Board of Education Meeting 12-1-21 @ 7pm

001[Music] good evening everybody this is the brookfield board of education meeting of december 1st 2021. please join me for the pledge of allegiance i 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 so this evening we have five members of our board of education here in person chairman fernandez is under covert quarantine protocol so is joining us remotely which is allowed by our bylaws and so you'll see mrs fernandez on the screen but she's asked me if i would share the meeting today since i'll be here in person i hope that's okay with the board yes okay and uh mrs greenstein will not be able to join us this evening um so first up on our

002agenda is uh the report from our student representative so so first off just um one event we had was the thanksgiving football game so that was the last football game of the season and the bobcats came away with a win for that one so that was exciting and then more recently we've had dr mcmorran the interim principal at vhs he's talked to me and shared some insight that he's had um he meeted with her hip with the peer counselor student government friends of rachel club and many other programs at bhs and said a lot of great things about them he said there are a lot of natural leaders across the school and we're a very close-knit community and he just wanted to touch on working to ensure that we stay vigilant during this time and

003continue proper mask wearing and social distancing to come combat any routine fatigue that students may be experiencing so as students are doing these things over and over for a while it might become redundant and they may feel like it's becoming too much but just sticking with it and continuing to do it is the key and then also he said which a lot of the students know about but um he just pointed out as the cold weather kicks in across the building temperature control has always been an issue um but it would probably require some attention and just saying that like some rooms are hot while those are cold and it's kind of hard to like room to room it's always different temperatures but um on a more positive note going into the clubs we have

004outdoors club the two upcoming ski trips one day trip to bromley mountain on saturday january 22nd and an overnight trip to killington from friday march 11th to sunday march 13th and just for anybody who's interested that's open to all students not just outdoors clubs so it would be talking to mr buckley or one of the officers in the club and finding out more information about that key club we have a new advisor that's going to be taking over miss beyond kerry since mrs donovan has left we just want to thank ms donovan for her several years of service to key club and the school as a whole and going off of that we had a successful thanksgiving food drive with key club which we got over 225 items donated which went to the brookfield food

005pantry for families over thanksgiving and mr davila's ilt won with the most number of food items and was awarded with a donut party and then with national honor society we had our blood drive on monday november 15th we had 50 donors sign up to participate unfortunately due to the widespread outage of red cross servers the red cross team only processed 16 units of blood which was 53 percent of the goal but still pretty impressive under the circumstances and our donations made an impact on the lives of 48 people in connecticut and then with peer counseling we've had a few events going on we had a teacher and staff appreciation kind of snack bar on wednesday november 10th a bunch of the teachers and staff were happy to see everyone together um finally having some sort

006of like connectivity event since we really haven't haven't had one with for counseling in a while and then in addition we had today after school an ice cream social for the students which was not only to fundraise for a charity but also increased publicity about the club since tomorrow we'll be having our informational meeting after school and then finally future teachers of america we are officially kicking off our word of the week for this year um next monday so that'll start off our first two words we've distributed to dr mcmorran mr ronda and a few other people that are involved with that so the students will start participating with that during their classes next week that's it thank you ben thanks ben yeah any uh questions for ben thank you so much mr belden for

007may i want to thank ben for um he's really working hard to get the report to us in advance in writing so we can have it distributed to the board and have a record of it as well so that's great that's a new tradition we're starting this year thanks to ben and his leadership in preparation in case i didn't catch anything you said this is really good [Applause] cool okay so next up on our uh on our agenda is written correspondence jessica jeska and dennis carderos wrote regarding the transition to candlewood lake elementary mark ferry marnie mcniff jody brennan jill grabko and sarah mcgovern wrote regarding concerns with the chair investigation and athletics policies and procedures and monique matthews wrote regarding the mass policy thank you next is approval board minutes i'll move the board

008approve the minutes from the budget roundtable on november 3rd the regular meeting on november 3rd and the special meeting on november 10th second okay you get to be official tonight um so so any any comments or questions on the minutes okay all in favor aye any opposed no all right so next up is the superintendent's update but before we jump in if you don't mind i'll take i'd like to take one moment um we have a board member who's having her last meeting this evening and i think as a board and i'll speak for the board we want to thank you right it's been great working with you you've been a huge value add to this board jen and uh and we'll miss you so thank you so much for everything you've done and everything

009you're going to be doing but uh please everyone join me in a round of applause for uh [Applause] and john we'd like to present you a traditional gift thank you very much for your service that's really nice i just i just i thought last month was my meeting so i said goodbye to everybody but rosa told me i have one more i just want to repeat what i said to my colleagues after the meeting was over that i just really appreciate appreciate all of you and i know we all have very busy professional and personal lives and that you've decided to dedicate what free time you have to the children of brookfield and so i'm really proud to serve alongside of you for the past four years and john really appreciate your leadership and the

010team on really i think make taking brookfield from a good to a great school district so thank you so much for all that thank you janet thank you for everything you've done to support us we really appreciate everything thank you um all right and also before i turn it over to you dr burrell i note that um mrs sharon bhutto who is our newly elected but not yet sworn in member of the board is here with us this evening and sharon if you'd be interested and willing i'd invite you to come join us at the table you we won't have a voting capability this evening but we'd love to this is a budget review this is a very important first meeting that you have a chance to sit through and we'd love to have you

011join us and for the board i apologize for breaking uh protocol but i thought it would be particularly given the timing of the swearing-in i thought that would be an appropriate thing to do so you're gonna if you're gonna shed your book yeah yeah we can look at we can look at ours together all right with that dr burrell i'll turn turn it to you for our uh your update thanks mr belden uh jen just so you know we work on the budget for eight months so we have plenty of time if you'd like to join us for any of these plenty of time um i'd i'd like to you know first start by uh thanking the board for their continued support um you know now now beyond the election and with ms patojo joining

012us um you know looking forward to really moving forward i'm going to talk a little bit about some organization we've done to get ready for strategic planning uh coming up after the holidays uh in addition to that i want to thank the the leadership team that is here this evening as we get ready to launch into budget for next year as well as strategic planning uh and thank them for their continued support and it's great when we talk about busy lives jen we've got a lot of parents here tonight which is great too because they've got busy lives and to take the time to come out on a cold night to be with us is always appreciated um so thank you to all of those folks um a couple of of updates that i want

013to get into a quick covet update uh which we've been doing monthly um we've had um wisconner had a number of cases uh over the last week and it really the the lagging over the last week indicator is that there was uh some significant infections uh probably about a week and a half ago and then there's been some continued uh i think the numbers are on 18 right now if we we hopefully have a slow down today we we've noted that as uh the first two days coming back from thanksgiving um that were behind them uh importantly uh for everyone to know uh we did inquire of dr garcia and dr sullivan and this time there's there's no action that they're recommending but we're keeping a very close eye on monitoring that we have not

014seen an uptick at the other three schools at this point um we have a quick update on vaccinations regarding five to 11 year olds dr sullivan shared with us that the information he has now is that 16 and a half percent of eligible students uh in that age range or 255 students um are in the vaccination process at this point um specifically when we talk about the five to 11 year olds we're talking about students um definitely first grade through fifth grade but even into sixth grade um so it involves center school huckleberry and wisconsin when we look at that um and so we're monitoring that a number of parents have shared vaccination status of their children at this point that they're in the process or are already there um we're gonna as we get

