001[Music] Jr appreciate it I just wanted to present the trip to Peru for the Board of Ed I've talked I'm sorry so yeah I wanted to visit the traffic to prove to the Board of Ed for approval research the trip to Peru and I think would be a great opportunity for the students for a hands-on experience I wanted to explore possibilities other than Europe and something that has more hands-on experiences Peru looks like once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go so I also provided a packet of information a be willing to answer any questions you may have don't just talk about the insurance yes we are going to have two types of insurance we're gonna have the kurma insurance that the Board of Ed provides for trips national and overseas and also the EF insurance which is the
002trip cancellation insurance baggage insurance and also medical insurance that covers a myriad of various expenses when you travel abroad that will be mandated and we've done it for the last three or four trips to Spain thankfully nobody has have to use it but I know the fellows are first it has been you know a practice coming prime minister so you know they also have a peace of mind insurance in case of any international event or anything that the truck needs to be moved or delayed a few more etc different so the trip would be it's a little higher than what the kids did for Spain right now Spain was a little bit over 3,100 last year this time it's gonna be three thousand two hundred and eighty if they sign up within the next they
003have a like an incentive to sign up early because that way they can block the plane tickets their hotel accommodations and everything and that way it kind of seems even though people are gonna pay the same kind of seems like a little better to do a couple hundred dollars a month for the next club something 14 months Dan you know Senor just presented trip three months ago let's go to Peru now give me three thousand bucks so a little bit more than speak I will say to that also that includes lunch so now the kids are gonna be full-time because in the past trips lunch wasn't included this time is included so now breakfast lunch dinner accommodations transportation tickets to all the places that would benefit in the tricks of only person expenses for shopping
004and so on and the one idea sure we're not including minimum number of students required for the trip to take place I would say I would do about six five six six to ten we'll see since this is the first time and so on about six would be fine my first trip with a Bolton 21 years ago it was with the classic piece of dance I have for students going have to be a thoughts government I already told them I don't know that he was thrilled with the idea but I told him anyway he's worried about my shopping experience I told him I could manage for a week they might repeat your experience would be function like that and how many times you can have a chance to go there school too much a feature
005on the other cuzco and so on nine days eight nights over school vacation our school vacation I'm asking for the thinnest Thursday first day Thursday Friday hopefully to be back with one day so that they can get back into to rest or so any other questions motion on the floor to through the per trip for 2021 is there any further discussion all those in favor opposed motion to approve the minutes of January 9th 2020 [Applause] we have any discussion opposed abstentions this is also belong to Portman committee reports so the full cab the committee met on the 29th of January to discuss what we the meeting went through the detail all of the items currently on the five-year plan the new town administrators created a form that has creates a lot more detail that you
006can look at and see what the details are 42 the items on the five year old man so most of the meeting was just simply going through that so we call become familiar with everything both for this coming year as well as the next few years there was no specific discussion of this year's combined list and assigning any priorities for hierarchy to it yet they are meeting on the 19th and I believe that discussion to make a recommendation of sorting this year's Capitol requests getting it for a priori prioritizing it and then submitting it couldn't order so that meant for them to create if I don't except meets the expectations of the budget which will be a lot of cuts yeah so it was discussion of that there was some additional monies in the original
007in the bonds for the high school project that were not needed or spent at the time of the construction that the are still available through the referendum that was approved by the town to total sum total well not money all that was actually issued for my we don't know what the real breakdown is but that as well as the return money gets us somewhere in the range of six six hundred thousand so some of that 645,000 is money that yeah it's part of the rebate from the state and some of it is available if the town decides to reallocate it to other project or you know anyway i think you would have to go to town be a - we wouldn't we'd have access to somebody that's already been approved to be bounded it would
