001the regular board of education meeting Tuesday May 24th at 6:34. Please stand for the [Music] pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And before we begin, I would like us to have a moment of silence. And I apologize if people are not aware of the the tragedy that is unfolding in Texas of a um another deadly shooting. Um so moment of silence for um the families and community um that horrific nightmare that they're going through. Thank you. Uh, roll call starting with Vinnie, please. Vinnie, Steve Co, Mike, Debbie Sherman, Stephanie Miller, Nicole Wood, Vick Ros. Okay. Are there any amendments to the agenda? Hearing none. Um for um yes want sure
002motion to approve of May 9th forification minute. Second. Uh any discussion changes? Okay. Uh all those in favor I opposed abstain. Motion carries. Um would you like to speak? Are one audience member? Okay. Welcome. Um so no audience citizens. Um any board correspondent? None. uhou request. Robert. Yeah. So, one of the things that we've changed one of the things that we've changed is the protocol forus. um the prior superintendent um did not bring thoseus to the board and we had talked about that earlier in the year that all memories of understanding should be brought to the board for the board to be um in consideration and then to allow Stephanie to arrange or to come up with the final negotiations and to sign theus. So what I did is I brought forward to the board
003finance committee on Thursday um four potentialus um one dealing with contract language which changes the graduate the credit level. Right now the contract requires 30 credits in order to advance to the next salary scale and we're putting language in that requires the 30 credits to be graduate level or higher. So, it's clarifying, it's helping the district um hold um make sure that it's a level playing field. Um so, it's just clean up language within the contract, which makes sense. Um the second deals with the um current track coaches. Um we split the head coach into three assistant head coaches. That was done um this current season. So, theou is to address and fix that so you can pay those appropriately. Um the third MOU deals with the fall play and the spring musical. These are
004positions that historically had been paid through revenue of the play, but there had been nothing in the books in terms of what those people should have paid that those positions even existed. So rather than continue paying people a phantom salary for those positions, it really needs to be um outlined in the actual contract in the MO in the site of the siphons. We also need to make the retroactive for this year for the fall play and the spring musical. So in order to pay these individuals out of money that's sitting in the revenue, I want to get this MAU signed so you can pay these individuals appropriately. And then the fourth one deals with the stipens. The contract for the education um association for the teachers in the district outlines all the academic, all the
005um extracurricular and all the athletic stipens that teachers would get anywhere from um clubs to coaching. That stipend list got modified two years ago in a separate um with the former superintendent and the association. it was refined again last year. Um the goal of changing those types annually is to reflect the current needs of the school. So for example, there might be a club that had huge enrollment one year, but there's a different level of interest that students have in that school for the following year. Or there's a a need to change the the amount of coaching that we have. Um, in one case for the middle school, we're proposing decreasing a track coach and replacing with an intram mural coach to further have opportunities for more students to engage in athletics at the middle
006school. So, the idea is to bring to the board every May what the list of the stipens would be for the following year. Stipens are not permanent assignment. Stipens are annual assignment. the teachers apply if there are not any teachers that apply for a stipen and anyone else in the district can apply for in some cases a parent might have a stipen but it comes from the stipened list from the teachers so I'm bringing forward to you the recommended list of stipens and I've outlined in theou um memo that's attached in board docs what those changes would be for next year um and then it's the long list that gets attached to that so the goal would be to answer your questions throughout these fourus and then for you to enter into um a motion
007allowing Stephanie to have final negotiations with myself and with the education association. I already have spoken to our attorney who is working on the actual contract language for theus pending approval for theus um tonight and there is a motion um in the um board docs agenda if you want to go into executive session to discuss these specifically or if you just want to go ahead and have a motion to allow Stephanie to come into final negotiations with these I guess now we're were, you know, open for discussion. Um, actually not discussing, we're not discussing the particular people. So, I guess the question is, do you want to discuss, did you have a chance to look at the MLS? Do you have a question? Do you want to go into the expected session or do you
