001on March 24th and I'd like to convene this regularly scheduled meeting of the board of education. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance 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. Miss Davidson, Melica, yen. I think she can hear she's she's on. Yeah. Mr. Gales here. Miss Feressa here. Miss Hosking here. Miss Palao here. Mr. Malibu present. Miss L here. Mr. Gabardella. Miss Meglo here. Miss Ky here. Okay. Everyone should have re uh received their board of education meeting minutes dated March 10th. Do I have any discussion? Seeing none, do I have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from the board of education meeting on March 10th? Yes, Madam Chair. I
002move to approve the minutes from the board of education meeting from March 10th, 2025. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed abstensions. Motion passes. Abstain. Moving on to Judson Elementary School student recognition. Thank you, Madam Chair. U like like to welcome all the friendly faces from Judson tonight. I see Miss Raymond in the back, a lot of the students here. I have the uh privilege of announcing uh you know the information about the Mathon and uh we're going to have some awards at the end there. So whenever I call the students names toward the end, please come up receive your award and stand up front. Gladly get a picture with the board there. So in February, Judson Elementary School hosted its annual Mathon fundraiser in support of St.
003Children's Research Hospital. Students created online fundraising pages and secured sponsors to support their math problem solving efforts. Faculty and staff took part in a month-long dress down event while a tiny toy sale ran in the lobby throughout the month. Beyond Judson, other schools also joined the cause with pajama days and staff dress downs. Thanks to these collective efforts, Watertown Public Schools rated an impressive $9,475.96. The board of education congratulates and thanks all participants for their efforts. The following students are the top Mathon fundraisers. Kora Benedict. Congratulations, Cora. You can stay right there. Stay there, please. Charlie Benedict. Hey Charlie, congratulations Charlie Leah Ceru Elena Carrera. Congratulations Joshua Gilbo. Congratulations. Shash Jose Masonette Declan Manion. Keegan man. And that is everybody there. Congratulations to you all. Have Adriana. Oh, I'm sorry. Do that with two on
004the back here. Thank you, my friend. And a big thank you to Adriana Caligguri and Tessa Campbell, students at Johnson Elementary School, who dedicated many hours and efforts running the toy tiny toy sale and Tessa. Thank you. Board members, if you want to come around, we'll get a picture. We get behind you guys. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Good job. All right, everybody. You're going to look at me first. machine to your parents. Okay, we're going to start here. Ready? One, two, three. And now you're going to look to your right. And now over to your left. Very good. Thank you all. Congratulations. Thank you all. Thank And moving on to the Watertown High School academic achievement recognition. The Watertown Board of Ed is pleased to announce the names of the following top 10 students
005from this year's graduating class. The Board of Education recognizes the excellent academic achievements of these dedicated students from the class of 2025. These students truly exemplify the district's vision of a Watertown Public School graduate. Mrs. Hosking, before we start to say the names, I just wanted to commend our top 10 students. This is an extremely high honor. It takes four years for a student to place in the top 10. This is an aggregated GPA from when they begin as freshman all the way up to their senior year. And it's very competitive. And so to be able to be part of that top 10, that means that you beat out a lot of other students that attend this high school. And that means you worked really hard to get here. So congratulations to all of you.
