's the case. So we will be launching that um this fall. Um you know that we've done a lot of work with our par educators. Um we were the first district to offer an in-person option for 321 insight who's a partner with um the state of Connecticut um and has rolled out PD high quality PD. We were the first district to have them actually come into district and we did like a a pareducator um kind of uh we call it learning academy and um did some fun raffles and had a really great time with it and so that was really well uh attended and um a lot of great feedback on that. So we've been really working hard on training programming thinking about um how to best support our students staff development. Um we brought

094in um PD Monster to help us work on planning for next school year. Um different um community engagement as you know our 8th annual autism wellness fair is very well attended. We have ESY coming up in in the month of July with over a hundred students attending at both Huntington and here at Kelly. Um so you know we are um happy to also join with the academic program that will be at Huntington along with us like last year. Um so we're really looking forward to you know continuing the work into the summer. So we do have of course some summer priorities. I wanted to mention to you that I'm very very pleased to tell you that I will be at the special education legislative summit in Washington DC again this summer knocking on the doors.

095Um but I'm happy to bring any um letter that if possible if the board would like to engage like they did last year. Um the platforms um or the issue statements are not out yet with the council of um administrators of special education, but I do anticipate that the biggest one will be funding for IDA and continuing funding um for IDA. So just to put that on your radar, that is something that's happening earlier this summer than it was last summer. Um, of course, we are um in a really good spot for personnel right now. So, pending any changes, you know, we're going to ensure that we have our faculty and staff ready to go. Um, we do anticipate potentially some movement of uh people, but um, you know, we do have the people, so

096that's good. um continued planning for Rose Gross City and really digging into the planning for the resilience program um and continued realignment of programming um an analysis of our IEPs with building principles. We'll be doing that um Mrs. Hamlin and I uh talking with our building principles this summer about um student supports and pared educators etc. So really working hard on that. And then I did put in being ambitious and all. I did put in some fall priorities. Might as well get those started right and thinking about that planning. So those are also captured in the report for you. Um and really just are focusing on you know um when we come back to school the quality of our program continuing um to support our teachers and our um and our staff. And I would

097like to thank the entire um student services department. it is um amazing work that they do and um I'm just pleased to be able to represent them in in this fashion. So, and thank you all for your support this year as well in student services and I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you. Thank you. Um on the number of students enrolled um in the summer program at Huntington and Kelly um do we take as many as are needed? Do we have everyone has access to that? So the academic program that runs out of Jaime's office is a little bit different than the one that runs out of student services because ours is IEP driven. So if a student qualifies for that, of course, they receive those services. So those are all of

098our students prek through actually um high school and beyond. So we have students that attend their out of district school because that's where they go for ESY. Um so in that capacity yes um all of our students who qualify do attend or they have option to attend they can decline. And the only topic that I didn't really hear was our attendance uh metrics. Um how are those? I don't think I think that's Jamie handles that right. Susan, do you have any idea on the attendance metrics? How how they're improving? I'm talking about our um chronic absentation. Yes, that's on there in the report. All right. I can get I can tell you right now. I I'll give you a snapshot. I'm just looking it up the other day. It's just you know it's on the

099end. I think it's also filed separately. I'm not sure. So, you can see it. Click on it. I could click on it, but I know it's filed. I'll look at it after a little screen. I can tell you where we are right now. Um, it was a long night last night. Um, as of right now, 20, at this time last year, we were at 20.55%, we're now at 19.33%. I know it doesn't seem like it went down that much. However, there are some pockets of schools that made it outliers that made it go up. Um, for example, there's one school that has a 32.40, so that skew skews it a little bit. Um there's some uh quuanics doing great at 9.14%. Uh 10.86%. So we're seeing you know some downward trends um by school. Um

100so we'll continue to work on that. Um we need to we need to we we have our family in attendance people. I feel like I I have these conversations with Dr. Panel over at NFA and we feel like no matter what we do sometimes we just can't get that number down. So, um I was thinking about some different things that I can do um at central office. Maybe put out a video to parents explaining the importance of um attendance and uh the detriments of non-attending. Um so, there's some things that we need to to work on and maybe it's not just by building. Maybe we need to start doing some other things. Jamie and I have talked about tag teaming and how we're going to do that with parents or with kids. Did the state

101give more or took away grant money for those attendance centric programs? We still have it. We still have the two-year grant that Jamie's working off for these attendance attendance. Can I ask what was the attendance for preschool? Pretty much were people were the students attending regularly? So, we don't we don't keep that's not the state doesn't ask us to keep track of prek attendance. Uh but it is something that you know we try to impress upon them so that when they go into kindergarten we all know that attendance it's kindergarten, fifth grade and eighth grade are you typically the highest chronic absenteeism and we feel if we we impress upon the families about the importance of prek that that will follow them into kindergarten. So um how are the prek how are they evaluated whether

102they're ready to move on to kindergarten? What do you mean? Like how do we know that they're ready for regular school? Well, they we would we don't hold kids back in prek for um so when they get into kindergarten, you know, they have to meet the requirements of the state, which is the age. And we do have um we have been using if they're five um before December through December 31st, then we have them come in and we do do assessments with um students that are still four years old. when they do apply for a waiver, who's who's evaluating them to see if they're ready? Cory Beckwith has a whole team and we have kindergarten teachers. So, Sue Blenderman's always been great at that. Slenderman's been a kindergarten teacher for 30 something years. Um, so

103she they do the work and they do some assessments with them. So, it's great to have a kindergarten teacher because they know where they should be. So, they come in. No, it's just I've heard that some kids have been waited that weren't necessarily ready. That's fine. Well, they have to be like toilet trained. I can't hear you, Mark. What? They've got to be toilet trained and and all of that. Oh, they do now. We We do have some We have some assessments. I was just saying we don't they don't have to be totally totally They're supposed to be, but we obviously need some um depend. It just depends on the student. There's only one more year for the correct that just came out. There's only one more year for what? this legislative session passed that

104this next year coming up is the last year school. So from now on you have to be five. There's no waivers. So you have to be five by December 31st or you cannot enter kinderg. Thank you. Okay. Any further questions for Lisa or not? Okay. On to man of the hour Bob. Thank you. on what I did to deserve that. Anyway, I'm going to talk to you about two items tonight that have occupied most of my time since turn of the new year, January. That would be where are we going to end up this year and the budget. Um, back in December, January, it was looking fairly bleak for us in terms of uh whether we were going to have a deficit or not. It was a matter of how much. So, I let the

105board know that on the for first forecast officially that I did in February and I was estimating up to $400,000. Um, we've made went into a budget freeze early in the winter and I will say that made a significant difference. Um, you know, we're basically at the end of the year so I have to go on a whim. Are we going to be in the black or in the red? So everything right now is indicating that we will not be in a deficit that will be slightly favorable. But I would caution everyone once I've said that it will be like a razor thin election or a photo finish at the Kentucky Derby. Um we could be 100 $200,000 to the good, but that seems like a big number, but $100,000 is roughly onetenth of 1%

106of our budget. That's how close we will be. So, uh, how did that happen? Uh, I have to give an awful lot of credit to, uh, not only my fellow cabinet members, but the district leadership at the buildings and schools, their budget freeze, you know, you go into a budget freeze in January, the question is how much will be left over at the end of the year because they're still going to need their stuff. Um, right now it looks like in our variable expenses it's going to be about $345 to $350,000 of unspent money. And I don't think our surplus, if we have one, will be that great. So, had they gone out and spent all their money, we would definitely be at a deficit. So, a lot of credit goes to them. They made

107do without. Uh, I don't want to have another year like that again. Uh, and not only that did they make do without, they didn't whine. They didn't complain. They didn't say it's unfair. They just did it. So, uh that was a testament to them. And then we had a lot of efforts by uh individuals within departments. Rose City School was instrumental by bringing back more students in January. We avoided paying tuitions u to those out placements. When staff members left, we didn't replace them right away. Example would be in registration. I don't know when a person left but probably three months ago and we did without. So it was if we do achieve the um positive variance at the end of the year it was definitely a collective team effort and that would be something

108I'm very pleased with the efforts of everybody. It's not a Bob thing. Uh, I just report the numbers, but everybody's been working on this uh for 6 months. And in fairness, I spend too much time looking at it. It prevents me from doing things that I should be doing that could help us save money. If we can save money in the non-sary expenses, that provides more money for staff, uh, for academics. And I just want to take a little look back at two numbers. I'm not going to talk about a lot of things tonight. and I'll wait till we convene and really know. It's going to take six weeks to know where we really ended up. I looked at two non-s salary items. Heat for our buildings and diesel fuel and gas for our buses.