015closer on those um on that data i'll report that out to you how we're doing on that and we're still in that 75 ish range for our high school 9 through 12. i'm looking forward to um not only talking about budget but the school project uh going to be scheduling some time lisa's been working with me and the the school pto leadership and we're getting scheduled times to be presenting to the ptos and engaging and answering questions and having some good conversations so we're getting those dates on the calendar really looking forward to that i mentioned strategic planning we have dates now working with mr costa the strategic planning consultant who's worked with the board before we're really excited we have some dates scheduled in february march and april for collaboration on the 15th of

016december our next board meeting i'll be asking the board to have on its agenda to establish an ad hoc strategic plan planning steering committee of board members that could work with me and the team and we can we can move things forward um and look at getting people from the community to help us with that um and what's really exciting about strategic planning is covet has really kept us on hold in a lot of ways and looking forward to more aspirational goals now and moving moving forward and away from this phase of the last 18 months that we've been dealing with um really excited about that and really looking at our instructional vision and what we want to do to engage students going forward so we're looking at the next five to ten years when

017we when we start to look at this plan so it's very important um bhs gymnastics have to thank the board um for all of their support last year in the budget process uh mr baldwin reports that 19 girls have signed up for gymnastics that may be the highest uh the largest enrollment on a team in the swc so we're really excited about that now it's only the beginning uh getting the season underway but we're really excited about that uh with a new sport and don't forget the board also supported volley uh boys volleyball for the spring and i've uh seen some of the the boys and they've been excited about sharing uh the working with mr baldwin on the new uniforms and things like that so it's it's exciting times at the high school for

018sure um board retreat just a reminder with the new board forming we have a board retreat scheduled for tuesday december 21st with dan murphy our board attorney and really focusing the the topics at that meeting will really be focused on board roles and responsibilities and getting organized as a coherent team going forward and then the last thing i have is actually like to invite mr post to the podium to talk about kronos which is our time and attendance implementation and uh that has really gone off tremendously in terms of tracking uh time and attendance so let's talk a little bit about it thank you members of the finance and facilities committee have heard about this off and on over the past couple of months the system is actually up and operating now to get it

019that way there was a lot of detailed hard time consuming work performed mostly by eric conklin joan reynolds and our payroll coordinator head the burner so they've really been leading the charge on this and i'm really really proud of the job they've done um we began our parallel testing a week and a half ago we run two week payroll cycles so we have another a few days to go before we have to produce a payroll and parallel means we're going to use the old old-fashioned time sheets to run the payroll and the new system and compare them and see what's working what's not working and then we will run another another two week parallel period following that and then on december 20th we will go live and do away with the manual timesheets and we

020will be on the new system and the town is doing this with us by the way their payroll cycle is a week off from ours so they started this week with the parallel whereas we started last week so they'll be one week behind us hopefully learning from any mistakes we make that's it ken thanks for all the work on that and that's all we have for the superintendent report bob okay any questions from the board i want that ring that sounds fun um okay so thank you very much we're going to move on to subcommittee reports so first up is facilities who's going to give the facilities i am all right there you go that's why you're staying there so the the committee reviewed the school dude reports um a number of work orders were

021for heating issues which as uh our student representative described could be classrooms too hot too cold uh on the whiskey near water situation mr caldwell reported that the treatment system is online and operating we continue doing testing and are waiting for the final sign off by the state and after that we will just have to do the normal routine testing that we do at all of our wells of capital projects the committee was updated on the status of all open capital projects most notably the rfp for the high school hvac project is about to be released which when that is completed will alleviate many of those issues that uh that been mentioned with the being full on or fall off for the wisconnier wall we have received specifications from the engineer on when to winterize

022the wall have not received any specifications on a final solution for it we sent the the specifications out to several contractors none of which so far are either interested or able to take the job so we're working with the town to see if we can identify other contractors to to to go after and see if they're interested and willing to take the job center school roof the problematic section of that roof has been replaced and there have been no leaks reported today the building conditions study we're still working with tacton to develop the specifications for an rfp for that the high school roof mr caldwell is working with a contractor to come up with an effective solution we got a couple of bids that were higher than we thought they should be so we're trying

023to to see what other options we have uh high school gym lights we have a situation now where we have a lot of the fluorescent lights in the big gym that are not working or not working well and it will actually be slightly only slightly more expensive to replace all of them with led fixtures and lights than it is to replace ballasts and lights uh in the existing and then continue replacing year after year after year so again depending on if we've we've talked to the vendor uh hopefully they said they think they can get the product for us but haven't yet so and then we're working with mr baldwin on the timing of when we can do that because it'll take the gym offline for a few days and finally uh mr caldwell reported

024that two small sidewalks had been paved at wisconier allowing for safe access to the parking lot from the two exits on the north side of the building across the uh the new bus loop that we put in there and that was it okay any questions for ken on the uh facilities committee okay thank you kevin you're welcome all right so next up is the finance committee and i'll give that report um we did meet on november 8th as a committee um and i'm going to be rather quick about it we went through the financials and mr post is currently projecting that we'll have a surplus of 114 000 that's an ever moving target as we have learnings this time of year so um i it does change every month this month we had the cost

025of the uh the interim principal at the high school was incorporated into the forecast and uh saw an increase in special education transportation costs so those were the two big drivers month-to-month you all have a copy of that financial report is in your package in the consent agenda section so you all could have it but that's kind of the net of it we did talk about the bus rfp we do need to go out for bid on the bus as we've talked about it prior meetings we expect that that rfp will go out shortly and we should have a bid back in january as what we would target bids back on that's important because it intercepts our budget cycle and we will need to have that information to finalize our budget for the coming year

026at least as best we can the we went through the student activity fund as you remember we do periodic reviews of the student activity fund and uh and we went through it and it all seemed in pretty good shape had discussions about how the cash treatment was being handled but we've asked mr post to continue to work with the principals to clear any dormant accounts out of that and return funds to the general fund where appropriate um and uh and then we talked about the budget process and i'm not going to spend a lot of time on that this evening um and it's a budget transfer on this evening's budget ken that you had brought to us or did we i don't think it is okay so that we did talk about doing a uh

027budget transfer uh for the policy so some of the small items we've approved in the last couple of months so that should be coming shortly and uh and that's pretty much it we got the an update on the time and attendance system if we just heard so so that was really it on the financials they're still in solid shape right now but as we all know december january february is when you see most of the exposures and opportunities actually coming to light so that's we watch that with care so any questions all right next up is the equity and inclusion committee okay so we met on november 11th and between our october and november meeting mrs holly had a meeting with mr andrew hill who advised that he needed to communicate with some statistical experts

028on how to best guide the committee in disaggregating the data for programmatic and achievement equity so right now the committee is focusing on stakeholder equity and teacher quality while we wait for some direction from him so we're breaking into two groups to look at those so we started by all breaking into groups of three and going into breakout rooms and each group contributed to a jam board with facts that they already know they think they already know about these topics some things that came up were like teacher certification the district's commitment to professional development the annual panorama surveys to staff and families the support of student organizations pto etc so we had did that then we had some discussion and questions sort of separating a fact from an opinion and then we broke into two