008just need a town meeting to reallocate it to other projects and i do believe that they are bringing information forward to our meeting next week right with that information for discussion very detailed bill do and what the rules requirements for pretty allocating money and they also we're asked to go back and determine remaining kappa monies and all of the remaining previous spring so that's something every couple years is done two four four projects that were approved then have some that go for money again that goes to a town beauty for reallocation so we're gonna get a counting of how much thank you curriculum we they're killing didn't meet on february 4th we discussed proposed astronomy new astronomy textbook to replace one that's quite old and out of date and also discussed a possible new grade
0099 science textbook to try to bring us forward to the board not sure if you'll be next month but funds for those textbooks should true gotta come out of choice monies thank you finance finance met this morning and while we have our budget discussion we'll go through these numbers in greater detail to be highlighted are some of the transfers that happened in the last month so those are all highlighted on the right hand side of your pages Kristen did you want to go through some so you will see under regular instruction 667 dollars were transferred from building to cover supplies for English language arts that were needed $1,500 from buildings for texts for world language these were replacement text not a new textbook 794 dollars transferred from buildings for text for mathematics again replacement of
010text and three hundred and twenty-five dollars from buildings for supplies for health and physical education then moving down to Student Support Services we had a transfer to guidance for Naviance software for both the center school which is to ensure that we have planning for our middle school students like we do for secondary and Beyond school planning for high school students we already have Naviance at the high school so it was an ad but it is something that legally were supposed to be doing statutorily and we definitely need to be doing it so we worked a great job working with Naviance to get in price down and now that money was transferred from esy summer school you will see that we have a savings in summer school transportation and currently the state is projecting a reimbursement
011of twenty five thousand seven hundred eighty dollars for excess cost going on you'll see savings for regarding negative renewal increase for our workers compensation and Liability that we've actualized you'll see there where the transfers came from and you also see a four thousand two hundred and forty four dollar transfer from systems for replacement desktops at Bolton Center school in the office we were there old and we were having a lot of issues and those computers need to be running and operational at all times we have projected savings in paper and copier rental Casal and I are in the process of meeting with various copier companies we own prepare copier it's not doing so well it's it's on its last leg ready to go to copier graveyard but in the meantime we're not paying anything on
012it so we have some savings there we hope to have new copiers before the end of this year this fiscal year though and then you can see the transfer that was done out of systems for those needed desktops at center school we have projected electricity savings of eleven thousand dollars and the savings on technical high school transportation we have a savings in salaries which is due to staffing changes which we have made mention of throughout the course of this year so far vacancy hires and contract negotiation saving and then we have a current net savings result in insurance changes of $90,000 we currently are anticipating 160 1604 projected balance that we are currently not using that's in savings and then if you go on to the final page you will see well I'm sorry on
013that other page you will see that we are currently 52% expended and then we are also requesting a transfer request of a total of twenty four thousand two hundred and seventy one dollars to upgrade server equipment and our malware subscription and licensing support specifically transferring 11,400 from fiscal and twelve thousand 871 from school insurance our server has reached its capacity and then summed and we are experiencing technical difficulties because of that our malware license and servicing will be up in May because it's a may renewal how that particular renewal works and this is malware that I think a lot of districts had including crack over the summer correct improve their malware to a much better product to handle the constant barrage that we are getting to try to infiltrate our systems and they have had
014about six months with it now and feel very confident in our recommendation to us that have moved to this new malware is exactly what we should do to better protect our district systems so I am respectfully requesting this transfer so that we can get a new server set up possibly over April vacation if we can get it all together in time and then get the new malware on there so that come May we're not renewing with the old one to pay money only such to do one so we'll need a motion yes unless there's any questions the $24,000 transfer that's after the hundred sixty one thousand dollar projected correct it's not already accounted for enough you should have it right there I move to approve the transfers recommended by the superintendent in the January budget