006Thank you, Miss Oski. You're welcome. So the names in alphabetical order followed by our saludiatoran and valadictorian and again come forward and all and then wait um for a picture at the end. Sophie Berseron Congratulations. Haley Korea, Seb um Sebastian Creeder, Francesca Guerrera Sarah Keski. Good job, Sarah. Mora McDonald, David Perini, and Zra Ummer and out of alphabetical order. Our saludiatoran this year is Kevin Tran. And last and certainly not least, our valadictorian, Olivia Van Dyk. All right, board members, if we can come around to take a photo with our top 10. Congratulations to you all. Stand behind you. Mindy, give us direction. All my students, please step forward. Two feet. Keep coming. Good. Dr. Go right in the middle. Krista, why don't you stay in the end? Very good. All right, we're going to
007start looking at me first. One, two, three. And you're going to now turn all the way over here for me. Okay, now to your left. You want to turn back there? Huh? Back there. Parents and students who were here for Judson and for the top 10, you can leave if you would like. You're also welcome to stay or you can stay. It's okay either way. You're not doing anything wrong if you leave. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations everyone. Really? I was going to say give it to her home. I'll try and make it brief for the kryosis tonight. Just speak. Okay, moving on to the report from the student council representative for John Trumbull. In math, second graders continue to work on the place value of three-digit numbers and operate on numbers within a 100 and up
008to a thousand. Students continue to work on their subtraction skills and worked on visual models of tens and ones, adding and subtracting on an open number line and decomposing and compensating when adding. The PTO through fundraising raised $25,000 and were able to buy 12 smart TVs for the school. Thank you to it for installing them and thank you to the PTO for the amazing fundraising. For Pulk Elementary School, the Pulk Invention Convention took place on March 11th. Students worked hard deciding creative and innovative inventions where their problem solving skills and originality were put to the test. A panel of judges evaluated each invention based on creativity, useful usefulness, and presentation. This year's winner was Landon Johnson and the runnerup was Tyler Medina. Landon will be moving forward to the state finals. Congrats to all the
009participants. For the coral and instrumental concert, um there will be a night of music and celebration at Pulk Elementary School's fifth grade spring concert. On Thursday, March 27th at 5:30, the entire fifth grade will take the stage at the Watertown High School auditorium for an unforgettable performance. For Judson, the third and final round of themmies have started. Students are having fun while connecting with new friends and staff members and learning new skills and hobbies during the 30 minute block on Friday afternoons. The March character theme is inclusi inclusiv inclusivity which is a core value that emphasizes embracing diversity and ensuring everyone feels valued and respected. By practicing inclusivity, Judson is able to strengthen the community and promote a culture of empathy and moral support. The fifth grade students will be taking the next generation science
010standards assessment on April 1st and 2nd. And students in grade grades 3, four, and five will be taking the Smarter Balance assessment on April 7th. For Swift Middle School on March 11th, Swift Middle School Ed Rising teacher leaders Lisa Dorso and Julie Ayer attended the educate educators rising annual state conference at CCSU. The event offered a variety of workshops focused on developing future educators. Lisa and Julie participated in sessions aimed at strengthening and growing Swift Middle School's Ed Rising program. On March 13th, Swift Middle School 8th grade students had the opportunity to had the exciting opportunity to attend the high school's production of Phantom of the Opera. Students enjoyed the impressive impressive performance while getting a glimpse of the talented work. This week at Swift Middle School, they are celebrating a spirit week with a
011variety of themed days to bring energy and excitement to school. Students and teachers are showing their school spirit by participating in fun themes like tie-dye day, neon day, team colors day, dress like your student slashteer day, and decades day. It's a great way to build community and showcase commu creativity all week long. Um last week the language department, the language arts department collaborated with the amplify coach to explore the next unit each grade level will be teaching. Each team included the two language arts teachers for that grade and their special education co-teers. Um, using the backwards design planning method, they focus on identifying identifying learning goals, determining how to assess them, and planning instruction accordingly. The upcoming units for each grade are the Greeks for sixth grade, brain science for seventh grade, and the Holocaust
012for eighth grade. for the high school. For the counseling department, a group of 40 grade 11 students took a trip to Harford's National College Fair on Wednesday, March 19th. The annual fair boasts over 300 colleges and universities. And this was a great opportunity for students to chat with admission admission representatives from across the country. And for athletics, the Watertown swim team finished fourth overall at the state tournament and spring sports officially started on Saturday, March 22nd. For general information, um, Washington High School is proud to announce that our district has won the Innovated School Lunch Makeover Award. Thanks to the USDA's healthy meals, healthy meals incentive grant, we introduced fresh salad bars at Watertown High School and Swift Middle School. Um, this is very convenient for takeaway salads at elementary schools. Also, um, our team
013is making this possible and students love it even more. about 125 salads are sold per day at Watertown High School. So, it's awesome to see students loving the um invention of it. Um next, we are excited to invite the community to the K through2 art show at WHS, showcasing the incredible creativity and talent of our students across all grade levels. It will take place April 2nd, which is a Wednesday, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at Washington High School. For academic department updates, the unified civics class enthusiastically took on the Saint Vincent Depal item drive, demonstrating their commitment to community service. Through their efforts, they successfully collected a total of 136 items to support those in need. For Watertown High School club updates, the Watertown High School Leo Club re recently led a successful community service
014initiative to support individuals experiencing homelessness. Over the past month, the club collected socks and monetary donations for this cause. Last Wednesday, the club members members assembled brine bags, which are care packages containing essential items such as first aid supplies and packages um first aid supplies and snacks designed to make life a little easier for those in need. This initiative reflects our students dedication to community service and their commitment to making a positive impact. We extend our gratitude to the Leo Club and their adviserss for making their meaningful contributions. Thank you. Moving on to superintendent recommendations and report. I don't have any update at this time. Thank you. Okay. Public participation. In accordance with policy number 9050, public participants must state their name and address for the record and limit statements to three minutes. The board
015encourages speakers not to express defamatory comments about the Watertown Board of Education personnel or any other persons associated with the Watertown Public School System. Would anyone like to come to the podium and speak? Seeing none, moving up to updates. Uh, school capital building committee. Wonderful. Okay, so we just have a couple of quick updates for school capital. Um, I want to thank our capital committee, uh, which is made up of town committee members, uh, for keeping our work continuing to move forward. Um, our John Trumbull roof project is now back on now that the weather is a little bit warmer and so um, Imperial Construction Company has returned and is, uh, continuing to move on that roof. We anticipate that by June 1st, everything should be done by then. Um, and thank you to Mr.