029groups to sort of delve into the teacher quality and stakeholder equity so each group looked at data the teacher quality was on ed site and that includes like staffing levels demographics and qualifications and for stakeholder equity we reviewed the data from the most recent panorama surveys for staff and families from last spring so each group started out additional jam boards where we're coming up with questions to interpret that data like this is what we know this is what we need to know so some questions that came out of that like we have 18 mental health counselors is that enough to to you know meet the needs of our district and for um like on the staff once at the high school if someone said drug use is a bit of a problem for the people

030that answer that well what are they basing that on you know so these are some questions that we're putting on is this an opinion is this coming from data that we can look at so those are sort of things that we're working on we just started to get into that and we ran out of time so everyone is either going to meet like in the stakeholder group we already had another zoom to sort of discuss things further and we're going to meet synchronously or asynchronously to try to sort of complete these gm boards and come up with this is what we know and this is what we need to know like three main questions on each of those so that we can sort of work on those and then eventually in a couple months present

031come and present to the board on those two on the teacher equity and the um the teacher equality and the stakeholder equity and that's basically what we're working on a lot of stuff going on there it is yeah a lot of data okay any questions for any all right and so the last of our committee meetings is the policy and communications committee okay we met on november 17th and it was actually a very exciting meeting because mr mastaro from cabe joined us he is working on our customized policy service so he really provided an overview of the process that we're going to go through to review the policies that need to be added to our policy handbook or need to be modified it's a lengthy process so there was a lot to digest in his

032presentation but it was very very helpful and we decided as a group that we will begin with reviewing the mandated policies that we do not currently have and most of those many of those i should say are mandated because of new legislation so there are things regarding title ix iep special education and health and medical records and hipaa regulations so that'll be what we dig our teeth into first we'll start um at our next meeting which will be on december 15th so we have a lot of reading to do but it's really great that it's so nicely organized for us and there's really a very clear road map as to how we need to proceed and what we should tackle in what order so it was very helpful okay that was it any questions for

033debbie hey before we're off the topic of subcommittees rosa and i uh chatted and we thought it would be one of the first things we'll have to do as we reconstitute um the board structure at our next meeting is because that's the first meeting after the new board is sworn in is each of we we need to understand what subcommittees people would like to report on or be on and i just ask or we would just ask that everybody look at what they're doing today and let us know if there's changes you would like and what we'll try and do is kind of package it all together and put together the committees you know that we will that we will live with so uh so i think it would be just good if i just

034ask each of you to just kind of go look at what you're doing today tell it tell us whether you'd like to change or not anything you'd like to add rosa to that no i think i think that um you know if you basically covered it yeah okay um it's just a matter of just getting information from everybody so okay so next up on our agenda is the consent agenda i'll move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are resignations new hires terminations and the october 2021 financials second okay move in seconded any uh any discussion on those items okay all in favor aye hi okay so now we'll move to new business and the first item on the business is the star of this evening's uh agenda is the presentation

035of the 2022-23 budget now i'm just going to pause while you're getting organized on the presentation material and remind the board and remind the public who's listening in this is the first of a number of discussions we will have on the budget the the school budget is usually presented and at dr barrels initiative at the first meeting in in december so that we can use the month of december and january to review the budget so we'll have three meetings as a board to go through and have questions come backs anything we'd like to do at the same time the finance committee does a deep dive into all the line items because that has proven to be very successful and really exercising the the budget so we're going to kick off on tonight as a kickoff

036if you will and for the public this is the first time the board is seeing what the proposal from the administration is for the budget for 2022 and 2023. so it's it's informative for us but i wouldn't expect there's a lot that we certainly can ask questions as we go but we do have we have to absorb this right there's a big book and for those of you who've never seen a budget book this is this is what a budget book looks like and it gets thicker as the process goes on posting notes and the posters notes coming out of every side of it there's a lot of reading for us to do to really understand the budget so so this uh feel free we should ask questions as we go along let dr barrel

037have a say on what the budget looks like and then we can have some q a but again i don't want expectations to be that we're going to solve all the final budget this evening we do have multiple shots at this over the next month we do bob and thanks thanks for that introduction you you kind of took it's going to move my presentation a little uh faster i think it's slide three i go through some of the budget process but it's important bob on what you said for people to know after tonight there are three regular board of education meetings on the calendar and we could always schedule a special meeting there are six finance committee meetings on the calendar um between now and the end of january and there's also a public budget

038hearing so i if on my count there that's about 10 scheduled meetings in the next two months and in that two months there's the the holiday break the winter break that that uh we we're in so you know a few years ago we moved the the present this presentation up uh two weeks so it gave us this kind of time to really vet the budget and like i said earlier it's an eight-month process what you'll see tonight is a culmination of two months of work with the with the from the the teachers giving information to the to an input to the principals and the administrative team uh up through central office culminating and fine-tuning what we have uh uh this evening as a matter of fact when we talk about vetting and adjusting and really

039looking and exercising the budget you'll see a couple of adjustments to the status quo budget that mr post shared with you prior to the thanksgiving break there's already a couple of adjustments so we were working you know over the last week continuing to do that so it's always fine tuning and context is always evolving so we want to be responsive to them and i'll just add that that gets us to a budget submission at the end of january then there's a a process where the first selectmen reviews the budget then the board of selectmen reviews the budget then the board of finance reviews the budget there's public hearings at the board of finance level and then a town meeting and then a vote so the process goes all the way to may uh into may

040and assuming that the budget gets passed in in the referendum in may and sometimes it goes past that so uh so it's a uh it is a long process um and with a lot of players and a lot of scrutiny on this budget before we're done so and i think i will say for all of us that we appreciate the level of scrutiny that goes on because having our eyes on it and then having the board of finances eyes on the board of selectmen's eyes and the public's eyes and giving us all the input we can we get we've had a number of years in a row where we've had good budgets so um and uh appreciate everybody's uh really real engagement in this so all right thanks bob um so so it's a very

041uh tight presentation it's about 15 slides um and all this talk about process um i'll i'll be able to move quickly through that slide but it's be there for reference for everyone so one one uh phrase that i always talk about when you develop the budget is that the budget is a financial statement of our values about educating our students and this also has to be in alignment with um our goals and our priorities and um specifically what i mean by priorities is you know we have priorities and as we've all talked about over the years um i think this is your seven uh my seventh budget with with the district now you can't do everything at once for two reasons the district doesn't have the capacity uh to to do that and train people

042and move things forward and we also don't have the financial capacity to just do all these things at once we want to do them with care and we want to do them well so we have to strategically time them and calendar them through so that's just important reminder for everybody having said that um always a reminder to come back to our mission remember i just talked about strategic planning and things we're trying to achieve to inspire challenge and prepare all students to lead meaningful and productive lives and we do that through the vision and getting to the skill sets of our portrait of the graduate which is critical and creative thinking the kids becoming tremendous communicators collaborators and change makers this is the budget development process that mr belden was just leading us through we've

043broken it down by month as you can see what happens in october is um initial work begins with the administration they seek input from their staff and bring that all the way up through uh initial meetings uh to present priorities to the board of education which were approved in october late october we have meetings in early november and we continue to work through a public budget roundtable and we start to put the budget together in december we present the budget and then we have those scheduled meetings as we talked about in december and january and then uh in january and february as mr belden indicated there's lots of process going through with the board of selectmen board of finance and the public so um we'll move through that side slide quickly as i always do