109In my mind, that doesn't do a lot to educate our students. It gets them to school in a safe way and our staff and students, if they're comfortable, they might teach better and be more comfortable, but it's not a lot of academic learning from heat and and gas. I went back to just two years ago for natural gas to heat our schools. We spent $67,000. This year we're going to end up spending 306. So that's a reduction of $31,000. So how did that happen? Maybe the weather was a little bit better. Uh you recall we had to replace boilers at Stanton and Global and they've been in operation the last two years. So that they're high efficiency uh gas boilers, 95% efficiency versus the old oil boilers we had. We still have inefficient buildings, but

110it probably did make a difference. So looking forward to new buildings when we have efficient heating systems and heating and cooling system and efficient buildings from a building envelope standpoint. I'm hoping we see positive uh payment on utilities then get and We we get our gas from uh NPU Norris public utilities. They do an outstanding job at purchasing. Uh so they've purchased at opportune times and the market conditions have changed. So those factors al together helped us to save $300,000 from two years ago. Then if I look at gas, two years ago, bringing our students to school and field trips and the little bit of gas we use for uh in the maintenance department, we spent $676,000. This year, we're probably going to spend about 509 $167,000 less. That's a reflection of market prices. Diesel

111fuel is is less and gasoline is less. We're still driving basically the same routes. Um, but I was able to enter into favorable contracts 15 months in advance when diesel was low. So, combined that's a reduction of $468,000, almost a half a million. So, when I see savings like that, I try to equate that to staff positions. That's maybe four or five, six teachers, eight or nine paras. Our whole custodial budget is $1.7 million. is almost 25% of that. So if we can do things like that through uh good business practices, through working with our principles, through good contracts, collaboration with the city, new efficient buildings, then we're doing our job collectively because we are stewards of public funds and it's it's our job not only to educate but to spend those funds wisely. And

112one last thing I'll just comment about 24 uh 25 as you know student transportation been a major initiative to try and control those costs. So I look at transportation on a per day cost and this is for our uh type two and uh special education which are mostly for special education buses and the large type one and our wheelchair buses. We run three wheelchair buses a day. On average, 38 type two buses and 52 large buses. That's a big fleet. Our cost per day in May dropped to $50,000, $619. And that's a trend that's been going on compared to the year-to-ate cost. The average cost was uh $51,360. So, it's $740 less. That might not seem like a lot of money, but if you can do that for 180 school days, it's $133,000. So, we're

113hopeful that these changes we've made, the optin and things like that will continue to reduce transportation. Lisa and I met with a outside vendor regarding potential of providing uh van service uh to us, one dedicated provider as opposed to using seven or eight uh different providers. So, we're hopeful we'll find some cost savings there for next year. So, uh the budget freeze was very impactful. What could cause us not to be um in a deficit uh to that not be positive but have a little bit of a deficit. PreK, as you know, is not fully funded by the grant. We won't know on our complete reimbursement on prek. It's based on enrollment where the expenses are. So right now it could be a $350,000 deficit in prek that the board of ed absorbs. So where

114that ends up will have a little bit of impact. Um how much we receive in Medicaid reimbursement. The district does bill. We have one more month of billing. So that could have an influence. So hopefully I my fingers are crossed and I if I had to make a bet I'm betting we're above zero. So if you have any questions about 2425, so any any surface we have, will that go into the non-lapsing fund again? Actually, probably not. Um, we the legislation changed where board of ed I think does not have to ask permission, but there might be some charter ordinances that we'd have to deal with. U we have a issue with our healthc care self- insurance fund. I won't spend a lot of time on that uh tonight, but basically we are self-insured. We're

115pulled with uh the city of Norwich, which includes the firefighters, police department um and public works and also NPU. What ends up happening is uh our insurance rates which are called allocation rates are based on the experience of the entire pool. So, uh, it's doesn't separate out Norwich public schools, uh, re uh, experience versus NPU versus that. So, we go by what the rates are that Anthem provides us. We receive the claims, the city receives the claims, and they charge the claims because they come by NPU, the school district, and the city. So, we've been paying out more in claims on the board of ed side than we collect in premiums from our employees and from the board chair of our thing. And that has been going on now for over three to four years.

116So, it's probably not due to just average shifts in claims. If you recall in 2021 when we had a large surplus uh from COVID years, we deposited $2.7 million into the insurance fund. The following year, we put in $938,000. So, I thought we would be good. Over the last 18 months, that's eroded and we are now in deficit on the board of ed by $2 million. And at some point, we have to fund that if the planes don't turn. So Susan and I have been working uh with our broker and we've talked to some off-site people. We've talked to the city and sometime within the next six months, we're going to have to come to a decision on what district does going forward with health insurance. So any money we have on the surplus side

117really needs to go towards that self insurance fund deficit. So you're saying like if NPU has a lot of claims that affects our rate also because when this pool Yeah. Everybody everybody in that pool there's one claim that's extraordinarily high and extraordinarily usual and that's very impactful. That's really all I can say. We're we're we're still sifting through information that we have though. So Bob and I have been working with our broker um and I've been asking for additional information that will help us um figure out next steps. Yeah, it's it's it's very difficult getting information from Anthem. Our we've given our folks some challenges on what to do as more and more. We need to we need to make come to a decision. Is this just a normal part of the eb and flow?

118We're on the high side now because right now NPU and um the city are contributing more than they're paying out. We're paying out more than we're contributing and in the overall aggregate the pool is okay. The pool needs to be in the three or four million range. So u in the end we going to need to figure this out with the help of our group. It's not something we can do on our own. So I guess the answer answer Christine is if we did have any extra money it would go towards Exactly. I remember him saying that before that. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, we've made we talked with Josh, the city's aware of it and we're the largest I think is roughly 983 participants in the self-insured uh fund or in all the plan

119between the three bodies and we have 185 members. So if we were to leave self insurance pool that would have an impact on both the city and I do. So it's not a decision we can necessarily make on our own. Thank you. So last night the city council uh approved our 1%. Um so that left us with uh what was the total budget now Bob? I don't have an exact number we have it. It's It's in your motion, but it's in motion. Is that what it is about it? Yeah. Yeah. But I'll I'll talk briefly about the budget and the legislative process. And the reason the city waits is because the legislative process is so impactful on Norwich. Um there were some surprises in the legislative process. I'll start with the ECS grant. um when

120we received the allocations by town which came from the office of fiscal analysis. We're still waiting for the governor to sign it and we get the numbers from OPM but I these came from the state body that does this work. We're going to get a 2,540,488,000 increase in the alliance grant and that's approximately $476,000 more than we were anticipating. So that I don't want to call it found money, but that's not money we weren't anticipating through the process. So that's good news. U bad news, we'll go good news, bad news. The bad news was the excess cost u reimbursement amount that's in the fund. Uh last year the state had allocated 181 million and that was far short. That was causing us to get dropped to a reimbursement rate of 62%. The state in the

121special action added $40 million in. So that brought the total pool up to $221 million to be distributed to uh cities and towns, school districts. Out of appropriations, they added 84 million more to that. So we were very hopeful that even if all of that doesn't stay, if some of it does, our reimbursement will go up next year. But none of it stayed. So they kept the 40 million that they added. So, it'll be the same $221 million. Now, we have some good news on special edite. This was unexpected and this is different than the money that's bonded to create in-house programs like Grove City School. That'll take effect in 2027, the second year of the budget. They created a new grant called the Special Education and Expansion Development Grant. Um, common we know now

122as SE uh sed so they've come up with allocations uh for each town and it was based on the ECS formula with a 50% factor for uh special education whatever that means and it was passed in house bill 501 and our allocation is uh supposedly $599,793 so we expect that and that can only be used for special education direct expenses to educated students in house. It's uh the legislation says we'll receive 25% in October, 25% in January, and the balance in April. Um qualifying expenses will be um providing direct services to students including tier 2 interventions, academic and behavioral interventions, hiring and salaries of special ed teachers, pareducators, behavioral and reading specialists who work directly with students and equipment purchases and maintenance and curriculum materials. It cannot be used for any administrative expenses in special