016Valardi for overseeing all of these construction projects. Um, in addition, we have officially now moved on to the next part of our capital, and that is for security cameras at the high school. And so, uh, Mr. Dalton put a presentation together for our committee, um, last Wednesday just to give them a reminder of what that investment is. And so, we anticipate that we will begin, uh, that project very soon. And as of last Wednesday as well, Collier, the project management firm, will begin our RFPs for engineering to start our HVAC project at John Trumbull Primary School. So slowly but surely, we are moving forward and now that the weather is just a little bit warmer, we can get construction crews um out there a little bit more frequently. Thank you. Okay. And an update on
017the summer scholar program reduction for 2025. Okay, so FY25 is the current year that we're living in right now. Um and as you know later in this evening we're going to talk a little bit about where we are um fiscally for the year. The goal is always for us to end on the right side of up when it comes to budgeting. Um and some ways that we are able to mitigate additional costs or costs that are going out just to freeze when we have overages and other lines is to make reductions. One of the items that we or one of the experiences that we offer our students in the summertime that we have part of our part of our operating budget is summer school. This is not um special education extended school year. That is
018mandatory by statute. But this is regular summer school for students who would qualify for extra support. Um so in order to start mitigating some costs that we see coming up, we will actually be eliminating um or at least the recommendation is to eliminate summer school for this coming summer uh of this fiscal year so that we can save on some costs. Um, I'm going to actually throw it over to Miss Lisa Peeky who can just give us a three-year snapshot of what the summer school experience has been. Um, so that you know ultimately what we are or what I'm recommending that we don't move forward with this year. So, um, the past couple of years, we're really fortunate to receive the summer enrichment grant, the competitive summer enrichment grant, um, which we were able to
019really put together a lovely experience for kids last year, which also included transportation, a camp experience as well as academic support. And last year, we were able to uh, service 90 students for academics, and then 40 free camp scholarships through the grant. Unfortunately, that grant has um, dried up. Um so really we're the position we were in this year is to try to allocate funds to go back to um you know self-funding. So our plan for this year was to try to at least capture some of the experience that we had through the grant mostly the academic part. Last year we did something with three stations where students got um had received some instruction in language arts, math and then they had an enrichment area. So some students were learning how to play the ukulele
020and others were uh doing art projects. So, we were going to try to um recreate that model. Uh had we been able to move forward just to get a sense of of, you know, what it would have looked like. We were probably going to be able to service about 110 uh students, we would have had um three rotations of 12 students. Um but unfortunately, due to the hard freeze, um at this point, I I I think the decision has been that we won't move forward with this year. Um the hope is of course we will put it back into the budget request for next year on a smaller scale. Um and hopefully we can get this up and running again. It is definitely a benefit to our students. Um but at the same time I
021do think we need to try to rein it in as best as we can as we get into the latter half of this final year through the chair. Yes. What is the total cost if we were to service 100 students in the same capacity? So last year with the grant we did total cost about 78,000. 78,000. And so this year on a scale down we were looking anywhere between 25 and maybe 45,000. Okay. So again, not a huge ticket item, but enough of a ticket item that we would have some savings this year. How were the students picked for this? Was it just based on need, academic need? So typically we use our academic scores and we find students who are looking for not looking for but ultimately could do with some additional time. Is
022this set in stone? So, it's not set in stone, but at this point, there's not much else I can look for. So, almost set in stone because there's not really anything else I can offer up. Okay. On a personal note, we don't talk about students. However, when it's your own students, we can talk about them. Um, my daughter Payton purposely tries to tank math just to go to the summer program. That's how awesome that summer program is. And this is such a loss to our school system. Well, to speak to that, we also have students who don't necessarily cut make the cut off marks and parents request that they come to our summer school. And we have also let sometimes students who can come in if we have a wait list where people can't show
023up. Um, and so students who might just need the enrichment portion of it um have attended our summer school before. They they make it so good that students really want to go. To have a child say, "I want to go to summer school. I want to go to summer school instead of being outside and playing with friends or go in the pool or whatever. I want to go to summer school." That speaks volumes. There's that. Okay. Moving on to the town council boarded special meeting. Okay. So um as you are all aware um board of education and town council members members will join tomorrow evening here in the uh Watertown lecture hall. We will have a elongated conference table created here in the front uh where we can all sit together and talk about not