044right away i put the numbers up there we don't wait for the end of the presentation although i will at the end of the presentation bring this slide back up and click on that yellow bar at the bottom which will provide us with some more detail to talk about as we round out the presentation but just so everybody knows we always start in brookfield with a status quo budget so you can see the first line at the top uh the current 2122 budget is uh 46 million 800 thousand that this current budget was a three percent increase over the 2021 budget so to keep business as usual with exactly everything we have we have what's called a status quo budget so our base status quo budget which is all of the bargaining unit uh contracts

045other contracts we have with service providers um and the kind of natural inflationary cost of doing business takes us to a 2.49 uh increase of 1.1 million dollars then we had some significant uh inflationary items which i'll go into detail at the end of the presentation um including fuel oil uh and so forth in addition to some contractual things that have been been adjusted as the year has evolved and then there's some operational integrity to make sure we're providing services in a quality manner that we need to uh incorporate into next year's budget then there's some required legislation that has a cost of 91 000 as you can see there and then from the spring the american rescue plan funds uh the grant monies we had some we have some grant funded positions and opportunities

046this year and for next year some of those are going to be phased in we had a phase in plan we talked about uh in the spring the summer and even had some reminders earlier this fall that we're going to start phasing in into this budget uh for next year so you've got that to consider and then we have two specific strategic investments uh one involving mathematics at the elementary school uh and another involving further support in kindergarten at the center school so we'll be taking a look at that um at the end um the increase uh that i'm proposing tonight and again as mr belton said this is just the beginning is a 4.2 increase or 1.9 million dollars so we always have our annual goals to organize our budget and how we move

047through things the first goal is to maintain class size within our guidelines while adjusting staffing patterns to reflect enrollment changes and achieve efficiencies so the first part of that goal is really important for people to think about is we always are looking at our enrollment patterns and staffing patterns that go along with that um to make sure we're maintaining class size but also um being realistic and responsible and good stewards of the taxpayers dollars and obviously looking to achieve efficiencies in any way we can the second goal is to provide for teaching and learning to make sure our professional development our curriculum materials are continued and involving curriculum development for the self-navigating learner continue that that's our core business teaching and learning uh and that's why we're so excited about getting the strategic planning process

048underway uh the third is maintaining and continuing to enhance programs while remaining responsive to changing needs we talk about being an agile organization being ready ready to move when we need to with changing student needs and evolving context whether it's you know federal local local um state legislation whatever it might be we need to be ready for it um and obviously continuing to build on programs and you'll you'll see the details in just a minute uh the fourth goal is to provide the technology infrastructure that effectively supports student success in our digital environment um all of these obviously are linked to the things we're trying to do with our strategic plan and then finally providing all the necessary resources we can to meet the needs of all of our students and making sure we're in

049alignment with state and federal law which is ever evolving as we all know so goal number one maintaining class size and adjusting staffing patterns and taking a look at enrollment we have two adjustments that we're going to make we are going to the proposal is to reduce one fte at wiscon in grade five currently we have uh nine sections we would reduce that to eight sections and that would continue to keep us in the class size guideline range and then the second is in addition to kindergarten at center school which was discussed at the budget round table and also worked on with mrs diamond principal center school and her teachers to bring in a half paraprofessional for each of the nine sections to support learning and we'll talk a little bit more detail about that

050later mrs diamond is prepared to share a little bit about that and so we would bring that in as an addition in that goal goal number two continuing to uh enhance our teaching and learning um and so you can see there's a number of things we're going to continue to do here uh advancing the integration of technology um and technology resources into daily instruction i took a walk around brookfield high school with dr mcmoren yesterday and technology was abound it was everywhere it was really great to see making sure we support access to digital texts we were already moving in that direction and through the pandemic and remote learning we really invested in that and so we're going to continue to make sure we support that ongoing support of the faculty's capacity development aligned to

051student assessments uh and teacher evaluation data we've got to make sure we support that we want to advance our assessment literacy for the professional staff and for parents and there's a lot of engagement there we also want to make sure we're expanding our curriculum development aligned with state standards specifically for social studies um and we're advancing we've really made strides at the elementary school and we're advancing up through the middle school now additionally we need to develop standards alliance assessment to support standards-based grading we have that in grades k through four and now we're going to matriculate up through the up up through uh grade five ongoing revision and alignment of the bhs science and k-12 social studies uh curriculum uh making sure we're aligned to the ngss standards and the connective frameworks for social

052studies and then the last two um we it's time those board members who've been around uh quite a while might remember that early on we had committees put together and we brought in new math k-8 math programs and k english language arts programs we need to take a look at those now to make sure they're not outdated that we might need to enhance them do we need new programs there's a lot of work to do so we're going to convene some committees under dr ruby's leadership and make sure that's happening next year not that we're purchasing for next year but that we're convening the committees and the release time and the work that needs to go in for the following years and we'll see where that goes plan ongoing professional development for instructional coaching and

053curriculum development and of course content area support third goal maintain and continue to enhance programs while remaining responsive to changing needs so one of the things we need to do there is uh mrs labrizano has proposed that we bring in a full-time math interventionist a certified teacher who is a math interventionist to support mathematics at huckleberry part of the offset to bring that in is currently we have two regular education paraprofessionals that provide that intervention and as we look at the transitory nature of those positions as well as gaining expertise in mathematics through a certified teacher um that's the direction uh mrs labriciano and the team think would be best for the school and and i agree and so we're proposing that we also need to transition arcade this is part of operational integrity our

054k-8 principal secretary positions are 11-month we're going to transition those to 12 months and we could talk about the reasons for that we'd like to do that uh our athletic director we're going to move from an 11-month to a 12-month position um there's just so much work that happens over the the summer and and that actually was contractually negotiated um agreement uh to move that position to 12 months transition the athletic trainer from contracted services to a school employee uh contracted services we are we transitioned from a school employee who was here with us for 18 years we a few years ago to try to save some money it is very difficult through contracted services to keep someone uh with us and so uh one of the things we're thinking about doing is is moving

055back to a employee and we certainly talk about that through the budget deliberation process at center school we want to increase the 0.7 ftes for both art and music to 1.0 and there are some things we are considering there part of it is uh retention we continue to lose people with these part-time positions and we want to make sure we keep them because we're preparing in next year to get ready for the transition to candlewid lake elementary where we will need them with the extra grade to be full time and as we train people we put a lot of resources into our people and we develop them we don't want to lose them their the balance of their work would be to be in an intervention role to support students if they're not teaching necessarily

056math or music so we've got some some ideas and some plans there we're pretty excited about and then of course um there's some courses that have been proposed by our uh curriculum leads at the high school um uh mrs holly uh is uh proposing that we move forward on a french honors class uh level five uh in uh business we wanna have a social media and marketing course as well as an introduction uh to marketing and we certainly um have lots of backup to talk about why we to do that the fourth goal providing technology infrastructure to effectively support student success in a digital learning environment we're going to maintain support for digital curricular tools necessary for our blended personalized teaching and learning continue advancing the integration of tech and resources into daily instruction which