123ed. It cannot be used to pay for related services to third party contractors for tuition payments. So the focus seems to be we will give give you grant money to provide services to special ed students. There is a caveat that if you misspend the money, you will be punished. And the punishment is $1. For every $1 of misspent money, the penalty will be $2. So, we need to wait till we get the rules and make sure we're in compliance. And um they will also be a tie in to your previous year's budget. So now that we have an adopted budget, I'm going to go back and review all of these special education budgets to align them through budget transfer process to make sure that the expenses align with the budget so our budget isn't overstated

124um due to you know have a favorable variance because of vacancies and things like that. If anyone's wondering, Lisa and I have already figured out a way to spend the $59,000 the minute we There's always ways to spend. So, and then I just have two more items from the legislation piece. Uh there was a program I might have mentioned called the drip program, which is a district repair and improvement program, which allows school districts funding to deal with the minor capital projects. Um, you know, they they have these school construction grant processes which build schools. They periodically come up with security grants, uh, HVAC grants, indoor air quality grants. Well, it seems those things are going away and instead they're going to provide you this money much like the low program works and you'll be

125able to keep the money into a fund and use it for uh small capital projects. So right now in our budget for next year, we have $117,000 budgeted for projects. We no longer were budgeting for specific repairs because of the new schools. It is that money is there to fix things like an elevator when it goes down a heating unit. This could help our budget because one, if takes effect this year, if the bonding package really go out and bond it and release the rules to us, last year we spent $50,000 on a rooftop unit at Huntington. We wouldn't have to do that on our budget come from these funds. And the beauty of this is I like the best going forward. If this program is viable and they continue it and they bond the

126money every two years, if we do really get $244,000 every year and you don't have to spend it, that can be your fund for doing capital projects as you need them as the new schools. So I think that could be a wonderful thing. But on all these things I talked about, none of us have received any correspondence from the Department of Education. We have no guidance on how to implement them, what the rules are. Year starts in two and a half weeks. So I'm sure we're going to be getting learning more and learn how we can spend this money. Your parameters. So overall, we look at the budget process. We're going to get roughly 2 million 5 million from ECS Alliance, another $600,000 from the seed grant, 900 about $956,000 from the city, which is

1271%. We've made staff redundance. So I'm really optimistic that we're going to be okay next year by managing all of these funding sources together as one unit. We love the drip. The drip one is the big one. I'm really looking forward to that one. Especially when something goes wrong. I don't have a lot of Matt show up my office door saying we have bad news. Find money for this or that. If I have one personal thing to happen next year is I don't want to talk to Susan that we need to go with the budget freeze. I just That's our goal. We've done this three years in a row. It's discouraging for the staff. We fall behind. I don't stop. The staff was great. There was When you say the staff was great, Bob, they

128were there was no They figured it out. They were great. Uh the the the exact figure Heather is 96,637,77 and we're happy with what we got from the city and we can live within that budget assuming everything goes well. Yes. 10 special need high need special needs kids move in next. You never know what will happen. You never know. Summer's coming. But we have a good plan. Yeah. Considering the plight of the city, they really don't, as it was pointed out, have a budget probably have a everybody's budgets were reasonable. The board of ed budget, the police department, fire department, they have a funding issue due to the shortfall of state revenue. So if we we I think we can optimistically make this work um without inflicting pain and suffering. Any questions for Bob? Oh

129wow. Do we have a replacement for Allen? I believe I'll let Susan talk to that. It's going to be done through existing staff through a stipen with three um staff members, PE members that have been working. So really what Lou Allen's been doing for the last couple years is knowing that he's going to leave. He's been moving two PE teachers to take over his role. Yes. So there'll be another person. Um so we'll be able to absorb it into these statements. I would just like to say about who Allen, he was hired part-time, but I swear to God, that man was here every day. He really was a mentor to the students. I know firsthand that he bought things for students who didn't have money for shoes, athletic shoes. He bought them basketball so they

130could practice at home. He was generous to everyone. Um, and I would see him at games and events and he was more than a coach or teacher. He was, you know, a real resource to parents and uh students and he's going to be missed tremendously and he's a quality person and our athletic program now that it's not just marginal, it's robust and it stacks up against any of the regions. So, he did an incredibly just to see the kids participate. Um, so it's just it's just been great. That's why he has so many connections, maintaining those connections, you know, as far as getting coaches. That's what I hope he's passed on. Just quickly, I've taken Lou to a couple basketball games with the Yukon games and we park a little further away and he adds

1315 to 10 minutes to the walk because everybody knows him walking in and has to stop and talk. Okay. So, uh, back in college, I had a friend Ed Freriedman who wore very thick glasses, and we call them Ed Specs. So, without further ado, we're going to do Ed Specs from Mike Fenza. Thank you, sir. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Sorry about the one way. No, no, no problems at all. This is uh probably the last time that we'll be visiting this group. music. Um, I'm joined by uh one of the project managers from our office, Samantha D. Agustinino. She assisted us with putting these educational specifications together. Um, just to give you guys a little introduction, the first phase that this board approved was the Greenville and Stanley project. Both projects have kicked off

132and are now underway, actually being built uh within the city. Uh the Yasis and Morardi projects are uh wrapping up design. Uh we hope to be out to bid around just after the beginning of the new year on those two projects. And the final two projects that'll be before you tonight are a new teachers middle school and converting the old Huntington Elementary School into a central office uh building. Uh just a couple things and you know just to thank everyone from the uh NPS administrative team. Uh as you review the edspecs the uh collaboration on the teachers middle school project was enormous. Our staff interviewed close to there's almost an entire page of staff members that were integral to that process. um as well as everything that went into central office as as it related

133to getting those we can all Yeah, we can see it too. What's that? We can put it in front of us here. Oh, no. We just have a quick presentation together that just kind of recaps everything so you don't have to go through that document page by page. Thank you. You may have to hold it and just drive it. I never let it just red every time it goes down. That's okay. We can send you We can send you a copy, but can I just I don't Matt, you don't need to worry about it. It's it's fine. I can send it out to everyone so you can have it. So, um well, good evening everyone. My name is Sam Dagino like Mike said. Um I'm a project um project engineer project manager with Construction Solutions

134Group. Um I have been with CSG for about five years now. um and Mike uh asking to assist in putting together the final drafts of the EDS specs for you guys for teachers and central office. Um so last week um we worked collectively with the NDPS staff to uh finalize the drafts that you have presented in front of you tonight. Um just a brief overview of um Teachers Memorial Magnet Middle School. Um it's a new construction project that will be built on the existing site of the current teachers. Correct. Um so in total the current building area is a little over 71,000 square feet. Um and that includes areas obviously your academic core programs, classrooms, prep rooms, um ISS, coaches office space. Um, in addition to all of your special ed programming, your fizzed pro

135programs, food services, um, arts and music, library, media center, admin support spaces. Um, and then we have two categories called building services and core area as well as circulation and interior partitions. Um, the building services and core area are things like your mechanical rooms, um, bathrooms, um, and that type of thing. anything that kind of services the building. Circulation and interior partitions are things like hallways, corridors, um that type of thing. Um so that kind of again very brief overview of teachers. Does anyone have any questions specifically related to teachers or um any clarification that they may need? I know that was quick but and the reason we're building a new building as opposed to renovating the the existing it it actually benefits the city. Uh CSG ran an analysis uh to to to look

136at the financial impacts to the city if we were to renovate the existing teachers middle school or build a new school on the same site. Um there were a few things that were identified, you know, that you wouldn't get if you were to renovate a building there. You know, you wouldn't get a dedicated bus drop off and parent drop off area. uh you know a large portion of the analysis revolved around the fact that the current teacher's middle school is larger than what's needed to support the enrollment within the district. And it's not as simple as a oneline uh analysis that you can make. So you can't just say we have an 80,000t building. We're just going to take you know 15,000 square feet of the building away because it may not be practical to