015status is there any discussion I just like to note that going forward this is how we're going to be reviewing a budget status it was brought to our attention that our policy indicates that we should be approving transfers of any amount and I think it'll help keep us all a little more in touch with how the budget works and how things changed throughout the year so can look forward to doing this monthly but is there any more discussion and if not and all those in favor for making the transfers aye opposed sessions passes unanimously I would also just like to add that we were going to change our format a little bit since the Board of Finance chair is here in this evening in terms of what you are receiving for an update it will
016include the column with all of the things and outs of transfers and you will also be receiving a memo about you know these transfers that are over the $10,000 so I guess at some point we'll have a conversation about is that really needed anymore or not and I'm fine with it either way you're getting it this time around and then we can act as decide from there so hopefully this will be more informative for the Board of Finance as well I appreciate the additional information it would be public agreed thank you great Personnel Committee did meet to discuss the unaffiliated terms of employment and discuss executive session and later community meeting reports deserve any of this month PTA met this month however their meeting was a little different they didn't you know have their usual
017back-and-forth what they did was have a speaker or two speakers or other sisters who present in a wonderful presentation mostly about special ed and how their experiences with their own children and some recommendations for parents and members of the community mr. jereth it was there and I think it was a really good presentation if several community meeting reports I attended the crack council meeting on January 15th if the meeting we received corrects fiscal year nineteen financial record which contains several fascinating statistical tables comparing the 36 correct districts I learned for example that Bolton is an FY 19 was responsible for a 0.05 percent of Craig's overall budget as a group the member boards contributed 22.4% the vast majority of Craig's budget comes from the state non-member boards and other agencies the financial report also contained
018four people expenditures per district and since FY 2010 Bolton's per pupil expense has consistently been between one hundred and six hundred and ten percent of the error of the group average however a growth rate for people for per pupil expenditures has been slightly below average thirty three point one percent compared to a being growth rate of thirty three point nine percent among the thirty six towns New Britain had the lowest growth rate at ten point two percent and east winds are at the highest at seventy two point nine I attended the Scholarship Fund meeting on January 15th yes s scholarship applications went live on the SF website a few days before that application deadline for current high school students is May 5th 2020 and the deadline for students already in college or graduate school is
019April 28th the scholarship fund is also in the middle of our fundraising season P letters have gone out to town residents and annual phonathon with help from high school Society students will take place on February 23rd 24th and March 1st and then lastly yesterday and I attended the public hearing that the Charter revision Commission held I spoke as a citizen not as a boarding that number but I do to advocate for several changes that could affect the Board of Ed specifically I asked that the Commission take a look at CAPA and expand the sorts of purchases that can be included under CAPA to include such things as well purchases of computers to try to do before turn down and and also that they consider requiring the Kappa spending on town and waterbed projects to be
020proportionate to the size of each body's budget so since the or debated budget is typically sixty five seventy percent of the overall town budget why is in capital expenditures similarly proportioned finally I asked the Commission to amend language governing collection of officers by electric boards and commissions the current language in the Charter can be conflicts with state statutes governing the operation of Boards of Education so hopefully they can take a look at that and make sure that things are harmonized at the end of the meeting the Commission agreed to send representatives to meet with the Board of Education in order to solicit our input into the process of revising the Charter so hopefully they'll be reaching out to Andrew Christian to set something up then I would also encourage anyone who has thoughts on the
021Charter to try to attend one of their meetings or send written comments to the chair Quinn Marion is the chair attending the meetings might be a little tough because they scheduled most of them for the second Thursday of the month but you that doesn't make didn't just lastly I'd like to congratulate the cast of The Addams Family as well as gen-probe ala and happy Saco for putting on a fantastic performance last week my daughter had been very reluctant to attend we finally convinced her to come along and after the show she was so enthusiastic and was saying that it was better than some professional theater performances she's singing I breathe thank you for that that's great do you have any other community meeting reports we did earlier have any superintendent for the Superintendent of Schools