057we talked about earlier upgrading our classroom presentation stations uh specifically uh at wisconsin we've made great advancements here at the high school with the investments the board has supported and the community has supported continue to invest in our chromebooks toward completion of our one-to-one uh device initiative and something we're really looking forward to is adopting a new adaptive website platform to provide more enhanced communication and a better user experience finally in goal number five i'll provide the necessary resources to meet the needs of all of our students in alignment with state and federal law through the second meeting in october we talked about our budget priorities and we talked about a lot of the legislative updates that were there so this this will be very familiar uh to all of you uh adding a full-time

058bilingual teacher at huckleberry required by state law once you have 20 students speaking of the same language at a school the next year you're obligated to have a bilingual program so we need to be prepared for that because this year we have that number of students at bhs the the state department of education has developed the black and latino studies course and that is by legislation needs to be offered as an elective so we have to offer that as an elective course for students grades 6 through 12 success plans that has to do with family engagement and so budget wise there may be a need for substitutes so teach teachers can meet more frequently with parents and so forth so there's a lot that goes on in that regard similarly with social and emotional learning

059there's an assessment that we need to do one of those things when we do such surveys want to make sure we send such a survey we vet it through the team but we also send its parents so they know in advance and so we make sure they're all appropriate questions and so forth and then we need to finalize the talent and gifted identification process and work with the police department on making sure our school resource officers are trained in social emotional learning so these are all legislated policy implication type items as well as budget so those are the five goals and the main things we're focusing on enrollment is always very important it's important on these enrollment slides this is as of october one the enrollment changes every single day you know there's usually not

060a grade in the district where there's a student moving out a student moving in something changing somebody injured and on homebound there's all kinds of circumstances that go on pre-k through 12. and so um this is as of october 1. and you could see the light blue is is the current and the dark blue is our projections for next year and while there's some uh changes it's pretty stable as you can see if you look at the bottom you could see that our projection for next year is that we'll be up about three students total and last year you see a big jump there um that the there was a year-to-date change of uh uh from last year to this year of 58 students obviously that had to do with the pandemic a lot of

061the younger children who stayed home who weren't registered with us now have registered so that that that's an anomaly as i think we all understand special education is down uh by about eight students as compared to the current year as we project for next year which is a trend we we hope to continue through all the intervention work we do uh i want to make sure i can see everything here english language learners our students are uh projected to be uh they're up 14 this year and so uh that's a tough one to project with the way things change in the middle of the school year um and so forth and and taking a look and then finally you can see free and reduced lunches down by a two i wanted to make sure i

062saw that said that right and uh we're projecting out place uh out placements being down out placements for special education that is a cost center i know mike and i've talked about that the finance committee keeps an eye on that monthly so we thank you folks for that and this is why gonic comes to the meetings period periodically to share what's going on there so keeping an eye very very close eye on enrollment and matching our our resources to our enrollment is it's significant yeah and you'll see in the slide where i bring up some of the detail um with the actual budget figures there there's a little slight change already in there that we started to talk about and uh some for positive to the budget and some more difficult to the budget and

063then this is our class size average range chart uh going all the way back to 2013-14 school year um white for the most part indicates that we are in in the range of the um uh board of ed guidelines board of ed guidelines are up in the right-hand corner they're up there and you can see that uh over the years we've done quite well with maintaining a class size within the range and we're very honest about it we even if we're 0.3 students over the range we color it red so we can note it um remember we talked about paraprofessionals added to kindergarten that's in lieu of adding a section to reduce the class size so that was one of the pieces there um and actually in grade seven you can see that um we

064are actually below the the class size range all right so i wanted to go back to this sheet here eric is there can you click on that that yellow bar for me because that's going to pull up a detail sheet um that's important structurally and mechanically to walk through and obviously once we get through that we really near the end of the presentation there's a way to get the whole thing there there we go you'll scroll there you go so like i said at the beginning we had the preliminary status quo which was salaries health benefits kind of natural inflation some of the things that's about a two and a half percent increase and then we had some significant inflation issues that we're going to talk about uh some contract pieces that i mentioned and

065some operational integrity that we discussed that kind of fit into this next category so we really had a great deal this year dollar sixty a gallon for fuel so um we we anticipated and this is the town as well right ken um that that the cost would go up but no one i think um could have could have seen what what's coming you know what has come with the cost of fuel and where it's skyrocketing to so there's a really big jump there and fuel uh and heating oil um then the 12-month secretaries there's just a lot of work that happens in the summer and again we can talk about the details of that i want to move this along so questions can be answered for operational integrity it cost us about fifteen thousand dollars

066for the three secretaries to work the extra month in the summer uh to make sure our offices are open and more available to families um you know new family moves in they show up on uh june 30th or july 4th uh july 5th they they can't wait three weeks to be registered you know and and that happens now because we just don't have the support staff in place and that's just one example of many of the things that are our evil secretaries would be able to do in the uh in the summertime um the athletic director i talked about that's a contractual negotiated agreement between the board and the administrative union to move that from 11 to 12 months you can see that there the art and music fte increase uh the mr beldon talked

067about the transportation there is a significant increase there um it's definitely more than the the typical uh increase because the uh whatever bus company we go with likely and again that's mid-january um but we're we're estimating um i think would you base it on can seven and a half or five percent what was the increase yeah seven and a half because there was a it was a five to ten so we looked at just a logic for now to start in the middle because if we stayed with all-star or go with another one at the beginning of a five-year contract they're going to have to update their fleet and that's very costly to a company and they pass that on to the customer um then we talked about special education um in a recently newly

068uh projected outplay student and the cost for that um and then the athletic trainer minus the service cost but what it would cost for an employee and the balance would be about thirty three thousand dollars we also have the required legislation of the bilingual teacher uh so with health benefits that gets us around uh ninety one thousand dollars uh health benefits are very costly as we know and can basis that on a middle of the salary step range when we average out a teacher for an estimate the other piece is the american rescue plan funds the grant that's paying for the social studies instructional coach position and a partial on the technology integration specialist positions phasing those from the grant into next year's budget and you can see the cost there and then finally strategic

069investments what's new uh the the paraprofessionals to support kindergarten is new and you can see the cost there um basically the 4.5 so four and a half pair of professional positions has about the same cost as a full-time teacher uh the way we average it out so it's instead of having a new section to keep the class size guidelines lower um the teachers and mrs diamond really worked that through and we talked about it but you'll recall the budget roundtable um to have another set of hands to do a lot of instructional work and we also would build in training before the school year started for those pairs to set up expectations seven people right what's that one four point five seven people perhaps they would be there will there be there would be 4.5

070positions and it would be a half half day in each classroom because there's nine sections right so how many people how many people is that four and a half also four and a half oh i'm sorry so so you would have four full-time people and a half-time person okay thanks for asking mike to make sure that's clear and then the math interventionist at the at huckleberry hill and like i talked about there's an offset of the two regular ed paraprofessionals and so there'd be uh you know the net cost there would be about seventy thousand dollars that gets us to a point four point two four percent increase uh over last year's budget and eric i think that was the last slide yes that is it i thank you for your attention and your time

071a different number two point four nine percent yeah it says 2.57 for the preliminary stats can you look at your book uh different than what we had there ken just got run off today so i don't know if it was a older version or not yeah last week yeah but that's been adjusted since last week that's what i'm saying it's really just the status quo yeah the numbers down below yeah um could you bring back up the budget drivers thing sure yeah sure that'll probably be a good sheet to leave up i think we should leave it up i know that was a lot of information coming at everybody but try to keep it brief tight take a lot of complicated information and really boil it down so it's it's simplified and and digestible do