137do that. So, um, you know, and in looking at that analysis, even with the existing building, because of some ADA compliance issues that it has, you know, you would still need to build towers on the existing building for the stairs is is one example. The stairs aren't currently compliant. The st the current codes, the elevator isn't large enough in the existing building to meet current codes. So when we started looking at all of that, as well as the fact that I believe the auditorium and gymnasium are on the lowest level with no elevator service down there, it became kind of problematic to reutilize that building knowing that it needed to be smaller than what it was. So, one thing for everyone to understand is that if you renovate a building and that's larger than what

138you need, the the state actually uh lowers your reimbursement rate as a result because you're renovating space that isn't supported by your enrollment. And because of that that onetoone analysis that I made that that I was just discussing, you know, if we were at an 88,000 square foot building and that's approximately what it is now, we can't just say we need to remove 17,000 square ft of the building and take it in one fell swoop. It just doesn't work that way. So, as part of our analysis by rights sizing the building, building a new building, the state does offer a 10% reimbursement bonus when you util re reutilize an existing structure. Even with the extra bonus, because of the square footage that would be additional or unneeded to support the educational program, the cost to

139the taxpayers in the city of Norwich was higher to renovate the building than it was to build a new building. And so it almost became a no-brainer for the city to go that direction. That was something that was presented a couple uh months ago to the school building committee and ultimately the decision was made to go with a new building there versus renovating what was currently there and it was quite a significant difference. It was $25 million. It was close to to a $2 million variance if I remember off the top of my head as to as to what the value would be that you would the the additional cost you would in incur to renovate versus build new. But that was without the that was at the standard reimbursement rate without the additional up

140to 80% that we're getting on the rest of the project. Right. Right. So you would So basically a new construction project based on the city's current reimbursement rate 67.14%. If you were to build new, the state will give you a 10% bonus on the reimbursement rate if you were to repurpose an existing building. But then when you factor in the fact that repurposing that existing building, it would be repurposed with additional square footage that that isn't supported by the enrollment, then that lowers the overall reimbursement rate to lower than the 67.14 that you would basically get to build new. So then that's where the variance ended up being and and it ended up being a better deal based on the analysis for the city to build new versus what was there. But that that was

141at the 67% rate not counting that we hopefully would get the 80% re. Correct. Correct. Yes. If it if if the 80% is acknowledged for the project, it would be 80% and it would be 80% total. So, um you know, it definitely has an impact. Any other questions on teachers? Um okay. So, Huntington um is a little bit different than teachers in the sense that um it's an existing school that's going to be converted to a central office space. Um and Mike can probably speak a little bit better to um the rationale behind some areas getting altered versus some areas not getting altered. But what you'll notice in the ED specs for this one in particular is um if you go into the space matrix portion, there's some areas that are highlighted in green versus

142red. The green areas indicate areas that are going to be considered as part of the alteration project converting Huntington to central office. Whereas the red areas are areas that are still going to remain intact within the building but will not receive any upgrades or alterations as part of the project. Um, so we had we had to include all the areas because they're going to be obviously maintained once the alteration project is complete. They're still going to be active. Um, but so we just wanted to show what those delineations were. Um, yeah. Yeah, I can I can speak to this. So So essentially what what's happening at that building is you're converting a full-fledged school into a central office. And as part of that renovation, there's a lot more offices than you would typically have in

143a school. We surveyed the NPS administrative team as to everything that's going to go in there. So, you know, as part of a central office component, you have superintendent, assistant, superintendent offices, facilities department, finance, HR, payroll, uh, and I'm not going to be able to remember all of them off adult education. Yep. There's also a major adult education component of this project, uh, which was voted on by the voters of Nor, which is part of the referendum. So we had to service those spaces as well. Um but you know the altered spaces within the building are are mostly the offices and the adult education department. Um I I will say that the the alterations that'll be needed in the adult education component of it will be a little easier than the conversions that'll be needed

144to facilitate offices being built. Basically, an adult education classroom is the same as a general classroom, but the classroom would get refer refurbished and altered as needed to support the adult education program in there. But the fact that you're already utilizing a classroom where students were taught, you don't have to put up new walls, you don't have to, you know, re reorganize rooms that are currently in place. Mike, I just want to add one thing. We did talk about including the Nor Tra Trans transitional academy. Uh but in speaking with Lisa once we all sat down together, it didn't make any sense to move that program from the current uh spot at K Street um to uh this to Huntington. And I also just to add one more thing for the building services and core

145area. Um it's my understanding that the bathrooms and the corridors and things like that are still in relatively good shape. Um, so that's why they're not being altered as part of the alteration project. Well, to Samantha's point, we'll go in and investigate them. Any type of improvements that need to be made. We don't feel that there's a lot that'll need to be made. The the bathrooms are generally in very good condition within that building. They look like they've been renovated very recently. Um, more so the back portion of the building where the new addition had gone on. um that that space is almost pristine. Uh and to think that it's even 20 years old is difficult to even think about because it just looks so new. Um, you know, but to to Samantha's point about

146the areas that aren't in the alteration project, uh, there was the desire to keep the gymnasium at Huntington as a community gym, at least initially, because it services a portion of the city where there's no other facilities that are as close by as Huntington. So, we left the gymnasium at Huntington and TAG. The parks and recck department currently utilizes that school more than a lot of the others in the district. I think that'll more than likely change once the first four elementary schools come on board because now we'll have full-size gymnasiums whereas we may may not have previously. Um and the other area that was that was uh requested and desirable to keep was the kitchen. Um that's also a newer space that's in the both the kitchen and the kitchen. The gymnasium serves as

147a cafeteria, an auditorium, and a gymnasium, gym, a cafeterium, you know, and a lot of uh school building projects are going away from that because there's obviously benefits to having those spaces separated. Uh but given the example here at Huntington, you have a perfectly good gymnasium. Uh if if it's maintained intact and it eventually gets used as a gymnasium, it's already working as a gymnasium. The kitchen is already working as a kitchen. services kids for for lunch and breakfast, I would imagine. And, you know, going forward, it was kind of desirable to keep that kitchen intact so that if any community events needed to happen or food needed to be prepared in that building, it could be accommodated. Well, you could serve the the central office staff and have it available for for sale for

148uh students attending the uh adult education programs both day and evening. We do summer meals there as well. Summer meals that that would be up to the district as far as whether or not the adult education program is serviced by meals. I you know we through the programming I don't believe that adult education is is a program where the the students enrolled in that program well not now because there is no kitchens at the the existing facilities so I'm saying it's possible to add that into those services if in the future if you wanted to. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's something that we should really talk about too because if if food service becomes something that then gets offered to adult education, the space may need to be classified differently or altered to be

149able to service. Yeah. Bob, do we still have a prep kitchen that we use for um like local produce and stuff? Um no, that not yet. It has to be reinstated. We have to renew the license. So that's a possibility for that kitchen at Honey at Honey that one of the existing new schools. That would be the plan. All right. And one of the reasons we don't want to take the kitchen out is once it's out, it's never going back in, right? And it's hard. It's easier to keep it for potential use for summer meals, for adulthood, for NTA might have graduation there and you could serve a nice catered meal there. So it's space that doesn't need to be demoed. So why do it? And because it doesn't fit directly in the program, that's

150why it's not being altered because there's no you need to have rationale for altering it. If if it was needed for the program, we would be able to alter it, but you know, in this case, we're keeping an existing asset that's there. Um, one component that we didn't mention is that more than likely there will be some space that goes unused within that building. It's almost I think our total program area came out at like 44,000 and change, you know, almost 45,000 square ft. So, there will be portions of the building that won't be altered at all or even used in the final rendition of of of the central office project, per se. So, you know, there there is there will be space that will be in that building that will be untouched um that

151could remain intact and be potentially used for other things. It's just, you know, to stay within the budget and and the amount that the referendum approved, we had to really go off of what spaces were directly in the referendum. and and that's why we took the path that we did as it relates to that building. Silly question, but under this um the specs for um one special education records room a lockable for drug filing cabinets. I'm just curious as to why those aren't um the fire rated ones. I know they're very expensive, but that's the record. I see you have them in the other. Yeah, I'm not sure why they're not firated. Typically, we don't usually get that specific with filing cabinets once we get to design. Well, it is listed, you know, on on