008want to just make a motion to let me um the the finance committee kind of went through and we we gave our two cents in, no pun intended. Um, so, um, you know, I know the finance committee is comfortable with the the content that you have at this time. I don't have any questions. I'm fine with just voting on Okay. So, Deb, do you want to read that motion? What motion? Oh, I'll do it. I don't have it. I'm sorry. I have it right here. Um, uh, no, the second one. Motion to authorize the board. Should I do it? Yeah. read it. Can you make it smaller? Dr. screen. Uh motion to authorize the board chairperson to execute memoranda of understanding with the Oxford Education Association regarding statement and degree definition issues pursuant to the
009general terms and condition discussed by the board in executive well we didn't go into executive session and to further and subject to further negotiation between the superintendent and the Oxford Education Association. Second. Any further discussion or clarification? We're just going to remove the executive session. Yeah. Yeah. Because we didn't discuss, right? Right. Gotcha. Um, all those in favor? Opposed or abstain? Motion carries. Robert, your report. Oh, I thought that covered both. No, non-certified. Okay, so then it's non-certified. Is that talking about non-certified non-bargaining association staff salaries? Okay. I thought that's all in. So, we have to do the same motion again for this. I'm different though. Okay. Yeah. So, the the second component of this is we have staff members that are not in any bargaining association. These are um at will employees or employees
010that we have come up with a standalone contract for everybody ranging from director facilities to administrative assistant to monitors um and tutors um within the schools. In the past, these have just been negotiated directly between the superintendent and those individuals. It's common practice in in most school districts for the board to have a motion in May or June to approve these salary requests and block. If there's a need to discuss individual people and the salaries, what we would do is we would table this item to the next meeting notifying individuals that their salaries would be discussed um in executive session and if they wanted to request that that be a public discussion that they've had the opportunity to. I did share the statement I did share the salary list with you in private via email.
011It's not a public document. It's also listed in board docs under executive content. So if there's a comfort level to vote on these salaries as a block tonight, we can do so or we can table to the next meeting. We can go into executive session at the next meeting. And and these were also discussed um person by person and um in detail in the finance committee. So I'm not too sure if Mike wants to address that at all. Um so thoughts on this So, so you said the motion would be different. The motion would be um as simple as the board approves the salary request presented by the superintendent something that So again, do do you feel like this is up to you as you feel like you need more discussion on this or are
012we good to just? Yeah, this was what's already in the budget, right? Yeah. and finance sub committee went through this pretty thoroughly. So, okay. So, just make a motion. Motion to for the board to approve the salary request as presented by the superintendent for non non. I'll second. Um, any further discussion? All those in favor? Oppose or abstain? Motion carried. Okay. Um, I do not have anything to report now. Now we're into my report. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. My head is spinning. That's my head is spinning, too. And I'm going to address something that was not originally in my report, and that's student safety. And um, clearly our primary responsibility is to educate our students, but our our number one priority is to ensure that every student, every staff member that comes to school every
013morning goes home safely. And when there is a um travesty like this that took place in Texas um in any place in the world, it hits home because um it could be us here. And when this happens elsewhere, it's our responsibility to make sure that our students and staff um feel cared for, feel supported, um have a place to go if they um have concerns, if they're scared, if they're anxious. and we're going to have some of those. So, this evening, I've asked um our administrative team to meet at 8:00 p.m. tonight via Zoom and we're going to talk about what type of supports we need to put into place for the schools tomorrow. I don't know what those are yet. We we literally just found out about this 45 minutes ago if that and
014we've begun that conversation of of meeting this evening at 8. Um, and part of that will be what do we need to do immediately tomorrow, but also reconvening our support and safety team to talk about what it's still it would be really too early to make to take the lessons learned from Texas, but what what do we know about our existing practices today that we need to immediately shore up or are we in okay shape? But we need to immediately have those conversations and make sure that there are not any gaps in our security protocols that we could immediately address. And what can we do? What do we need to do to protect student and staff safety um from a physical standpoint and a social emotional standpoint immediately for tomorrow and students are going to