022report could I get that length Lord and we better please thank you I believe you have in your packet a copy of tonight's presentation so on the screen please find my recommended book budget for 2020 2021 and you see up there happy portrait of a graduates visual and we are continuing to work and refine our new vision statement which we hope to bring forward to you what you see on the bottom there is our latest iteration although we're having a little discussion about one more iteration after feedback that came from parents when the parent group met with wild Cartman so we're working on that but we believe that the Bolton Public Schools empowers all students to embrace learning build knowledge develop skills and become engaged global citizens the belief statements that are part of our
023current strategic plan are there in terms of what as a board of education and staff we believe and I believe that the budget that the administrators staff and I are putting forward to you this evening encompasses those belief statements we are still operating this is our last year of our 2015 2020 strategic plan and our priorities continue to include maintaining Bolton Public Schools as the high-performing school district focus on instructional improvements student outcomes professional learning digital literacy and technology improvements the proposed budget for 2020 21 is a budget of 14 million eight hundred and forty three thousand three hundred and five dollars which is a three point six eight percent increase you will see in the graphic there and that regular instruction encompasses 1.8 percent of this budget student support services or special education encompasses
0242.7 percent administration and business services 4.3 percent operations and services seven percent salaries sixty five point two percent and benefits 19 percent here is the distribution of that increase in actual dollars and you will see our salary increase of a hundred and seventy six thousand seven hundred and twenty three dollars for benefits increase of three hundred and sixty-seven thousand nine hundred and thirty-four dollars and that is driven by our current 19.5% insurance not to exceed increase I am hopeful that next week when we meet again to discuss budget that I will have a better number to share with you we have our next CT chip board meeting is next Wednesday and we the expectation is that Cigna will be bringing to our collective group new information after they have had an opportunity to review the
025January claims a reduction of forty seven thousand two hundred and eighty dollars in special education a reduction in administration and business support of thirty nine thousand eight hundred and eight dollars regular instruction is up fifty four thousand eight hundred ninety dollars and operations in services fourteen thousand eight hundred and forty eight dollars her projected revenues we are projecting two hundred and eleven eight hundred and forty four dollars in federal grants four hundred and sixty eight thousand six hundred and fifty dollars in state grants nineteen hundred dollars for the erase grant with total projected grant awards of six hundred and eighty two thousand three hundred and ninety four dollars I want to remind the board that choice monies are what Fulton Board of Education uses to pay tuition for our Bolden students who attend magnet schools
026and agricultural schools and our total for next year is projected to be a hundred and two thousand dollars for that on the screen there you see our capital proposals which you approved I believe at the December meeting for our CAPA items and you can see that they are there in two groups because to be honest we really weren't sure what to do with the tennis courts and the soccer fields but we felt it was important that we keep it on everybody's radar screen and those were included in our discussion at our CAPA meeting last week here is a graphic of our enrollment for the last three years and we anticipate seeing steady enrollment at our elementary school just up slightly at the middle school as well as the high school in this graphic it shows
027you Columbia enrollment and our projected numbers for 2020 2021 and we are projecting 51 students you will see in the graphic on the right hand side that the current enrollment for eighth grade at Horace Porter school is the lowest that we've seen in a very long time which is why we are only projecting 10 students for grade 9 for next year based on the small number of students they have in their current eighth grade class you'll see there that the tuition is twelve thousand six hundred forty six dollars and sixty six cents and below is how it is separated out for the general fund and the Bolton high school bond which totals six hundred and forty four thousand nine hundred and eighty dollars by budget highlights this budget includes a reduction of one teaching position
028at center school it it is not a teacher losing their job but rather through retirements and some moving around we are looking right now we our proposal is for two sections of first grade for next year in the end it may be two sections of kindergarten right now we're rejecting three sections but we need to wait for kindergarten registration to happen to see where that falls with the addition of two new paraprofessionals to meet the needs of special education students and I want to call to the board's attention that this is in order to keep our students in district and program appropriately for them here and to meet their needs and where students need to be out placed we're looking somewhere in the range of 150 to 200 thousand dollars per student versus approximately 55