152um for like the education administrative assistant has a lockable fire rated. Yeah, they're all fire rated except for the ones in the records room. They're they're they're generally indicative spaces and narratives. You know, this is a really preliminary document in that don't don't feel that you're you're more or less limited to the spaces that we're providing in there, but not the amenities. There's still going to be there's still going to be a full-fledged design and got, you know, to what to, you know, Susan or I would just make note of that. That's something that should be brought up because I would think because it says eight lockable for a file cabinets and I know from my own experience in education that we always had the fireproof ones knowing the records rooms. Yeah. And and Christine,

153just to put your mind at ease a little bit as it relates to that when so there'll be a full-fledged design similar to what we did for standing in Greenville and then another phase component that'll select all the furniture for all these spaces as well. So um definitely something we'll be able to capture further on in the project. Also just you know one other thing to mention is that you know in particular with the with the special education spaces in there we did receive some feedback from uh the NPS administrative team and there there was a lot of uh back and forth to get the space to what we felt or the administrative team felt was needed to support a good working central office. Um, so if there's no other questions for central office, I

154just wanted to add that the goal is to get a grant application for both of these projects submitted by June 30th of this year. Um, so as long as the EDS specs are approved tonight um, and then we get the minutes I believe certified, we can continue with the rest of the items for the grant application. But these EDS specs are a critical piece in getting those grant applications submitted by June 30th. And just back to teachers. Um the word is escaping. It's not it's not observatory is it where they have the planetarium. Yeah. Was there was that part of the edspec for teachers that existed? To be honest with you, I don't recall if a planetarium was ever desired to be incorporated back into the or into the program. What? That's a question. It's

155not It's not part of the new ed. Yeah, it's a lot of money. I'm sure it is. I don't think if you ever went to a new um newly renovated build or not renovated but a new school building in middle school or high school. They don't they just don't do those anymore. They're I mean you look at what the debacle over in East Lime they had. They weren't even going to do that. Someone took over it and they but it's an existing building right now at high school. So plus we hadn't used it for how long? I mean it just started using but it wasn't used for a while. Yeah. But there's new projectors in saying I mean so we did without and then we started using there's new projectors though you'd hate to have

156those go to waste utiliz well we're approving the specs tonight so that's no she's talking Noturn usage is there a planetarium in this building no that's the only that's the only way districtwide. And I'm not exactly positive as the reason that it came out, but educational parody could be one of the reasons why it came out. You know, one of the big things from the school building committee as well as you know, I believe this committee was that educational parody was uh you know, thought of in the design of all these buildings. So that could potentially be one of I think it was more the cost. Okay. because it that wouldn't really matter to to us because I believe we would just ship students back and forth. All right. Was that ever discussed in pol

157in planning sessions? They did. So when they had everybody in there um there was somebody that from um CSG CSG that went in there was a staff member and spoke with every science teacher, every math teacher. educational specialist that came in and met with the district. And if you go into the educational specifications with teachers, we actually provide a list of names of all of the teachers and staff members that were in it was just about every staff member. It's a it's a pretty encompassing list. [Music] They Why do you know they have, you know, on top of top? [Music] So maybe we could partner with another kids. Well, is it planetarium or an observatory? Planetarium. Oh, okay. That's also dollar-wise, do you remember offhand what how much more of it added to the project?

158I don't have that information. All right. But it would it must have been a significant amount. Yeah, I'd imagine. So they don't build they don't build planetariums anymore. Like when we talk about East Line, when I went to East Line, that planetarium was there. So it's been it's been there since the 70s. Yeah. I didn't go when I was in I did not go. I I uh graduated Lime Mold Lime High School, which received a uh major renovation a couple years back. And I remember through the that project they had a planetarium at that school as well. We weren't ever allowed to even go into the planetarium because of safety concerns. And then you know ultimately the the planetarium was up on a roof level and the vibration from the HVAC units would shape the

159telescope and we weren't able to even really use it. So, and I I can tell you from, you know, personal experience, I've never been a part of a school building project that added a uh a planetarium. This is kind of a question for Susan. If we are going regional with prek, are we going to need these positions? Which positions? Like the administrative assistant to the prek director. Oh, yes. Yes. We're still going to um just enable schools. Good question. But yes, we'll still leave them for we have 1.5 right now for So, anyone have any questions for for Mike for on the UDS specs for either project for teachers or um the new central office at Huntington. Mhm. I just want everybody to know too is that we had all the central office um involved

160in when we went over for the specs. We made sure everybody had a say in the spots we Matt Brown went and measured every space that we use now so that we could make sure that the square footage matched what we needed. So we would be able to move the entire central office it whoever in every single everyone at Bishop at 90 town street right the only the only thing that won't be moving from Bishop is the Rose City School which Rose City School will eventually go into veterans which we're going to talk with the city manager in the coming weeks about that when that goes offline and Huntington has facility space like a repair shop for equipment to now or yes, there's a maintenance shop as part of the part of the EDS specs.

161That was a request from Matt Brown. You have a facility storage area, office space for Madden's assistant um for computer repair. There's actually an IT department that would have computer repair. So veterans we are looking into which we think we've talked to the city manager, talked to the mayor. We're going to move eventually move Rose City School to Veterans as it expands. So once Veterans goes offline, it's one floor. It's in a perfect location um for a program that Bishop would Bishop would go back to the city. I know that I know that there's talk of using that building. I know Sheila Hayes brought up using that building as a youth center. That's what she would love to see going there. Ste brought it up that that would be a perfect spot once that goes

162offline. Veterans. No bishop. I guess so. Yeah. So essentially Bishop Mahan um well veterans we have plans for Laquanic. Um that's go offline and adult Hickory Street. Hickory street, right? PreK would be in obviously prek like Christine was looking at would go into I don't think the there's some staffing that the EMTA program at K Street CNA classroom listed that's adult ed but we're going to we're going to keep right okay uh having No questions. Uh I'll entertain a motion for uh the we're going to do two motions. Uh under 10 um 101. I'll make a motion to authorize the Norwich board of education to approve the educational specifications for teachers global magnet middle school state project. Christine Dasio second that. Okay. Any discussion on the matter? Hearing none. Um all in favor I it

163is unanimous uh just uh it'll that's 80 cuz Kevin left the meeting. Um and I'll entertain a motion on 102 for the edexs for u the Huntington central office project. I'll make a motion to authorize the Norwich Board of Education to approve the educational specifications for the Norwich Central Office State Park. I'll second. What a tough. Okay. Any further discussion on that matter? Hearing none. All in favor? I I again unanimous. And that's does it forex. Thank you very much. What do you need for the grant application? I'll work I'll work with Amber to get to get the information. We'll just need a certified copy from the recording secretary and I'll I don't know if you need uh approval. I I think in the past we did approval of the final minutes. It all depended

164on when the the the meeting fell. So I think the first round we did in June and we needed an approval an approved set prior to June 30th. So there was no chance for another meeting to happen because of the similar situation to this. But we've worked with Amber. We know what to do. We'll get the certified copies and we'll be off and running. All right. So yeah, if we need another special meeting to just the minutes, uh I I don't anticipate that you're going to need an extra special meeting to do that. Okay. No problem. Have a good night. Takes us to item 11, unfinished business. Uh, okay. We have several policies for second. New business. Uh, oh no. Student retention. Student retention policy. Okay. I'm sorry. Oh, what was the approval of the

165park? You just skipped one. That's 11. That's unfinished. It's okay. It's okay. You were up. It's been a long day. My mind a very long day today. I did three graduations this morning, morning and afternoon, too. Okay. Um, yeah, Christine called me to have a discussion about student retention policy. So, you want to take the lead on that, Christine? Well, I think that we seriously need to consider um uh at looking at it closely and uh possibly with retention in kindergarten. Um so that our kids have get that strong. Well, let me start with what I wrote. Uh sitting at graduations today wondering if we have done everything we can as a board to give our students the best foundation possible or passing on kids lacking proficiency in reading and math and are struggling with

166social development is going to always hold them back from being successful academically. I ask that the subject of retention be added to our our agenda because I have true concerns as many of our community do when I hear of students from NPS starting at NFA and at and other high schools requiring remedial classes or assistance with reading and or math. And I was curious as to but Jamie doesn't have the scores yet. um how many of the kids that we graduated today even weren't prof weren't uh proficient in math and or reading. Um I've had a discussion with one of our longtime kindergarten teachers and um there were several concerns. Um, I was told I guess when Abby was still our superintendent, retention was done of course after extremely close analysis, you know, looking at