015feel um differently about this whether they're in elementary school versus high school. It's going to hit them different ways and it's going to hit teachers um as well. So, we need to make sure that those supports are in place for tomorrow. Outside of that, um it's hard to talk about celebrations. Um but over the last two weeks, we've had a number of scholarships and induction ceremonies and the number of students that have been inducted to these ceremonies have just been so high. I attended the math induction ceremony last night, the National Honor Society induction Thursday night, the scholarship award, and the senior award ceremony on Wednesday night. Um there's the world language inductive terminated last Monday. Um I attended the superintendent student awards um the week ago yesterday. The Connecticut um at scholar athlete um
016was Sunday night. So it was just it's a a season of celebration for our students. So while we are in mourning tonight for the students and teacher in Texas, um it's also a time to recognize that our students have done some amazing work over this course the course of the year academically and athletically and we're trying to showcase that and um bring some celebration to what the students have succeeded um with this year. One of the successes um is something that is something that we should be very proud of as a as a community and that's what our staff at comm farms um pulled off yesterday. We have an amazing young child, kindergarten child. Um her name is Liv. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor um cancer um earlier in the fall. Her heroic
017work from our teacher to identify that there's a problem yesterday. Um, we had hundreds and hundreds of of parents and staff and kids, um, board members that that came to the event. We had t-shirts, raffles, um, money just put into a box. I don't know all the revenues brought in. I do know that there's $2,19 that were brought in just for t-shirts alone. I'm still waiting for the final tally from the school, but it was amazing. I did send a thank you email to all parents and staff this afternoon. We're trying to encourage all staff and students to wear their their shirt tomorrow across the district. Um, so that'll be a nice site to see. One of the things that we Stephanie and I had a conversation of is the value of us retaining membership
018in CABE. We know that we are moving away from that from a policy standpoint, but from a overall membership, what other value ad is there? and we had a hard time coming up with reasons why we should stay as members of Cape for next year. So, we're looking at dropping our membership. So, that would actually save us around um seven around $80, $100 per year by not being a member of CAPE. So, it's something that we're looking to move forward with and we just want to let you know that from a capital perspective, I met with George Temple last Wednesday. There is a state grant for $150 million for HVAC upgrades and air quality across the state. We're anticipating that's going to open up on July 1st. We don't have the specifics yet on the
019grant, but we do know there would be a sliding scale based upon town. We're anticipating we're going to be in the return rate of somewhere between 35 and 45% most likely, which means that there's going to need to be a match at this at the local level. George Temple is prepared to bring that to a bond referendum if when we get there. So, we're preparing to move forward with what we need to have in place for the July 1 date when that does open up. I also had a conversation with um Jack Kylie this morning. He called me. He believes that there'll be some additional funding that's available outside of existing capital projects that just got approved. So, he wants to meet with Anthony and I within the next um few days or next week
020um to generate some more of those ideas and I'm really looking at most likely probably upgrades to the bath bathrooms at Great Oak. Um and if there's any HVAC, we know we're have facing some issues at the high school. So, we need to compile that list and then that would go back to the board of finance and he's pretty certain that with the funds that available that we could have access to um some capital repairs that were not originally on the table for next year. And I think that's why some of our requests were not placed on town. I think he knew that this was coming. He was waiting to get to that point. He also asked us to get the two projects that were approved up and running. That's the pool with the diving