029to 60 thousand dollars between salaries and benefits or one paraprofessional we are looking to offer a new both high school course probability and statistics we are continuing our partnership with each camp which is our early college advanced manufacturing pathway between Bolton Coventry Vernon and Goodwin College mr. Misskelley and mr. Jean Sante guidance counselor for the high school I had a meeting a few weeks ago with members of the Goodwin College team because we are also looking at additional potential pathways including possibly nursing whether that be for next year or not we're not sure but I'm trying to open up the doors to examine as many pathways as possible I did arrange for commissioner Cardona to come to Goodwin College with all of us present yesterday and we had a wonderful afternoon with the Commissioner where
030he saw firsthand our students working in a lab and doing a lot of hands great hands-on activities as well as the impressive partnership that we have developed and a pathway that is unique and important since there are 33,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs a month in Connecticut we continue to have a shared service partnership with East con with our food service director and our website and student data privacy technology support we continue to have a shared service partnership with the town of old loon for the Director of Facilities and for our technology specialists we are one of the founding members of CT chip and I am the chair which is our Connecticut collaborative health insurance program and we have solidified a new 10-year contract with Columbia we have numerous achievements to be proud of I think for
031the outstanding job that our staff students that administrators do Bolton high school was just named to the 2019 AP honor roll Walton High School just received the 2019 computer science female diversity award Bolton high school you may know was named a national Blue Ribbon School of Excellence saying we have updated curricula in all subject areas we rolled out k5 ready math this year and our teachers are really having a great experience with it and as are our students we have brought to life Atlas Rubicon our curriculum mapping online software and all grades we have a new bowl Public Schools website we have numerous electives for very minimal cost at Bolton high school and we continue as I shared to look at other potential pathways we have a host of student achievements I'm not going to
032read them all but and they're not all there but I ran out of a lot of room so I shared a few in this presentation for you and I think we need to be very proud of the achievements that our students earn here in Bolton because they're pretty amazing in addition as part of our continuing effort in this strategic plan is an update on our digital literacy and technology accomplishments which we continue to be part of and at this point we are on track with our goal public schools technology replacement plan which has been a yeoman's effort on behalf of staff and this board and we are very appreciative of that and I'd like to see you stay on track with that we have numerous athletic achievements as well that we continue to be very
033proud of and continue to Iraq up athletic accomplishments this budget focuses on the future it is in the coming year we will be developing and rolling out our new strategic plan when people guide the work of teaching and learning continue to focus on maintaining Bolton Public Schools as a high performing district we will be looking to integrate the transferable skills at all grade levels support teacher leadership and curriculum development provide job embedded professional learning and empower all students to embrace learning build knowledge develop skills and become engaged global citizens just a reminder of our budget schedule this evening we will move to the board event conference room for 7:30 start or our budget workshop we have another one scheduled for next Thursday and if needed we will have one on Thursday the 27th and we
034have to have our budget to the Board of Finance by charter by March 15th in an ideal world I'd like to get it to them by the end of February or by March 1st at the latest because we are scheduled I believe for March 19th to present the board's budget to the Board of Finance and that concludes my presentation thank you very much thank you all the way down to unfinished business policies the second read of 4 1 1 2 . the employment of family members address changes sure so coming up first I can read is a revision of the boards nepotism policy it was first presented to the board in December 2019 some discussion at the time and board members requested the policy committee take a second look superintendent Hecht then worked on the
035new version with the board's attorney shared that with the policy committee just present soon a new language and so we would recommend that the version presented today he adopted the prior version would have prohibited immediate family or Tibet members from being hired by the district the new version simply requires the board event members inform the chair or superintendent of existing familiar relationships with board employees and notify the superintendent if they become aware that a family member is applying red applied for a district position furthermore the policy direct support of it members to abstain from any vote that would directly affect family member [Applause] they usually have two we have a motion to approve the second read of policy for one 12.8 employment of family members as recommended by the policy committee we have any further