167everything. And then when Kristen came in, um, she handed that over to Tamara Glouester and Tamara wouldn't entertain it at all. um they the teachers would get together all the information that they needed to justify it and it wasn't entertained at all. They were totally ignored. Um and this is coming from like I said experienced teachers. So, and that was when parents were on board because of course a parent has to be on board with this. And um so I'm just and at at the kindergarten level, that's when there's less stigma, so to speak. We're being held back. And um it's just a huge concern because I'm I'm embarrassed at times when I hear, "Oh, look at how many kids at NFA are struggling or or that 70% of the emissions at Three Rivers needed

168remedial reading." And it's like, isn't there something more that we can give these kids more time at the at the young level to give them a stronger start, stronger young patient? So, so having no wife, pardon, having no wife, which would be me, being retired, being retired and half a I saw that I had an interest in this and I have had an interest in this and I've done reading and I've sent articles to folks about the research and what's happened and there's a trend and there has been for the last probably seven years of a retention policy at the end of the third grade. I can't hear you. At the end, I'm sorry, John. Can you speak up just a little bit? I will. At the end of the third grade, right? And we've

169spoken in here an awful lot about age three to grade three, which kind of ties into where we should be focusing. Mhm. And you know a lot about this age three and a grade three and a lot there are states that have that have laws that students have to test this their retention is based upon a standardized test score whether they move to the fourth grade. So research is out there and what does it say good or bad? It says both. Yeah. Depends what depends what study you read. And there are studies that will tell that studies will say it it's not all about intention. It's about what happens with that extra year. And a lot of places when they retain students, they have 90 minutes a day on reading. That's only based on reading,

170not math, just reading. They have 90 minutes a day. What does that turn into? State of Mississippi. So listen to this. State of Mississippi. And I have a cousin who is in the education department state in state Mississippi. Um they have found there's an absolute difference in their next reading test which is in the sixth grade. They see they see a significant out the numbers improvement in that does it carry on after that? Don't know. retaining people in the middle school forget about 60 60% of students retaining the middle school drop out of high school period. So if my opinion is if we're serious about age three to grade three, this kind of ties into what we need to look at and how we need to look at and it is uh I'm looking at

171a year study on this from whoever is doing this not for this school year because budgetary concerns, staffing concerns, class size, there's a whole margin of things. But if we do a study and we do the research and we go visit places and talk to people and find out is this something that could help the students of knowledge public schools, we need to look at it. And so we may do all that and say, you know what, really is it worth it? Maybe it means we need more tutoring and we need more. Maybe we need that. I don't know. But I don't want to discount detention as not being a solution. And I don't know if if it's the answer or not. I don't know. Well, that's the thing because we haven't had any recent

172studies, you know, and we haven't there are a lot of them out there. I thought we Oh, yeah. But I mean, you don't know what the the population is that they're looking at for I'm sure some of the ones you read did say get the, you know, SCES's and etc, etc. of the population. Any research that's out there gives you all that information, gives you all the demographics, gives you all the data. So, it's more than just the numbers. How does it affect this population in Mississippi? The high winners, okay, are minority students. High winners. Surprise, are the high winners. So, um you know, I'm my mouth too much, but but I'm in favor of of not saying we're going to do it. I'm afraid of looking into a year away. Is it something we

173should look at? That's all. So, we do have a policy and Dr. Hughes and Jamie Bender are the ones who speak with the parents and and we have retained students. Um, and if you look at the Yukon um retention after CO 19 evidence-based guidance, this was December 1st, 2021. Pretty recent. Uh the CO 19 pandemic changed the way school districts reach, educate, evaluate, and support students. Historically, grade retention has been a common way for school districts to address low achievement and high absenteeism. Research is clear. Grade retention has no long-term benefits for student achievement or long long-term outcomes and may in fact have negative consequences for both students and districts. So the research that I've seen, and I'm open to look at a lot of different research, is that we see it, we go, "Oh,

174wow. they went to first grade. Look how well they're doing. But what we don't see is what they look like and they get into fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. They don't see that. And that's when the negative effects start to occur. So I feel the same way as John. I'm glad you brought this up, Christine, because I think that it's important for us to look at. I do think when you see the data, I saw some really good kindergart. And I just think too that with what um Cory's done with um our early education and school readiness, having a strong school readiness program really helps those kids in kindergarten what they need to do and where we're targeting more SVI by third grade. I teach therapy and fourth graders and I just know that if

175I don't check them when they come to me in third grade that it's significantly fifth and six. So when you look at we've been talking data over like six years even since before co that early the kids that went to early you know had two years of preschool had a solid group I think that's where and I think you see NFA and Christine when you talk about those are the kids that were heavily affected by CO forunately right and that's I just wanted I looked up some interesting stats on um like SAT scores from our juniors and our seniors and the the decline in the last 10 years do you know that Connecticut's average score is under a thousand for an SAT. That's embarrassing. That's that's the state of Connecticut. Yeah, it is. And I'll

176tell you that when I've talked to Nick Canel about it is that he he feels that it's a lot to do not with um how much knowledge they have, but um the way they they take the the effort that they put into taking the SAT. They don't they don't feel like they need they need to put a lot of effort into it. Well, so you said a lot of a lot of colleges are not using, right? No, but it was just it was just a standard to see that it it's drastically went down and it continues on that trend. It's going down um like 150 to 200 points every year. That's like that's a horrible line. And that's why I feel like and I'm a mom of four kids. I know how important it is

177those basic the foundations that they learn and we have to just make sure that because it's much easier with them being socially ready to stay I mean socially staying deaf is not going to affect them in kindergarten as it would in 8th grade. That's why we need to make sure we're we're staying on top of it because um there's too many kids that are slipping through the cracks and I know we can do better. There's been a while too obviously as a teacher that schools were using one way to teach reading and we've gone back to the science of reading the last three years. I've done a lot of work on it, a lot of studies and it's picking up those dynamics. or teach in a different way of reading again back to the other.

178And it was a big thing for kids. Like there was a lot of um teachers college there because it was so great and we were into it for a very long time and which a lot of places were. Everybody everybody went to teachers college. I spent weeks there and looking at the science of reading is a much different it's very phonetic. It's very it's a much stronger way to look at it. The science of writing um and There's a lot of happy factors. totally but the way kids were being taught like that high school age at that point was co I think there are two things getting science training and then I wanted to I wanted to just ask um who I would talk to I know it's about the curriculum but why why do

179we not teach cursive and is that something that maybe we as a school district could possibly add because our founding documents of our country are in person and these children cannot read them. How are they supposed to protect themselves, stand up for their rights, and one, know how to sign their name? Um, I realized it when I take my kid to the DMV and he has no clue how to sign his name, and I'm standing there in the DMV like, I know I taught you how to sign your name a long time ago, but so I wanted to um I mean, I'm having a calligraphy class my at my house this summer for some high school students because they're going to be an art project. we'll turn it that way and they can at least

180learn the basic cursive letters. I think the problem is fitting in in the curriculum with cursive too. We search about cursive and where would we find it? We have just about we try to cram in reading and writing as much as we can and to add cursive but cursive is part of writing and it's part of being an adult and we're supposed to be raising kids that are going to function well in society when they get out. How are they supposed to the standards now all go towards textbooks and use a computer be able to make documents only you need to use cursive to sign your name but I can tell you my third grader and documents she can write her whole whole spelling sentences in cursive she writes her whole all class okay that's

181not all the students that's her whole class has been using cursive then that's at like not they she's in now Okay. She learned it in third grade in Orange. Okay. So then there is obviously in one school are getting it and there's five other schools and they're not getting it. There's a problem. All I'm saying is that even though tech is everything is moving tech, we also have to learn and realize that when we started putting kids in remote and doing all these things on tech and computers and now with AI, they're using AI to plagiarize to write things like the things that we need to educate their brain. That's basics. They need to know how to work these things out. If the computer and tech goes down, they need to know how to work

182things out. I work at a restaurant. When the restaurant power goes out, we had to sit there and we had to figure out how much those checks are, add the tax, make sure the stuff got paid, or we weren't we were going home with no money. If these kids have computers go down, I fear they're not going to be know how to function. And we all need to know how to function without tech. We need the basics. So I think it's another discussion and maybe we even have a school program where we have curses being taught or I think we look at the research and and talk about it and certainly if it's happening at one school and not other schools that's I just wanted to mention make a comment about the student detention policy.