021board and that's the playground over at Baker Farm. So, we're going to start moving on that events coming up over the next week. Uh prom is Sunday night. Um it's going to be in New Haven um at the Anony's Ocean View. So that Sunday evening, the students in the high school drama program were invited to the Halo Awards on June 2nd. So that's a whole number of students effort to fit in the the musical and the the play were um included in that. So wishing them good luck. And then next week we have a number of concerts. We have the Great Oak and Chorus concert in June 2nd. In the evening as well, we have Cuka Farms Field Day. um I think on Thursday and eighth grade field trip on next Friday we have the
022high school senior trip next Thursday. So there's a whole bunch of various events that are taking place over the next week. It's getting back to normal in the schools which is good for the students to be engaged in these type of normal cultural rituals that would be expected at this time of the year. So that that's a positive sign to see. I awarded the April Teacher of the Month. I'm trying to do a teacher of the month. um from this my love of superintendent to my teacher of the month for April was Kelly Hovind. I kind of missed seeing her the last few days. I finally got into her classroom this afternoon and wore that to her with her students in front of her and the students all cheered her she's a um third grade
023teacher at Great Oaks. So she was thrilled and kids were all so excited to celebrate with her. And then finally we got some good news from a health insurance perspective um this afternoon. Um we believe that we'll be able to switch carriers if we decide to do so and save around 69 to $80,000 um in the process um add a comparable carrier to the partnership plan. So we're just getting the details today. I just got a text from Anthony late this afternoon. So I need to really dive into that. that then unfolds that will be that'll be very positive for us and that would actually not only save the district funds but also save every staff member's pocket as well because they pay portion health insurance. So it' be a win-win for the district and
024for staff. So I I still need to dive into those numbers with our insurance broker. I literally just got the text this afternoon. I need more information. But if that does come out that'll be very positive. Is this for comparative insurance? So we wouldn't have to renegotiate across all the That is correct. Yeah. And that's my report this evening. So thank you. Thank you. Um I have nothing to report. Um Joe is not here. Anybody on facilities that wants to say? Yeah, he just did it. Okay. Thank you, Joe. Um Deb, we just met for curriculum. Yeah, we just had a curriculum meeting at five o'clock. Um we talked about um some surveys that were done for seventh and eighth grade parents. We wanted to try and get an idea of parents taking their kids
025out of district, what we could do to keep kids in district. So we got went through those results. We talked about some of the um uh class enrollment at the faith school. Well, can I just add into that? Could you just can you share the the survey with the rest of the boards? I'll do it. Yep. I'll I'll send the rest of the board. Whatever works. Yeah. Um so we then we talked about um some of the class schedules at the high school. They're starting to put together the their master list. So we hopefully at our next meeting, which is June 13th, we'll have more feedback on that. Um and we tabled a whole bunch of stuff. So we'll bring that back at our next meeting on June 13th. Nice job, Mike. Finance. Did we
026skip policy? Oh, yes. Everything. We skipped policy. I appreciate it. The fast button tonight. It's been rough this afternoon. So, this is a So, this is a quick one. We have a meeting scheduled for June 2nd. So, watch this space. More to come. I knew she was gonna be quick. Thank you, Nicole. leaison report. No, I'm joking. Finally. Okay. Uh so, uh so I have a few few notes. Uh we met um Thursday, May 19th. It's a great meeting. We talked about the possibility of a surplus for the end of this year. Uh and just to kind of emphasize, we want a surplus at the end of every year. It means that we properly manage the funds because we never know. We always have to anticipate, you know, worst case scenarios and we want to
027be able to fund them and and so having a surplus is a good thing. Um it may not always happen, but you know, we do our best to have something. The dollar amount is not fixed of how much we have. Um but I think it would Stephanie, would you agree? Uh maybe start collecting some ideas because in the month of June goes by very quickly and we have to the end of June to spend the surplus. we give it back. Uh some some money typically always goes towards supplies for next year. There's rules of what we can and can't um spend it on, but the goal is that we want to spend it in things that that you know advance the district, maybe lower operating expenses for next year to prepare for the thousand1 things
028that could go wrong. Um but it's also we it's a way to invest you know and and maybe some might go towards security uh measures. I mean how we spend it on where where we need it. Um but taking input from the board would be greatly appreciated as we come together and put together a short list of things that can move quickly and uh can logistically work in that time frame. Um so there's that. We talked about uh you know class funds and making sure that we spend down those class funds before the class graduates. Um there might be some u handoff to policy potentially for us to come up with whether it's a policy or it's a handbook where we talk about the process and making sure that we don't have leftover funds that