024only this year's FY25 budget as we're trying to bring it in um and also next year's uh proposed and recommended board of education budget um before we go to the official town council presentation of budgets on March 31st. So, um I encourage everybody from uh the board of ed side as well as the town as well as the community to patch in. We will have the live stream as usual. Um we will also have uh no public comment tomorrow because it's a special meeting. However, the open audience is a public meeting. Certainly welcome to join tomorrow's meeting. Uh one of the items that we will be talking about tomorrow as well is health insurance. And so I just wanted to make sure that I could bring our board members up to speed on just where
025we are with our health insurance overage. As you are aware, we've been experiencing overage since the start of the school year. Um, and I just wanted to give some topline pieces of information so that people understand why we have an overage and where it's coming from. Uh, one sound bite that people might recall just in our last meeting, which was only two weeks ago, um, I had said that we had over 26 highcost claimments or what we call 26 HCC's. As of today, March 24th, as we ran um another update, we are now at 31 high-cost claimments. So, that number just continues to climb. Um, as you're also aware, because of this, uh, Miss Kosuba and, uh, myself and the town manager and the town director of finance, we are actually changing our health insurance
026plan as of April 1st. That means before this fiscal year is even over to try to help mitigate any additional high-cost claims that are going to be coming in between the last three months of this school year. At the rate we are going if we stayed with our current self-funded insurance uh plan, our appropriation number at the end of the year would have been even much more than what we're going to see now um as we move. Um, so again with 31 high-cost claimments at this point, I believe we have uh 16 that are over $150,000 and we have um something of a difference that are over $75,000 in cost. So it's it's it's quite jarring how how the numbers are are moving. Um, as we move from a self-insurance health insurance fund to a
027fully insured um, fund, the state partnership plan, there are some costs, something called the runout that we need to pay in order to make that change. And that is ultimately the claims that we have on our books that we need to carry over into the next uh, claim. So, I just wanted to show uh, board members just what that would be. Um, so if you look at the third page in your package, you will see three tables. The top table is for the town of Watertown. I'll draw your eyes to the table in the middle which is for the Watertown Board of Education. You can see that on the left furthest left column the line of coverage column those are the items that we are going to be covering as we move into the state
028partnership plan. We also cover those in our self- insurance fund right now but as we move over these are the same items that we will uh cover as we move into the fully insured plan. the circle, the very large number that you're seeing, the 1.9 million number, those are the claims that we are over this year alone because of those high class claims. It's a very, very large number and that is why we pushed so hard to have an April 1st move and we did not even want to wait till July. In addition, if you compare it to the town of Watertown in just ratio, we are much larger employee force than the town of Watertown is. They also have an overage in theirs. Um and again this may be a growing number between now
029and April 1st moving forward. Um but that is where this last uh report gave us. The next um row in the second table and also in the top table for the town is called the self-funded runouts. those that is the cost for the current claims we have on the books that we're going to have to also take care of once we move over into the other plan because we don't suddenly just sever our ties and then everybody just disappears. We still have our people, we carry them over. So that is the additional cost that it is to pay for that runout and that goes on top of it. Everything else is what we offer here through our self- insurance fund. Um we get rebates for pharmacy. Um, typically it goes to the town, but now
030that as we move over, we anticipate that the rebates will be put towards our funding. Um, we have stop-loss, terminal liability insurance. We have dental, we have the voluntary vision plan that we offer, Medicare Advantage and a supplemental plan for our retirees. We also have basic life, um, long-term disability. We have a small broker's fee, which has come down drastically since we've moved brokers. And also we do have a small administrative cost for offering an HRA to our retirees. That being said, you see a very large total which is 2,915. That is not how much um an additional appropriation will be. But between the town and the board of education based on where we are now, I do anticipate an appropriation of under just under $2 million because of the catastrophic insurance year. One sound