183Um, from what I see and I'm noticing is that we have a policy in place that allows for uh promotion and retention. And if you look at the procedures that are around it, I think they're pretty well thought out. And so the discussion we're having is about I think are we being too strict or too loose on on how it's happening and how it's going. And um that's where I'm I'm going to go back to what John said before is that we should really should be looking at what's our practice here in Norwich when it comes to retention. Um what are the practices in other places? How successful are they with that? And then we can make decisions about guidance towards, you know, we should be retaining more students and why that's the case. Um

184because the process to me looks really good. I wouldn't recommend any changes to the process based on what I'm writing there. um there can be great benefits to retention for a number of students because replacing students in school based upon their chronological age but there's also a lot of studies that that's not really the best measurement of someone's maturity. I mean if we're placing students in school based on their size it might even be a more accurate way of telling you how ready are they to learn or do whatever they're doing and not necessarily their age. So you might have students who are very young and you see this with the, you know, change in the policy for kindergarteners having to be at the age five. I have a son who was a late year

185birthday who did kindergarten twice and just for him, I'm not saying this is for everybody, it was a big benefit. He transferred from one school to another school and was able to enroll in kindergarten the second time around. And he's very small. He was very young. And so not just academically but also socially there were benefits from that where he unlike me being the smallest kid coming into nth grade wasn't the smallest kid coming into nth grade cuz he's a little bit older instead of being younger than everybody else. So I think really what we need to do is just kind of take a look at how are we doing this within our district and like the comment that you me mentioned it was happening at one point and then it seemed like it wasn't

186happening at all. And I think we're trying to find a balance now. And if we see the position of that balance, let's talk about where we want the balance to be. There was there was a time north public schools what was called developmental kind. Yes. I think that was a lot of different schools. My ch my but we we had both of our children go through develop DK and then regular K both and my daughter really didn't need it. some he's a small little you know whatever I think they call transitional pain though yes yeah and but again that that takes us back to that whole concept of I keep saying way what do you think about this where they're at what do you think about this though when when the law changes not next

187year but the year after where you have to be five that might change a lot is going to change a lot because when you're putting kids They're not ready. They're not ready. They're too young. I know. Like for my sister, my my sister has that late birthday and my mom fought to have her start early and she started early and she's had trouble since the second grade fitting in with her peers, um, getting the score she needed, passing things. And everyone knows where my sister's not doing so well. So I feel that if if maybe she had waited and was in the right from the beginning, she would have had a better chance of being successful like me on the summer break. I don't know June maybe and have a problem. I went outside five

188and a half. I was over. Yeah. I I honestly I I think it's it's the individual child, you I had my son went to kindergarten at five. One that went at four. You know, that the one that went at four has a college degree. The one that went at five did not go to college. So, I I think it's really that individual child and wherever that child falls. So, if they need that extra help, that extra assistance, we have those things in place, we we have, you know, the reading programs, we have prek and then K. So, I I think we have a process in place. I think we just need to find where the individual child fits in that process to make sure that they're not left behind or to make sure that we're

189not putting a kid in in a situation where they need to have a little bit higher academic rigor so that they don't get bored with school, you know. And then you've got the other side of the spectrum where now school's boring. This is too easy for me. So, you know, I think there's a lot that that has to go into to thinking about enrichment is another thing we need to be we need to have something challenging our kids that are succeeding because the easiest way to learn that or lose that desire to to learn is to not be challenged. You get bored in school and it happened to my older son. He was one of the top students in elementary school up until fourth grade. And all of a sudden in fifth grade, he was

190bored, bored, bored. And then he wasn't paying attention. And all of a sudden, seven and he has no clue what's going on because he didn't pay attention anymore. He lost that drive to learn. And now I see my 10-year-old who everyone here has met. He's pretty like an 80-year-old man. He is wise and smart beyond his years. But I fear that the same thing's going to happen to him because I hear this is a kid that never wanted to miss school and I was like, did I really need to go? What? What? So I can watch this person have a temper tantrum in class for an hour? That's like he wants to learn and he's he doesn't feel like going to school for the eight hours is beneficial to him, you know, and I feel

191that there's a lot of kids that are that are feeling like that. And once we lose them, it's very very hard to get them back into that. I was just going to say like earlier we were talking about the absences and rates in that phase a big bowl into like if our kids are not even showing up. You can't teach them if they don't show up. You can't even Well, that's the thing because I heard preschool attendance was wasn't very good at all. It's not really that right. And it's like and yet we're using that as a precursor, you know, for it's getting better. And this year it did get better. Yeah, cuz that's what I mean. You know, you want to take advantage of it if that's what why we have it to build

192that foundation, but it doesn't sound like a lot of people are like taking it for granted. So even if they're not chronic and they still miss 15 days, it's okay. And then if you think about it, if the teacher misses 10 days and the student misses 15 days, they're the same. Oh, this is 25 days. So, I think that Jamie and I are in we're in conversation with one another on how we could um ramp up um chronic absenteeism by maybe maybe it's another level to central office to talk to parents when they miss if that doesn't work because I hate I hate to I I doubt we could do it especially with the state funding but say look if your child misses a certain amount of days we're going to give the slot to

193somebody else you know because I think Corey has done that in certain situations Um, but I'll I'll she has, right? Yeah. Well, I think parents are are looking at prek more as opportunistic daycare as opposed to an educational child. That's what you said, right? Childare and it sucks cuz I was a mom. I was a single mom and I needed child care before and after school. But I hate to sound like a jerk, but it's public education. We are to educate kids. We're not babysitters. We have kids. We have kids. I have to find my own I have to find my I have to figure it out for my own family. And I know that things are hard, but there are programs out there that help with um child care for all kinds of um

194lowincome families. You can get it. Well, I think prek should be used both like to the students to learn and also for moms to go to work if they need to work. Yes. And there's also a caution against academic rigor for prek in kindergarten. Socializing for boys boys just learn different and they need that activity. All right, let's uh sort of wrap up this discussion. Uh, where do we go from here? What I want what I wanted to just say was that I I want I need to know that when our teachers have children that they feel should be held back and they have the proof. I'm saying like in kindergarten, they need to be listened to. And I'm hearing that they're not. I'm hearing that they're not even giving the time of day to

195the point that to the point that they didn't even submit any names like this year because so we have so I would want to know that you know that they don't that's why when I heard that I was like so Lisa and uh when Jamie comes back Lisa will have a conversation with Jamie and teachers should talk about that yeah well that's why they not being a day well I will tell you that Jamie and I have had some conference at the schools with that's why it hasn't even got to that point. It sounds like it with some Yeah, I'm not aware of that. Well, that's what I mean. That might be like above your I mean below where you are at in the chain of what happens. You know what I mean? No, I

196think where you might just not even be aware of it, you know, and that's my concern because that's not Well, certainly need to be listened to. Exactly. If teachers have a concern, they should be at least be listened to. into that. So we need to take any action or propose anything. I think it definitely needs to be looked at. I I agree with every No, no action. I think it needs to be scrutinized. I think maybe um we can all look at into some more data and I think we should wait and see what our data Greg brought up a good point that it's in place and we need to follow it more. Yeah. So, it's just to make the administration aware that there are possibly some problems out there and keep an eye on

197that. I trust that you're going to look into this and you're going to try to find out who are the teachers who are making these concerns and then make sure that they're heard and listened to and that may prompt some changes. I appreciate this conversation. I will continue not to have a life about you like everybody over the past 50 years. So you're like, you know, a lot of life in those years there's a lot of things across. Sorry, what did you just say, Chris? There's a lot of We just had two that families wanted their check. There's a lot to get through to be a retain child back by their scores by a lot of different things. And I know one thing was talk about the cost of retention, but what's the cost of