072you have a question yes um so one thing i didn't notice on there was the summer school so are we that's still being paid in the grant rosa for next year okay yep because we had that we had that as transitioning into the budget and that's one of the things that we were planning to talk at the finance committee next week ken and i were looking to be as responsible as we could with bringing forth the proposal and so we were looking at timing in the grant um and so we could show you that specifically um as we dig deeper on monday night okay now on this on this one just looking at the sheet the question i had which i'm just it's a words and music question because your your enrollment said special ed

073out placement is down in terms of number of kids but the cost is up for one additional outplay students by 124 000 here is it up or is it down or is it is there some dynamic that we need to understand actually ken if you could come and talk to that a little bit for us that'd be really helpful what was your mic on bob yeah it's it's in addition to the over and above the projection of 30. so we're objecting 30 now we're going to have 31. but what was in the budget was the prior year budget was 34 correct uh we actually have 34 right now i don't know off the top of my head how many were in the budget okay we need to compare budget to new budget right so we're

074real clear on that okay maybe we could do that at the finance committee detail review yeah okay so john broad question you said the number of items when you were going through the presentation you said we could go through the details and we probably don't have time to do it this evening could we schedule in our next session just a deep dive on each of those items where there's additional people or additional months right and why we think we need it and what's the underlying driver of cost and things like that absolutely and one of the things we want to do by the end of the week bob would like to get it to the board prior to the weekend is joy had asked at a previous meeting um to actually look at the proposals

075from uh the either the departments or the principals so we're going to put that package together um and those the rationales are developed there as well as uh what you're asking for so we want to make sure we're going to carry this budget forward we all need to understand absolutely details of you know why is it you know i've kind of go through your presentation i just was a number of areas that were i'll tell you more right and so we have probably ought to go through that sure and you can line up whatever speakers we need on that absolutely and if there's any specific burning question tonight someone's really interested in you know we brought the team with me as well so we can you know talk through that okay you know whatever works

076with the schedule no okay um well four percent it's a tough budget so what do we know about these inflationary drivers i mean i said for example as the heating and fuel oil cost and the diesel cost is it based on hard contracts do we have a buy out there are we planning to engage with our procurement to figure out how we get leverage on that cost i mean what's the status of it great question and we work with our purchasing agent as well on this just this week we discussed that on monday when we were meeting with the first election and the town controller and the purchasing agent uh we have not gone out to uh bid yet the thinking is that uh that they believe the even our supplier believes that prices will

077come down over time the number that i have in the budget right now is based on his latest estimate of what it would be if we locked in now which would be about two dollars and 39 cents a gallon uh and we locked in at 1.61 for this year so we knew we got a bargain and we were gonna have an increase but we didn't didn't know it would be this large so it's not based on anything more concrete than his estimate of based on the market today okay and the second question which is related is you're on the biggest unknown we usually have about this time is benefits what information do we have on benefits costs for next year we're doing the same thing we did last year at the beginning and that's taking

078the the opeb actuaries estimate of increase plus 0.5 percent so their increased estimate was 6.5 percent so we're using 7 percent and the town is doing the same thing at this point until we get better information and is there a timing when we think we would get better information does that get us before our january 31st submission or does it happen after that generally after okay all right and and you and marsha are working on the same assumptions absolutely okay that's good we haven't always done that okay we do and if we if um it was a real christmas present last year it made the budget all come together it really did yeah and when we do decide to go out to bid like on oil and gas we will do it with them okay

079and uh the and the busing contract you said you've gotten a range and you just use the midpoint of the range yes then and that's from our existing provider correct okay and did he his is his drivers mostly salary of drivers and because of the shortages or is it mostly because of a bus equipment and he gives you his what are the words that match the storyline uh both he's already ordered new buses for next year which are 12 to 15 000 per bus more than he paid previously he's got a couple of years left on their union contract with the drivers and expects there to be quite a bit of upward pressure on wages which again he'll have to factor in or any any company will have to factor in because it's a five-year

080contract okay and we're planning to take it out broadly to rfp right we're not being uh caught with a single provider here no we will we will actually physically send it to the other providers that we know are in the area okay okay well look i i'm looking forward to an extensive set of discussions i'm thinking at the board meeting we all need to hear about some of the programmatics absolutely john and so you know what are we doing and so what could you propose oh here's a list of topics we would sure you would suggest we talk about absolutely and i would just ask the board members to look at that and look at as you're looking through the book if there's things we want to add this is our chance to add those

081right and we just go through them one at a time and if the board members have any questions about any of those proposals please send them to us we're more than happy to get prepared for that for the december 15th meeting now have you set up the process for taking questions from board members and providing answers like we did last year we are ready to go so um we will have a google doc established and we'll have the questions submitted and we'll work on those as best we can in real time okay start them with the questions go ahead rosa um since the finance committee is going to be doing a deep dive and i assume we're going to use the same process that we did last year because i think that worked really well

082do you want to maybe have board members filter their questions to that committee so that if it goes under like a particular area of the budget or a particular line item we can keep all that organized i'm okay with that whatever the board would like to do we're more than happy i'm okay with that i think that i think if we i think of the board members all send questions into the central thing can you could you could then parse it into the different line items as we talked about the different sections and get it to what we did last year is we divvied it up amongst the three board representatives and we went through each one through line items you want to stay and and help someone yeah who's taking over for me if

083i got job that's one of the room we have to decide that at our next meeting so so right now it's just you and me rosa so i'll point out that according to the budget calendar our first our next finance committee meeting will be next monday yes yes i know that um your calendar is already full by my calendar these six meetings are weighing heavily so um but i think that's a great idea and ken i could use your help in you know parsing questions into different categories so that we take them into account as we're going through the line items it's a great idea rosa okay any other questions for this evening that we want to talk about mike john i had a question on the so the athletic trainer minus i just want

084to understand the minus service so this is in addition to the salary currently provided so we you want to give the detail on that ken or so go ahead you can walk it through thanks that would be the incremental cost we would incur if we hire an employee with benefits and don't have to pay for the service anymore gotcha okay so ken before you leave that i mean are we satisfied with the service we're getting do we have a good trainer right now uh we don't have one right now we don't have one come on steve so so it when we get when we actually have a trainer many times we are satisfied the problem is the way the services compensate the trainers they leave quite quickly and there's a lot of turnovers so that's

085that's part of our issue here but steve i'll let you take the rest of it so when um john and i got here we got at the same time we had a trainer um jen cole packard she was here for 18 years and she was fantastic and then we couldn't find one right away so then we tried select physical therapy and they provide us with trainers and it's just become a revolving door because we pay the service you know their people it's like their first job out of college and then they leave it's like our last trainer friend was outstanding great she left to get a job at university of bridgeport so and we've always had gaps so now we have a gap right now season's starting and we don't have a trainer so that's

086not good looking at you know how it was before you know we tried to save money and go with the training service that a lot of schools do use it's better that we get our own sorry i'm very nasty short term in terms of this year right is there anything that we should be doing to make sure you have proper training for what we need okay go ahead you want to comment on that no you could you could share what we're doing um so ken and i talked and john and we posted it as our own and we've already gotten two applicants one of which was our former trainer who left select because she didn't like the company went somewhere else and now it wants to come back so we are we are working to