031bite that I will also offer is that typically when organizations are in a self-funded insurance fund, you usually get uh a good seven years out of a self- insurance fund and then you have to anticipate that you will have a catastrophic year. We were in our self- insurance fund for approximately a little more than 10 years, which means we squeezed out two additional years in that self- insurance fund and now we are at ultimately um that catastrophic year. I need to step out for a moment. Yes, please. Sorry. Um, so I wanted board members to just know exactly where we were. Um, you've been hearing about the insurance overage. You will talk about it once again tomorrow, but I wanted people to see just where these numbers come from. In the last two pages, and
032I won't go through the towns, but I will go through our board of educations. Right after the three table sheet, you see um a breakdown of what our potential savings are by moving to the state partnership plan. So, there's a lot going on in this table, but I'll draw your eye to the area where they just circled or they put an outline around the final estimated savings. If we stayed with our current self- insurance fund, again, it would have been a 19 to 20% increase for next year. by moving to the state partnership fund. You can see in that outlined column that essentially we would have about a $48,000 savings by moving over. We still have an increase in insurance and claims costs. However, if we stayed, we would still have to incur an additional
033$400,000 plus whatever the claims are now. So, this move helps mitigate some of that. The the very last column on the right is what would happen if we moved in July and not in April. So the one right beside the one where the column is circled. If we moved in July, we would have actually had to pay out more plus a $50,972 um on top of that because we would have continued to incur claims now in our self insurance and as we moved we would have had to pay that. So even though we are certainly over both on the town and the board of education right now in our collective joint health fund, this move was imperative. And so that move is offering us that $48,000 savings just on the board of ed side. If
034you go to the last page, and again I won't go into detail here because this is the town's um they are going to see a savings of $373,000 by moving to this partnership plan um in April. So again, lots to digest here, but I just wanted you to see the numbers that will be talked about tomorrow evening as well as we talk about closing out the FY25 year. Um, so you know where they are coming from. And again, the sound bite to really think of is at this point as of March 24th and it could increase, we have 31 highcost claimments and that is literally the equal to a catastrophic year in insurance through the chair. Um, were there any issues bringing everyone over to with the new plan based on these high-cost claimments because
035sometimes that can have a little bit of an issue. So, actually we we did okay. We were worried that potentially some actuarial uh kind of risk management on this SP might actually not accept us, but we were all right. In terms of operations of moving everyone over, I just want to thank the uh central office secretarial staff and Miss Kosuba. They were just moving and grooving with the broker to get everybody over, give them information, and at this point they're just waiting for their new IDs um in the mail. Okay. So, everyone is whole basically concerned that all of our employees are whole. Everybody's whole. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. B. Moving on to agenda item K, notification to Watertown Public Schools by Ed Advance regarding the discontinuation of the Head Start
036preschool program located at uh John Trumbull. So um as you are aware and as community members may also be aware we offer two types of preschool here in Watertown. The first one is our Just Friends preschool which we employ. Um um and then we also have Ed Advance who comes in and provides Head Start preschool. Head Start preschool. The way you are eligible to attend that is when you are at a certain income bracket um then you are welcome to join that. Ed Advance has always run that program. They've received funding from the state and I think from the federal government to to run that. uh we were given notice from in advance that they will now stop um providing head head start preschool because their funding has essentially been ceased by the government. So
037um as we are in just uh flux with lots of things I think that is the safest way for an advance to go as well. Um so at this time we will not be offering head start at a water town location for next year. Um, so similarly to how we're trying to mitigate summer school, I think Advance is trying to mitigate just what their expenditures are as grant funding changes for them as as an organization. Um, I anticipate we'll probably see some more ripple effects of just um, you know, changes in the education sphere. Um, and as they come, I'll make sure to communicate those to the board of education. Thank you. You're the chair. How many students did this affect? Good question. I think, and I could be wrong, um, was it like 30
038say it was like somewhere between 15. 15 and 20. Okay. 15. 15. Thank you, Ellen. Okay. So, this year would have been 15. I think we've had larger in the past. Okay. Would these students be eligible for our our program? They are eligible for our program. Um, our program is pretty full. Okay. Yeah. But we will certainly offer it. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to item L, yeartoate February financial report. Miss Kosuba. Hi everyone. How are you? Um so if you flip over to the um finance tab, uh finance report tab, you'll see that I've provided the usual format that I always provide every month of the year-to- date expenses. This is obviously as of February 28th um 2025. If you were to look at the current total line at the bottom, I am now
