001good oh he did okay great all right everybody um I'm gonna call to order this special meeting of the Brookfield Board of Ed um on what are we we are Wednesday October 30th uh 2024 um at 604 p.m. um we all members are present um so let's get going the the order of business tonight is a training uh provided to us by a training provided to us by Tom Mooney of Shipman and Goodwin um who is the that is the legal services we engaged um at the prompting of Joy Greenstein uh last year or earlier this year and um he's going to walk us through um different scenarios to talk about our roles and responsibilities as board members so Mr Mooney thanks for joining us well it's my pleasure it's nice to meet all of
002you and um what I'd like to do is um talk with you over the next hour about how you see um your role as board members and uh illustrate some of your thinking and my thinking through some uh scenarios uh just a brief thumbnail on me I um always wanted to be a teacher but I majored in German so was unemployable and I went to law school never having met a lawyer in my life uh but it worked out and um so now I'm at 48 years at Chipman and Goodwin representing Boards of education and I also have the privilege of teaching school law at Yukon and at Quinnipiac both so um uh but I have not been elected to anything since 8th grade so you really are the elected people you're representing your community
003and so how you want to operate is really uh an important Focus here and with any luck we'll develop some consensus as to how appropriately you all want to work together to serve your community on the board of education so I'll just start with a simple question who here went to middle school okay perfect so far I asked that question in these trainings quite a bit and so far everyone has gone to middle school but you may be wondering why I asked that and of course the answer is that that's where you learned about the three branches of government right what are the three branches of government and and legislative so you're doing great so far so far what are you what branch of government are you Department isn't that a isn't that an agency
004of the state well you uh you have a dual status as board members you serve your community as Town officials but you're also uh you serve uh the state as the delegates because education is a constitutional responsibility of the state so your state agents your local agents but back to the three branches of government what does Congress do on a good day laws they they pass laws and what else do they do on a really good day they pass a budget does that sound familiar M okay except they're not laws they policies so that is your primary responsibility do you ever serve in a judicial capacity we haven't yet but we we could right we the appeals uh unit uh you do have a Judicial responsibility and and what is a fundamental um characteristic of
005a judge partiality correct and so that's so important and I hope you never have to worry about what I'm going to tell you now but where there's a intense Personnel matter I want the I didn't use the scenario about the teacher arrested for running a meth lab but that's one of the scenarios that I sometimes use um you might imagine that that would be a topic of some public conversation where do you uh meet your fellow citizens at the supermarket at the post office wherever it is and and in a uh I'm sorry online a lot of oh yeah right right and um so the U question is people are going to try to engage you in conversation about these controversial topics but you have to keep your judicial responsibility in mind and the worst
006thing that happened to me um happened about 40 years years ago maybe a little more but I still remember it because the situation was that the um superintendent wanted to uh not to renew the contract of the high school principal no offense intended um and um the high school principal invited 400 of his closest friends to the high school auditorium for the hearing and the first thing and we're up on the uh you know the stage and look out at the crowd I don't remember if they had signs or not but they might as well have um and um the first thing the lawyer for the principal did was he called one of the members of the board to the stand and he said uh isn't it true that you told Sally at the Stop
007and Shop that you want to get rid of my client um yeah I guess so yeah yeah I did yeah and so there were three board members who had been commenting you know and you can well imagine that the status of the high school principal is a topic for conversation in a community and so it's not surprising that they would be tempted to talk about the high school principal but it was unfortunate in the extreme because three of the board members betrayed their inability to fulfill that judicial function and so you've provide you in the rare circumstance where the superintendent recommends non-renewal or termination of a certif staff member and that person wants a hearing that's a Judicial responsibility and you have to be impartial and you can't be talking in the community and people
008are going to want you to talk about it but there are other judicial responsibilities um uh can you imagine you as a board ever getting involved in the location of a bus stop that's a Judicial responsibility uh because uh transportation is part of the um right to an education you have a duty to provide education to resident children um through reasonable Transportation or otherwise and so whether someone's transportation is reasonable can be the subject of a school accommodations hearing and a parent can say I don't you know that's unsafe and they can appeal actually that to the board of education and so again these are areas where you could be called in to make adjust judgement whether someone's entitled to go to school is subject to the same they you may uh the superintendent may
009look into it and say actually that kid lives in Danbury not entitled to go to school in Brookfield um that parent can say I want a hearing and you would be the first uh body to hear that uh so that's another and then the uh last one and I hope this doesn't happen often but have you ever conducted an expulsion hearing I think we use a hearing officer here oh you do yeah okay well good for you um because that gets you out of that business because those are very um uh tough uh I've served as a hearing officer on rare occasion and I really don't like it a bit um but anyway so in those judicial responsibilities you have to be impartial and we'll talk a little bit on under one of the scenarios
010about um conflicts of interest when can you participate as a board member and when should you really withdraw recuser yourself from from the particular discussion what I'd like to do is I have I think uh six scenarios we can go through them it's mainly for us to talk together and I also um that's on the right hand side of the folder on the left hand side of the folder is more like an outline a checklist about the things we want to bring out but particularly I'd like to draw your attention to the second page which is a caution on email um because uh that is the new uh Battleground uh for uh you know I'm wondering do you get a lot of thank you notes um from the community for no but seasonally maybe they
011will arrive you know be be patient right um but um people who are not pleased with what you decisions you make are now increasingly turning to email and it's a a bit of a tool of aggression frankly and they can ask for any so we'll talk about what is or is not a public record but let's just jump into the uh uh scenarios and then swing back to emails um three members of the Board of Ed post a letter on Facebook addressed to the Brookfield Public Schools community in the post the board members talk about the upcoming budget and they urge people to vote in support of the budget the board members identify themselves as members of the Brookfield Board of Education other board members see the post and are mad that the three board
012members did not let them know about the post in advance if the board do you um pass your budget through a referendum if your uh if a referendum is pending was that post on Facebook a violation of the law I don't know I don't think so why don't you think so um well there three members who identify themselves as members of the board yes I mean I'm I'm well here's the issue ising to speak prohibitions you're probably aware that once a referendum is pending ah okay okay you can get in deep trouble if you authorize the expenditure public funds to authorize a to affect a referendum result I see and so um uh districts that put out a flyer vote Yes [Music] mhm they can be fined oh yes we did talk about that in
013fact one it's a scary thing for me because I you know I have to give advice and you don't have to say vote Yes to violate the law the um State elections enforcement commission has um adopted a tone timing and tenor test which you know is anyone can decide whether it does or does not Advocate uh so it's scary but the scary part is that if someone files a complaint and if the state elections enforcement commission finds that it was a violation that it did Advocate and you did authorize the expenditure public funds um the person who did that can be fined up to twice the amount of the expenditure but the worst part is that you probably know given the important work you do on behalf of your community that almost everything you do
014you're totally protected by what we call the indemnity law use board members are protected if a somebody makes a claim against you for something you did um as a board or something you maybe you didn't do maybe the superintendent did and he still they still sue you um you're totally protected including attorney fees but this referendum law is the only exception to that and it specifically says that you cannot be indemnified by for any fine imposed by the um State elections enforcement commission so I just take that opportunity to to caution you about that but it's irrelevant in this scenario because there was no expenditure public funds so now the question is should did the board members do anything wrong by identifying themselves as members of the Brookfield Board of Ed in making this post
015you okay with that no spoken as individuals okay so you say they shouldn't have said members of the brook field board event we three members right okay well that's a bit of a dilemma because and this is probably you know what's new you can be blamed for whatever you do uh if you identify yourself as a board member then are you speaking for the board or not if you don't you're being sneaky I mean so people can take issue with it either way so in these circumstances uh the I'm old enough to remember letters to the editor um and uh letters to the editor would quite often say member Brookfield Board of Ed speaking as an individual or somehow you clarify so that would be my recommendation but now the rest of the scenario is
016these three board members are just trying to like get public you know uh appeal to the public and they let you out and it's like what are you other four are you not in favor of the uh and uh so shouldn't they have told you before they post did this give you a chance so that they're not trying to one up you okay what's the problem with that no we're not impartial no you don't have to be impartial because there's no expenditure of public funds yeah it's like a public meeting pardon it's a quorum if it's more than three and you're exactly right both of you the you need to do this if at all at a public meeting because there are any number of foi cases where the board you know we'll issue a
017letter and some local gadly will say oh that's interesting when did you discuss that at a board meeting and people uh basically at that point start talking about how to settle the case because they it was uh when you gather as a quorum and discuss board business even through email then that is a um a violation of the law unless you post your meeting and and that's maybe we'll swing back to this caution um anything you create or anything you receive in your role as a board member is a public record the only question is whether it's or not it's subject to public disclosure and I have another scenario that we can elaborate on that but it's a very broad definition of public record and in the middle of the page you see the definition
018of a meeting and why is that important if a a a communication among a quorum is a meeting then you need to do that uh at a posted meeting and you shouldn't be uh talking as a quorum um outside of a meeting and um the this definition has been in the law since 1975 so what do you think by electronic means of electronic equipment the relevant thing is any communication byor to a quorum of a multi-member public agency which you are whether in person or by means of electronic equipment what did that mean in 1975 speaker phones yeah that's all it meant speaker phones uh because in 19 it's funny um I was around in 1975 and um at that time I was probably still reading Dick Tracy and his two W RIS radio and
019and you know here we are and so um we have now email and that's a by a communication by electronic means and so um whenever you communicate by email you're always creating public records even one of you creates public records when you send out an email but as soon as the email includes a qu of the board then and it relates to a matter over which you have supervision control jurisdiction or advisory power you're conducting a meeting under foi and um that meeting should have been posted the law was passed in 1975 so it's almost 50 years old um and they just haven't caught up they haven't figured out they are doing their best on the remote meeting piece but they just haven't figured out like could you have um uh uh I don't know
020what you call it a chat room like people can send in questions and you can answer and you can you know connect with your constituents um they haven't figured that out uh and as soon as a Corum of the board is involved in that conversation uh in fact I uh I don't want to disappoint you but I lost a case um at the commission when the board chair and a board member who was uh upset were exchanging emails and all the board members were on copy my argument was it was just a conversation between two people the others were just watching I've already told you I lost that case uh because they were so this reply all is something you have to be very careful about because as soon as now can the superintendent send
021you an email all of you perfectly fine because the term is to discuss or act upon and so if you're exchanging information you're discussing among a quorum but if the superintendent sends you the packet and you have a question it's very tempting because it came to all of you to just hit reply all and ask your question but then you've just taken a step down the road of foi violation uh and so just get off the reply all ask your question and um that would be fine and it's little awkward because sometimes the superintendent would want to reply all so that everyone has the same information um but when and again uh that could happen but you can't then get back back and forth so um uh I think we're ready for um scenario two
022uh a board member can get in be intense in expressing his views on important matters that come before the board sometimes his emotion get the best of him and he can be less than kind in his critique of the views of other board members in One heated exchange his final comment about a contrary perspective expressed by another board member was only an idiot would believe that is that comment appropriate no so you're good with that it's not appropriate corre um so you would not then want that board member to ask rhetorically like your mother correct no the got it um this in public meetings or regular conversations this doesn't make a difference well I'll defer to you on uh in private conversation but at a this scenario is at a public board meeting I had
023one um situation where the uh bo it was a apparently a heated discussion because one point the uh one board member turned to the other and said f you at a public meeting and so they called me about that you know and uh what do you think I said other than that's a bad thing um I said well that's a matter of parliamentary procedure you follow Robert's Rules right and so when a board member is intemperate then any board member can just and this is something to keep in mind when you probably know under Robert's Rules if you don't like something that's going on you think it's contrary to appropriate procedure any member of the the board can say point of order and um I want to just emphasize that that's not adversarial it the
024chair has a lot to do you know and so when you raise a point of order the motion wasn't seconded the guy yelling at the board that public comment is out of order you know you're help you can help the the chair um and so uh if the discussion gets a little heated or whatever at a particular board meeting you certainly anyone can raise a point of order uh about Robert's Rules which contemplate civil discourse uh so that's uh uh how that works um ready for scenario three sure yep oh I just one other thing on Robert's rules um point of order chair rules you don't like the ruling of the chair what's next under Robert's Rules that person appeal the decision I appeal and then and only if someone else says I second then
025under Robert's rules that goes to the full body to uh make the decision um so uh and that's a two-thirds majority correct what's that on the appeal of the chair yes two3 I wasn't aware of that I think I think it's a two-thirds yeah well we'll look it up okay um uh board member is Facebook friends with a teacher in a post on his Facebook page the teacher complains that his principal unfairly denied him three days of personal leave to attend Nature's Classroom in a neighboring School District to serve as a chaperone for his fifth grade son the board member calls the principle to find out what the problem is the teacher files a grievance which is denied at the lower steps and is now before the board can the board member participate in the
026grievance hearing or does the board member have a conflict of interest preventing him from participating conf you say it's a conflict of interest and how do you define a conflict of interest well I mean they have prior knowledge of what the problem was so there's okay they're not impartial with anything well let's just they have a personal relationship well they're Facebook friends I guess we have to decide what that means okay um but back to impartial did you prior knowledge prior knowledge PRI knowledge and well what if um what if you you were uh you're you're child comes home from school and says oh my god there was a fight in the CAF a food fight in the cafeteria and uh Joe Blow threw a hot dog and hit Mr Smith in the head and
027now suddenly three days later you find yourself in an expulsion hearing concerning Joe Blow do you have a conflict of interest I don't know I don't know I find this one hard prior knowledge isn't necessary well I think here prior position could be a conflict person contacted the yeah the principle about it well let's pause there was that appropriate no no okay we all agree that a board member shouldn't be calling the princip a principal to say hey what's the story the communication should be you know and again I wasn't elected anything recently um but communication should go from the board to the superintendent and so on and so a board member to go directly to a a school principal and about something uh of concern it would be typically viewed as inappropriate protocol um
028so when on the second bullet under what circumstances it as appropriate for a board member to call a principal to find out what the problem is the answer would be never if it's their kids problem that's about it but what back to conflict of interest who gets to decide whether a board member has a conflict of interest the board the board so if for example uh I'm that guy who called the principal and um in support of my Facebook friend and um I come show up for a grievance hearing and a majority of the board says hey Tom you have a conflict of interest you shouldn't participate and I say I disagree I'm an objective person can the board vote that that I can't participate so because you said the board decides if there's a
029conflict who gives yeah well I don't know who who you guys have a lot of power right but only as a board you know who gave you that power people the people so how can board members deprive the an elected board member of his or her ability to function as a board member so the answer is that individual decides and now it's perfectly appropriate to talk to the individual and say Hey you know Tom this doesn't look good I think you have a conflict and and and then you know and there are many circumstances where there could be the appearance of a conflict but a person can work through it and they can decide but then the other related point in ever considering issues of conflict of interest are the appearance of conflict and if
030just a member of the public would know that you were you know it's your cousin and who wants a contract with the board you know you might not even like your cousin it might not affect your decision- making at all but there could be an appearance of conflict and so you uh would um hope that that board member would would think about the larger concern about public confidence in the uh operation of the board and recuse him or herself so back to what is a conflict how do you so now we've decided I think that the individual board member gets to decide uh what a conflict is uh and when he or she should not participate in um a board meeting so what standard do you apply for that inner monologue to make your decision
031partiality that's say oh well it it is a form of impartiality that is when you act as a board member you're acting on behalf of the community that elected you and so your decision should be based on the community's interest as you define it your decision shouldn't be based on personal allegiances or personal antagonisms so the inner monologue is can I listen to the evidence through the deliberations and can I make uh a decision on behalf of the community as opposed to letting my personal biases one way or the other uh affect my decision-making so that's the question that we typically ask um or that we suggest you ask yourselves um can I act on behalf of the community and that's a a little there's some Nuance there for example um um my hypothetical is
032that I have been involved in youth Athletics for years I finally get elected to the board my life's goal is to get lights on the football field at the high school has that already happened in Brookfield we need a new score board so maybe that uh and so finally I get the chance to vote in favor of lights on the football field is that a conflict of interest because this has been a personal goal of mine no I don't think so no you're right it's not a conflict of interest because you are all elected for who you are what your interests are as long as they're not your personal interests and the last thing I'll say about conflicts of interest but I'm I'm I know I'm trying to do all this in an hour um
033but I do welcome your questions um okay I have a conflict it's my cousin uh superintendent's recommended him for director of Maintenance come that's the agenda item oh I think you do need to recuse yourself there okay it's a and I'm going to do that you're right I'm I'm gonna recuse myself but I just want you to know this guy is terrific on Thanksgiving we thought the oven was broken we thought dinner would be ruined but he macgyvered this thing and um saved Thanksgiving but I'm not going to vote is that okay no no it's not okay and you all know it's not okay but I'll just elaborate how do you make decisions as a board through deliberations through and that means you talk and you listen and through that discussion you formulate your views
034and you vote accordingly and um so when a person has a conflict of interest he or she should not participate in the deliberative process at all and um there are some cases where a teacher gets fired and um turns out that one of the board members had an AXS to grind against that teacher undisclosed you know and so now we're in court now we this is in another state the the parties are in court um on a due process claim the board decided this the board was not impartial and the district in that case said H it was 90 throw that vote out it's 80 teacher loses but you're right just like 12 Angry Men right um uh the the court said we don't know what impact that one person had in the deliberations so
035so the the decision had to be thrown out so anyway those are my thoughts on conflicts of interest and um uh so uh you run into an acquaintance at the post office and she complains that her fourth grade teacher has not returned homework to her student in two months to her students in two months of course you want to help her but after reviewing board policies you determine there's no board policy on whether and when teachers must return homework to students you check with other board members on whether they not by reply all but you check with other board members uh to see whether they've received similar complaints about this teacher and they've not do you share this information with the superintendent no yes yeah yeah okay do you mind I think I would tell
036the person to follow the proper channels and contact now that's absolutely the right answer okay unrelated to your saying I won't tell the super tenant um but but just there are two steps here the first is um this is a common problem and maybe you're all sophisticated and never have this problem but you all got elected to serve your community so when someone comes to you with a problem for many people the first impulse is to help and how how can I who you know let me talk to so and so or whatever and uh back to uh the three branches of government we didn't actually pin that that down earlier did we you're not the Executive Branch the statutes say that the superintendent is the chief executive officer of the board which means that
037you as the legislative body establish the policies the superintendent implements those policies and you're free to be you know exercise oversight but direct board involvement in operational issues is not part of your job and um so as I think you were saying you would help the person understand and some appropriate modesty is often helpful you've mistaken me for someone who's important I'm a member of the board but this isn't my bwick and so as I think you were alluding the chain of command have you talked to the teacher have you talked to the principal have you talked to the assistant superintendent that's totally appropriate because people and in all innocence they think you're the answer to their prayers and they come to you expecting you and so helping them understand the proper role of you
038that you have as a board member is is an important um thing that you uh would do um so but it's sometimes it's hard and uh so back to um do you tell the superintendent there's not a right or a wrong answer there all I want to say is you have the right to you and and and you have judgments to make because you may hear a lot of stuff if I hear the same thing over and over again maybe that's the time to say wait a second that's another good point in fact if you hear the same thing over and over again that would be all the more reason to say hey this is an operational concern I've heard this and you think the superintendent should be aware of it that's totally appropriate but
039it also in a given case could implicate your legislative responsibilities if you hear the same thing over and over again you know how they say there ought to be a law uhhuh you know sometimes um you would hear and you say you know we might need to regulate this through policy that would be an appropriate thing all I'll say is on this you um can serve as ears to the community you're listening to the people who seek you out and share information with you and some of that information could be very helpful to the superintendent um but you on the other hand it's a balance to strike you don't want to burden the super attendent with every rumor or or complaint um so I just want to leave you with my thought which is it's
040a judgment call for you but there's no problem with you sharing that information with the with the superintendent um when and how should you report back to the parent who raised the complaint I wouldn't it's not your yeah it's a trick question right and you you have passed the test um no when and no you don't and and the person shouldn't be expecting that that has to be part of the conversation this is the chain of command and and you know good luck um uh but um board Boards of Education board members uh should not do constituent service like if you you know writing your congressman and they send someone to try and solve your problem um you're a policy body and you're a Judicial body and the operational issues are back to the superintendent
041and the last thing should the board adopt a a policy on grading homework um that's could be who knows um so they'll enter the 15th and the 30th we're good um right the 15th and the 30th they have to enter their grades so we should be good oh that is that your new policy well there is one right well okay uh scenario five with a contentious national election looming the policy committee is considering a recommendation that the board adopt the following policy no person shall engage in political activity when on the property of the Brookfield Public Schools accordingly the board prohibits employees and students from displaying any messages conveying support for any political candidate for state or federal office this prohibition extends to buttons hats t-shirts and other apparel and to m messages on personal
042vehicles including but not limited to bumper stickers or signs that sounds like a good policy doesn't it no um we'll talk that's the last question is that legal no um spoiler Al spoiler alert it's not but um first um the first bullet is the uh proposed policy has received a lot of public attention and some board members who are not on the Poli policy committee want to attend the meeting of the policy committee at which this new policy uh will be discussed is it a problem if a COR of the full board attends a meeting of the policy committee do you have a policy committee yes we do yeah okay and how many people are on the policy committee three three so as soon as another board member shows up is it a quum is
043it your no not if they attend as a a member of the public I'm sorry I'm I'm speculating I'm think that as if they show up as a member of the public then no it's not a quorum well how do you strip your well maybe how how do you strip you're you're still a board member it is a quorum uh that the factual issue is four members at the same meeting at the same time as a quorum whether it's an email or um uh at the policy committee meeting so you're saying uh that that's fine it's a notice meeting does that help it it does help it does why does it help because it's a a properly uh warned meeting of the policy committee right and therefore uh under the Freedom of Information Act if
044you attend if me uh a quorum of one public agency attends a meeting properly posted by another public agency it's not a violation of the law and in fact you may at some point in your budget process go to a meeting of the board of Finance do you have to post that you may post it but you don't have to if it's posted by the board of Finance um but there's more to the story uh and that is I was talking about this so I think you've already uh anticipated the right answer here which you say if you attend as a member of the public what does that mean that means you sit and listen and probably don't talk um participate deliberations or right uh so in other and so that's where some boards get
045in trouble uh I had talking to one board about this and and well they were a friendly Bunch I'm I'm this is without judgment is to all of you but they were a friendly bunch and um so their view is oh board me hey come on sit up the table you know what oh and that's where you run uh into a problem uh because as you point out if you're there the the danger is that the meeting morphs into a meeting of the board which is not posted but if you um um carefully um limit the procedure uh I'm sorry the uh limit the participation of the uh other board members to treating them just as members of the public then it hasn't morphed it's still a meeting of the policy committee properly posted and
046that's a an explicit uh provision in the Freedom of Information Act so so that's fine um and I think email as well uh if a board member is sending an email as a public citizen yes to a committee uh because they can't attend or they don't attend or whatever oh that's interesting that's say you know I'm a lifelong learner and I've never had that question um so you have uh I feel like it would be the same right because your participating is a you're not well let me um I think we need to like break that down a member of the board thinks this is a bad policy and you want your opinion known so you send a me uh email to the three members of the policy committee this is a bad policy so
047far so good M but you do from your personal email no I feel like if you're do from your board and your subject line might have to be like personal opinion not writing as board member well um that's part of your defense uh but anyway so far so good now the chair of the policy committee writes back and says that's where the trouble yeah that's where the trouble starts because at that point a quum of the board is discussing and this issue about attending a meeting as I said before the Freedom of Information law hasn't really caught up with email terribly so um in that case it would be a discussion among a quorum of the board uh because it would be an exchange of information so that board member can certainly Express his or
048her opinion and that opinion can certainly be discussed at the meeting properly posted of the policy committee but for that to be outside of U in public comment during public comment uh it's the back and forth it's the it's the reply yeah that board member if the uh committee has public comment can participate in public comment I to the same extent as any other board member um I'm not going to ask for a show of hands um but do you uh have any of you ever texted when sitting at the board table oh while sitting at the board table um not to board members I I think I said I'm not asking for any confessions here okay please do the dishes before I get home well I can't believe it's so late you better pick
049up the milk right still here so that's all fine that's all fine BEC why because it doesn't relate to the meeting uh it doesn't relate to the conduct of the Public's business gotcha uh but you are to the extent your text messages relate or text messages as you receive relate to the Brookfield Board of Education then you have a problem now um when I talk about that so can one board member during deliberations text another board member say I hope I got your vote on this don't screw this up up no no okay good so I'm glad I'm I'm glad I'm not bringing news to you on that um but iron uh coincidentally one of my favorite cases rose right here in Brookfield oh boy uh and it wasn't the Board of Ed although another
050faite case is a labor board case from Brookfield from about 20 years ago but here's the the situation um there was a a zoning board meeting some years ago and um the uh Commissioners or whatever they're called um are like talking softly to each other during the meeting and um so the um disappointed um uh applicant brought an foi complaint and hauled these people to Hartford and uh I wasn't there but I just have this image of um now you're in a formal hearing these zoning board members are there and uh were you Whispering yes why were you Whispering well duh so people couldn't hear me I mean you know it's not that hard to figure out um and they ruled that that was a violation of the public uh meeting law because it was
051depriving the public of the ability fully to participate in the meeting and I love the case because isn't it directly relevant to texts when a board member texts another um you're depriving the public of full participation it's like whispering and so um I don't think the commission has actually ruled on texts um um whe you know when they uh violate the public meeting law but it's a um uh I think the analogy is overwhelming that that's how that would work and um each year for the last many I've spoken at the conference of the Freedom of Information commission we just did it last Friday uh but the year before I asked the question of the commission you know this commission staff because we're preparing a presentation I'm a member of a public agency my phone
052buzzes is it an foi violation if I read the text and they said no I I was relieved um because who couldn't who who would like get a text and not read it right um now it could be a public record because of someone in the audience encouraging you in a particular way um that's a public record uh but you don't know until you read the the text you know it could be your lights are on so so you you just so but I was I was happy to know that the commission uh was not so formalistic about it that they would say that a member of a public agency has to like leave their phone unread um during a meeting it's when you text between yourselves or among yourselves then that's the problem yes
053quick question what about if we're at the meeting and someone scribbles over on your paper a little message to you yeah during the meeting uh that's a a great question and that illustrates I think the difference between um uh uh strict legal interpretation and life the strict legal interpretation is that's not appropriate because the people can't hear that but you know the Practical reality is um now if they scribble to you and say uh here's what you should do then that's but more often the scribble would be what do he say uh and that's more common you know hey I didn't quite get that you know and and so no one's going to take you to the commission on that um that zoning case that was they were just trying to be a little sneaky
054by talking privately at at the meeting um so is is a policy legal is what is this policy legal no no VI First Amendment right uh right and interestingly the rights of um staff members freedom of expr and the rights of students are very different you can tell staff members they can't wear the button you can't tell a student you can't wear the button because the rules are entirely different for students they have a right of free speech unless you uh reasonably forecast material disruption or substantial interference so a kid can wear button you know but I guess you can imagine a circumstance where the button would you know be fighting words and that that wouldn't be permitted but um when teachers are on the job they don't have First Amendment rights they have all
055the First Amendment rights in the world when they're not on the job well not really but they have some uh and we could get into that um but uh so you're quite clear on this uh that this wouldn't be an appropriate um policy because it would restrict the Free Speech rights of employees and of students um but part of this is also just practical the bumper sticker is like a no one was going to prohibit bumper stickers but yeah maybe you're you've seen this too someone shows up with a pickup truck and a huge sign with ropes Parks it in the parking lot you know fill in the blank for whatever and um that's not consistent with normal behavior so I have no problem saying that could be misperceived as a endorsement you know on
056school property this big sign so that's where I would draw the line last scenario a good friend of a board member sends the board member an email marked personal and confidential the friend of the board member complains to the board member that a teacher was mean to her daughter a reporter makes an foi request of all board members for a copy of any email sent to or received by from a third party during a specified period of time which time period includes the email in question is that email marked personal and confidential about the child's daughter I'm sorry about the a friend's daughter a public record yes yes you're good maybe I'll just leave now okay but I'll just have a couple more things you're right why is it a public record because it s
057to it's not protected well that's a different question well it was sent to the entire board on a board email so uh well no this is this is your friend writes you a personal and confidential email is it a public record it is because it still relates to the of the Brookfield schools and you're an official so what you receive and the commission the Freedom of Information law defines a public agency as including a public official so each of you are not only public officials but your public agencies with responsibilities under the Freedom of Information law so when you get an email so part of the reason why I raised this issue you might want to tell some of your friends the phone still works and you don't need you know but when you send
058me emails about the district even though I'm your friend you're creating a public record now in this particular case it would be protected under furpa because it relates to that uh friend's daughter and that's now a uh personally identifiable student information which is fur protected but it's still a public record the burd's on you to show that um uh there's an exemption that should apply and many times friends write to board members about things where there is no exemption it's your policy on a b or c and and sometimes um friends of board members and board members back to friends are little casual in the language that they use and it can be embarrassing because some f somebody makes an FY request and here this is a matter of great seriousness and this board member
059is being flippant about it so you just have to be very careful now please question does that apply to board members personal emails as well uh there is no such thing I think you're uh referring to emails on your personal computer or your personal phone related to board business if it relates to board business this the um uh Forum or the place where you're creating the record doesn't matter right and that's uh applicable to um uh employees as well if two administrators are on their personal computers or texting each other if it relates to board business it's all a public record um do you all use the district server for your board business I do M um another just so if you all do then I'll just summarize in one sentence because you're all responsible
060for records that you receive the last thing you want to do I mean because you don't get paid right right so so last thing is you give all your time to the community the last thing you want is to have an additional responsibility to go through all your emails in response to foi requests so if it's on the district server it's not your problem someone makes an fi request you give it to the superintendent he gives it to the IT person and they search and um they respond to the foi request um so I'm just glad that if any of you are ever tempted to um uh do board business on your personal email um just be careful uh you're assuming a responsibility the Practical answer is somebody may know your personal email and may
061communicate with you on your personal email about board business what I would do is respond to them and copy your District email so that that exchange is on the server and you have no problems well um I have question for you so last week we had an foi request um for our personal notes in a meeting okay so if we're taking notes for you know as the meetings going on for our you know record of it right is that subject that's been adjudicated and I'm happy to report every so often I have good news and the good news is that your personal notes do subject are correct exempt from disclosure they're still public record y but they're exempt from disclosure is preliminary drafts or notes yep uh the very there's 27 exemptions from disclosure the
062very first one is preliminary drafts or notes uh so um when someone says I want to see what you're writing if it those are your personal notes uh they're not subject to disclosure but the danger is that if you share those notes with anyone they're no longer preliminary right so if if they're your own memory notes mhm uh then that's not a problem uh that's clearly um and you know and it's only right because you're just doing that to do a better job and keep things you know on track um so that's um you don't have to worry about that good I won't release on thanks good um and I know that we're just about out of time um and U I appreciate the questions you asked is there any last uh uh question that
063you would like to present before I get out of your hair and let you go on with your meeting I'd just like to say thank you on behalf of our group um for your time and your expertise thanks for sharing that with us well it's my pleasure thank you have a good meeting thank you nice to meet [Music] you e [Music] for [Music] this is always on my one and done so good evening everybody um I'd like to call to order the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Ed uh tonight's Wednesday October 30th and it is is 704 um would you please join me in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance everyone I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation
064under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have a full compliment um of folks here uh Dr man will be with us presently and for people who were not able bless you for people who were not able to join us um last time uh at home we have a new uh member that we've welcomed Melissa Baines um who's uh our student representative this year and she'll be now you're just showing off Stephanie um she'll be giving us an update of the the goings on of the high school pretty soon all right um so we're gonna we're going to start with um public comment are we not are we looking at yeah yeah yeah okay okay um so uh for public comment um the Brookfield Board of Ed welcomes public comment each speaker
065will have up to three minutes to provide input um discussion of school Personnel individualized students or of individual members of the board is prohibited I think uh we know the the rest of the uh Logistics on that so first up we have Mrs Korea and you um are here to talk about class sizes class presentation will show the high number of over oversiz classes ATS last year I stood here telling the bo that my child was in a math class with 28 students this year my two children have eight out of 14 classes that are over the recommended student size Li last last year 100% of the business classes were over the recommended limit and this year it is at 95% the percentage of classes at the high school over the limit are substantially higher
066than WMS and CES the BHS students and staff deserve better during the budget season consider adding a math teacher and other necessary teachers to reduce the class sizes at BHS to improve student achievement and level teacher workload my child is one of the two confirmed math classes that have 29 students this is 50% higher than the recommended Boe class size last year board members brought this exact issue up for discussion and most of the board declined to engage in constructive dialogue regarding this issue this failure to act has caused the same problem to resurface when will you work together to ensure our high school students get what they need to create their tomorrow or become critical and creative thinkers collaborators and communicators when they are in oversized classrooms with teachers who are overburdened you are
067failing 900 kids thank you Mrs leers hi Denise rice 3 old Hemlock Road I listen to the board at Bed meeting again from home um regarding the English the non-english-speaking students and I understand the cohort because of the over 20 students speaking Portuguese and I have a few questions how is a parro or even a if she was a teacher I'm not talking about her credentials supposed to help these students in multiple classrooms throughout clees this has come to my attention because of something I'm dealing with with cka for example it's a 90-minute block what are these students doing during this time they don't understand the language how are they sitting for this time period what are they learning is it okay that they're getting nothing from it common sense tells you that the power
068can't be in all of the classrooms at the same time yet a lot of them do have CA at the same time and what about the illustrious map same thing they partner up in there don't they and then what do they do do they just sit and talk to each other do they partner up with an English-speaking child again what is that student getting out of this what is the kid learning do they not take the standardized test that it would show throw the district scoring lower I guess my problem here is that the students are suffering because I don't understand how they're not even becoming behavior problems because I couldn't sit somewhere for 90 minutes and do nothing day after day so I'm not sure where we're having this power that jumps around so
069she counts for the state takes precedence over actually teaching the kids after all one day won't these kids count as portraits of the Brookfield graduate I think we need to do better by all of them thank you thank you okay we have one more um speaker who will speak to Second um excuse then Mrs are you here here to talk about the oh thank you sorry s i i put order as long as we follow that consistently week after week um listen I think you asked our opinion if this was okay as a oneoff I don't think we're changing our procedures but there's one public comment and I think we have routinely allowed for one public comment if there's just if there's a list of 20 we're a little more parsing it out so I
070don't think the procedure needs to change but we can be flexible and I think we've always done that I think the last meeting there was someone waiting for the public comment waited almost two and a half hours to speak and it was one person um but that person had had spoken initially as well as long as we're just being mindful of it for the future that's all I'm asking I'm not saying I'm not being flexible I'm just asking us to be mindful of that moving forward and hold on just a second Mrs cross I think I think actually there are a number of U things that we um could discuss it's not on theend genda tonight but regarding public comment um I think that that is something definitely that we should like make into an
071agenda item and discuss further but for this evening Mrs cruss please go ahead thank you my name is Pam I live at on Cove Road in Brookfield I'm here because I'm a grandmother of two young children that will attend Brookfield public schools by way of introduction I'm a member of the Florida bar retired teacher from brow County schools in Florida where I taught environmental science was the magnet coordinator of a stem program for over 500 students I followed this by a fellowship in the US Senate where I provided input on stem from a teacher's point of view on Essa tonight I want to bring forward an issue that you already may be aware of and looking back at your meeting uh your meetings that appears to be overlooked time is of the essence to address
072it um whiner Middle School is 1900 ft from two gas turbine compressors and and three gas pipelines there is a current proposal to place two more compressors on the site the site is on high mow Road and it's hidden from the school by an area of trees this makes it difficult to understand and Overlook the hazard it presents the byproducts of a 24/7 operation of the compressors are are toxic and they're particularly harmful to children growing bodies a recent report by two Public Health officials have provided confirmation of this Hazard The Proposal is Technical and the applicant iroy pipeline owned by a Consortium of companies that includes Trans Canada and Berkshire hathway this pipeline does not serve Connecticut it serves New York City it's unmanned and monitored offsite in Shelton the current proposal has bip
073bipartisan opposition from the the board of Selectmen Marty felo Steve Harding and the candidates running against them in other words no one other than the pipeline company wants this in Brookfield there's an active citizens group opposing this as well as several NOS because this involves the safety of a generation of of generations of students and I only have three minutes to explain I have two asks tonight one is to place a presentation of this on your next agenda so that the details of this rather complex issue can be better understood and to join the BOS or local leaders and Brookfield residents and opposing this project known as expansion by compression there is a permit pending at Deep right now and time is very important I know it's Oh I thought I was going to talk
074very late but um if you have any questions I'm certainly happy to address them that's it thank you very much Mrs Krauss all right so we um we will move now to an update from um Melissa Baines take it away um hello everyone um so last Tuesday the 22nd of O okay sorry uh I'm going to talk a little bit about Athletics first uh last Tuesday the 22nd of October Vanessa Greenstein uh represented to the Brookfield represented Brookfield High School school at the cic athletic Advisory board meeting um two of our student athletes were nominated for their outstanding football performance uh junior Thad ballsy and Chase Sylvia uh Thad ballsy was nominated under game time Connecticut and Chase Sylvia for Walter Camp student athlete of the week uh junior Landon wall has been named all
075state for cross country and in addition to this uh boys cross country won their Patriot Division Championship uh senior Mia hatet broke chis School record for girl swim in the 100 meter fly and has committed to swim at Yukon next season girl soccer won against Notre Dame this past Monday with the score 2 to1 securing their s swc Championship um in terms of last meeting I spoke a little bit about Student Government athletic advisory and bethl high schools starting a fundraiser for Asheville Public Schools who were hit by um hurricane Milton and Helen uh student government and athletic advisory collected donations this last Friday at the football game as well as two s swc soccer finals games which happened on Saturday um and we raised almost $1,000 for that effort uh I still don't have
076the combined number with bethl high schools made donations because they also collected at their football games but um Asheville public schools had like a whole post of just talking about their appreciation for us raising money for them um and then in terms of my personal clubs I'm a part of peer counseling which is a club just focus on like student inclusion and Aid and we help a lot with like transitioning to a new school um so yesterday during ITT we held a new student mixer uh where we just played Halloween bingo and talked with a bunch of underclassmen um ways to get involved around the school with different clubs and activities um our club Club has a lot more student mixers pled so I look forward to telling you guys about them in the future
077but that's it in terms of updates do we questions for Melissa all right then thanks very much appreciate it thank you and happy Halloween okay um Stephanie please uh talk us through the written correspondence the following people have emailed the Board of Education since the last meeting on October 16th Denise rice October 16 Board of Ed meeting and 1312 Irene Korea multilanguage learner student numbers from Boe meeting on October 16th Heather Buckley foa request from special meeting on October 2nd Andy Korea lunch accounts and student privacy violation John Morris lunch accounts Deborah C policy policy part two and foa request okay great thanks um now we'll move to the uh approval of board minutes I move that the board approve the minutes listed below as recommended regular meeting 101624 special meeting 10242 24 second is
078there any discussion of these okay all in favor of approving the uh minutes um say I I I oppos okay so it's unanimous um wonderful let's go then to item eight the superintendent's update Dr BR have for us thank you Dr Young good evening everyone um the uh report tonight really um lands on all the priorities we've been talking about since uh August Communications in preparing for the opening of school um under under the topic of security uh just to let everybody know the all hazards plan has been completed and submitted on an annual basis that's uh up to the state department of Ed um we had a great meeting uh last week of superintendents in the region in our Western Connecticut region along with athletic directors and High School principles to talk about after
079school action and safety um and we um had some folks from the state down to talk with us and we went through the um from a few weeks ago you may recall that uh massic high school and ARA high school has been squatting and so those were the scenarios and we talked through and reflected on um the successes in the areas we need to grow from that so um we really learned a lot from one another there um and uh continue to collaborate we we have some um documents we're working with and uh helping us establish additional actions on that further on security it's not actually bulleted but I did want to let everybody know that we were alerted and extra vigilant uh the chief kept uh myself and the principales uh uh up to
080date today with the SRO there was um some swatting in Oxford New Milford and region 15 so those those it was unfortunate those districts were dealing with that today so um we were fortunate that we weren't but again paying attention to what's going on in the region and being ready uh that particular swatting threat came through that hotline that the police uh you may have heard the police have this hotline where law enforcement federal and state are paying attention to all of the different threats that are out there and then they call in if something is bubbling somewhere and give a heads up to the local area so um those three particular districts were dealing with that today so I just wanted everybody to know that um in the region it has not gone away
081we're we're still dealing with that stuff um under operations uh Board of Finance uh took a walk through with Casey and myself and Paul czecho from the NBC of C last week um it was great to have that group go through um and there was an opportunity for lots of questions and it was nice to have Mr czecho there from the NBC because he he is the chair of that committee that is responsible for the physical uh aspect of really finishing off the project at this point so a lot of questions got answered and I think uh there was enlightening opportunities and perhaps not only seeing the the the building but um having other questions that arose the one thing Mr czecho continues to emphasize is um if you have questions of the NBC please
082come to the NBC meeting send him a communic or the you know the NBC of communication they want to engage with anybody who has questions so um he asked that people continue to do that yeah what's the date on that I think you said is it like the 17th or something the November date the October meeting is passed yeah I think it it might be the 17th in case people NBC the NBC meeting yeah it's the second or third Tuesday Tuesday Cally but I mean everything's posted on the town website so if people are interested they certainly can send me a note if they're not sure and I'll get back to people if they're interested or they certainly can ask a board M it's the 19th 19th thank you er um one thing I did
083want to ask the board um to think about no decisions need to be made tonight but one of the priorities of the board um kind of leaning into the summer and planning for this year is taking a look at our change to later start times from you know for last year we implemented that and in this year um giving the surveys out again looking at um you know how many student athletes are missing class if they have to leave for a game or whatever the case may be um certainly Mr Bland and Mr baldman myself could into that data and get those surveys out there but I wanted to suggest and encourage the board to reestablish an ad hoc committee for that so we could actually work together and have a board member to involved
084I think that would be really helpful um as we we work on that particular priority um again no decision needs to be made tonight but I wanted to just put that out there can we talk about it a little bit now or is absolutely what so what what kind of time commitment are you thinking is we like way can do I have the bandwidth for that sure sure I I'm thinking probably would need two to three meetings two to three meetings total with you know with board members just to go through the data um certainly um one of the the pieces is to resurvey the the students the teachers and the parents of you know what they're seeing with sleep habits and and that kind of a thing um and uh Mark and and Steve
085really quickly they've been keeping the data so we can get the reports on the um the missed classes and those kind of things but board members may have heard from constituents as we talked about at the 6:00 meeting there might be some other questions some burning questions that are up there let's have those conversations so before we put out a survey and just ask the same questions that we did a couple of years ago maybe there's some other things we need to ask and maybe there's some other data that would be of interest in in possibly making uh you know whatever decision we make even a non-decision the non- decision is a decision to stay with what we have um so um when do you think you guys will Kickstart this um depending I mean
086I can Kickstart it with Mark and Steve in the ne next few weeks just to have some initial conversations about it but it probably one meeting prior to the holidays would be a good idea I think you know as we get really moving into the holiday season where it's going to get tough on everybody you know after school hours and things like that we could do Zoom meetings we don't have to meet in person um again this could be operational and administrative work and then we could present a recommendation but we have a board here of very engaged members and I think it would be something very positive uh for that contribution so people who are interested in um maybe being on that ad hoc is that a thing they reach out to me or
087just directly well I think the first thing is are we going to establish a board subcommittee ad hoc subcommittee that's the first thing that has to be determined if that's not going to happen I'm going to do the work anyway okay um but um I think it's important to have that engagement of the board um as a decision-making body um on a very important big operational uh possible new decision on that and again we talked about timeline if we were to collect data and say man this is something we need to discuss and we want to go in a different direction is it realistic something that could be done for the following year maybe too late I mean it have to be a 26 27 you know so those are all things we would discuss
088as a committee but I think probably three total meetings where I would need a commitment from board members is probably what I'm thinking um if there was a fourth then maybe there's a fourth um and we don't need to drag it out either I mean it's great I would prepare all the data with Mark and Steve and then we would bring it that would be the initial kickoff me let's go through what we're seeing here let's talk about it and then do we have any other questions and then what are our next steps what our actions going forward then we have we have a comeback and then we have a second meeting and then maybe have a presentation or a conversation with the full board um once we've made our once we've deliberated and maybe
089uh have a decision ready to go okay is there an appetite for this does anybody want to put a motion on the floor to establish an ad hoc committee I make a motion to I'll make a motion to establish an ad hoc committee for a second for the purposes of reviewing for the purposes of reviewing the school start times awesome and so you second second great um discussion um is there anybody who'd like to be on it I'm definitely interested I mean obviously it have to be in the evening I could potentially zoom in at certain times certain times yeah I would it's a priority so we'd have to figure out when we could find the time to do it okay so that can be worked out um are we are we good to at
090least vote on this m right um all in favor so the motion on the floor is uh to establish an ad hoc committee to review Healthy Start times all in favor signify by saying I I any oppose great all right thank you very much so I could take my personal notes as we learned about Sarah Aon joyer interested okay Stephanie put me on the list and give me the details and let me know the wonderful I didn't think I'd get this enthusiastic of a response awesome that's wonderful thank you thought we might have to delay till November's meeting thank you very much I do appreciate the support F yeah let's get it going um the other thing um I did want to let everybody know school I talked about it a little bit with school
091climate legislation um it's important to know that I've mentioned before we have uh Judy Palmer former uh region one superintendent um works for Ed Advance now and she um is really uh really the liaison working with the state and several districts including Brookfield um and we are availing ourselves of it at advances Services U at no there's no cost which is wonderful uh the the implementation of the new law really kicks in for July 1 of 25 we need to be ready with training before July 1 and a new policy so I'll be bringing to policy committee policy committee over here Stephanie um so all of you um so we do have a sample policy we'll be bringing forward but in terms of at Advance they're helping us with training and in November I'll bring
092forward kind of a uh uh a truncated uh slide deck just to kind of walk through the the the key pieces for everybody to really build some understanding uh not only for the board but for the community and ultimately the staff and again second semester we're going to talk about tomorrow we're actually meeting with that advance to set up uh and schedule dates for training of our Administration and our our school based teams um after the winter break for the entirety of this second semester um but um getting that presentation to everybody to build an understanding of how comprehensive it is how time sensitive sensitive it is um it's a lot and um you if did read the um budget assumptions and priorities I actually put in there that we we need a position to
093cover this across the district um the legislation does call for uh the superintendent or an administrator design to be the district coordinator um and then from there you want to carry out who's going to operationalize this and really be the support person for the social workers or the DEA students or the assistant principles to really implement this throughout the the district at each School in uh a particular way not only consistency but then the particular way for that developmental level so there's a lot to it I'll talk more about that next month but um I wanted you to know that we're really gearing up for that and it's going to take a lot of effort and it's it's a high priority under teaching and learning um there is um actually I'm going to skip uh
094to budget and then I'm going to go to teaching and learning um we're going to talk about budget when we get to priorities and assumptions and those kind of things but I do want to remind the board of a couple of things with the budget um the first thing is something um that we had had some feedback on from the public and we've taken action on that is chunks of kind of informing the public in chunks about the budget so we put out a concept called budget blast and so that's gone out we've had a budget blast on the budget calendar he's here's the key dates as as the public you need to know about the second one that went out last week was on where do you find all this budget information historical information
095we have the budget assumptions and priorities ready to go as budget blast number three literally go out this evening um um or or tomorrow and then we'll continue to do that with the different pieces and the pieces I'm talking about are what's been feeding into the board since September so just as a reminder for everyone in September the board approved the budget calendar that's the timeline of of all the way through until the end of January when we submit the budget and then to the first selectman and then there's a number of um to be determined dates where we work as you know we work with the board of Finance Board of selectman all the way through uh all the way through until referendum in in May uh last uh last last meeting on the
09616th of October we had the ml report and the special education case load report and people Services case load report that feeds into how we develop the budget um tonight um there's several more reports you'll get the class size report the enrollment report the assumptions and priorities and the capital uh that's actually a presentation tonight the capital report Capital uh projects report um for November uh bill will be back uh he was with us in Ju July for a presentation but he'll be back for uh special education strategic planning report um and errands on that committee so we have board input on that committee um and also the climate needs I was just talking about because those are all you know there's always budget implications with with these areas um December 4th is when the
097formal budget recommendations from the superintendent are presented we're one of the first in the state um I think it gives us a lot of time to deliberate before that very early January submission there are school districts where the superintendent doesn't even present their recommendations to their board until late February or March so we are extremely early but that gives us more time to deliberate and think these things through um and then on the 18th of December um we had the budget round table and we actually uh Casey secured um ESS our substitute service to come and talk about how they recruit um and what their whole process is because substitutes is another priority area for us to keep to study and analyze this year um so that was really important for me just share all
098this is lined up for everybody and the budget blasts that will be forthcoming are various reports that I just talked about those are all that's kind of chunking it out for people to keep the budget fresh in people's mind because the budget is the financial statement of our values and beliefs about how we want to educate the kids and so and you heard that even public comment tonight uh moving on to teaching and learning last section I have one piece I'm going to turn the rest over to Dr man um Ed Advance uh has a first year career accelerator program they're working with a few districts um and I asked that Anna and Mark bring this to Cape in November um Anna Mark and myself uh got to hear from U Ed Advance yesterday and
099they and Bill oh and Bill was there that's right bill was there um got to talk about um their career accelerator program and it's for high schools and high school students it's really aligned with our priorities for expanding learning and authenticity in learning um and so they have this program 10 districts right now are participating from two to 15 kids very small groups and a lot of times it's transitioning our younger students at the high school school and looking at a maybe a 4-year vision of what could be the really exciting um thing about this is that um it supports career Pathways for kids it supports dual enrollment so they not only get high school credit they're getting college credit for these courses um major access to college meaning if you're in those dual credit
100classes and you start as a freshman just thinking big picture Vision very broad here I'm not getting in the weeds for anybody tonight students can graduate from high school and upon graduating from high school can have an associates degree in the all credited through the state universities and with the state of can we got every everything's all organized and and the um at Advance liaison with everybody to make sure this happens so this is something we're looking at it's very early we don't know that we're committing to it but it's really an exciting opportunity can you imagine an two years of college done in Connecticut when you graduate high school the savings for families and and just that alone also the career Pathways and the skills kids are going to learn getting ready for job
101and so forth so we're really excited about the potential of this but obviously going in with our eyes wide open and treading lightly as we do so we have some Nas information some PD information can I ask a question pleas please I'm sorry are is I know it's from the state but are we at all looking at how other states accomplish that how other schools accomplish that well there's 10 like I said there's about 10 districts that are doing that so we so we have like a Connecticut Fe as in this small state and we've all been around a long time we were as they were naming the districts we're all going through our our Rolodex in our head that shows how old I am I'm saying Rolodex our Rolodex in our head of of
102who we know what those schools we can call say is is this is this legit is this really good those kind of things so um we are we are definitely like I said eyes wide open but really excited about the potential this can have for um all kinds of families you know um and uh and all kinds of students so one of the things that thisum that this um program does is it takes a lot of very I think uh you're a lot of various initiatives um that have been at the state level for a number of years 5 to8 years um including apprenticeship programs pre-certification programs dual enrollment programs at a variety of different universities not only the state universities but some private institutions like the University of Bridgeport and those kinds and essentially
103is kind of like bringing them all into to streamline together so that school dist schools high schools Career College and Career counselors you know administrators don't have to kind of go out and pick them all together it's kind of all there are various Pathways and there's been tons of talk at the state level about the need for Pathways particularly through um mechanical and Engineering uh um areas of uh employment um and so it's it's been something that various uh groups at the state have been focused on so this is really nice that they are um this this gentleman who started this um used to be a career in tech ed teacher at Hampton High School and did a lot of this for his students and essentially got woed Away by Ed advance to create a
104formal program so um a lot of people in other states that have actually done that yeah and we and I mean right now we have some dual enrollment right Mr Blanda so we have some of these opportunities but this really formalizes a program so an eighth grader who's considering do I want to go to abitech or do I want to go to chog oh no I guess I could go to Brookfield High School um and you know study uh an education an education pathway I mean they have a couple different Pathways including education which would fit nicely into our increasing educator diversity plan where we say we'd like to partner with area universities and increase education uh education educator education right so there's a lot of ways that this helps align with our I think
105we need PRI the cape because that's really the appropriate place for to be and I have I have I didn't have multiple copies but we have one brochure there just for everybody to get a look um you could easily go on the Ed advaned website and see those things and we we'll pass this information along as we can but very initial right now um and then we have some great news with with with our Nas application and also we have professional development on the uh on election day next week so I'd like to let Anna take some time now thank you very much so just a few minutes um as you all have heard me talk about over the last six months we have submitted our district accreditation application um we did that in the
106summertime and um so that means that for many many many years the high school has been an accredited High School through the New England Association of schools and colleges which means that essentially every 10 years uh te you know they do a self-study team descends upon the school kind of validates the self-study does a a three-day visit and then says yes these are um areas that you should focus on as your school Improvement plan and you're doing a great job here these are we validate you know your self-reflection um this while the the process has changed somewhat um and it's a little bit more it's it's a continuous learning path so it's actually you do some touch points every 3 to four years in many cases um we entered into an application for our entire
107District to be accredited so k12 and that was really um uh conceived of or the impetus was the idea of those Pathways that we did last year and all the teachers feeling like they really needed had a need to not only get to know one another within the school but across the district and this will really provide that um kind of focus uh you know streamlined Focus for everybody um everyone will be working towards the same standards it actually the timing could not uh end up being better um so our application long story short got got approved by the commission on Monday so I was at my last commission meeting I had to leave the room they chatted about it and then they approved uh Brookfield as a district accreditation um uh applicant and so
108we are one of only a couple in the state um I know New Milford also is going is going to be going through the process um but there are not very many and there's actually not very many across the across New England um but what so we will get put on the same cycle which essentially means our our our first big um lift will be the year of 2627 the district will go through a self-study um in preparation for our collaborative conference and so we will you know kind of do a review and a reflection using the standards as our guide and then have a host of visiting team for the entire District in the fall of 2027 and then that will give us two years to focus in on our priority areas that's what
109comes out of your collaborative conference visit as a priority areas which essentially is a strategic plan and um will be perfect because our strategic plan goes through 2028 and so that will help us align to um kind of you know continuing the work that we're doing and then we will have our desial visit in uh 2029 um so that's exciting so we are now an official um we have been an approved applicant so we are not yet accredited because we have to go through the process but uh we will hopefully be an accredited District in a few short four years five years um so uh that's exciting and then and thank you for your support on that I know that I've talked a lot about it so I really appreciate your support um and then
110moving on to next Tuesday our last full day of professional development so as you know the board um supports five full days of professional development along with a series of early releases in the spring and and in you know school terms spring is January on um and so anywhere from January on but our for our last full day on uh next Tuesday teachers will at by that time have set their professional learning plans they all have had goals meetings um and so they are are essentially creating their you know this this is really focused around them uh working toward their goal so they all have specific um aspects of their goal that they're going to be working toward on Tuesday some will be doing um we start if their if one of their goal if
111their goal relates to becoming a more reflective practitioner in order to Enga you know create student engagement they'll be engaging in the game this is a copy of the game um so we have about 125 teachers uh participating or Educators participating in uh the reflective intelligence work so I'll pass this around you can take a look at it um if there's not much to look at you can look at a few of the cards but there's four different card decks in that box um this what was yeah that's what uh Tim Klein was talking about um so teachers will who are involved in that will be starting that some teachers are going offsite we have uh Visual and Performing Arts teachers going to Westcon to go to an all day conference we have some PE
112and health teachers going to hamon to go to an all day state conference um we have other teachers involved in curriculum and instruction and assessment work whether it's within their own uh you know within their own cohorts or from outside um folks and then uh we also have a focus on um health and safety for each one of the schools so at CES I'll be doing uh the have a session on the um building the new building uh Mr czecho is going to come and uh lead a conversation with them along with Mr Conlin um so that they can ask questions of uh regarding the new facility and also technology and then at the high school and at the Middle School uh Brookfield PD is um partnering with the uh Administration and doing a preliminary
113training in a a emergency response called Alice um and so that's you know kind of like what you can do in a in an emergency but it's just the preliminary training um so each school is going to have a session of Alice training led by um our own our own uh folks in blue and so we're excited about this everybody has a lot to do and they've got that time to do it and so um that's that and in The Weekend Update I'll make sure you have the um the email that Anna sent out today um so you could take a look at the schedule and see everything that's that's going on on Tuesday that's all that's all we had any more questions or anything um Dr man I just want to tell you that
114in my faculty meeting last week Brookfield was mentioned as getting District accreditation there we go and I was like Yay I can take no credit but I know the lady who get thankk you for the leadership right okay so uh subcommittee reports uh let's start with um Finance oh um so I gave this report um at our last meeting so I don't know if you wanted me to give it again but I feel like probably not okay um is this Cas is this the part that that they decided they wanted to talk more about is that okay never mind all right so uh policy then okay so at our last policy meeting um on the 16th we looked at the feedback that the board had given for the first read for the legally required and
115recommended bylaws in the 9,000 Series after making a few recommended changes and changes that um I had sort of found going through it with a fine tooth comb um we decided to recommend them to tonight um and so the second read is on the agenda so I'll leave some of the discussion about the specific changes to that so we don't get confused um we then continued our discussion reviewing the remaining 9,000 Series and have put those on the consent agenda for tonight for our first read There are two exceptions um to the 9,000 Series the first one is 9221 it will not be for on in either group tonight because we are trying to align that policy with the town Charter um it's about filling vacancies and then Wendy we wanted I I was on
116vacation last week so I didn't get a chance to engaged with you but I wanted to find out because you had done a ton of research when and had bunch of discussions when we were filling the vacancy that um Aaron Feld so I wanted we wanted to get more information um as a committee um on that so that will be presented at a later date and then we also discussed um 9325 which you will not see on in either group tonight as well because it is a shipment and Goodwin um bylaw called meeting conduct and we have a Brookfield policy that the language is different enough in the policies that we wanted each individual board member to give us your feedback on what you think of each policy so if you don't look at anything
117else because you trust us um if you could look at 9325 and I would love to have opinions from everybody even if it's like you know love like the Brookville policy better like the shipment and good and policy better I just want to know what everyone thinks individually CU it does change um like when you read it I don't want to feed too much into it without you guys looking at it but you'll see how different the policies are and how the Brookfield policy has a lot more language a lot more specifics and we've had discussion back and forth about whether or not that should be included when we adopt the shipment and Goen language so if you could just send um feedback on that um specifically um and actually I did not write the
118date down but it's the Friday before so all this feedback if it could be um in my inbox by our next Board of bed meeting is the 20th so um and we have a policy meeting that night but we have a policy meeting on the 12th does everyone feel like November 11th that's 10 days from now is that enough time for you guys to look at these policies so that we could review them at the next policy meeting sure or do you feel like you need more time okay so if you could send any feedback you have um by November 11th which is Monday um that would be super helpful because then we could look at it at the policy meeting that's just for the first read the ones that are on the consent agenda
119tonight and then the 203 sorry 9325 as well um so that would be great write down um and then okay so we in the minutes it says that we were going to have a u policy meeting on November 7th the special meeting we've actually moved that to the what I just say the 15th 12 the 12th sorry we've moved it to November 12th um just as a side note so you're aware of that 5:30 yeah 5:30 um at that meeting the purpose is to go through so we have all read the 3,000 series which is really um administrative and pretty easy to go through we didn't feel like there was an issue trying to get through those so um we want to get through those quickly because we want to begin the process of updating
120the 5,000 series which is directly related to students and there's a lot in there that um have been brought To Us by the public there's a lot in there that various board members have had concerns about want updated or want looked at for um various reasons so we'll be able to start the 5,000 series at that meeting um we also as a committee looked at the student privacy policy that shipment goodwi um provides we as a committee were sort of an agreement that there are several Brookfield policies that pull into that policy and so as individuals we're going to kind of figure out where we think the different policies uh lie in the Brookfield policies so that we can all come together and create make sure we understand what we're going to be replacing if
121we adopt the shipment and Goodwin policy um what we're going to be sort of leaving out how we want to pull that all together so that's going to be a much a much more robust conversation um and so that will that will begin that but it probably won't be anything that happens as quickly as the 9,000 Series uh and then Dr brell reported that the school climate and bullying policy will be on the agenda at the November meeting for the board to discuss and learn about updates um and that Brookfield policy was updated in 2023 so there is um no reason to believe that we're out of compliance with that correct Mar how he had told us that there's reporting that has to be put in there so language does need to be changed in
122that policy as far as reporting so that we're going to get more information about that from if there is anything specific then we need to talk about it at the committee and then also um I thought that we were going to bring the PPR um from shipment and Goodwin where it actually referenced policy numbers instead of what we had which really doesn't say much like the one that the one that we're reading at the policy meeting I mean they should have one that definitely aligns with policies so there are several Brookfield policies what we my understanding was what we were going to do is go through and pull the Brookfield policy policy numbers to say like this applies to this section our Brookfield current policy applies of this section right I also want to make
123sure that that's all Shipment has inclusive of student privacy just that so when we a couple pages that we have yeah so we won't know that really until we get to the 5000s we haven't really looked at that yet so um that's what the purpose of that November 30th meeting will be or whatever 20th whatever sorry 20th can't you Dr me there's a lot here yeah so Casey agreed at the meeting because she has to pull everything in so she said that November 20th would be enough time for her to be able to update that for us and in the meantime um we have all of this so yeah I agree that will be our next priority awesome serious kudos to the policy committee for the this big undertaking I mean I know every committee
124does um uh good and important work but this is a heavy lift so thank you very much policy committee members um security task force okay um all right so we met on the um 17th of October um and we went into executive session with Don Beer from uh School access management to discuss um his company's anti- swatting uh it's not really software um yet per se um but upon exiting we did vote uh unanimously to recommend their products for swatting deterrence um which is still has to go through kind of like a little bit of a legal liability review on our end um but that's sort of the takeaway there um and then we received an update on the non-functioning badge reader at CES actually that badge reader was fixed like the day to after
125our September I think um security task force meeting so that badge reader is now functional there is still a somewhat of a mechanical issue with the door like hinge or something itself um so the issue is is mostly a maintenance issue not a construction issue although we have taken efforts um to seek some type of warranty coverage for that um but again that is not the only access into and out of the building um so that's um that's being handled at the school level and then our next meeting will be on Thursday November 14th am I missing exhibit E I don't have it in my pile it was emailed separately I think yeah right thank you um it appears that our meeting will be punctuated with are they holiday sounds found it thank you spook
126book yeah spooky books hilarious okay awesome Halloween thanks everybody okay so let's move to the consent agenda okay I move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda as recommended new hires resignations retirees bylaws for a first reading 9010 9011 912 9020 9030 9100 9114 9115 9130 9160 9200 9220 9230 9251 9310 9311 9312 93 25.5 9327 9360 and 93 sorry and second um all in favor of approving the consent agenda I okay any opposed okay we got there so it's a unanimous approval of the consent agenda um Wendy can I just say a couple couple of words so so I I really wanted to give a um uh just just acknowledge Casey scabard Donis a nine-year veteran nurse with us at the high school moving on some really cool career opportunity for
127her um and uh also thank James uh Jim Jay we call him Jay but it's James Jay serth uh from the middle school and before that Huckleberry 23 years of he's retiring midye um and um just thank them both for their service and um uh we're excited for them and their Futures so anyway thank you yeah wonderful thank you very much and then also really quick I just wanted to point out that you guys have another spreadsheet to refer to for the changes in the bylaws thank you yeah okay so that so this the the one that is not highlighted that says at the top for the first read got it thank that refers to the consent agenda yep highlighted one is for well our discussion later for the second read okay awesome thank you
128very much and thank you for the highlighting for those of us whose attention needs to be directed okay all right so we um with all of that we're moving on to new business and we are going to hear first uh from Dr burill about um District enrollment all right thank you so District enrollment report again as I said earlier during my superintendent report we we use uh all of these reports in the fall to feed into um essentially the data and the information that we're going to use for the recommendation for the budget going forward for the following year obviously student enrollment and grade size and class size and all of those things are big factors in um developing a staffing plan and as we know um faculty and staff are 80% of our budget
129so I mean that's it's the human resources piece of of a service organization like a like a school um our enrollment generally speaking kind of the story is uh quite stable uh Dr pra um did the enrollment report for us over the summer that was a a brief report than maybe going into a deeper report you might remember on that enrollment study we had some conversation during budget deliberations we can go deep with the study um or have a more truncated uh quicker turnaround Dr proud does a more truncated version so we did that over the summer um we put that information out to the public and to the board long ago back in I believe in August um having said that um they're really like I said things are things are pretty stable if
130you look at Candlewood Lake in total we're down 19 as compared to last year uh whisk andir were up by four students and at the high school we're down by 22 again uh you already know this but I'll say it again we use October 1 as our uh that's that's for State submission they want you to use the state ask us to do the October 1 enrollment report that's because they know September is a volatile month kids and families are moving all around and we don't settle down until then so we took this snapshot on October 1st every single day enrollment changes there's someone who moves in and someone who moves out uh among 25 200 students um uh interestingly um on campus um we are looking we're down a total of 37 so 2531
131kids as of October uh 1st and again this includes prek um for special education students off campus you could see we've had this downward Trend the last couple of years and it continues um we're bringing more kids back um and we have 26 students uh in what we typically use as a general term outplaced um at a special program for their particular needs um grand total of students 2557 down 40 overall across the district um total students we have three particular areas that we always really look at our special education population our multi language Learners and our total free and reduced lunch uh total free and reduced lunches are kids are experiencing a serious disadvantage in terms of the poverty line um and so if you look at our free and reduced lunch um we
132are up 35 students that has been steadily uh and consistently uh increasing um frankly it's a major upward upward Trend it's a large percentage um our multilanguage Learners they continue to um uh be an increasing uh area or population that we need to service up eight in total that takes into account and I could get other information for you from Mr brao but kids are testing out of those Services as well each year so there's lots of kids who their first language at home is not English and so it's a much larger number than you see here but that number continues uh to increase and then in terms of special educ students with IEPs identified as special education down by 17 students overall um over over this year uh compared to last year um bill
133was at a workshop and was getting some percentages the state identification rate um is 177% of the student population on average uh in Brookfield 14% of our student population is uh there that percentage has been increasing over the last decade specifically since Co there's been more and more increases with learning issues and things of that nature um so overall that's the enrollment uh you could it's all broken down by grade this is uh will all be posted it's part of the minutes anybody can look at this it'll be part of the budget information Etc can we get a number on 504 kids in District absolutely the board would like me to do that I can certainly turn that around that's that's like to know yeah how many how many are transitioning from an IEP to
134a for absolutely the um I think you guys may have seen there have been several articles in the paper over the last two months about the numbers in Connecticut um that districts with the exception of like a couple I don't know South Windsor or something um the numbers are trending down um we really look to be stable compared to our neighbors yeah kindergarten surprises me with the younger kids I really am surprised by that very surprised interestingly and you know we're we're we're triangulating all the information we have what's our real experience what did we have on October 1st what is Dr proud to saying you know in years past we we literally Dave will talk to Lisa Ruggles Lisa what what's it really like at this time of year you know what what are
135you feeling here you know there's all those pieces that go into that um we get information out about kindergarten registration you know after the holidays and we get it to the prease but we send it out to all of our parents because they know someone somewhere who might be moving in or whatever we need to know that's something and I when I get the budget priorities and assumptions we really have to keep an eye on is kindergarten because you don't know a lot of kids right that were born before September one might not have even tried we didn't have too many can we attribute as much to that not not really no I think Dave what what was the do you recall generally what was the final number of kids total kids exemptions born before
136September 1st that ended up not coming this year that we knew about before September after September 1st excuse me yeah it's hard for us to know what the balance it was about 16 that filed for exemption um and a number of them were were admitted that's for sure um but more kids are moving in all the time that aren't school age yet we're waiting for that so um kindergarten is always one we have to keep an eye on um for sure absolutely we have to anticipate that number going up for first grade next year well that that's that's that's what we do kindergarten for more for more kindergarten no so like will the first grade number drop by 36 oh right yeah exactly because those potentially could be students in town that are seeking other
137options scholing they're coming at first grade right absolutely so we need to keep an eye on that and that's part of the principles getting this week getting their their budget plans in we look at the sections what are the recommended sections and so December 4th we'll have all you know where we're at there and we just keep monitoring and monitoring and monitoring um enrollment um can I make a quick comment it's not it's not really a question but when I looked at the free and reduced um and you drew attention to this too Dr BR but um when I looked at these numbers I mean honestly like that's pretty the standout number for me on this page I mean we have gone up 6% in the last four years and so I think that's as
138you mentioned like those students are at a severe disadvantage so when we're looking and considering our performance reports we also need to consider the demographics of this town are changing and we're seeing that in our students so you know socioeconomic status is like a a very strong correlate of academic performance and I think we just need to keep this in mind because the data is right in front of us and I mean we're we're looking at like 2% a year growth so that's that's pretty significant Brookfield is our student population is much more diverse and socioeconomically uh much more disadvantage I mean that 668 out of 2500 that's a a very large it's what over 20% yeah yeah there you go the map there it is 26% it's a large quarter of our kids are
139disadvantaged y so some may be in multiple groups right you might have a multi language learner who also qualifies for special education who also is a who also disadvantage yeah you've got why that group needs to that point have we ever considered providing breakfast we have and that's something we probably a year ago started to talk about with the principles and um it's one of the considerations we haven't gone deep into that discussion because it demands planning but we can um velop a plan like that that's something we we've worked on the how can we do it and then we just haven't followed through on that yet that's great cuz there's so much research that says like breakfast and starting off the day with that ruol could really make a difference in how they are
140able to function throughout their day so that could be and not to be a downer on that there is also a supervision issue with that and so what can we afford in terms of we have lunch monitors and would we have breakfast monitors and extra people before classes start and then looking at collective bargaining agreements when people can start so there's a lot to making that happen Chartwells would have to make sure they have the Personnel to do that so there's a lot of planning uh again while sometimes things from the outside seem like you could snap your fingers and make these things happen you know we we're moving an aircraft carrier when we're moving an organization the size of our so you know you have to plan the turn and the turn takes time
141so it's good to know I've been oh yeah no we we we we are empathetic to the situations our families find themselves in there's no no doubt about it so anyway thank you everybody all right let's go then to just quick question that -3 or minus 3 that doesn't necessarily mean we brought three students in house right it doesn't necessarily mean that but there were students brought back this year because there's always a shuffling right some students move out of District some students move in but other students who are our Brookfield kids who are outplaced actually came back that actually happened on actually the finance committee the report that I last time but not this time has like a little blurb about it because we talked about it in committee so you want to look
142at that I have and we always want to be mindful and very careful when we talk about that because we can personally identify personally identify a student just by talking about a particular program or a town that a school is in could actually identify students we need to be very very mindful of that okay okay thank you for comments M all right so let's move to the um home school report um Mrs farious hi Deb good evening I'm here to share the 2024 2025 home school report the district uh prior to the start of each school year uh families of students were whom have knowledge of home school thank you Seth so good evening I'm here to share the 2024 2025 homeschool report for the district U prior to the start of each school year
143uh families of students for whom we have not knowledge of homeschool status are sent letters inclusive of uh notice of intent for instruction of student at home forms um in the letter we request families to complete the form and send it back to us uh this notice is a suggested procedure um as outlined in uh Connecticut statutes and guidelines um currently our current data shows that we have currently eight students being homeschooled in uh Brookfield the eight students identify as being homeschooled will come from eight different families um for the eight students um we did get two notices of intent return to us and um the families of six students did not respond to the request for the information and um the statute does not mandate schools to monitor or follow up um with that
144um in the current data suggests that in um the district we have um one student in fourth grade two in sixth grade one in seventh four in 12th and that is the home school report thank you DP all righty right thank you are there questions no right let's move then to theise report um from Dr man all right thank you very much um so this is an annual report that we go over with the board uh and as Dr burill shared um with the enrollment report um you know this is uh something that we go based off of October 1 um the cape committee reviewed uh BHS class sizes at the time when uh in September but that was based on even prior I think I was based on data in the first week or
145two of school um and so particularly at the high school things are very fluid things change a lot particularly in the first month of school um as students are kind of settling into their schedules and changing in classes and um you know kind of working around that um but with that said you know currently we have um uh 1,087 students at CES I won't go over all of the other stuff that Dr BR already went over um but that looks like it's mainly due to you know a drop in in our kindergarten over the last year for a variety of reasons I'm sure um we currently have eight sections um and you know kind of continuing that postco uh uh learning needs Focus particularly with our earliest learner um making sure that we are meeting
146their needs we continue to have as we did last year a par educator in each of the classrooms um and you know one of those one of the reasons for that is we're still kind of waiting to see how the the dust settles with the new kindergarten legislation to see if people um you know going into next year are going to uh change their enrollment or you know have that come back up to the kind of more average of 155 or 160 um which is what it has been for the last couple years um and so we'll see how that kind of shakes out um and just kind of continuing through you know I'm not going to read through every single detail you folks have had it for a couple days um so certainly I'm
147happy to answer questions and we have the um principles here to answer questions um but you know as we kind of analyze this we are analyzing these sections at each one of the schools at the elementary middle and high school to see where based on next year's enrollment if we will still continue to need the number of um classes for example at CES you know currently we have nine nine classes uh classrooms in third fourth and fifth we'll see if everything kind of Trends up if we're going to need that the same number of classroom teachers or if we'll um work things around maybe adjust down if there's an enrollment bump in you know a different grade um so that's what we're kind of con constantly monitoring doing our best to forecast and then obviously
148planning around what um who we actually have um in the schools and in the classrooms um at whis caner uh uh the total enrollment is roughly the same again a little bit up but generally um the same and um you know you can see the various uh sections that are um within you know the guidelines uh and then um a little bit a few that are outside of the guidelines um you know kind of all the way through and Mr Renda has um differentiated between the the the core subject classes of six seven and 8 versus the unah the elective classes so to speak uh the um the uh middle school and as a reminder last year there was an adjustment when the fifth grade uh moved to CES there was an adjustment in the
149um the schedule and so that unah uh has a little there's a little bit more um equity in the way that those uh classes are seen um and as a reminder we are at Cape looking at um the Spanish language program kind of K8 that's kind of one of our focuses over the course of this year to see not only uh about uh proficiency and the experience that kids get but also kind of just how the the uh content is delivered how much you know time they have in uh that particular subject um as we move on to the high school uh as Dr BR already said that we're down a few total uh students these things these you know class the grades kind of always fle Flex a little bit particularly throughout the year
150as um students you I was thinking as Mrs fer was talking about those four students who are seniors right now who are homeschooled sometimes people come back mid year through um you know their their senior year so that they uh you know have they they have the Comprehensive High School graduation experience sometimes they don't so um but as the board of Ved is kind of aware um you know these credits credits at the so for the high school um obviously credits are uh are determined the the graduation requirements are set by the state um and the Board of Education can always have higher you know have more they just can't have less uh or you know a less rigorous graduation requirement um and the state has over the last 12 years really adjusted things um
151in a variety of ways uh for about 12 years ago um they set uh an expectation of um higher number of credits they went from 20 uh you know kind of Carnegie units to 25 for the class of 2018 and then that kept getting pushed back and that's when the adjustment was in math from 3 years to four years and World Language came in for two years then they rolled it back to one year there have been a variety of different adjustments um for the class of 2023 back in 2019 um actually I think the men the state department said it in 2018 um they kind of decid rather than having things focused by subject Area English you have to have four years social studies you have to have three years including American government and
152C Civics math you have to have four years science you have to have three years um they just split things into kind of two larger pots and have Humanities and stem Each of which one at one initially were nine and eight and then they went to N9 and n and then there is the PE and health which is there's two credits requirement um and there's a couple other requirements in there um prior to that switch uh Brookfield had a four-year credit requirement for math for example so there has actually been the same expectation of credit requirements um pretty pretty much for a while in the history of Brookfield and that's one of the reasons that um as has been brought up a couple times you know these math sections have kind of floated back and
153forth and many of them have been over the board guidelines um and so that's something that we you know definitely have to look at as we are preparing the budget as um you know Mr Banda had talked had long conversations with um all of us all three of us up here over the summer to really kind of think about you know in light of where we are with our uh scores but also just in terms of scheduling you know he did a lot of the scheduling this year um what the needs are of the of the students um not just in SC in math but also in science also in culinary also in business um you know and that's one of the things about being a comprehensive High School uh principal is that you have
154to go based off of your requests as well as your requirements and making sure that students in their scope and sequence 9th 10th 11th and 12th are getting the great you know the the classes that they need a 10th grader who hasn't had personal finance would take if transferred in will have to get in before a nth grader would get in because they have fewer time you have less time to to make it up if they were to not pass and it's a graduation requirement so there's a lot of uh you know there like a lot of moving Parts when it comes to building a comprehensive high school schedule um one of the things that we're also going to be looking at at Cape is uh kind of how many kids are uh and working
155with um The College and Career councelor Nicole Usher how many kids are taking those four years of math even though it's not necessarily required for graduation but the expectation of postsecondary Institutions is that kids take four years of math um many times it's that they take three years of a lab science not just three years of science um oftentimes it's at least three years of a World Language sometimes four uh so depending on what the students are interested in in pursuing and where they're interested in going um has a huge impact on the class sizes and on the schedule um and you know we also have to look kind of for Trends both historically but also forecasting you know I think I've I don't know if we've spoken about it here but we have a
156lot at Cape about the fact that our physics numbers have been uh our sections in physics have been Chaka block full you see that in this um in the report we have a um a largest class at 25 students in a science class that's actually over the guidelines the national guidelines for a lab science they're they're pretty much set at 24 for safety purposes and and that kind of thing because they are Labs um but if we're trying to do our best to offer you know as many students spots in these classes um that's kind of where we are and um Mr Hill is actually teaching a section himself this year even though he's math certified primarily he's also has a physics certification or science certification rather um he has taken on an extra section
157so that we could run an extra section of physics um where you know administrators don't normally uh take on that uh teaching responsibility that day-to-day teaching responsibility um so the last thing I want to kind of draw your attention to um is and we talked about this at Cape and I believe talked about this last year is uh the last page which is the appendix and so these are the board of ed class siiz guidelines um and you'll notice that they were approved by the Board of Ed um on November 18th in 2009 we just went over the uh an enrollment report and um our district is very is a very different District than it was in 2009 um in a lot of ways right we're a different we're in a different Community we're a
158post-pandemic we um have different graduation requirements we have different needs of students we um and so my recommendation is to the board is to um consider and this may seem like a theme but an ad hoc committee that really takes time to review these class sizes it's something we spoke about at Cape um and I so I would just um recommend that there are a few you know if the board saw it fit um for a few people to review um you know kind of what the expectation is for uh um the demographic that Brookfield has the size of uh the district that Brookfield has the you know the capacity that we have keeping in mind that you know we are going to be building a budget in the next month um this may not
159get adjusted by then and that's fine um but it just seems prudent that 15 years later we might want to consider you know what has happened the the ad hog committee that you're suggesting would be to look at the guidelines themselves right to actually and and we may find that you know things are great and we just want to keep them as status quo or we may want to increase guidelines in some areas decrease guidelines in others um you know this is but this is something that definitely has an impact on the um scheduling uh and so it's you know in other districts sometimes it's codified in contract um it's not in this District but it is something that is directly under the purview of the board so and keep in mind you're right I
160mean it has been updated since 2009 but you know some of these ranges I feel that are appropriate or developmentally appropriate for the given schools or whatnot um but I think we do have to keep it in mind that that's not going to this is not going to be solved no by the right but by next not by for budet correct it's also like not what we've been practicing right I mean like have like this range and we have a Target but really our Target is like the max of the range and that's like what we've been kind of doing so I I don't know like these guidelines have kind of like just irked me a little bit for years but so I I do think it would be long overdue to like get some
161fresh eyes on it and really like look at it in depth yeah would it be are you are you suggesting that it be a committee just made up of board members or would we bring in other members of the administration or how like how would we I feel like we would need advice School level right like recommendations advice the principles like they're yeah I think that you know because the board sets these guidelines as part of um you know of a board purview um then obviously it would have to be an a committee of the board to change anything on here but certainly we would bring in you have recommendations absolutely yeah I mean I think that there's you know when we we spoke a little bit about this and and certainly members of the
162cape committee can chime in when they you know as they their thoughts um but you know getting kind of current practice across you know getting similar demographic reference groups and of size um as well as per people expenditure you know districts um and looking at how they do things and um and then also looking at current you know a variety of the you can find research to support you know a variety of different uh perspectives I think looking at all of them is is the I mean I wouldn't make you read a whole T bunch of articles but um I can summarize a lot of the information for you um but then and then also talking to our our principles and seeing what it is that you know we what are the challenges what are
163you know there's there may be differences in terms of the um different areas obviously you're not going to you can't just set a you know the guidelines for BHS say 9 to 12 range 9 to 21 Target 20 as a comprehensive High School principal that doesn't that kind of thing doesn't give a a ton of information because it depends on if you're talking about a PE class or a band class or a finance personal finance class or you know a co-taught uh co-taught English class for nth graders you know so there's there's so many different variables yeah and and to piggy back off that so and that's all conention on the supports that we have in place right so um a range at 17 to 20 at CA um Kenwood Lake Elementary is you know
164what supports do we have in place if we were to raise that to really support more students in a classroom right um you know our srbi or RTI whatever you want to call it um our levels of intervention interventionists right you know to kind of support that because reality if you have a parah in every kindergarten class well then maybe you can consider raising that class size and that was a that was a topic a couple of years ago the teachers themselves said hey we'll take a few more kids in the class if we can get some parah help they really were for that so yeah great so I would say whatever the whoever um is on the ad hoc commedia I would recommend at least having like a lower elementary and Upper Elementary Middle
165School right teacher and right in fact that's one of the nice things about these guidelines is they already kind of create that structure for right you would just probably do K2 and 35 um so with the ad hoc committee I understand that that's going to be long term but this budget cycle are you looking at I mean first grade and third grade in particular I mean seven classes are over we're looking at everything so and then we have you know I just can we utilize some of these pirat in the kindergarten with 15 kids to support a first grade class that may have and I think those are the detail conversations that happen at the elementary level and so while they're assigned to kindergarten there might be a need in the first grade class so
166for an hour or two a day that PA gets moved and is over here to be very candid um sometimes the kindergarten pairs Dave will would would tell you that if there is a you know 12 teachers uh and six pairs out on a day which happens um and I talked about attendance over the summer one of those pairs might get pulled to cover a class you know because they're more regular Ed if you will they're not assigned to a specific student or set of students so there's there's a lot of day-to-day operational game time decisions that need to be made to make sure we have supervision of students at a the most basic level right this is really this um this report is an opportunity for the board to kind of just get a
167sense of okay so now right if we come to you with requests or kind of like wants versus needs you have some context and parameter for those requests so this sounds like it uh could have some legs to it is there a motion on the floor to set up an ad hoc committee to study uh class siiz guidelines so move I I was going to say you just made it second um great as so for discussion I know that at least in Cape I've been um kind of signaling to Sarah that wouldn't it be great for her to head up something like this doesn't have to be decided right now but but let's let's decide if as a board um do we want to um well is there more discussion on this do we want
168to set up an ad hoc committee to study class sizes yeah yeah right so all in favor I I it is passed unanimously great um so uh maybe Sarah and uh Dr man and I can be in conversation about who look like um Sarah I would I would definitely join that group with you I was I was thinking about the other one but there it appears to be very full can I just suggest to or like mention that if as we're making the committee if we're talking about pulling if we're talking about dramatically changing the structure of a classroom like pulling Paris from kindergarten that we include those teachers in that conversation not just necessarily like well I think those are like oh yeah those are operational operational LEL but in the overall discussion right
169if we have a kindergarten teacher if we're if that's one of our main goals we need a kindergarten teacher to be like wait wait wait this is why right like if like whatever the main discussion is I feel like we need to make sure we have teachers in on those the the daily ramifications of so when I mentioned when I mentioned kindergarten I just was talking about like an hour here if you have a child that may require some extra help in math interventionalists can't get there can up you know PA read with them or I'm not talking about pulling them completely um and and just just as an example with the the last ad ha hat committee we had which happened to be healthy school start times um we had um lots of uh
170variety of teachers and coaches and things like that including Mr Baldwin our athletic director who also is the health and PE coordinator you know on that and you know we had guest speakers in and we we we really did a lot with so this is the kind of thing Stephanie definitely need our teachers on this absolutely teacher Voice have to be um before you move on it has nothing to do with the ad hoc committee but just about um the class size guidelines in general um kind of a little bit related to Aaron's comment um I know it might be like a little too early to let us know if you have anything planned in the budget but I'm I'm looking at like I mean like the high school like those sections that are really
171over like even just adding teachers that we're looking at half a million dollars to a million dollars in teacher salaries so like we going to see giant prises like that so to be very honest with you I'm I'm I'm not going to tell you everything because I'm not there yet um the like I said the principales and department has just got their budgets into central office uh really not even into me and Anna yet really to Casey just so she can start to collate things we are scheduling our meetings for next week the three of us with each principal um and our department head so you know so Bill's part of that Etc with his budget and we work that through with the guidelines like we do every single year um we are really um
172and I I uh put it right out there um in the uh assumptions and priority document where I think we have a potential reallocation opportunity um but to be very candid to your point with every teacher that we add not reallocate but with every teacher that we add we've typically used the step sevenish range of salary um so we're looking in that7 $75,000 range for salary and then we have to think of the health benefits so you're looking at close to $100,000 for every teacher should we add on average so that's something people need to think about um in preparing the budget presentation already and thinking about some things I also show where we've reduced uh positions over the years you know we we never just net add we you know um we might in
173aggregate ad but we're always trying to reallocate or reduce and we look at particular programs positions are they still really necessary what do we need to do do they represent uh value in the eyes of the community do we feel like we're getting the results do we actually see results um so all that goes into consideration but it it's a human capital business it's very expensive 80% of our budget is the people but I'll go over the budget assumptions and priorities so you you know exactly like for the last 10 years that I've been here everybody knows this is exactly what the superintendent's thinking which kind of gives you a forecast as to those things we're going to be seeing in the budget recommendation in early December okay and then we'll deliberate as we go
174one thing that you need to think about I think Annie you were about to talk about that um if you wanted to pipe in speak for you go ahead no I was just going to say that you know one of the things about um looking at high school sections in particular was uh is that you know while you we we can there are a variety of ways of um addressing High School sections and and kind of simultaneously or on opposite side of the same Co coin um it's not as straightforward as um adding a teacher or not adding a teacher because in the elementary school you know if you have a certain number of kids and divide them by eight or nine then you know that what your average is going to be um at
175the high school if you have AP Physics and that is a Singleton I'm just making that up it is not but it's a AP cem which we didn't run this year because we only had three requests and so it would have been a Singleton and then you also have an AP Chinese class and it's all and they happen to be Singletons and they're at the same time kids just can't get into those right so or if they're one if they're block one and then block three is um AP chem then all the kids are going to be that are taking those two classes that that is a kind of waterfall effect on how the rest of their schedule works so it naturally creates bumps in different other different sections all of a particular class um
176and so that's why it is a huge Matrix that so that that's why it's not quite the same as just you know saying we're going to add a teacher we're not going to add a teacher we may need a section or two in which case we could put out a point4 FTE or we could ask teachers first if they would be willing to take on an extra section to get paid that differential and if not then try and then if not not run the section right I mean that's we are not going to ever be at a spot where we are we are satisfying the requests of all the students at the high school at any one time we just don't have they don't have the time yeah in their schedule and we certainly don't
177have the room in many of the classrooms MH so that's one of the other reasons I really want to look at that class size report because again that range 19 to 20 um if it's not in one of these elective unah classes it doesn't mean that 21 is actually the appropriate size um you might need a CL you know a class may be appropriate at 27 28 in one content area for one particular course of study but might be more appropriate at 15 or 16 um you know if we want to do a science research program that you wouldn't want more than 15 or 16 kids if they're going to be out doing you know doing a like this career and accelerator program we may have to have a cohort for that so there's so
178many things that we can look at but it needs to be a little more fleshed out than what's on this paper but I think Jo might want I think we about say simp no I was just going to say um well the continent areas that we look that we're looking at are not Singleton right it's math um and the numbers that were high are freshmen or sophomores taking those classes essentially and then um Mr Hill said those numbers are going are have been continually growing in physics mhm for the last years yeah numbers in French so these aren't like Singleton classes but I understand what you're saying um my point was more that it's just you can't just add a teacher and say we're going to satisfy you know a whole a whole department necessarily
179at the same time I think a value statement needs to be made we would relish any opportunity we can and public support to have 15 to 20 kids in every single class at the high school that is not a reality but that would be you know we want that and run all the sections and do all the opportunities so it's it's a a balance of PR priorities and dealing with the reality and the realities of the constraints that we are faced with we but we get it and we're going to you'll you'll see Mr band has been working on this since it's been a board priority we discussed it in the spring uh worked with Mark RightWay in the summer on this he's been working on it um and his team as we in his
180team and as we talk about um the high school budget um you may you very well may see a recommendation for an FTE or two or three I you know I don't know I'm waiting for that analysis for what he thinks but it also is contingent on program studies coming out and all the requests uh so you know December 4th is very different than perhaps um what Mark knows on March 4th based on um requests for the following year so there's there's just so many moving parts so we just need to be open you said before what the colleges are looking for right right the increased demand for the Sciences for years the math World Language things like that yeah yep well speaking of requests um let's move to so thank you everyone um thank
181you Casey's uh presentation about the uh is it one year or year one Capital project it's one year and it's year oh it's year two it's year two of a 10year capital Improvement plan but it's one year of capital requests so um news flash I will not be a asking for an ad hoc committee this evening so I'm sorry to disappoint you I'm very sorry supposed to be the trifecta but I would invite you all um so okay so we're going to talk about Capital requests um this evening we're going to start um very high level 40,000 uh foot perspective here and you have all the slides there I passed those out um if you want to follow along it's it might be easier than looking at the screen um so we're going to start
182uh high level um and this is also for those members of the community that might be tuning in for the first time and and looking at how we address Capital needs across the district um I thought it was really important to recap um the fact uh that we uh the board uh very astutely commissioned a a building condition study um in 2023 uh Mark sakubo came in and went through um with the fine tooth comb uh both the middle school and the high school um and produced building condition study reports um which included 10-year uh strategic Capital investments in order to update the buildings keep the facilities running so that they can continue to serve the Brookfield Community um for for decades to come um so those building condition study are the foundation of the
183requests that you're going to see tonight um and they are the foundation for the 10-year Capital Improvement plan for both the high school and the middle school they also are the foundation for what we're seeing as a five roughly a 5 5.6% increase in our operating uh maintenance budget overall maintenance budget for the for the district um and uh that is to address other needs that came out of this building condition study that can really be more ongoing maintenance um that we take care of In-House so um we don't anticipate an increase in that operational expense uh over the next few years but we do expect to maintain the operating budget uh for the maintenance department at that higher level so you'll see years 1 through five of the capital Improvement plan really focuses on
184key infrastructure uh Mechanicals and building envelopes so you're going to see a lot of the same things at whiner as you do um at the high school for roof Replacements architectural and engineering design studies Window and Door Replacements heating system upgrades HVAC unit Replacements um and Replacements of O underground oil tanks and then there are some items that are um more specific to uh the high school and more specific to whiner so um year one um thank you to the Brookfield uh taxpayers uh year one of this Capital Improvement plan was uh approved at referendum um and taxpayers approved uh support of 2.2 uh 2.2 a little over $2.2 million of repairs and upgrades to these facili so thank you again to them um so you'll see on the on the bottom here we are
185at you year two um the overall request for Capital um for Capital funding this year is two 2,364 220 um and then the out Years you'll see in years 3 through 10 are all estimates and those are just estimates based on the building condition study what you'll see what you'll see is that um there are additional requests that we're going to that we're bringing forward um we met with uh building principles to find out what are what are some real immediate needs that maybe didn't come out of the building condition study but um that you see as a need for your buildings and so those are will be incorporated year-over-year um important here I know it's hard to see on the screen um but you you will have access to this um this spreadsheet but
186important here to note where we are in the 10-year Capital plan and the fact that um you're going to see similar requests year-over year so we you're going to see requests for a rooftop unit replacements for HVAC systems you're going to see requests for roof Replacements you're going to see that again next year um so there's a very strategic way that um rather than replacing everything all at once we're trying to spread it out address the the most aging you know failing systems first um so that it is not you know a one-time huge hit to taxpayers but it's more manageable over time and then this is the same here I'm just highlighting here where you're going to see multiple requests over years um so as I said um the main focus is Mechanicals and
187envelope uh 85% of the year 2 projects are informed by the building building condition study and 77% of these um $2.3 million requests um go towards critical infrastructure such as um a water supply a public water supply for whis skiner um HVAC upgrades and roof Replacements so I'm going to get into the the details of the um of the request themselves and the the feedback that I did get from the facilities commit which thank you all for listening to this last night um and a member of the community as well that attended um is that there's no need to go into Super detail into each and every single request partly because of the way that this presentation is laid out which you'll um all get a copy of all of the information is clickable links
188in here so if you want to see a what you know a closer picture of this if I can use this um of the gym unit ventilators that are going to be replaced you can click on that and get a um you know much more up close and personal um I can't use this Mouse uh picture any any anywhere you see a link on the request side of the of the dollar amounts um you can click on that and see the um the cost estimates directly from the building condition study from Mark SBO and more details about what will go into that um into that that request and that repair um so all that information is there but in brief um the high school we're looking at replacing the the unit ventilators in the gym
189which um do provide heat not air conditioning um they do provide heat and you know circulating the air um for that for that large space unit ventilators class these are classroom unit ventilators um so we have a capital plan in place for each year of the 10-year plan to replace two unit ventilators um in the classroom and there'll be a priority list of which ones need to be addressed um first uh rooftop units those are HVAC units the one that we're we're looking at for next year at the high school is the um the HVAC unit the rooftop unit over the guidance swing as you recall we did replace the guidance Wing roof last year um and the the the um the unit that's on top of that roof is is very much at the
190end of its useful life um and then this this next request for $25,000 for um an increase to the engineering design um uh funds that we requested last year and were approved so if you recall last year in our request was an engineering design for AC air conditioning throughout um any parts of the building that currently don't have air conditioning so we want to see what is a strategic way to invest and to get the whole build all of the buildings both at the high school and the middle school um fully air conditioned what we've come across is that there is also a need especially here at the high school um to look at the heating system um interestingly enough um the building condition study didn't alert um the boilers for needing replacement in the
19110-year um span they were still within their um estimated useful life and there's not a lot of um detail on like the age of these systems but but based on their expert opinion of of assessing the equipment at that time um they anticipated not not needing to be replaced in reality we have found um as the as uh the the facilities committee understands full well um that we do need to replace um these boilers we we there's three boilers um in our in our Boiler Room one is fully operational another one is op is operable um but it does have a crack in one of the units um it does leak outward so it can still run and it can still function um but not ideally and then another third um unit is um completely
192offline so um so we need to replace those part of the problem is that these are steam boilers and so I don't I know if you've um there's you've heard there has been a little an issue um in the beginning of this heating season with some areas of the of the high school being being cold um this is because of the heating system itself the Steam Heat is a very ineffective um heating system in some cases it takes um uh pipes that are upwards of 12 in in diameter to push the steam through to get to the place where that needs to go in the classroom to heat the room and as that Steam Heat travels throughout all the the plumbing throughout this um this building it's emitting emitting heat as it goes so there's
193areas of the building that get very very warm even though it's not calling for any heat and so right now in this time of year when we have mornings that are 36 Dees and then we have afternoons that are 80 degrees if we were to leave those boilers running we would we would be hotter than we are right now um we would so we have to manually turn these boilers on and off on during this time of year sort of like this dance of you want to get it warm enough but then you want to shut it down fast enough so that it doesn't overheat in in many areas of the building and so what this uh request here for 25,000 does is include an analysis um to get an engineering um design plan to
194redo that system right now about about a third of the building is still op operating in the different classrooms and areas of the building with the Steam Heat the the rest of the building has um um gosh right it's it's right it's hydronic but it there's there's converters there's converters that convert the steam to hot water and a hydronic system so that's great so this design plan would hopefully would would come would would inform us in a very strategic way on how we could potentially PE meal that do we have to address Plumbing first in in one year and then do the bo ERS in the next year um and I don't know what that would look like but this design plan would inform that work and so again as Dr BR stated it's sort
195of like moving moving you know an aircraft carrier we know that there is a problem but we want to be really thoughtful and strategic about how we address it long term we don't want to put in a request for $700,000 for a steam boiler which is they're they're they're huge dinosaurs they're very very expensive and they're they're highly inefficient so if we can come up with a plan to to replace them with hydronic boilers which are much smaller much more efficient much more efficient not as expensive um we think that is a worthwhile way to go um it just will take probably two years out to to actually complete that work so that's what that study um that those funds do any questions on that yeah um so that would mean then that um we
196would be adding some sort of significant investment to in like year four five for whatever the stud stud this recommends correct correct and that's and that's the thing that's why there are estimates and we can you know even when even when putting together this year two request list there were there were things like the seminar room I'm sorry um that were originally going to be proposed in this year too but but understanding the needs and the more immediate needs we you know we have to I'm sorry Dean is looking at me we have to prioritize um we have to and it would would be wonderful for to ask for it all at the same time but we also want to be you know aware and and and thoughtful of what the what we're asking taxpayers
197to fund here um so but yes Rosa that would that would that would inform future years of the capital requests okay um okay whis skiner you're going to see a lot of same rooftop uh Replacements um there's there's different size units here at whiner and so we're replacing one large one um and a small one um different sizes unit ventilators in the classrooms and then the big one for whiskin ear would be um uh the domestic water service upgrade to um hook into the Aquarian water source that will save um you know just provide you know City water to to that to that school and so we um Mr Caldwell has already started the ground groundwork for that um one of the first things you have to do is get a a letter of an
198intent I don't there's a specific name for it it's sort of like an intent to serve like will will they even give us the water if we were to go down this route and we do have that so we can you know we're moving forward with all that research and again we're starting now even though it's for you know next year um it just takes so much time to to get these large projects um going so um additionally envelope and exterior so envelope is like the you know what is keeping everything inside the building roofs and windows and doors um we're looking for additional roof Replacements at both whis skiner and high and the high school and we're looking at um we're doing some some repairs of some doors um these pictures I think tell
199a thousand words um of some you know door seams that are rusted and um we're just you know a budget of about 30 you know almost $31,000 to clean clean some of that up and fix those um interior Investments um as I as I shared last year when is Every time we're doing a roof replacement we also want to make sure that we're addressing the ceiling tiles in the inside of that space so that we're it's the whole complete um picture there that's getting upgraded so we're requesting additional ceiling tiles for both the whiner and the high school um there is a request for a gym floor replacement at whiner of the large large gym you can see the picture there it's um it's due it's due for a a facelift um and then two
200new items that are not in the mark Cubo report but in speaking with um Mr Renda um he has um suggested that we replace the um the curtain in uh on the stage that's in the cafeteria um I think you're I was going to say mustard yellow mustard yellow with picture really close you'll see how yeah mustard yellow with um many stains to go with it um there you go bunch is that good um this this well so this is a it's a placeholder so the placeholder that we have for the stage curtain is $20,000 that is that's just a a best guess at this point by the time we're I'm gonna you know the facilities committee is going to ask the board to to vote on this I'm hoping to have a much more
201firm estimate but I believe that is reasonable based on um the cost of replacing um a curtain at the high school this one's smaller so it's not as big but um and they all have to be flame there's so many standards for a c a drape that size in a in a school building so we will get a firmer estimate on that um but that's what we have in there as a placeholder and then carpeting in the main office um the main office is is not carpet tiles it's just one full large or a few large pieces of laid carpet and the adhesive underneath is really it's it's all it's dilapidated and the carpet's coming up and if you move things on the carpet it wrinkles and then it's tripping hazards and so it's I
202think it's do or would you say so Dean yeah okay many times and then yeah no yeah because of the Y so so so we have $20,000 um in the in the request for that um that is actually based on a 2021 um quote that we got for carpeting in that in that area I escalated I escalated the cost 5% in year one because inflation was pretty high then and then three years out until we get to um next year and then it also includes the cost of movers because there a lot of you know office equipment um and Furniture in that space and it's a it's a fairly large space so I did put in a budget there for the cost of movers to take that uh Furniture in and out technology Investments um
203these are um these these These are to upgrade the servers that house all of the data for our security cameras in both uh whis skiner and the high school um uh they are currently um over 10 years old and are at the end or P beyond the end of their uh useful life which um Mr Conlin has informed me that indust industry standard is 7 to 10 years um so an upgrade here will improve image quality it will allow us to maintain um data and footage for a longer period of time um and really save time you know these the the security footage is used for not just security but also investigative purposes um and when administrators are trying to do investigations and the you keep getting the circling and the circling and the circling
204um it's it's uh that's a storage issue and so we are um we're due for upgrade there those are um very very upto-date quotes as of today um for for those um upgrades server upgrades quick question on that um were those new or were they in the 10e those are new great question those are new they were not in the um they were not in the marus Cubo building condition study those were in conversations with um Eric Mr Conlin and I um and then the the last uh actually this is not the last ones but next we have equipment and vehicle Investments these also are not in the marks Kubo building condition study but um they are needs that we're that we're looking at um the floor scrubber at the high school um is I
205think it is 10 years old if I yep it's 10 years old um it has been repaired um a few times in the last few years um we did get a quote to refurbish it you know the entire piece of equipment and it wasn't it wasn't um much less than the cost to replace it um in completely so um the suggestion here and the request is that we replace the current floor scrubber with uh the rideon floor scrubbers that we have at CES which um we know them they're very very um efficient and they're it's a good piece of equipment so that's the investment there and then um the vehicle investment so we have a maintenance van it's it's a 2011 Dodge minivan um that our maintenance crew uses um we do a lot of
206In-House um mechanical repairs um of the building which requires going to you know supply houses and Home Depot and and getting a lot of equipment um and so that's what this van is used for um it's got about 171,000 miles on it um a lot of rust as you can see in the pictures around the frame um the front end um is going to need significant repairs um this year um if we were if we're to hold on to that much longer um and so the request here is to um consider replacing that with a uh Transit van which is intended for this sort of commercial maintenance work um and you know looking at used prices they're anywhere from1 15,000 to $24,000 for a used vehicle in the range of 68,000 to 27,000 miles um
207so that's the request there and then um aarin you mentioned the scoreboard so yep so there you go um so the athletic Investments um the scoreboard at the high school is uh over 10 years old about 10 years old um and the quote from the the vendor that that has come I think as recently as last spring to um repair this is is that it is on its last legs um and so the request here this is a a very recent quot quote from um uh Mr Baldwin uh of the scoreboard replacement for $53,000 um and then the next request is for a replacement of about half of the equipment in the athletic way um the PE uh weight room so this weight room is used not just for you know sports teams for lift
208and working out and things like that but it's also used very frequently by the PE classes at the high school so this is used by all students um and this would replace about half of the equipment which is um is is you know beyond repair at this point um the the the remaining um equipment that's in there U Mr Baldwin said is in is in Fairly good shape and with proper mainten can last you know seever several more years and then this is just a summary of um everything we just went through uh the the year two um Capital request lists um and then I have links so if you are curious and again you're going to get this so you'll have access to to all of this but if you want to see um
209this is the high school's uh building conditions study it's 170 Pages it has very very detailed reports of every item that they have recommended we we take a look at it's got all the pictures um and everything there so both of those are there and then um links to the the uh documents the 10year plans and the one-year request list as well and are there any questions I just want to see how there could be do great job Casey thank thank you very much I actually do have a couple good good good um so do we have so I've noticed that there's like there's a few other like new items that are on this list that are pretty significant that we didn't have in the 10-year plan last year is there does there exist some
210sort of like comprehensive list of all the mechanics all the things all the things in the district the capital Investments with like a projected end of useful life date on it where even if it's like in year 15 we kind of know when that's coming up so we see it at some point appear on the 10e cap plan and we don't get kind of like surprises surprise is a bad word but for all intents and purposes this relates to the town's Capital planning committee and so far they've been supportive of everything we've put on it but like having like big surprises so are we talking like technology investment like not just building yeah technology too yeah so like for like the servers um uh where was it umle yeah maybe it was like the yeah
211um there was like um yeah okay so like the the weight room equipment right so that's replacing about half the equipment right well when should the other half be replaced right is that within this 10 years because then maybe we need to like put that in there but it at least gives us like a much more accurate picture of the the long 10 of really what's needed in the 10 years you know so yeah I think that's a that's a fair fair question and a good point to raise and I can certainly work on that um to and and also to sort of like right cuz now we're in year two of the 10e plan but we're still ending at 10 years so what's in year 11 question right yeah so like the the van
212right that might not be until I don't know like year 18 but at least we have that sort of like okay this is the these are all our assets life cycle of these things so that we can kind of like project when it's going to finally appear on the your plan um no that's good feedback yeah Y and on that related to the town's Capital planning committee um that is getting started again great um I happily served on that committee as kind of both like just on the committee for the town's uh interest but I also represented the board's interest there as well I'm happy to do that again unless yes we accept um they'll probably be meeting you know regularly through January February is um so if that's something I said that in in
213Jess is there anybody else who would like to be on the town Capital well I served on it um too but it's much more helpful when someone's who's on the facilities committee is on it it is yeah that's a kind of plug that' be you I'm actually the chair so I get to assign you guys tonight security so I'm all aded out I have no more ad hocs available I mean I'm happy to like liaz closely with it does does help for somebody who's like constantly talking about facilities to be on that committee but do you feel okay with that no sorry no okay I don't know I'm I'm I don't know if I have the time commitment to I don't know that I have the oh sorry off I don't know that I have
214the like robust knowledge that you have I do in terms of like budget planning but the facilities aspect does really it's it's a good okay could you be available if I have yeah need a Lifeline cuz I I it it would be something i' would be interested in and I just feel like I would not we'd all be here to help the right you call me anytime okay all right cool so then be in the car'll be in the car if it needs me person I that's wonderful that's wonderful okay does this mean that we can move to the budget assumptions and priorities um there there is an approval in the motion Capital yeah so sorry timing yes at the um at the facilities committing last night I think the sentiment of the group was
215that um it's important for the the board the full board to have really time to sort of absorb this digest it look at it it's a it's a big Capital ask um and so I don't think there's any harm in terms because the capital committee is just getting started um to bring this and we can and if you have questions or you have um suggestions or anything like that please you know send them to Rob and and myself um and we can bring those up um for discussion at the next facilities committee meeting um and then hopefully the committee that that point can then move it um as a recommendation to the board for November sound good great thank you Casey y I think Wendy before we move on to the to the next piece
216um two things about Capital that are very important toward the end there just as a a reminder for everybody thinking back a couple of years when we worked on the boys locker room project the the the gym the fitness center was to be totally replaced we would have gotten new equipment that was all part of that original uh estimate bid proposal whatever we want to call that was you know way way too much and so we had to scale things back so so to your point Rosa there was a plan for replacing equipment so it's really not too hard to get that info and publicize it if you will from Mr Baldwin the other piece from Mr Baldwin um that um we were talk but actually with stepen Marsha in our Monday meeting when we
217were going over this um and I don't know Casey if you mentioned it last night but um there there may be a very generous benefactor um in the community that wants to support the scoreboard and perhaps half the cost of that scoreboard that was proposed um but that person can't act or probably won't come forward unless the whole project is approved and then would say hey we'll offset that kind of a thing so um it's not set in stone it's not set in stone but but we want you to know that we're always looking we're talking we're networking and we have a lot of generous people in the community that want to support and help different programs so that just putting it out there to everybody that's fantastic that's fantastic part of the glue for
218the community you got it um so budget assumptions and priorities all right so um this is we've been doing this for this is uh uh my 10th budget season with the board the board's uh Rosen Joy I think seventh or eighth budget we've been working on together so this is something you're very familiar with um budget assumptions priorities again this is a receiver report this isn't an approval tonight um what it is is basically the the assumptions is page one that is things that the board the superintendent the community needs to assume in running a comprehensive Public School System what you need to do okay and then we lean into after that the next two pages are broken down and are really priorities and so we've talked about a lot of those already this entire
219document goes right back to my August welcomeback slf fundamental prior document it talks about school climate it talks about teaching and learning and it talks about business and operations it's all right there and and it lays it out so there should I wouldn't expect there to be uh surprises on this tonight but certainly things to talk about and I there's a lot this is I think 10p Point font I am not going to read from this it's public information we're going to put this out as the budget blast I think we're ready right we can do it tonight probably so um if not tomorrow I know not tomorrow she did a wonderful presentation here I am just assigning more things you know I will be let's wait till tomorrow um so so having said that
220um let's start with the assumptions on the the first page so pretty straightforward making sure we're providing appropriate resources thinking about continuous Improvement um and flexibility um in the way we we operate based on changing needs and the things changing needs we talked about tonight um I think that the fifth bullet there representing value in the eyes of the community that's a big piece that's a lot of feedback that we get um whether it's uh public comment feedback feedback through email um feedback we get from our Administration our teachers our Paris uh the custodians Etc uh our secretaries um it's important um that the board's operating budget uh maintains um our commitment right to the intentional implementation of the Strategic plan that's the board strategic plan so we always go back to that we have
221the one pager to kind of always you know anchor everybody back to um establishing new programs remaining responsive to changing needs uh recruiting and retention the best staff we can um the fourth bullet down I want to emphasize there it's exactly what we were just talking about two reports ago seeks to maintain board approved practices concerning class size while adjusting Staffing patterns to ref excuse me reflect enrollment changes legislative mandates and Achieve efficiency so we've got to be very mindful of that um like I said um we'll be talking uh with the principles and department heads um next next week about their budgets and making determinations as we get ready for you know we're five weeks away essentially from me presenting the final my recommendation that we'll then work on as a together as a
222board and administrative team um so that's very important for people to know so that's kind of the class size piece it's it's right there in the assumptions um and then um we've got social emotional needs of kids we've got to be uh paying attention to that after school programming making sure our curriculum remains rigorous and up to date um we need to provide the technology infrastructure just talked about that with Casey right the for for the cameras was a big investment but all the technology infrastructure and we'll talk about a little bit of that in the coming Pages we need to meet all of the mandates state federal um for special education uh now School climate we said that's a that's a big uh push so all of that is there um and then there's
223contractual obligations U not only contractual obligation obligations like collective bargaining but contractual obligations for the technology agreements that we have for the security agreement you know we have United alarm you know there's there's escalation in all of these different uh vendors and contractors we work with to run our our school system we need to work with and so there's there's various contracts and fees and so forth um making sure that um policies and and practices of the board policies are supported uh with the proper budget and then all the efforts um with Cost Containment whether we're part of regional efficiency groups uh such as you know Fuel and technology and other things like that or looking for generous benefactors to help offset the cost of capital purchases as I just alluded to so uh a
224lot of things there that's the assumptions looking at priorities this is really the forecast of what we need to be thinking about that that's going to be coming forward the first is under teaching and learning there's a lot with technology technology is essentially digital tools is 1/4th of our strategic plan so you know one through I think uh one through five maybe there or one one through four there's a lot there with professional development and uh support digital uh texts digital tools Etc I'm not going to go into every detail because again you could read this yourself um number seven um specific to climate um there is a mandate within the legislation that you have to have a district climate coordinator and that person needs to be superint I just cleared this with legal today
225we got the final answer on this there's there's a little interpretation there so we wanted to make sure we were correct on it we have to have a climate coordinator that is either the superintendent or an administrator designate as the general climate coord coordinator um you all know that we have climate specialists at each school we have climate teams at each school already that's in the the legislation but we need someone to operationalize and support and I started to mention this earlier um the actual implementation of Investigations PD restorative practices and ensure that all of that is happening at this excuse me at the school level uh I'll talk more in December but we have a vision for a teacher leader position station for the majority of the day at the high school but then
226also is goes over to the middle school and supports the team there and also works with our team at the elementary schools and is constantly in contact monitoring and working through either me or a different administrator designate we haven't determined that yet um to make sure we're following through on that so that will be coming I don't anticipate um I purposely put here that we think through reallocation of existing resources we might be able to fund a position like this I say that in the in number eight as well because I don't want people to all of a sudden say oh my gosh we're adding all these positions we're really trying to do the best to contain cost and be as efficient as we can with programming and existing funds that we have and so
227we're being Innovative and creative in our thinking and those details would be presented in December um the other piece math is a big need we know that um so maybe class size is part of the answer at the high school um but we're looking at the elementary and middle school to add a math interventionist they each have a math interventionist we want to add another math interventionist at the middle in the elementary school um so we think we can establish that too through some creative financing there so just to let you know that's a high priority um making sure um as we know we mentioned it earlier following through on the correct recommendations in the Strategic plan for special education Mr B Mr Roland is really moving forward on that um making sure that CK
228our new K3 reading program remember this is year one of the state mandate to move to that program we need to fund at a minimum fourth grade the materials for fourth grade and then we need to roll we're thinking we're going to move right into fourth and fifth ideally um but at a minimum it has to the third graders need to go into fourth grade with the materials and the training for those teachers ready to go bilingual is a concern um while we're covering it um we don't believe it's the best way to go but there are no other people and that is a big part we lost a full-time candidate who was qualified and viable and there's not many of those around that are bilingual Portuguese um because we had funding for a halftime
229position um so the thought right now is we probably need to expand it to a full-time position um and also we probably it's probably uh uh an educated um estimate that there'll be more than 20 students needing uh bilingual instruction in the language of Portuguese come next year the way the Dynamics of the community continue to change as you saw in the enrollment report so we're still talking about that but it's a priority we need to be thinking about um and then of course number 12 monitoring kindergarten legislation and you know what is that enrollment going to look like next year with kids who didn't um uh register because of age uh they're born after September 1 uh in leadership very focused on engaging instructional practices and that culture of belonging this is really related
230to school climate um moving into making sure we have a welcoming uh culture of belonging it's a heavy emphasis and all the climate work that we're doing in addition to that um again year one of the teacher uh growth and support model and Anna talked a lot about that and the work that's continuing to happen with with our teacher team and uh the administrative support of that we really need to continue that work with our leadership team we just did a lot of teacher efficacy work yesterday at admin council with the team and continue all of that work going forward and not everything here um is something that needs a new budget or anything like that so that I I probably should have prefaced with that under business and operations uh our facilities and operational
231area um we really need to continue to invest in uh Chromebooks you'll see a lot I think we go down to probably number seven here with technology um our website plat form a lot of work still needs to continue on with all the um the the the potential of parents Square I think we're just scratching the surface um we do want to make a move and we'll talk more in detail about this with District issued Chromebooks for all students at whiner and at the high school right now about I could speak specifically to the high school because our point of emphasis this year with the cell phones was really on the high school and the the changing the culture there um about 20% of the kids um bring their own device and while that's great
232we're not fools we understand that kids could work around this the the cell phone rule through personal devices kids can get the text messaging and be on social media and again that detracts from their that's fragmented attention and so with Chromebooks they they're not able to access that so we'd really like to move in that direction um so this is kind of the first public conversation and kind of uh putting out of that particular uh concept and so Eric has some um ideas of how we can finance that without a major uh investment um uh given that there's the cycle over the the four years of the kids buying the the US getting the Chromebooks and pay we've got a whole plan in place um with service fees and things like that that we think
233would be very supportive of families and and not uh a hardship can I add one reason other reason um with the switch to to digital testing um between sat and AP um you know you have to have uh if a if a student has their own personal Chromebook it is not it is not viable it cannot support so we have to them a Chromebook anyway and it becomes a lot more difficult to shut the you know kind of to shut the server down or shut the computer down if it's a personal device in order to access What's called the Blue Book for sat or the you know the AP classroom for college board so it just makes it much more streamlined for when students have to do testing um so that's another big reason for
234it when you have students that require special devices are you going to are you going to provide those if the parents provided them think frankly I'm not going to be able to answer that at this minute right here great question again strategic plan committee working with Bill we'll work through all those details and Eric is a integral part of working with the special education department on technology um the other piece is uh the laptops are due with the middle school and the high school for replacement um so the we all the all the laptops for teachers um at CS are brand new they're they're only in the start of year two so we're working on that um display boards need replacing our technology strategic plan and the committee that Eric's got together um to to
235work on that Department's plan continue with shipment and goodwind policy Services um uh Steve and Mark they'll be they'll be back uh in in the next few meetings uh with some more information on how they're doing against the recommendations from um cic with the athletic review um other priorities going forward security is always a top priority we have we just had our security task force we were talking about that we did a uh kerma security and safety report um gosh at least a year ago now um that's our insurance company they did a free essentially security audit and they gave us a lot of information not only to um develop um techniques in terms of what we need to do with um training and uh human factor behaviors but also you can use some infrastructure
236support here and there so that's all been part of our plan we want to continue to work on those especially the training aspects human factor um just so people know they sent three uh adult males to each of the schools and tried to get in and and and we the principles were aware no one else was aware so um it was shocking for some people and they they wandered around and and they you know after they were in were they monitored and so we anywhere we can pull Coes we try to poke holes so we can then improve uh procedures so it was it was great and there was no major breaches um the report is available if you wanted to see it and read through it security task force went over it an executive
237session so um it's very helpful to have uh uh that so anyway in case you didn't know about that that's important to share with you what that is um continue to work with the town on on always upgrading our our fields and Facilities uh where Park and wreck is involved um evaluate and plan for maintenance of custodial Services that's always another area how do we continue to maintain our buildings clean our buildings um one thing that's very difficult and that's out there um we happen to do a report on attendance back in July we talked about the certified staff's uh attendance um there is rarely a day where we have all 19 custodians working whether someone has a personal day a vacation day they might actually be sick or injured um it is very challenging
238to have enough staff to make sure our buildings are are top-notch 19 custodians total for the amount of square footage we have is short of Industry standards Joy you'll remember we talked about this at great great uh with Hillyard um so we've really made do with that number um I'm going to talk with Mr calwell and Casey that you know I I don't want to have to go forward and constantly ask for more more and more I really I I loath doing that um so if we can be creative and find maybe some other solutions to that one of the things that worked during covid is there was a firm called Green life that uh was able to be on call to help us with the custodial Services again you have to be careful with
239collective bargaining you know and that kind of stuff because they could be taking custodial work but in these dire circumstances our custodians are looking for the support I don't think they'd fight fight us on that so if there's a firm like that that we can almost have uh some some budget money built in to support something like that might be a better way to go than trying to H hire a floater custodian although that's an idea that can work so there there's a lot of things we need to think about there um so if if we're bringing more uh asking for more funds I'll certainly bring that forward um and then building conditions as Casey went through all of that work um one thing here um uh Steve and I were Mr Dunn and I
240were talking about um he's finding the evolving need demands of uh Freedom of Information request on the town side um continuing to escalate um in addition to that there's uh kind of an expectation and communication needs of the public in terms of social media and the way things get posted um so the two of us were talking at one of our Monday meetings and he asked um if you know I'd be willing uh to entertain kind of a part-time position that maybe we can split between the town and the board um that we would have to flesh out more but I wanted to put it here we want to make sure we're communicating and we're we're also monitoring some of the activity on social media so we could stay ahead of the curve on what's
241going on in addition that someone we could train in Freedom of Information requests to help us with that I've asked for this in the past before it's something that is one of the first things to go out when you're squeezing the budget and I absolutely understand that um but the the town is actually talking about that need as well um so it is something that that I think we need to consider but again Steve and I would have to put together a plan for that and what that would look like before we just expect people to to support it in a full rationale I could tell you that rough estimate right now since August uh between Eric and I and a little bit of Casey and some other folks Mr Blanda uh maybe had one
242request we've probably spent 65 to 70 person hours responding to foi requests and that's not counting the few times we've had ask legal for some advice on how you respond to something to make sure we're redacting the proper amount of information um and and not putting out any uh personally identifying information of students or what have you so just FYI on that for everybody um and then um really revisiting um our business office and human resources department you may recall in this current year or halfway through the year last year into this current year we Consolidated Human Resources we're actually down to to uh two folks in human resources from 2.8 uh FTE there so while we Consolidated and I think it's functioning quite well with our new um uh supervisor we're very pleased with
243how things are going um what we're seeing is um uh the business uh department and the human res resources department it's like a a big van then diagram there are certain things that are clearly human resources and certain things are clearly the business department but then there's a big overlap and sometimes there's confusion and sometimes there's actual debate as to you know what belongs where or how do we interface what I'd like to do and Casey's going to research this over the next couple of weeks um we had Bloom Shapiro probably about nine years come in here and do a full overhaul uh audit of all of the Business Systems uh here and um that plan we got to all of the recommendation and that was a multi-page document there's a lot of great stuff
244there to make sure we had the proper financial controls um this is not anything to do with financial controls this is just business and operations how do we actually conduct our business and what belongs in what department and how could we develop some protocols perhaps that make us even more efficient and being from the outside they might see some things and give us some suggestions to find even more efficiencies so we're going to find out what a um uh get an estimate just to be a very um specific targeted study of HR and business in that interface so like to go forward with that as an investment um and so that's that's a that's the priorities as the superintendent sees it along with the assumptions um to get us ready for um I I have
245a question just to revisit one of those last items the number was sinking in for me regarding foi requests that you and your team have spent I'm sorry did you say between 60 and 75 hours estimated uh I I think around 70 on them up upside but we have to go back and kind of do some counting on that so since when since August that is that is probably not how the taxpayers would like our Civic dollars to be spent um foi requests sometimes have a very powerful potent important role in in having public activities be transparent in a democratic system that's that's a lot it's it just takes a lot of time you know and um it's important that you get the information out as quickly as you can to folks but there's just
246do you have the time to get to it one the man power to get to it and a person power and then the other part about it is yeah you have to you don't have a choice um but every hour you spend doing an foi request you're not monitoring classrooms you're not working with your administrative team you're not you know working on social media or whatever you might need to do you know creating a a a budget blast or whatever it sure that I was like so it is it is a lot of time and you know I've said this before so this is this is nothing new so um but I also understand that um while some districts can afford and feel it's a priority to have a public information officer or a public
247public relations liaison others don't put such an emphasis on it so that's what it is two years ago I think it was in there and then it we were doing it for redacting really because a lot of stuff had to be redacted at that point and then I guess it was just cut yeah so so and I and I think some of the policy committee folks with the heavy work they're doing have said can we get someone to be a administrator of policy right you know and I know saying it in just because it's just so there's just so much labor intensive work that has to happen uh in fact probably 12 years ago 13 years ago a part-time administrator position um it was an unaffiliated administrator was cut that was the policy person that
248was the Le on that was really since me coming in here Lisa and I really picked that up as the the the heavy lift and just in the last few months Casey has really kind of the she likes policy so she said hey I'll I'll kind of take on the mantle I was happy to give more of that work to her so um if anybody ever wants work I'm happy to give it away so you know that's the case so these These are important things and they're priorities for the district to move forward anyway um I did have one comment because I don't I don't see it on here or it might under something but um I had mentioned kind of the importance of maybe checking on The Residency status of our students is that
249falling under one of these some um so that that is an uh administrative function and so we are prepared um we talked about particular grade levels of doing a spot check on that our problem right now I mentioned that we we never have a full staff of custodians on any given day or rarely um we are short two secretaries so far this entire year due to workman's comp type injuries um and and leaves so we we just we're operating on a short staff so until we really can roll that out full that's something we've been holding on but we absolutely can do it once we have a full compliment of people and let's not forget I elim we we to make the budget work we took a secretary position away for this year so we're
250already down one and we think we can live with that but then we were short two other folks who are not with us so it's just hard to get that project started mhm and by project do you mean something more than just a spot check or well when when I say spot check that um minimizes what I'm talking about this this would be a check where we'd have we try to do it as automated as we can so we've got work to do there but we you need a human being to go in and check all of these addresses and so let's just say it's of course kindergarten that's the first year but then maybe there's a third grade we talked about some somewhere in the middle school and then somewhere in the transition to
251the high school and then maybe there's 11th grade as well after 2 or 3 years have we just talked about maybe just like updating a practice of like when we update annual information as parents like we have to upload like a utility bill or something that's something else we can do so we've talked about a bunch of different ideas but there so certain grade levels we were thinking about it um but the other part could be kind of the summer when you want to get your class list or your schedule maybe that's another way to do it so we've been toying with that idea but to be very C whatever decision we make our issue right now is we're we're just short staff to start the school year and tough tough time to you know
252in September especially getting all all these reports I mean this is all data heavy and people to put these things together so it's not you don't just click a button and things run off of Power School there's a lot of back work that has to happen but we value that we appreciate that feedback and and want to get going on that okay for sure Jo yes so some schools have the model of like a truey officer yes so that's what I was thinking about yes um so a try officer for address checking or just to check on student attendance well I think both yeah so they would do both so we've we've looked in I pitched an idea to some of my regional colleagues um it's kind of Fallen flat again because of tight budgets
253but Ed Ed Advance can help us with that kind of a service with like a private investigator type person that might serve in that role um yeah I'm just telling you what it is um so um again you want to be very careful to bring on employees the more employees you bring on you then have health benefit costs you have all the labor that goes into having more employees so if you can do things with Services that's that's sometimes the way to go um perhaps having a head of security that is divided by five school districts and they spend one day in each School District right something like that a truin officer um a private investigator that checks on addresses all of we can do all of these things everything costs money and so if
254the board has a super high priority they would like me to work on I'm all ears I'm always open to the feedback I'm sorry oh you want an ad hoc committee Aon there you go but I'm sorry dog I'm I'm not available Rob I thought you were going to be our truancy officer all right are there other questions about the um yeah just really quickly on the interventionist are they both can be full-time the ones you're looking oh yes these would be full-time certified teachers yes aome very important and and it would be an if it was approved in the budget and we posted it it would be open to even our you know our obviously our veteran teachers that are here if they wanted that position they could apply for that be a full
255interview process yep how big of an issue do we think it is what the residency like um hard to put it on a scale of 1 to 10 um I think we need to check and then we would know to be very candid with you you know you hear these things so and so said Somebody's you know when we hear these things the principles we have a standard letter we send out and say you know it's come to our attention that you may not be here you need to provide uh updated residents information and they either do or they don't if they do provide the information and it's satisfactory the administration checks it out and it's satisfactory um if it's not a lot of times people make a decision I'm just going to take my
256child elsewhere you know kind of be quiet about it and then there's the the place in the middle when we think about the mckin vento act and homelessness and there's a lot of um without getting into the the nitty-gritty affidavits that people could fill out and people could sign in leave Al attest that a certain child is full-time living with them um and you can't just go willy-nilly and deny that and so there's there's a whole hearing process that the board talked about it earlier with Mr Mooney um you might have to be a hearing panel for a particular situation um but but rather than citizens talk about it as a problem if they suspect a certain thing tell the administration let the team at the school know let me know we're not it's not
257going to fall on De ears we want to make sure all resources going to the kids who actually live here are supposed supposed to be here and there's no doubt about that so um if anybody knows you could quietly discreetly let us know we preserve the Dignity of everybody we don't not mean to anybody but we'll bring up the issue if it's a legitimate concern absolutely okay let's move then to Old business all right thank you everyone with final thank you Dr um final approval of [Music] bylaws I move that the board approve the following bylaws for the final reading as recommended by the policy communication subcommittee 9,000 9110 9120 9211 9212 9250 9253 9300 9314 9320 9321 9324 93 25.1 93 25.2 and second is there any uh discussion on this I actually have
258a discussion item on 9211 so when I was going through the shipment and goodwi version that we were said that we were going to adopt in our current policy the current policy does not at all refer to cause um and shiping and wind verion state cause although it's not at all defined so when cause is not defined it takes the dictionary meaning and by law it's a plain meeting rule so you're using a statute or a contract and not evidence provided which doesn't really make sense in that in this um bylaw to begin with so I would make a motion that the board Define cause as part of the ship and a good one um adoption of policy 9211 that States before voting on the removal of an officer a majority of the board shall
259pass a motion that cause for removal exist and identify the reasons for said cause second um so we have a motion on the floor to amend the language of 9211 um so um are I have something to say but I guess I should wait did other people have um I'm just trying to more thoroughly so it seems to me that cause is defined here it's not these four these four it's items say it's specifically Rel but means a which includes but is not limited to any conduct at ABCD so I think it's interpretation and so I looked at it I had an attorney look at it and cause does not appear to be reflected as what what cause is so if you leave it up to interpretation if it ends up going to court it
260it's moot because it's a dection like a dictionary definition which has nothing to do with what cause would be in this it evidence is not allowed so you're actually looking at a contract which you don't have or you're looking at a statute which so there's really nothing so I would think especially in relation to this there would be reasons and evidence should be submitted so I just think that cause needs to be defined that's my opinion okay my understanding though in looking at this is that cause is at least generalized here these four um these four descriptors of I mean it says cause which makes means a reasonable ground for removal includes but is not limited to yeah I mean I just don't think cause is defined enough and so how are you proposing again
261to Define it well there's nothing that states I think before anybody voting on the removal of of an officer a majority of the board should pass a motion that cause for removal actually exists is that part of and to identify the reasons for cause is that okay so I got a little bit um jumbled between the the existing board um policy and the Shipman one uh Shipman one has a hearing this but this one doesn't have a hearing yeah ours doesn't the Brookfield version doesn't Define cause there's nothing in our Brookfield policy currently this this this is a this is not a shipment in goodwi policy this is a ship why confused so our bfield policy has nothing as far as cause so I understand I'm uncomfortable with going from one to the other with
262cause not being cleanly defined okay so what I guess what I'm not understanding is like to me it says cause which means a reasonable ground for removal includes but is not limited to any conduct that specifically relates to and affects the administration I mean I won't read all four of these but it is quite specific in terms of what the board should Define cause as an open-ended and if it ends up in litigation that's where the problem's going to be because the definition of cause for a legal definition is not relating to any of this and that's what I'm uncomfortable with so this this language came from Shipman and I understand that no no I'm just I'm I'm pointing out that we have in the policy committee made it a point to trust the lawyer
263have like with the policy we've wanted to adopt it as is knowing that the lawyers have presented it and written it so I don't see how I I can understand where you're coming from but I don't necessarily think that it's that I I know how to say I I think that I get where you where you could go with that but I don't think that that's where this is and I think that the the recommended and required policies from shipment and Goodwin as a whole we've trusted and and we've given a lot of weight to so I'm not sure that I think that's true but when there's interpretation like we're not adopting one with public comment because we're not trusting what shman and Goodman say that's not true we're we're we're reviewing that we haven't
264decided that yet looking at Brookfield right because we want to adopt language from Brookfield to put it in ship in good because we're asking for feedback that policy right now so I really don't think we should stray to that well we're just saying that we're following all Shipman's policies that was what said there's a motion on the table it was seconded can we just right so that's let's talk about that one let's talk about the on that list we're in so we're in just is so wait hold on the motion on the table is specific to 9 9211 specific to the whole thing there's a second motion third motion was to amend this policy okay so that that's the the privileged motion right now because we'd have to deal with that before we could correct
265can I just clar what what exactly was the wording of your motion again because an amendment should have specifics right so what is your amendment that the motion that the board Define cause as part of the shipment and go to an adoption of policy 9211 that States before voting for the removal of an officer a majority of the board shall pass a motion that cause for removal exist and identify their reasons of said cause CH this completely though I I think it's worth discussion is can we just take this one off so that we can like so we can pass the others that are the other 17 in this list and then perhaps if I if I may the removal of board officer conversation for 9211 go back to policy committee that's another way to
266do this so it doesn't have to be it has yeah I I I seems like there's a lot of discussion there that needs to be had by the policy committee maybe even a check the more consider what Aon is saying I I get what you're saying it's just I think it's also very late and I don't know that we're all thinking about this as clearly as we might we took U some time to to like look at it a new I'm also not comfortable making that significant a change without discussing it with the attorneys because it is significant like it to me it's significantly changing what this says it ish because what essentially what you're doing is you're adding a step where really honestly if there's a motion on the table to remove an officer
267during the discussion that is literally when the board would be discussing is this cause is it not cause are we going to vote Yes or no that is literally what's happening in the motion to remove so to add a step to say every time we want if we wanted to remove an officer we have to first Define how we're I don't care defining cause and now we're going to go discuss it's just it's a redundant step and it also it substantially changes the meaning of this policy which by other bylaws has to go back to policy committee and that's your opinion and that's then so we have a motion on the floor to amend the language of 9021 um can we table that motion in um in deferring to pulling it out instead and sending
268it back to commit or you can call a vote on each of the Motions tonight too so there's I don't know if you can yeah I don't know if you can take on Amendment but yeah or you could s make an third motion to send it back to policy so there's I just combination of things and just to help you out like a a a yay vote would be adding language right here and now to this policy which I've already said I'm not comfortable with a no vote would be essentially sending this back to the committee so okay can you just repeat the change that you would suggest or recommend yep before voting for the removal of an officer a majority of the board shall pass a motion that cause for the removal exists and
269identify the reasons for said cause I'm just trying to understand um how does that substantially change the language that that's currently here because the way it says right now the way it says right now and I'm just going to read this for the public an officer of the board may be removed for cause by a majority vote of the board a vote to remove an officer shall only take place at a regular meeting or a special meeting called for that purpose cause which means a reasonable ground for removal includes but is not limited to any conduct that one specifically relates to and affects the administration of the office in a manner deemed to be delerious to the board operations negatively directs uh negatively and directly affects the rights and interests of the public violates board
270policies rules and regulations or interferes with the orderly and efficient operation of the board that to me is incredibly clear what any board deliberating the removal of an officer should be basing their deliberations on however what Aaron is suggesting is that before even having this de debate we need to have an additional motion to Define cause on that particular day where to me that is that is literally part of what you're doing that is literally what you're doing you're you're deliberating if any one of these has been met by the actions of that officer so there why why did you say that at that time it would be when you define cause because she aon's suggestion as I understand it is before we can even vote to remove an officer and deliberate if it meets
271any one of these four criteria we first have to Define cause even though it's already defined here I'm not I'm not I'm just not is that what you is that what you're saying you're adding emotion it's it's not AEM motion when anything if someone is not happy with a removal or whatever happens it's liability to let it go to the court and let it turn into the legal definition which has no relevance of any of this so any evidence that you have on someone who quote unquote violated a board policy broke regulation didn't follow rules they have you know manner deemed inappropriate none of that can be used as evidence so I think in order to insert language you're ultimately protecting the board against you know um litigation but your your Amendment clearly states that
272you want language added that said before the board votes to remove an officer they have to pass a motion that clear that tone um am I or am I not correct in my understanding that you want language added that says before the board can remove an officer or vote to remove an officer they need to First vote to establish and Define cause essentially okay so if you're putting an officer of the board may be roved for cause by the majority of the board or the entire board a vote to remove the board officer shall you know take place at a regular board meeting or specially or special meeting called for that purpose at that point that language could say voting to remove an officer majority of the board shall pass a motion that cause for
273removal exists and identify the reasons for said cause I really again it's a moot point it's just over and over and it's left to interpret is because that is when a board if a board wanted to remove an officer they would put that motion on the table and according to this policy they would deliberate cause which means a reasonable grounds for removal on the basis of of including all of these things so the board would be debating did do we think that this person um you know affected the administration of the office in a manner deemed to be deleterious to the board operations or do we think the person negatively or directly affected the rights and interests of the public or do we think the person violated board policies rules and regulations or do we
274think that they interfered with the orderly and efficient operations of the board those are the causes by which we would decide the person you know what you're actually having this conversation and if you go back to brookfield's policy for removal it has nothing so I'm really not sure why you're so heated with what you're saying okay folks I'm going to call the question here um I need a second on calling the question and we have to so that means to go to a vote you know I don't think you need a second on I think okay well no because we we motion second yeah so it's on the table right mhm the amendment yeah you motion to amend no no joy did okay Joy did so we have um a motion on the table um
275and eron please um help me if I get this wrong the motion is to amend um the existing motion that before uh voting for the removal of an officer the board must Define said cause well I mean I can give you the language that okay then then please do that please all right so we have a vote a motion on on the table uh to amend our existing motion to add this language you would you please before voting for the removal of an officer a majority of the board shall pass a motion that cause for removal exists and identify the reasons for said cause Okay so that that is the motion on the table um and we have had substantial discussion on this um so a yes vote uh means that we would be altering
276the policy here on that we've not yet finalized and a no vote means that the um policy under consideration would go back to the policy committee for further deliberation so if you would like to uh support this amended uh this amendment to the motion please signify by saying I I okay if you um would uh not like to if you'd like to oppose it please signify by saying Nay n n okay so this this um 9211 will go back to the policy committee so with that we'll all return to the previous motion um and I think we need to can I just say something really quick just can we just get that to S to Legal like to get that but but in order for this to go back we have to amend because the
277motion on the table right now is to send all these policies so now we have to make a motion to pull out policy 9211 yes to send back to the policy commit correct so I amend we're amending the motion I amend I'm the motion currently on the table to remove to remove to approve the policies and we will be removing 9211 to send back to policy committee correct so we need a second for that second okay great all right so um then the motion on the table is to approve the policies um aforementioned minus 9211 which will go back to the policy committee all in favor please signify by saying I I I okay any opposed okay so it is unanimous wait did you raise your hand yeah okay please please do a Voice vote
278um so six to one all right okay thank you um so now we've got uh the multilingua multilingual Learners by grade report that is just to receive an update you received it on Friday in The Weekend Update Catherine amended the mistakes that were pointed out and so it's corrected wonderful thank you so much record um we uh already um had our um non-agenda public comment so the three main points Stephanie what do you have um so I sorry I'm pulling up the upcoming events while we do this um okay so it kind of changed throughout the meeting so I'm thinking budget number one and that would include Dr Bell's update and the assumptions and priorities um class siiz report and then the capital projects have be its own yes yeah I originally had it part
279of but then it was such a robust sort of issue that I felt like that should be separate with all the clickable links and everything okay could you combine the enrollment in class size in one oh nice oh and include so class size and enrollment yes report as well okay and um upcoming events okay um there are a few upcoming events in at Brookfield High School um November 6th is early release for evening parent conferences November 7th is early release for daytime parent conferences and then districtwide November 5th is no school for students a professional development day for teachers and that's all I have all right um then uh thank you everyone for hanging out and without objection we adjourn at 9:47