087fill that void and that is a finance committee conversation in a personnel negotiations uh committee so you're obviously i would say we would implement this approach this year for next year you know to get us through with the proposal for next year yeah letting the applicant know that if it doesn't yes budget then the position pretends correct so what's what's like the hard number fear for for athletic trainer just because i know 33 thousand dollars is not no so that what we were paying was 45 so it would be 45 plus 33 and that would cover the salary benefits and everything else so that's where that that's where the i don't know the exact number the 33 000 plus on what that number really means to my cue of uh you're you're kind of in

088that world what do you think about 78 000 as a cost of with benefits that's not so bad yeah okay well what does the hours entail with benefits yeah it's not so bad yeah i think i think it was it was the salary of 60 and then everything else you know the benefits we were getting correct and there would be an 11 month we we used we looked back at the contract we had from 2015. so we were paying select 45k correct and when the trainer left at that time 2015 i think when we looked at the contract today it might have been 56 000 or something back then okay yep joy it sounded like you had a question you wanted that i was going to say what was the time and these are 11

089months under that during the day too or just after it would be about 40 hours a week and then you know cover obviously all the games saturdays you know we would yeah i would work with her and or him or her and decide the schedule for the week because it would change every week so this hour doesn't change with overtime like there's no that's all include 11 months i'm sorry that that's so it's 11-month position regardless of saturdays and correct possible sundays yeah yeah and the veterans is just how you schedule it yes i got it which is is it's much needed not having a trainer is brutal for us no i agree i just wanted to get all the what does all the numbers mean because yeah minus the service in 33k and i'm

090like okay what's the give me the full picture so does the trainer work with all the teams yes have we have we considered like an athletic training like shadow program too a lot of schools do that what do you mean so you have let's say you hire athletic trainer do you have i mean would we consider in the future somebody who's interested in physical therapy i think oh yeah as our students yeah right oh yeah definitely work i thought you might bring somebody in it would be easy i would say probably easier to work that program with someone on staff correct so there's a little bit of a non financial yeah benefit to that and i agree that's a nice little sell there too for that kind of hard to do when you have a

091service correct right doing it yeah you can't do it we have a permanent employee who's establishing history and relationships and and becomes part of the fabric of the community you can definitely do what mike's talking about and then they're here longer and they get to work with the nurses too so you get more of a bond there okay all right thank you thanks steve thank you steve all right yeah i'm interested at the social studies instructional coach do we currently have that and it's paid under our password correct it's if that's paid under our best or now and that's part of the phase in plan to next year's budget i think we ought to uh near list of topics for next time we ought to bring up that whole phase out our what's covered in

092our best or yeah phase i think that's a really important thing and i've updated that sheet and we definitely want to share that with the finance committee and so that we can but we ought to do it here at the board oh yeah so it might just be good to hear like how's that instructional coach going and what are the benefits so the board could feel if they felt like that was something they could advocate for they'd have some good information we're going to start with the cape committee next week or on the 15th but no next week yeah the eighth next week there's a there's a committee that can be talking about in the instructional coaches in an update there so it's natural to be brought to the board meeting on the 15th well

093so the cape committee ought to come with an opinion right when we meet next on the importance of that project so i'm very happy to see the possibility of the um music and art position at center school go back to a full-time position absolutely i remember when that was actually gonna be my question debbie yeah i remember when that was reduced to a 0.7 and i just think it's so much better for the district and and to help us retain attract and retain really superior teachers that that be a full-time position yeah thank you all right so look i'm going to want to get considering we have a bunch of parents who would like to speak tonight i think we ought to curtail the discussion on the budget for this evening um start reading and

094sending your questions in um through uh can we submit it as an email to you or is it gonna be a sheet where we can just post them a google doc of some sort okay i just uh we ought to just submit all those questions um and we ought to get instructions on how to how you want them okay um and then at our next meeting john i think you propose what the topics would be based on the things we didn't talk about and i just urge everybody to take a look at them and uh and say what do you want to hear more about right and depending how many of those topics there are we can do it in the next meeting or the next two meetings sure right so because by the end

095of january we have to advocate for this budget oh yeah or whatever and yeah it's to that point but there's just so much that comes at a board on that for on the first night here with with all this information you know i like to keep it as crisp as i can and then answer the questions that are that are of interest but people need time to digest it's a lot of information yeah and uh there are some good questions here tonight so this is i think it's a start as we saw last year our board's very engaged on the budget so bob i just had a thought uh as we're welcoming sharon onto the board remember how overwhelming it was all for all of us at our first meeting when we learned about the

096budget and anything we could do to support sharon like what types of questions might you ask you know so she sort of understands how to enter into the uh budget process i think would be really helpful even like what are some best practices and what's worked in the past so i found like that was really tough my first year so anything we could do to support our new member i think would be that's a great job and i always think put you in charge because you're the finances well i've already talked to sharon and i offered that after we got the budget she and i could sit down and we could walk through as simple as how do you read this book right you know there's a lot of information in here um it's very

097could be very overwhelming so i'll do that sharon anytime you're ready we could spend we could spend an hour or two and just kind of kind of slowly go through how's the budget look and what are the pieces of it and you know how do you connect the stuff in the presentation to the stuff in the book you have so um because let's take some knowledge of how those columns work they can ken puts a lot of information on there and ken you're tied out with mrs marion right in terms of the baseline numbers that so when she presents her budget it's the same base numbers as we do right no no in terms of what last year's current year budget is and because uh sometimes we found that to be out of kilter and

098we just need to make sure that stays in kilter john one last question on the uh the 4.5 full time so we're reducing the one full-time uh middle school teach middle school teacher at fifth grade but they're really just getting repurposed we're not actually letting them get well at this point it's so early in the process and so you know just so you know how i thought that was yeah it's um you can't automatically say we're going to reallocate that fte to x position um it's december 1st it is there's another six months to go in in the year before teachers get their contracts for next year there's retirements resignations um there's a math interventionist position that you know hopefully passes through the board and through the budget process maybe someone you know a veteran

099teacher from from internally would be interested in that position we just don't know so much goes on um in this particular case fifth grade is at the middle school so mr ren has already worked with his team i also work with mr petrino who's the teacher union president to let people know this is not the time to get nervous about it um we we talk about ftes and positions we don't talk about people because there's so much that goes on also certifications and what grade levels of where people can teach so there's there's a lot of time left and in the years three months underway we've got plenty of time okay so with that why don't we uh finish the discussion here on the the superintendent's budget proposal uh move to the next item uh

100which is item b the postponement of start times for the 2022-23 school year i will move that the board postponed the start times for the 2022-2023 school year as approved on june 3rd 2020 and as recommended by superintendent dr john burrell and director of operations ken post second all right so it's been moved in second and then uh dr burrell i'll turn it over to you to kind of talk through what concern and rationale is yeah so bob the rationale um i'm glad you asked for that is we as we talked about i think was the november 3rd meeting a month ago um we we are um not able to be fully um or even partially you know into the school the new school candlewood lake to start the school year next year the huckleberry