029are spent. Um we talked about Chromebook insurance. Uh the district currently pays for Chromebook insurance. It's very valuable in the sense that if they break a Chromebook, we don't have to service it in house. We can send it out and it either gets repaired or replaced. Um at this point, no family has to pay for it. If we were to pass it out to families, it'd be $25 to $27. And for next fiscal year, we are not looking to pass it on to families, but there's the possibility that in the future it may transition. Um, we came up with a a hit list of budget reduction, many recommendations from building administrators, nothing that involves cutting staff or programs, but it it, you know, it there's looking at retirement impacts to the budget that help lower
030operating expense. um you know, liability insurance, Chromebooks, uh being paid for by a grant for replacement instead of coming from the budget. So, there are several cuts and nips and tucks here and there. Sometimes if someone retires, we may be able to hire someone at a lower level. Not in a not in a bad way. We always look for the best fit, but usually someone at the top step hire someone potentially not at the top step. Uh so all in all, we're we look like we're going to have a balanced budget and be able to overcome the $25,000 that we didn't get funded and uh we're in good shape. I'm guessing we're going to need to meet to discuss uh several things whether it's the insurance, the spending, the surplus if there is a surplus.
031So we probably will have to have a meeting in the next week or two weeks. Yeah. um the surplus the insurance we need to make a decision on that and there's a couple other salary related that we need to iron out. So my assumptions we'll meet prior to the next board meeting so we're ready for the next meeting and then there's one other component financially that is the food services contract which we should have the RFP back in time prior to that meeting. Um but the state also announced today that we are eligible for an extension as well if we wanted to extend one more year. We'll see what the results come in. Make decisions to that point. You had a a thought of a surplus this year. So that doesn't include the $70,000 switch.
032The insurance would affect us for next year. The surplus for this for next year. Yes. Any other questions? Next job finance committee. Um any leaison reports booster club PTO PTO had their elections last week. Um and I believe they had their plant sale on the 19th. So I think that that went well. Rob, it went phenomenal. Um based on what you told me, they sold a lot of plants, more than they expected, raised a lot of money for both the um PTO for the schools and for the organization. So my assumption is that this gardeners will want to do this again with a with a PTO. But it was a phenomenal success that um we had students at both Great Oak and Quaker Farms that went out through the entire two days to get um
033plants and they were available late afternoon and evening. So it was a great success. One of the um at their um at the meeting is like fundraising, trying to get um more people involved in their activities and trying to think of different fundraisers because they used to do the the auction but they haven't run it in two years. And now now that we're somewhat back to normal, the um schools are making requests. So they they're trying to think of different ways to raise the money. So, it's getting some new parents involved in the process because some are on their way to high school. So, I'm still there. Same board in place. Yes. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. They change I think the treasurer changed and the the secretary moved treasurer and then there's other people that moved
034along. So, um so it was pretty much the same. weren't a lot of people in Boston, but they're doing a great job. Yes. Anything else? No. Um for Oasis, they contacted um Dr. Miller about doing a survey um at the high school. We discussed it at our Okay. Um, and you know, so what what we decided to do is look at all of the um questions and then decide or we were going to get back to Oasis because this is we we felt that there were possibly some pretty personal invasive questions that we weren't comfortable with. So I believe you're contacting um Vinnie at Oasis is you know is this a one package deal, take it or leave it or can we customize it? And I don't think we have the answer to that yet.
035Um, and they have done the they have done the survey before. I don't know if it was every year. Um, and quite frankly, I don't know if it was the exact same survey, but you know, now you look at things and you know, just kind of say, "Wow, is that is that really anybody's business asking that question?" Um, so we'll get back to you on that. Other than that, um, anything else with any liaison people? All right. Then I am proud to adjourn motion to adjurnn this meeting at 7:04. Second. Uh and motion carries. So there you go.