039reporting a $ 1.9 um million deficit up from last month where it was about 1.2 million, which is to be expected. I do want to note that um the majority of the cost was obviously because we've now hit the the line for um anticipated insurance expenses. Um and it really would have been much higher, but of course our excess cost grant, the first payment of two came in in the month of February. So that's where you see the little offset. Um, I I do expect this number possibly to still fluctuate a little, but we're watching every line diligently. We still have grant lines that we're hitting as we move along. Um, and again, we still have two months of claims that we're waiting to come in, but we've estimated what we anticipate it to be.
040So, unless there's another spike that we're not anticipating, I don't I'm hoping that we won't see any more movement with the uh the claims number that we've uh we've put in. Um, you know, we're in a hard freeze. uh official memo is going out later tonight as soon as I get home just stating at this point no requisitions are even allowed to be entered into the system unless they they're actually in conversations with myself or Dr. Villain Weva ahead ahead of time. Um going to do one one more big swoop through POS again just again to make sure that we're in line with everything that we've got encumbered. Um I really really there's nothing else we can do except to just keep tracking everything um until we hit the end now. Yeah. So at this
041point you're starting to hear just things that we will start eliminating that we can yes before the end of the year. Um but again there are expenses that do touch students directly. Um but again even with fluctuations we now that the health insurance is officially hitting the books we do think this is about the uh bottom line. Marie I just have a quick question because you just touched upon uh requisitions. What is the approval process for a wreck? Yeah. Um, if we're not in a freeze, uh, school secretaries can put in the Rex for anything that was pre-approved in the budget because they we obviously do zerobased budgeting. So, they list out the items that they want. The only time there would be any shift in that is if a cost of something has increased
042or decreased and then we might have to do budget transfers to move small amounts from lines. When we're in a freeze, they can put in a requisition. it comes to me um it gets approved by their principal first and then it comes to me and before it can move to the next step I actually go in to check if it was budgeted for to make sure and it's it really becomes I mean everything's a need but it becomes a priority like it's a priority list of where you know we only check off exactly what we need so for instance for the start of school with the freeze the only thing that we really allowed was anything they needed to open up the building to be functioning and you know and then we kind of loosen
043or or allow things based on you know what their I'm not going to an argument, but if they send something in and say, "This is why we need this." Dr. V and I both approve it, and we turn away just as many as we sometimes can say yes to, but um it just gets harder and harder. I feel like I say no more than anything at this point. Well, now that and now that we're And again, our I feel like our freezes are are already hard freezes. So, when you say we're going into hard freeze, I'm like, Marie, we've already been in a hard freeze. Um now we're going into they're not even going to put in the requisition. Yeah. Now it's I shouldn't go in there and see anything even in the system for
044me to review at this point. We're not even going to review them. All right. Thank you. Communications, Miss Feressa. Yes, we had three pieces of communication come in. Um, one um was from Ed Advance, which we just discussed, and I had two pieces of correspondence come in from parents from Swift Middle School, one regarding the lift situation at Swift, and one regarding um the basketball courts at Swift Middle School. Um and that and both are being addressed. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to committee reports, curriculum and instruction. Miss Hosking. No report at this time. Policy and labor. Mr. Melaguti. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just uh that I discussed with Dr. B and yourself prior to the meeting there. Just uh continuing to work through some of our policy updates that need to be done uh
045which we all agreed we'll be uh getting focused on those after budget season passes. Thank you. Budget and finance. Mr. Dales. Uh, no report, Madam Chair. Uh, facilities, Mr. Davales. Uh, no report. Uh, governance and community engagement myself. No report at this time. Uh, report from the board chair. I actually did have something typed out. Um, but I'm not going to say it. And I'm just going to use the last paragraph of what I was about to say. Um, I apologize that I had to step out for a moment. Um, I had to uh I had to put my daughter first. Um, I had this whole thing about um the budget and how much time it takes and how much we go through to put the budget together and all the thought we put into