036discussion on the hold manner I just like to thank the policy maker revisiting this I think this is a very well word actually is there any other discussion all those in favor of approving Policy Forum to donate or say aye all opposed abstentions [Music] thank you let me have clarity on this so we man new business we covered f1 f2 is the VHS 2020 graduation tape so this past summer you may recall that there was new statutory language that allowed Ward's of ed to set a high school graduation date well in advance of how we used to do things I was hesitant to simply do that right out the gate as were a few others and yet there were others that did it straight away for us we don't have an outside venue that we
037have to secure in order to have graduation we have graduation here on our premises which was one of the reasons why I wanted to see how some of this played out and we were getting some conflicting information from attorneys in terms of how they were interpreting this new law so having said after conferring again with our attorneys and I think a lot of work on their end on behalf of numerous districts I'm bringing this forward to you tonight and the statute reads that you can set graduation date for the hundred and eightieth day of school if we had set this back in September or October we would have been looking at June 9th or 10th currently now the hundred and eightieth day of school for the Bolton Public Schools will be Monday the 15th of
038June so it is my recommendation that the board set the Bolton high school graduation date for Monday the 15th of June I have had some calls for some parents they'd love to be able to solidify people coming from out of state and flying in and I think also you know sticking with the statue for the hundred and eightieth Day and the 15th this happened to be a Monday so that helps people out too I think in terms of flying in over the weekend so that's my recommendation I'll be looking for a motion motion to set Monday June 15 20 28 which is the current 180th day of school is the date for the Baltimore high school graduation so is there a second is there any discussion on this so what happens if winter suddenly returns
039we have five more snow days mr. Misskelley so we'll adjust the senior programming is always a little bit shorter anyway because of the exam schedule and rehearsal days so we'll know well known begins and teachers can just adjust for that they will still their last day of school will be on the 15th but they are more than welcome to come back to school after that if they wish do something but we would still hold graduation on the 15th it's on the date that you set tonight will be the date of graduation regardless of what happens with snow days moving forward from here correct so the rest of the schools grades would continue potentially massive correct is there any more discussion I just like to say I had the same concern or questioned about how this
040and I think at this point were safer living would I appreciate that we did not try and set a graduation date in the fall I think those foolish I understand that people will want to plan and book venues but you know waiting until at least February allows us to know a better lay of the land and you know voluntary post graduation school days are all those in favor of setting the graduation date is June 15 opposed abstentions passes they will be graduating June 15th and mr. Misskelley will be sending out a communication to all families tomorrow so question moving forward are we going to as it or trying to pick a date future we're allowed to do with housing I mean I'd like to see us do it at either the January or February meeting
041to the points that were raised here I just don't know how much pushback or not we will get from the community so I think people that have reached out to me with that I well before we waited till exactly so I think can please shoot for january/february and maybe judge it based on by the time we get to the January board meeting how many snow days have we already had and you know what may be projected forecast may well so it's not our intention to do it so it's not mine there's no it is not anything a lot of surgery required correct we're not required to and I just think that mr. miss Ellie and I are on the same way but with that we think this is a better point especially since we graduate
042here and there's crazy no I know you're not and but there's also I think that we do in January or February I think I'm not a hundred sensor but I think it still gives the parents who are in charge of operation graduation and opportunity to solidify with all their vendors who come in I still think there's time right it's not too late at that point correct much better to know now that it would be in April more than we do Sam it usually scrambling to correct so the next one is the budget update but we've already handled that under finance the possible action was correct I like to inform the board that Tom tomorrow Bolton high school science teacher has tendered his resignation and he will be moving and leaving at the end of the
0432019 2020 square that is a great loss for Holden and he will be greatly missed do we have any future business and this might be asking for a motion to go into executive session to discuss terms of employment for unaffiliated employees for 2021 as well as school safety and security and also to ask that we invite the superintendent in