198having a student being in special ed? That's why it's in the I didn't even mention that because Yeah, that's why I saw that. I'm like students. Thank you. I I know they in Iran they just reported they they dug up the tomb of Dethusela on his tombstone. They said I was taught by John Io. [Music] He's starting already. He's starting already. Yeah. Someday you guys will be there. Someday. So I'm already there. I'm not seeking any. All right. So no action but keep an eye on it. Okay. Next item. uh 111 our action on the uh the budget. So the um the city council passed uh the budget last night and you have the figure here in the motion. Um, could we have a motion to approve the budget for I mean, we already approved

199the budget that we submitted to the city, but now we have to approve this motion for the new budget figure that we're going to live with for the next year. I'll make a motion for the board to approve the 2526 public schools budget in the amount of 96,637,77. We have a second. Okay. Any discussion on the matter? All right. Um, do we need to do a vo voice vote? I mean an individual vote or um no. All in favor? I I it is unanimous. Okay. Very good. Uh, next uh the the second reads on the policies as outlined. Um, if I could have a motion on the first uh 112. Are we going through these one at a time or we Well, no, they're sort of grouped together. So, I think there's three motions that

200we Yeah. Yeah. I So, three motions, one for each group. Correct. Got it. Uh, I'll make a motion for the board to approve new policies number 106, naming and renaming school facilities. 1007 school security and safety 508 restorative practices response policy and 5,112 series oh sorry 5,112 Connecticut school climate policy will second that okay any discussion on those hearing none all in favor I is unanimous okay uh 113 Three. Uh, could I have a motion, please? A motion to approve to approve the proposed revisions to existing policies. Number 1,000 visitors and observations in the schools. Uh, number 4,118.112 title 9 personnel number 4,118.112 title 9 personnel. Uh, the redline version. These are not those are just one policy. 4,118.11. Yeah, Christine. Yep. They're just two different versions there. Number 5145.5, the title 9 students proposing

201version and 5540 transportation. That says I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and second. Any discussion on these? Hearing none. All in favor? I I I unanimous and the final item was the deletion of a policy uh because it was covered by a new pol revision to a or a new policy that came earlier, the school climate policy. The school climate policy. I make a motion that the board policy 5231 prevention. I'll second. Okay. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I I unanimous again. Okay. Committee reports. We just pass the budget and ad hoc uh that all had to do with uh this current budget to come negotiations. We're going to cover the uh in executive session. We'll discuss the administrative assistant contract which um was approved by the administrative assistance uh union and

202we're going to vote on that tonight. Uh school building committee, we heard the report from Mike Fenza. Uh we had the groundbreaking today and he gave the status updates. uh transportation. Uh I put an alarm on my calendar for the first Monday in August to contact Susan Lassard to uh schedule a date for a transportation committee meeting before our September meeting. Okay. Um I'll policy. I don't think there would uh we just passed the policies that were pending. Um there is nothing on the calendar until the fall upcoming meeting for the policy committee. You know that we cancelled it because there's no model updates from shipment that even need to be discussed. I can take that off my calendar. Okay. So we're good on that. Which brings us to board reports. Uh Greg ITCS. All

203right. So the report here is attached um for reading. Uh I'm just going to go through the really important stuff and we had a lot of endofear things happening. Uh events that are going on school graduation for the seventh and eighth or for the eighth graders was this morning. Um and that was a very well-run attempt event. Um there are some changes that happen technology-wise to improve uh signal for internet on both the playground and the gymnasium area. Unfortunately, I didn't do that before I left and uh director Debbie All performance review was completed and was overwhelmingly very positive. Going on to first any questions about the IDCS leaison report. Uh the learn leaison report is also there and included the highlights of that are there was a presentation on the long-term strategic plan for

204learn at this last meeting. It focused on alignment of the pathway which they've been working on all year. Um having integration and project based learning um at all their different sites. And one of the other key points from that presentation was um looking into an outplacement center for infant and toddlers. Um the budget is very strong for 2526 school year even though they did not get all of the money in this legislative session that they were hoping for um to the extent that was requested. And there are two graduations coming up. Oh, one was actually today at Three Rivers Middle College and then tomorrow at 6 PM at the Guard Art Center in New London for the Marine Science Magnet program. Can I ask a question about the um something you know? Well, first of

205all, IDCS is spam the kids taking the Spanish exam for NFA for credit and they get they all 100% achieve Spanish one credit. That's wonderful. They do Spanish from prek there. No, I I knew they had started it. Boy, you can tell, can't you? That is wonderful. But uh my other thing was do our students do this um Eastcon mobile manufacturing lab that they mentioned Eastcon offers. The students in six through 8 did it at IDCS might be something we're checking into. They've been going around. There's that one and there's an environmental environment. They learn about career pathways manufacturing and complete hands-on tech. Can you send that to me? Yeah, I sent his Oh, it's on here. Yeah, it's in the It's in his reports. So, you could talk to Deb about it. She would

206know. But I think Julia Cronin is the one that made that connection. Julia Cronin, I think so. Thank you. This sounds awesome. Yeah, the environmental. What about you? It was really for elementary. Okay. the NFA liaison that's me um they're meeting the board is meeting uh tonight the same time so uh I don't have their June update from I did attend the May meeting um and in May the major things were their negotiating with Park Church for their parsonage to turn that into a dormator atory for the fost for the um kids they're bringing from overseas and also uh they gave a financial report. They're finishing strong. Uh they're going to be about a million dollars to the good on their total budget. That's mainly good to mainly due to the uh to the staff

207cutbacks that they instituted the beginning of last year. So that was the savings. borrow some of that money. Well, they're putting that additional money to the capital projects. They need So, what is that? They might need more new brass railings on one of the buildings. They also received from the state 5.6 million capital and they needed it. We in public schools received $612,000 for students in endowedmies. I'm sorry, just that last one. Students enrolled in an endowed academy that came across first time ever $612,000 to our budget. So a little bit that's part of the ECS. My husband is walking the field tomorrow if it's not too his 50th. It's 50th. He's 75. He's a cooperator anyway, so he usually sits on the stage, but it's it's just so hot out on that field, you

208know. I know. Tomorrow should be a pretty good day. I know. Supposed to be like 80. Yeah, that won't be too. Yeah, 80 is perfect. All right. And in uh the NPSCF uh we had an election of officers. I missed the the May meeting was the night we negotiated for the administrative assistance um contract. And the June meeting is delayed until the 17th. Um, so which is the night of our bullet grad, so I'll probably miss that one, too. Um, but I think we had an election of officers as a new president and uh we're setting ourselves up. um who made another uh donation for our u fund uh to to get to a $10,000 level. I think we're halfway there now at 5,000. So that uh once we hit 10,000, we'll be uh permanently

209funded and work off interest for that through the community foundation. It's a separate entity that we send our money to and it earns interest and pays us back. So that'll be good for the students. And the obvious benefits of the foundation can be seen years ago. They they bought instruments for the music program and the music program is uh well you saw Christine I mean it's just amazing. Every school you go into it's uh the music program is just growing leaps and bounds. Okay. Okay, the additional reports we had uh they're attached to the packet the the year and budget that u Bob had said personnel report we're down to one teacher pending and our enrollment um pretty much holding steady for the year brings us to the executive session. Um I have a motion.

210All right. Pursuant to Connecticut General Statute 1-200 members of the board of education move to go into executive session for discussion regarding administrative assistance contract and the superintendence contract. Board may ask Susan Lar and Robert Sepensky will participate in some of the executive session discussion. Do I have a second? Second. You're welcome. Heather 9:19 p.m. Thank you. Okay. All in favor? I Okay, we're now in executive session. Okay, it's uh 10:32 p.m. and we are now out of executive session. Uh could I have a motion to approve the uh as discussed in uh executive session the administrative assistance contract? I'll make a motion for the board to ratify the contract for July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2028 with the Norwich Educational Administrative Assistance Local 1303-190 of Council number four as discussed in executive session.

211Second. Okay, we have the first and a second. Uh any further discussion hearing? None. All in favor? I I it is unanimous. And second item would be a motion to extend the superintendence contract for a one full additional year. Could I have a motion for that? Mrs. L. I'll make that motion and a second. I'll second that motion. Okay, Heather. Um, any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I I again unanimous and uh time for I could entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. I'll second. Okay. It's not a debatable topic. So all in favor? I I it is unanimous. We are journ. Thank you all. to make you.