046it. And uh what I wanted to say is um something we're all forgetting during this tumultuous time that we call the budget season as there is a human element to all of this. Um it's very easy to assume and create conflict where there is none. The nine of us sitting up here before you are parents or grandparents and Kareem with students attending Watertown Public Schools and we are doing our very best to help the students achieve their full potential through policies that strive to create academic excellence. We are volunteering our time and resources to provide the students the best education we can. We are human. We make mistakes. However, we always do our best to represent the interests of the community while advocating for the students of Watertown Public Schools. I just want to remind
047everyone that we are human and sometimes we have to put our families first and we just do our very best up here. We really do. Moving on to action items. Adoption of items to be approved by consent. Consideration of the approval of Watertown annual healthy food certification statement under section 1021215F of the Connecticut General Statutes. Healthy food option. Pursuant to CGS section 10-215F, the Watertown Public School District certifies that all food items offered for sale to students in the schools under its jurisdiction and not exempted from the Connecticut Nutrition Standards published by the Connecticut State Department of Education will comply with the Connecticut Nutrition Standards during the period of July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2026. This certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimburseable meals at all times and
048from all sources, including but not limited to school stores, vending machines, school cafeterias, culinary programs, and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or non-school organizations and groups. Do I have a motion to approve the Watertown annual healthy food certification statement under section 10-215F of the Connecticut General Statutes? Madam Chair, I move to approve the Watertown annual healthy food certification statement under section 10-215F of the Connecticut General Statute CGS. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor I opposed abstension. Motion passes. Moving on for consideration of the approval of the Watertown annual food and beverage exemption statement under section 10-221Q of the Connecticut General Statutes. The Watertown Public School District will allow the sale to students of food items that do not meet the Connecticut Nutrition Standards and
049beverages not listed in sections 10-221Q of the Connecticut General Statues provided that the following conditions are met. The sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of regular school day or on the weekend. The sale is at the location of an event and the food and beverage items are not sold from a vending machine or school store. An event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricularcurricular activity. For example, soccer games, school plays, and intercolastic debates are events, but soccer practices, play rehearsals, and debate team meetings are not. The regular school day is the period from midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of an official school day. Location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as the
050food and beverage sales. Do I have a motion to approve the Watertown annual food and beverage exemption statement under section 10-221Q of the Connecticut General Statutes? Yes, Madam Chair. I move to approve the Water County annual food and beverage exemptions statement under section 10221Q of the Connecticut General Statutes. Do I have a second? I second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I I opposed. Abstension motion passes. Moving on to future agenda items and board member comments. Would any board members like to raise an agenda item or a comment through the chair? Yes. I just would like to commend um everyone involved with the Watertown High School Theater Group. I know Mindy Davidson, our recording secretary, is a producer of it and I was able to go to the finale performance and I know that it
051was pretty much sold out right two weekends in a row and it is extraordinary what our students do and if you haven't had a chance to come see one of our plays or musicals, you really need to make it a point to do so because the hard work and professionalism, it is absolutely extraordinary and for my son to sit there and be enthralled for the entire two and a half almost three hours is extraordinary. So, I just want to say kudos to everyone involved because so much goes on behind the scenes and we know it is the largest group in Watertown High School of students working together. Um, so just kudos. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other board member comments? Okay, moving on to executive session. It is now 7:45. Do I have a motion
052to go into executive session? Yes, Madam Chair. I move we go into executive session for discussion regarding the following three items. First, the working agreement between Watertown Board of Education and local 1049 of council for custodial maintenance and technical employees. Second, discussion regarding the employment contract of the superintendent in schools. Third, discussion regarding the appointment of an acting superintendent to begin July 1st, 2025. Board of Education members present, Kareem Bellica, Cynthia Failen, John Gavales, Christine Foresa, Karen Hosking, Christa Palumba, Dr. Allison Villan Noea, Liz Lton, James Gabardella, and myself, Jason Malagudi, and Miss Marie Kosuba. The time is now 7:46 p.m. And do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor?