001everybody i'd like to call the march 3rd regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order it we'll start the meeting let's rise for the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have uh all seven okay all seven of us are here tonight that's great um and uh um so first up on our agenda is board recognition and uh mr superintendent you wanted to say a few words i did i wanted to um thank the board um well first of all it's march's board appreciation month here in connecticut and board of education appreciation month month and i wanted to thank the board for the continued support
002and their continued commitment to the students families and faculty and staff of brookfield and all the great work that we do um i think it's a credit uh to all of you i i sent you an update uh a couple of weeks ago um kind of chronicling some of the incredible achievements over the last just few weeks um and during my superintendent report i'll lead in and then ask mr beldon to share a little bit about that because i think we don't stop and reflect on what we accomplish we we really don't give ourselves the we really do ourselves a disservice we do the community disservice not to remind of of what is being accomplished in the great work that's going on so uh thank you for all that you do and you certainly are
003appreciated thank you thank you thank you um next up on our agenda ben glad to have you again um so turn it over to you for our super representative report all right so this one's quick because we only had about six school days since the last meeting but basically just a few that i already said last time but the school day sat coming up for juniors and also the parent-teacher conferences coming up for schools the high schools early dismissal would be thursday march 10th and then a couple editions so diversity day is something that we're planning to run at bhs on april 1st it's not necessarily anything like national but we're just taking the day to kind of do something to recognize diverse students since we didn't really do something like that prior and then
004also more will come for that but then also graduation as you guys approved is now saturday june 18th for the seniors at the high school and then we just had a blood drive with nhs and we had all 40 of our our goal was 40 and we met that and they said like because last time we had a bit of an issue since the red cross didn't have like all the volunteers they needed but this time we had everyone and got done pretty effectively so props to the coordinators from that as well so that's all i have that's great thank you any questions for ben all right thank you ben appreciate it that's uh i know these meetings sometimes come fast and furious don't they it's like okay what am i going to say now
005so thank you mr belden though if i may i i'm not going to say where but i i checked with ben weekly and he is getting into the colleges he wants to get into but he has not made any decisions yet he's still waiting on a few others but he will be put on the spot to tell us where he went when he makes his decision so i'm all over him every time we meet it's that time of year isn't it absolutely my goodness okay uh so next up on our agenda is uh written correspondence we only had one this time substantially lighter than last time it was deborah regarding the mask optional date was it 84 last time amy 84 just on masks oh man um okay uh next we're on to approval aboard
006minutes i'll move that the board approved the minutes from the special meeting on february 14th the regular meeting on february 16th and the special meeting on february 23rd second okay it's moved in second is any uh discussion from the board okay all in favor of approving the minutes all right on your post all right you approved unanimously um so doctor bro turn it over to you for the superintendent's opinion all right thank you mr belden so i actually have something that just came in today literally and our tech folks were in back working late working on it our e-rate grant arrival of chromebooks came through today and that's 600 chromebooks came in um and i asked eric to give me the breakdown just so i could share it with everybody today because it's such nice
007new news um their uh 200 are being immediately set aside for a one-to-one program and getting ready um 150 are heading over to center 150 to huckleberry and 100 for uh the middle school and as i broke that news to mr renda when i was visiting wisconsin he looked at me and goes we're going to be ready for s back he was so worried about making sure you know you have a break fix here and a break fix there so um we're really in a good place uh certainly uh eric was really excited and um uh that that e-rate grant that came in kind of later in our budget deliberations really helped us with the operating budget so i just wanted to share that with the board the other thing really you know some of
008the big news um kind of under my typical covet update that i give is on monday we went to we don't have the universal uh masking as a mandate any longer from the state and the board suspended its mask policy uh just i think last week we did so it's really been a very smooth start to the first three days of the week the principals are giving very good reports while we're not tracking who's wearing masks and who isn't clear there is a clear majority of students not wearing masks and um from everything we hear the students and the staff for being very supportive of one another on their personal choices which is fantastic and what we've always hoped for and uh have to credit the school administration and the staff and the families and
009the kids for all being cognizant of that as we've started you know there was a lot of intentional conversation around that at each of the schools so that's going quite well i had to share the anecdotes i was at huckleberry yesterday and two students came up to me to show me their braces because they didn't have a mask on so they could show me their new braces and on the other end one at the high school and one at the middle school showed me their brand new smiles without braces they were really excited so it's really been great to see everybody's face and happy to share and um you know have those those nice conversations and that connection together it's it's going quite well um the other piece is it's important for me to message
010and the principals are trying to do this when they get some questions from families and from kids i thought we were going back to normal and the one thing we need to be clear about is while we all pray and hope that this is the beginning of the end we want to be very careful so as dr sullivan dr garcia the dph says when you remove one of your mitigation tools you want to be mindful of your other uh mitigation tools so we've talked about spacing and being careful about that clearly hygiene is a big issue ventilation all those things we want to be mindful of so while we are not having universal masking we still want to be careful and so some of our lunch routines that are a little more restrictive are are
011still in place and it's only been three days let's give it a week and let's see how it goes we've had some staff that have been great about wanting to bring like third grade and second grade together and i talked with dr pep sake i said can we wait till next friday rather than this friday let's give it let's see how it goes let's hope we don't have any kind of a spike we'll see what early next week looks like um and so we're just being very intentional and mindful kind of one thing at a time one day at a time so that's important to message that for everybody so we know that we're doing that the other big piece is test kit distribution um we put announcements out about that to let people know
012that was coming uh actually our facility director dan caldwell went up to the uh to the armory today to get our allotment of are you ready for this six thousand three hundred test kits today in phase three we still had over a thousand left from phase two so we do have a little bit of a surplus but we've given out two boxes which has four kits in it to each of our students and we started that distribution today so dan went picked everything up this morning and some of the schools were able to start distribution today by by the weekend we should have them all distributed so families can use them at the at their discretion if they think they need to use them uh so that's out there um so oh and there was
013one more piece on covet we did get an update from dr sullivan um we're actually continuing to progress in vaccination rate our 12 to 17 year olds are up to 78 percent so we're getting very very strong vaccination rate among the students in the 12 to 17 year old range our five to 11 year olds are let's see fully vaccinated is 37 underway is uh 42 of the population working toward a full vaccination so we're progressing there um as uh dr sullivan asked me to remind everybody that the you know the best course of action is if you can get vaccinated so it really can help you out so he asked me to say that so i'm putting that out there from dr sullivan in the health department um our dashboard last week we were
014down to four infections total on friday when we reported out on the dashboard so far this week we i've heard of two infections we'll report again on friday afternoon like we always do um and that's all i have for my covet update right now is there any questions that anybody's had anything lingering or coming forward okay i put on the superintendent report state of the town mrs carr our first select woman is having each department develop a state of the town and really it's taking on the structure of you know where is your department been where's your department at right now and where is your department going and really trying to get that message out there and she's asked that each department head superintendent being one of them to have that information to her next
015week a very strong draft ready to go and i'm actually mr belden and i uh we have our weekly chair superintendent meeting and so i'm going to ask him to take a look at it as well and i'll submit it to tara next week and just so everybody knows we're working on that kind of fun to go back and do some reflecting over the last couple of years you know where we've been exactly where we are right now and then you know looking at our budget and some of the things we're doing in terms of where we're going so um it was a nice opportunity to reflect i'm glad she asked us to do that in terms of uh two district postings that are going on right now uh we have uh as as we
016know mrs wagonic is moving on in her career as well as dr ruby and it's important to let everybody know that we have posted for about a week now our director of special education position has been posted and we are working on developing establishing the committee for that and i think our initial interviews are likely to start in mid-march for director of special education and just yesterday we posted the assistant superintendent position so i wanted everybody to know that be going through the full process there um let's see and then this week the schools especially the elementary schools are having their reading celebrations for dr seuss's birthday and read across america day and it's really been great uh to visit with the students uh see the staff and the kids dressed up as captain hat
017and everything else and also be part of reading og the frog i got to read chapter seven from ag the frog so if you see a video out there i i tried i don't know if it's the greatest performance about the frog but i did my best so that's out there moving forward last day of school we've had a number of cancellations um one two three four five snow days this year our last day of school which is our 182nd day will be on monday june 20th at this point um just a reminder for everybody by connected state uh statute we have to have 180 student days and as ben said earlier the graduation is slated for june 18th for the high school graduation and um one of the things we really need to do
018is really through march we still can have cancellations we still can have snow i think tomorrow morning there might be an inch or something like that we have to keep an eye on that for tomorrow morning so who knows but anyway i'm going to continue to monitor through march and then obviously revisit in april to see where we're at with that to talk to everybody about that um and i didn't know if there was any other questions on just make sure this is my last piece yes on last day of school there's any other questions or interesting ideas or thoughts that anybody wanted to talk about that doesn't change the graduation date does it it doesn't have it doesn't have to no it doesn't we're knocking on wood on no more snow days so am
019i not looking forward to the 4 a.m tomorrow morning then again i had i'd go jog with joy i guess at that time so i don't know get in the running club um but uh if anything if they're talking about there could be a delay in the northern part of connecticut so that's kind of what we're playing with so we'll check that out while i'll check that out when i get home uh but that is all i have or not i shouldn't say all i have that's that's the report i have but i don't know if there's any further questions or anything anybody has to go over all right so look i want to jump on something you mentioned but i want to i want to take it down a notch because there's a lot
020of people out in the in the community who think we meet once or twice a month and uh i wanna i just wanna congratulate and thank all of you for what we went through about two weeks ago i mean people don't realize that in five days we had four of them we met as a board right we we had the joint meeting with the budget with the board of selectmen and board of finance on a thursday monday we had our mask decision which was a highly challenging decision that's been kind of long time coming but we did it hours after hours minutes after the state voted on it yes um by the way all the i i'm on this chairman's list and they're all following suit right uh i saw danbury just announced theirs so
021um the next day we did met with the nbc to go through the furniture at the new school and then we had our board of ed meeting on on wednesday wasn't that was that was the 16th of the board of ed meetings so we had four meetings in five five business days and uh you know it's a lot i mean we ought to all be happy that's behind us but also um it's for the public it's uh this is one of the challenges of being on the board of ed is periodically you've got a lot of stuff coming together at the same time we do have another special meeting coming up on the 8th so that's next tuesday correct um with the board of finance uh tonight while we speak they're going through a budget
022presentation with the board of selectmen so we'll there they'll be that we're the first stop with the board of finance i think in terms of their deliberations and um yes we actually um as uh i think lisa you worked with uh you talked with jenny or mr rooney we're gonna end up having having here at they're doing it here at the hospital the round table again okay perfect so it's uh thank you guys i just want to you know share share with the public what we sometimes we get these it's not every month but some months they are so okay without any questions we're gonna move on um uh we'll start with some subcommittee reports and uh first up uh rosa is finance okay so i have a just a brief update because we met
023very briefly on valentine's day um speaking of there's another meeting speaking of meetings uh yeah so we met um that night before our meeting on the mass and um so to report on the um the most current financial report our surplus which we still have but it's running at about 47 000 now so if you'll notice month to month that surplus is getting smaller and smaller so it is getting eaten up the major factors contributing this contributing to this are excessive costs for substitutes and special education there's some dynamic shifts in individual student needs and changes in programming so those are contributing mostly to our the how that surplus is kind of shrinking over time we do have some salary savings um because obviously uh miss la brociano has has left huckleberry but when dr
024rudel stepped up obviously there are positions that there need to be backfilled so there's some fluctuations there but because i think what what ken is mostly keeping an eye on is those really high substitute costs because those are running kind of high and we may we may need to look at a budget freeze by the end of this year so can't be too comfortable with that surplus that we have and that's just sort of what's on the horizon so that's pretty much it okay thank you any questions for rosa all right so next up is uh policy and communications debbie okay we also had a meeting in those five days marathon meetings we met on wednesday the 16th before our regular board meeting we kind of tidied up the last couple loose ends on the
025school library media policy 6563 that was approved by the board later that night and we'll be talk that's the one about the reconsideration of library material um we also started uh going through the very long list of policies from cabe that are recommended and mandated so the three that are in your packet tonight are what we discussed that night and they are um three five four one records and reports regarding transportation complaints policy three five four two point for food service personnel code of conduct and policy 354241 food service school lunch service we actually had tiny tiny little edits to those really nothing major that you'll see in your packet like i said we'll discuss later on there was another policy on our agenda for that night policy 4000.1 regarding title ix but dr burrill
026wasn't able to join us at that meeting and we really felt more comfortable getting some feedback from him and input from him on that because that's a big one so we decided to table that until our next meeting on march 16th then we talked a little bit about communications and budget flyer for this year and i said i would take a stab at making the edits for this year lisa sent me the file and i'll bring that to our next meeting so that was pretty much it excellent any questions for debbie okay we'll move on to the uh third um subcommittee report which is the strata strategic planning committee and i'll give this report uh this is debbie and i are on on this committee with a couple of you as uh as alternates we
027had our first organizational meeting on february 23rd uh we were joined by jonathan costa from ed advanced and you all know those who've been on the board for any length of time know jonathan costa he's been done a number of things with us [Music] basically we talked about what the structure of the committee would be right and we've concluded his his advice is to drive for somewhere between 15 and 20. we settled on 15 to 18. split relatively evenly between our teaching and administrative staff and on the other side boards and board members and members of the public right so it might be two-thirds one-third but it's it's in that mix and we agreed that we would get together again in an upcoming meeting to talk about what what structure we would like to do
028for getting members of the public involved [Music] we would drive the schedule of events around the strategic planning to have a organizational meeting by the spring a real kickoff meeting in the august just the school's getting ready to start and the and the focus sessions because the way he runs this process is focus groups would be in the early fall with a report out in the fall right that's the general flow of events his advice was don't try to rush into it right this moment because the spring is not always the best time to be going and doing focus groups there's too many things that go on with the end of the school year so uh so his advice was to drive this and and have it completed before the budget process is actually you
029know starting to be aired because it's a it's a statement of priorities and that does impact what we talk about in our budgets so uh the spring between now and the spring will be about deciding which volunteers of the in the teaching and administrative staff will have on it and then what members of the public and board members we would have on it um and uh and that there will be a kickoff then uh a kind of a preliminary you know i think john uses a term uh formation meeting formation right and then the real kickoff with homework assignments and things like that would be in august yeah so um it was about a 45 minute meeting but it was a get organized discussion debbie anything you'd like to add to that no i thought
030it was good we all seem to be on the same page and you know i think it'll be a great process i think one of the things to let to remind everybody that that the process of soliciting information from the public has has actually been long underway um we've had thought exchange and that's the technology platform that we introduced early on in the school year in uh via school message had sent that out to the everyone on our email share not just families and staff and then in addition that we sent it out a second time jonathan's actually shared with me some report outs from that of what folks are saying uh in terms of their input so he can he's going to help uh one of the conversations we have parts of the conversation
031was to drive the focus group discussions off of what he's already learning from thought exchange and maybe before the focus groups in the early fall we send out thought exchange again to continue to get feedback i mean i think we had over three or four hundred responses from different individuals and so on top of that when people are excited about the start of school because you know like bob said the spring's coming i'll be very candid i think our families and staff i think people are exhausted you know at the end of the two years here with the pandemic and everything else and then the spring just gets very busy so get some rest over the summer and come back fired up and enthusiastic and ready to go i think is a good idea so
032uh yeah so so we've already got some input the uh he must have said a half dozen times in the meeting just remember we have a plan that we're working on today we have a lot of initiatives that we've taken on over the last um six years since john since you've been here many which have reaped a lot of fruit in terms of curriculum and a new building coming in and uh you know improving our back office that we you know seems to be running very uh deliberately which it wasn't six years ago and uh and he says don't assume this is a complete reinvention of everything this is about enhancing and getting priorities right for the next you know three years right and so don't don't think this is a sea change as much
033as it is a prioritization session and you must have said that to us a half dozen times so and i think bob debbie and i are definitely uh of that same mindset that we agree that that's what we need to do okay any questions for bob all right next up is our consent agenda okay i will move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires transfers and the january financial um okay any uh any comments or discussions yeah bob i'd i just like to take a moment you know while thanking the board for all of their commitment and especially because it's board appreciation month i did want to take a moment um and express my thanks and uh appreciation for the board being understanding that i wasn't able to
034be here um on the 16th but not being here i wasn't able to address the consent agenda from the 16th and i really wanted to just give a tremendous thanks to uh mrs wygonick who's been with us for four years and this is her third year as a director uh for for the program coherence the connection with families and all the great work she's done for us and just really wish her well um in in her future endeavor uh uh as the director in waterford and then uh my my colleague for almost 30 years dr ruby who um has been with us seven years i wanted to really thank her and wish her well um on on her new adventure in her career as a endowed professor over at sacred heart it's amazing uh what
035what maureen has done for us and what she's contributed to public education all these years and just some of the things to talk about curriculum instruction assessment professional development um securing the materials for us social emotional learning uh working with equity and inclusion recently and all the work we're doing there she's been absolutely invaluable and i appreciate everything you've done uh for the children of brookfield uh maureen for this board for the community for me uh for and for our colleagues you've been incredible um and also i have to say that uh while ken and i haven't actually added it up we talked about it today maureen's brought in in competitive grants almost a million dollars uh in the time she's been here with us so anyway we certainly are going to miss her but
036we've got her through most of august so thank you for everything maureen i certainly do greatly appreciate it thank you i'd also like to just by the way we'll miss you just do you know i notice on here that uh margaret fitzgerald is retiring and uh and uh she taught all five of my kids um how to play musical instruments and uh then as at huckleberry hill and it's been just such a joy for so many kids who've gone through our school district and uh and i will never forget let's go band let's go back you know bob it's amazing we're uh margaret when i mentioned to the uh board and the nbc at the february 15th meeting where we're talking about furniture what shocked dave pepsosky and i is when margaret told us a
037couple of weeks ago that she was definitely going to retire and she's been talking about it a little bit but she made the decision and we were in her band room we were sitting the three of us were sitting together and chatting and she's so excited about all of the furniture and the storage and everything for the music rooms and for band i said and you're picking this time this is the time you need to stay at least for a year or two and she said you know she's got her or her reasons and you know the children and the grandkids and the whole thing she's so excited about the future and um but we just can't thank her enough for the leadership and the impact she's had on kids for years and years and
038years one it's amazing lasting memory in brookfield is if you ever go to the memorial day parade when we were having them we haven't done in the last couple of years but the number of kids marching on the street excited as all get out to play you know to march in the parade and it's it always jumps out at you when that parade is coming how many kids from the brookfield schools were involved in music and uh she was she did state level roles she did leadership roles she was teacher of the year at once she was she is our um she is our k-12 visual and performing arts uh coordinator yeah so she works with the you know up and down the chain with all of her music and our teachers so yeah we
039will miss we really will miss margaret and we're very again just happy for the stage of life she has reached but uh we're gonna miss her no doubt about it there will be a void okay all in favor of approving the consent agenda thank you hi okay uh we're moving on to new business so you have three policies um we'll start with uh let me ask you a question would you like to make one motion for all three or would you like why don't you paraphrase and do one motion for all three i will move that the board approve policies number 3541.5 records and reports transportation 3542.22 food service personnel code of conduct and 3542.41 food service school lunch service for a first reading as recommended by the policy and communications subcommittee second it's moved
040and seconded so debbie why don't i turn it over to you and you can walk us through what those are about yeah um they're really pretty straightforward um again these are recommended by cabe they are um we we pretty much lifted the language right from cabe's recommendation except that we changed titles in places where it was appropriate uh like in the first one records and reports for transportation complaints we added the director of business business operations because i think it had transportation coordinator before we don't have that title so those were the kinds of um edits that we made but the first one transportation complaints is basically what it is it just says that the director of business operations will maintain a written record of all complaints and conduct appropriate investigations and the superintendent will
041provide the commissioner of motor vehicles with a copy of the complaints um we don't have that policy today no that's a new policy for us correct okay these are ones that cabe said all three all three of these are yes okay um does that include like parent complaints or it's really any complaints concerning school transportation safety so um second one is food service personnel code of conduct and again there really was nothing controversial in here um you know there there were rules about you know couldn't hire members food service no district employees can participate in the selection of the food service personnel you can't hire family members or you can't hire an organization that employs a family member cannot solicit or accept gratuities employees cannot purchase school purchase food directly from the contractors for their
042own use so again nothing complex or out of the ordinary in that one and then the last one is against about school lunches and professional standards for food service personnel this one just really outlines the professional standards that that our school personnel or school food service personnel adhere to under the national school lunch and school breakfast programs and the laws that correspond with that and again i don't think we made any changes on that except maybe the titles of the personnel involved so that's it so by food service director they mean whoever is directing the the actual food service company right nobody in our district correct okay any other questions for debbie now just as a reminder we're accepting this for our first read we'll come back to this and after 30 days for uh
043as everybody's had a chance to read it at their leisure and do a final vote on it buy one so when do you need questions for um i think your meetings on the 16th right right why don't we just aim for that sure march 16th you seem pretty straightforward okay okay all in favor of approving the motion say hi hi hi any opposed all right it's unanimous okay um that's it for new business uh old business um we have the review of the book drama and the appeal on that and there might be a motion but i think that our first order of business is to receive a report from the cape subcommittee who had done the review at our request and so mike we can turn that over to you to lead the discussion
044yeah i put together a small summary on the very steps that we took there was a lot uh so i'm gonna start from the beginning november 1st 2021 a parent came and submitted a written request for the book drama the main point of the request is that drama depicts material not suitable for elementary children following the request the library specialist dina pearson followed the steps of policy that was currently sorry that was formerly on the books the parent and the library specialist met with the sorry they met and then the issue was taken to the next level a committee was made to review the book this committee consisted of an administrator a curriculum specialist a classroom teacher a member of the mental health team and a pto parent volunteer on november 17 2021 the committee
045voted unanimously to retain the book so this is the cape committee voted to retain the book sorry i'm sorry the the ad hoc committee formulated by the school district sorry about them the issue was then elevated to the board of ed level where on december 6 2021 the cape committee met and discussed the issue the cape committee decided to request that the policy committee formulate a clear policy as to reconsideration of library materials as the current policy only concerned instructional material on january 5th 2022 the policy committee presented a policy amendment to 6563 for to the board of ed for a first read on february 9th 2022 the cape committee continued discussion on the book drama and uh deana pearson was in that meeting we voted 3-0 in favor of retaining the book uh the
046evaluation and discussion were consistent with the policy amendment which we added so slowing down the second there was nine points which we covered throughout the book and it was determined that the book was still suitable under those nine points on february 16 2022 the policy committee presented the added policy addendum with revisions 6563 to the board of ed regular meeting it's important to note that the policy addendum or not the indent of the amendment was based on ala recommendations so some comments for myself is i i do want to you know thank debbie and rosa we we took this very seriously uh we had decent debates on this book and the process was taken extremely seriously and every step followed and the the great thing that came out of this is that we we formulate
047a clear policy as a result of labor materials okay okay thank you um and maybe offer it to your uh your co-cape members and if you guys would like to add no um mike had sent us a copy of the report he just gave and so we had an opportunity to read through it and we were in agreement that that's those are the steps that were followed and and he's right we had a very thorough process and um and really ultimately ended up with a really good policy i think so no further comments really for me okay all right any questions from the board on on this topic your recommendation is that we continue to retain this book yes as a board yeah okay do you like to make a full motion or is that
048okay that's one second if there's any discussion or requests i just asked a question um what was the discussion regarding the age range on the book uh that you know regardless of the age that was one small portion of the nine points on so the uh the six five six three does have that age appropriateness bullet and some of those children are at the upper are sorry the some of the children that are on the lower end of age are still in the school also we talked about the fact that when publishers review books they set the age the recommended age limit so if you look at reviews from not just publishers but professional journals like school library journal hornbook circus reviews they all have a different age range so some of them say age
0499 to 12 some say age 10 to 13. i think 9 was the lowest age we found in the reviews that we looked at so the age range is is somewhat arbitrary you know depending on the reviewer um and like mike said there are nine and ten-year-olds at huckleberry and there are other books at huckleberry that are recommended for ages even higher than that that are already in the huckleberry library so it's really a question of maturity and parents comfort level with the content of the book i also wanted to add that um and i wish deanna pearson was here tonight i don't know if she was asked to be here she couldn't make it tonight i know that it wasn't she did a really fabulous job presenting to the cape committee and helping us
050understand how publishers create those age guidelines and a large chunk of that which i found interesting was that it mostly had to do with appeal rather than necessarily an age-appropriateness of course that plays somewhat of a role in that determining factor but that's why you see the differences in age ranges according to publishers or other reviewers is that they do take some subjective measure of what what age group do they think a book like that would appeal to so some of it has appeal to do it now when you talk to the librarian did if a parent has an issue with their child getting a book do they have the ability to ask the librarian not to let their child take that book out what is the kind of the the ability for a parent
051to within the policy there is a formal write-up form of forms that say my child is not to take out ex-book and that's what they they they they collect those they didn't they didn't do that and they did that and that's the parent did fill that form yeah okay and also an added piece i actually talked with uh dee earlier this week and she was sharing with me and i must put a thank you out to the parent who brought this to our attention in the first place because it's really been a great process for all of us it's a it's a learning process we haven't been through anything like this probably in 10 years you know with the book challenge um and so we really it's important to thank the parent for going through
052the steps and bringing this to our attention the other piece is dee is actually working with that parent and actually was going to have them come into the library and kind of tour around and look at the books see the selections um you know that we talk about family connection and engagement all the time this is a perfect example of it so um and dee like you said rosa right from the start i mean what a professional she's been right on top of it available to the board available to the family and uh she really along with mrs labrizano they led a great process at the school level and then obviously being available to the board committee we and you know going to that discussion that we kind of looked under every stone is we
053went right down to discussing the the new school library camp like elementary school library setup so a lot was discussed within in these meetings including a new policy a little bit of facilities i mean it was all kind of um you know combined i'm actually on the the cape and the policy committee so it's like along with debbie so we get we can't sell the whole thing so the new school um if i remember the library's on two floors right correct and uh and will there be different selections of books up on the upper floors where the older kids are the older here and then the younger the the lower floor is where the younger kids are and they'll be different selections of books the selections will you know the essentially you know just keeping
054it basic and simple there's going to be give and take and puts and takes like we say the center school library will go over to the lower level and the huckleberry library will go to the upper level and of course we'll look at wisconsin if there's selections there that we think are appropriate for fifth grade we might bring those over as well i want to add those two levels aren't connected so you can't just go into a library and then go upstairs yeah you'd have to get permission that the students would you know visit the other life to go up the stairs to the library and that kind of thing yeah i think you told me mike that the the there's stairs but it's like staff homes upstairs yeah so yeah and uh we need
055to get into the library and look at the function the functionality of how that'll work for student supervision and those kind of things oh i can't wait to do it it's not a hidden staircase can't wait to do a tour of the school school when that comes we're talking about doing that by the way for the board and and sometime in as the weather turns nice so um if we could just get back to to this book discussion though i think uh mrs pearson relayed a story to us that was very impactful to me um regarding this particular title and she said that she had a student who checked the book out three times i think you know he would check it out he would return it when it was due and then he'd check
056it out again and return it again and check it out a third time and return it again and then at some point i guess another student was waiting for it so he couldn't check it out a fourth time but he waited a few more weeks and then it got returned and he went and checked it out a fourth time and mrs pearson said to him you really like this book and he said mrs pearson this is the first time i've read a book where i saw somebody just like me in it and um that's what we don't know about books we don't know which book is going to be the one that really resonates with a kid and you know what's right for one student is maybe not right for another but for that kid
057that book made a huge difference that's such a good story um and do you know what what age group that child was i think she said third grade or younger i mean i'm younger okay i think it was third grade so probably eight nine year old okay wow okay any other discussion points okay mike do you want to make a motion uh i move that the oh sorry i'm getting used to this i move that the board uh what vote to retain the book at huckleberry hill elementary school let's say the book drama dropped by reyna telgemeier is it telchemeier or telgomeier okay okay it's been moved in second at any discussion okay all in favor please vote yeah with your hand any post [Music] okay passes six one okay next up is um is
058the board of education's budget um do you want to give an update on where we are or do you want me to do it so um where we are in the broad status of our budget we submitted it on january 31st as required the first selectmen has gone through her review of it the board of selectmen has now officially completed their review while we're meeting here tonight the board of selectmen is presenting to the board of finance in that budget is it seems that there's been a reduction of three hundred thousand dollars to the board of education budget it looks like 91 000 in the paperwork that we received but they added in 208 000 for that the update on the insurance rates that we had received remember where they were going to adjust that
059and then took a 300 000 challenge reduction there doesn't seem to be any particular um specific items that they wanted to take out it was more about affordability and the overall positioning of the bud the the town-wide budget so that's being presented to the board of finance we do have a session with the board of finance next week i am sure and we've received no questions from the board of finance since our meeting in middle of february so i'm guessing the discussion will be centered around so what do you what's your reaction to the 300 000 reduction you've gotten so and that will be a discussion i mean and we will be in session so all of us will be able to sit at the table and have a discussion with them so just know
060that question is coming but the board of finance is now just embarking on what is a month-long review of on their part so so there's still a lot of time left before this budget gets voted off 300 000 is a challenge and cut because if you remember we don't have that much in the way of new investments in our budget so that means you're going after you would have to either find a way to use some contingency to pull items ahead so you actually could avoid spending the money next year and there's some room for that discussion i think but the board of finance that'll be part of the discussion with the board of finance and if you remember anytime we under run a budget they allow us to use some of that under run
061it's in the fund balance you know for future budget needs well we haven't used that for a couple of years and we've under run like two years in a row so so there's some room for that discussion um but then uh we will have to come back and think hard through you know if that if that cut stays you know how that impacts the district and it's uh i mean we all went through we scrubbed the hell out of that budget so uh and i don't think there's a lot of there's not any fat to go cut out it would be now looking at the items and the programs that we have which is never it's the hardest part of budget process for us so and it captured everything rosa yeah i think you did
062so so i think we have a chance to influence next uh next tuesday night um and then we should influence uh we don't have the answer on what would we cut because we haven't had a chance to meet on it right we don't usually do that formal meeting until we see what the final budget structure looks like but we do have a chance to influence and discuss with the board of finance and uh and talk about it and it's a hard budget this year because of the revaluation i mean speaking for the board of finance i know they have uh it's a challenge from where they sit as well so question um kind of maybe for ken maybe heard dr brill maybe for you um but have you gotten any indication as to the rationale
063for like why 300 000 like where where did this number come from or is it just to fit a box yeah yeah i think to make it work one affordability but i think the the the handling mill rate but the other part is the um you know the the uh the insurance was a part of that the affordability of the insurance um so that's what we have the key the key reminder for everybody when we talk about 300 000 that's practically three three-quarters of a percent uh in our budget so that really is a significant you know much of what we deliberate on is every year is a two to three hundred dollar production reallocation you know we spend a lot of time on in a 48 million dollar budget is a small number but
064it's it's what moves us forward in the district right and uh and we have a lot of programs that are effective and we want to keep going so and then you add in fuel cost increases or a new mandate through legislation from the state or the fed and there really isn't a lot of flexibility to actually improve so 300 300 000 is significant in our budget bob max the the insurance savings is not all the way known right right so is are they maybe expecting a high so so what so what happened this such a recap is we had assumed a rate of increase on the on the insurance rates then we got input from this from the state the people who run the insurance fund that we participate in that they were going to
065apply some arpa funds to it so we should expect about a three-point lower rate of increase and then when they and that's what we baked into our budget and then right before we submitted they came in and said oh well it's not going to be quite that much so the adjustment they and so i think it's more about four four four point something percent year to year instead of three percent i'm trying to remember the numbers can so ladies should come up for just kind of share it seems like that's always a moving target so it is and it will be moving it'll be moving until april i think right yeah sure so we we made our first assumption based on the opeb report which was using a uh six and a half percent increase
066and we decided to be a little conservative and use seven percent then we got the information from the state that they were using the arbor money and they said that we would be able to decrease they said that would have the effect of decreasing the increase by about four percent so again being conservative we took our estimate down three percent down from seven to four and then they came out and later on and said oh the four percent is off of what we're at we're actually expecting 12 percent so the four percent brings it down to eight so now we have to bring hours up from four to eight which is two hundred and eight thousand dollars and what's important on this is not only you know it's a moving target mike right and you
067get this input from the state uh the board of ed and the town are in the exact same position we work together on this we we we have the same health insurance so was that reported yeah no it kind of came up right at the end okay so and we agreed that we agreed with the town that we would submit our budget based on the four percent number and that they would adjust to the actual rates when they were known and this is the first i think this is the first salvo of what is known i think when when do we actually get the per person rates have we seen those yet we have not seen them yet usually it's in march or april i'm hoping for sooner yeah so you basically another salvo to
068be coming from the insurance provider that says here's the actual rates per for a couple per individual and that usually has a plus or minus as well so can historically has i think if i if i remember usually the final number that we get in around april is usually lower is that am i like remembering this correctly or do you think historically like it could be all over the place you know it i think historically it has been a little bit lower than our estimates although we tend to be a little conservative i've never in in my almost six years here have gotten any information from the state this early at all to even influence our estimates so it's really hard to say i'm assuming that they probably are being a little conservative because that
069because they really they gave us 12 minus four percent equals eight so uh i would guess that they would be airing on the conservative side i'm certainly hopeful that they are okay thank you kevin you're welcome it's crazy insurance is always the hardest number to call on these budgets so so uh so i hope everybody can make it next uh tuesday um and uh and i i think we ought to arrive with uh to remind them of what our budget submission looked like right so that we have that front of mind that the amount of investment i think was a lot less than three hundred thousand dollars it was about a little less than three hundred thousand dollars and some of those were very needed all of them were very needed right but but it
070does put things like the pay-for-play you know thing we put in there immediately at risk sadly so um next on our agenda is um public comment is there anybody here for public comment nobody's signed up there's no one in the audience so we'll move through that then an update on the candlewood lake elementary school building project all right there's uh there's not much new going on since our last uh big update i think they're just um logistically starting to plan for the big move and i think dr bruhl has a couple of points on that yeah a couple a couple little ones so just uh one re reiterating from a couple of weeks back um the exciting thing is the you know we're moving forward on the furniture that's a good reminder for anybody who
071might be tuning in it hasn't been tuned in a while in a while the other part is the roofing material did arrive so that's being laid down as fast as possible according to the construction manager he actually gave me a call today um depending on the weather you might remember it needs to be above freezing for the adhesive to work properly so um you know it's been cold but it's also we've had some nice days so they're going as fast as they can um and putting that in properly bob mentioned a walk through i talked with mr checko we're thinking probably may for this board the board of selectmen board of finance uh to take a walk through some of our key administrators that haven't had a chance to walk through uh might be a
072saturday morning something like that uh the the key is it's got to be dry right now it's a i think uh what is what a dan caldwell say it facilities a knee deep mud pit right now i've been over in quite a while it is it is muddy over there um and uh and so that implies quite wet so we've got to get it drier and it has to be safe and we have to time it so as a large group going in or even phased in as groups going in we don't disrupt the construction we want it to keep moving along we really don't want to slow things down and we it needs to be safe um so we're working on that so we'll get a date in may on the calendar as soon
073as we can as rosa indicated ong is working on the actual logistic plan and i think for the next nbc meeting they'll be having that public discussion which really is the winter move-in and making that happen and then the last piece that uh mr tenz of the construction manager shared with me is that this summer they will be doing the widening to candlewood lake road because remember we're getting that big right-hand turn that comes in the right lane for the right-hand turn coming down the hill into the school and then there'll be a repave of candlewood lake road as i understand at least in that area so exciting times do we ever get an update on those stools like the shipment of the stools are we going to get those in you know the chairs
074remember those phone ones the phone ones i have communications into eddie i'm still waiting on that if somebody just gives me the name of the school that's got them i'll make the call and go over and pick it up myself i just need to know so i will continue to ask eddie thank you for the reminder [Music] i can't keep picturing after that meeting what the janitors will think right okay they'll get at the end of the school day they'll just go to the end of the vacuuming or sweeping there's gonna be all of these things just strewn around the end of the thing so i kept asking what's the storage strategy and are there racks to put them in or things like that and then at the facilities committee you mentioned there was like
075robotic cleaners that come with the the the carpet tiles and i'm picturing these robotic cleaners you know running over these uh little stool things they're not getting anything done because they're bouncing around and they can't get in my head just keeps going there's details to be worked out okay um three main points i was thinking we could recap dr brill's covet update from the superintendent's report talk about the decision on the book reconsideration and maybe this latest update on the candlewood lake elementary school what are the chromebooks oh yeah chromebooks or the chromebooks i was back and forth with that deb i have some language that eric sent me that's already crafted on the chromebooks that saves the lives i would like to do the chromebooks okay we've talked about that we have plenty of
076times to talk about the school and that update is was pretty much it's moving along yeah right so perfect okay upcoming events at center and huckleberry read across america's spirit week is ongoing the rest of this week at center school there's a virtual assembly for the one school one book on march 10th and there is a virtual evening program for families on march 15th center and huckleberry will have report cards available on march 16th and early release for conferences on the 17th and 18th at wiscon there's early release for conferences on tuesday the 8th and at brookfield high school early release for conferences on the 10th that's all i have does anyone else have anything okay hearing none that's it for our agenda i will say last meeting we got done at 8 15-ish and
077i said that's the fastest meeting we've ever had well we just beat that so without objection we're adjourned [Music] all right