101students if everything goes according to the plan now with the supply chain delay on the roofing materials our huckleberry students will be in staff will be getting ready at this time next year to move in in january that's the plan so the kids will start at huckleberry this is important just to explain again anyway i think for people um the kids will start the year at huckleberry and then when the when candlewood lake is ready to accept them and it's finished and we have a certificate of occupancy the students and staff will be moved into candlewood lake then the demolition process begins with the school which as we all know doesn't just happen in a few weeks there's a lot of materials to be removed and so forth once the building's down then the the

102development of the property to get the parking lot driveway and everything situated so there'll be temporary lots and you know just enough parking for the three grades that'll be in there the rest of the year will progress the parking lot will be finished by the by june uh june july and then can center school will move in in fall of 23 we'll have everyone there so the thought process is we really from a logistical standpoint um the fifth graders will still be at the middle school they will not be joined at candlewood lake so um that it just doesn't work on top of that when you have that extra grade in the second tier of how we would do the busing fifth grade not just sixth grade through twelve but fifth that has a significant

103additional cost count i think of three hundred thousand dollars to have enough of bus fleet to um make that work uh rather than having the more even split with the bus fleet so you wouldn't need those additional buses so um for for financial and logistical the rationale is we wait on the start times okay any questions from the world together we always said that the the start times would go in when we had the new school up so it's a little awkward next year isn't it so um did we actually how hard did we exercise that could you run the two sets of bus runs did that was that a formal cost estimate um ken if you want to come to the mic so you can explain because i know you work directly with all-star

104on that no that was an estimate just based on their their experience doing they did not reroute everything to see to see how it would look that's a massive massive project okay and then the concept right now we're running if i remember we're running the center school and huckleberry schools kind of in tandem as it is right um and so this the old the change would be running the high school and the middle school in tandem correct and a second time that's how you would do the two times right that we talked about and like with the fifth grade still at the middle school that's just too much is that what you're saying that's what adds the extra buses no because because because you got eight great okay i got it yeah the other thing

105that's interesting in context and we don't have a formal survey on that but talking with mrs lavroshano and um uh mrs diamond many parents uh even though we're talking about starting times uh it's pretty much the same for for the elementary grade um and looking to be healthier for the older kids and a little bit later um many of our parents of younger children are talking to parks and rec ymca and us about can you offer before school um care so they're they're not interested in a little extra sleep um they've got work schedules and family demands so you know looking at how we might be able to accommodate so just an interesting piece to the context and obviously we can survey and work on that as an additional opportunity to utilize our buildings wisely

106and help families all right all right so any uh any further discussion on the motion on the table okay all in favor all right any opposed all right passes unanimously all right um so there's no old business uh um there's a next on the agenda before public comment it's just an update on the candlewood uh project canada lake elementary school project so rosa do you want to give any updates that we have yeah i can give a small update um you know as we actually just talked about on with the delayed opening um you know in the earliest students not getting in there until or at least all the students not getting in there until um you know at least the winter of 23. um but that doesn't mean and this is an important thing

107for parents to understand is that it doesn't mean that construction has stopped things are still buzzing over there construction is still moving along they've got concrete and steel still going in in some of the sections and they're still working on the tall walls and some of those more forward um pre-k administration gymnasium that those whole all those areas and actually if you you drive over there during non-school hours you'll kind of see some of that stuff coming together some of the roofing materials did get delivered this week so that's good but definitely not all that we need um and some is due to come in next week as well so um you know that's that's the structural stuff and it's still moving along um and the only other thing is uh furniture fixtures and equipment

108and um dr brill i know you had worked with um some of those teams putting those um materials together so maybe you have like an uh just a very brief update um i was actually working with uh tech town right before the holiday break to get a confirmation meeting oh one ready to go and so i haven't had a chance to send a notification to uh mary rose and and melissa um uh regarding getting together with uh eddie and the interior designer from tecton for one final uh confirmation meeting to go over the shelving and the furniture and so forth um we're hoping to get that in the next two to three weeks prior to the holiday break because they still want to get out to bid on schedule for the furniture again supply chain

109delay we want to be moving into a school next january with new furniture we don't want to have to have a short term repurpose of furniture or anything like that while we move into the new school so important to stay on time with all of this uh the other reminder for everybody it's it's most people would say of course that's the case but a good reminder to to let everybody know about is obviously if you can't roof the building you slow down the work because you can't enclose the envelope of the building and therefore can't work on the inside work that needs to be done everything obviously be exposed to the elements and would be ruined so that's really the the gist of the roofing material issues and mr cecco was here to explain that

110at the last meeting so that's all i have okay thank you rosa thank you john welcome right next on our agenda is public comment um so i'm just going to read our our general statement on the on public comment the board of education welcomes public comment individuals or groups can address the board concerning any subject with it that was in within the board's jurisdiction three minutes will be allotted to each speaker comments and questions at a regular meeting may deal with any topic related to the board's management of the schools discussion of personnel or individual members of the board shall not be considered appropriate so we have a uh sign up sheet that uh per our guidelines um with six speakers um for those of you who are going to speak we have these handy-dandy

111uh little hourglasses i've timed them 17 times over they're three minutes a piece um what i will do is as you speak first i'd like your you to give your name and address right so for the record and once you start speaking i'll start the hourglass just keep your eye gently on it and um and i'll when it when it runs out i'll just give you a reminder that three minutes is up so and we'll see if we could then finish your thought and uh and uh and we'll move on to the next speaker so and uh we welcome your input so thank you all so first up is uh warren fentress oh you've got you're kind of i'm here and i will tell you that we've spoken to our health director is when you're

112speaking if you're uncomfortable you can remove your mask while you're speaking that's uh that's allowable in general it's a masks on in the school but he said for a speaker in front of a microphone you're welcome to pull your mask down or you know whatever but then please put it back on after thank you mr fentress i've read um can i start name and address warren ventress 173 barton um okay can i start now yes i've read about issues like crt and other concerning topics being pushed in the schools that seem highly inappropriate to my values uh so if things like bogus racist claims or the sexualization of our children are seriously being considered here then we as parents need to let the board know how we feel and i have to tell you i

113feel kind of let down by the school management that seems unconcerned with truth which should be our highest ideal with science and with common sense and we should be following the law emergency use authorizations are prohibited from mandates according to federal law keep that in mind as a graduate of simsbury high many years ago i was taught to question authority and speak truth to power because truth matters the truth is real yet what i see in the news in the schools is an abdication of truth of rationality and common sense the politicians politicize facts to push a narrative that serves them not our children and this isn't a right versus versus left issue this is right versus wrong this is good versus evil which we're being confronted with in society right now this kovacs fraud

114and it is a fraud has people really confused because we're being lied to by people we thought we could trust doctors scientists even lawyers and legislators history teaches we should never blindly trust those in power especially when they are puppets of this new world order which is ultimately a satanic cult but i digress these new world order perverts eugenicists like bill gates and klaus schwab of the world economic forum have presented the public with a fraudulent pandemic and bad science all to push an agenda of genocide this is not just criminal it's pure evil this is what we're being confronted with what's the truth masks do practically nothing to stop infection this is what the science proves this so-called vaccine is in fact a poison it's not just killing our children it's causing injury and

115death on a scale never seen with a vaccine this has been proven by scientists like nobel laureate luke montane and doctors like david e martin this pandemic is actually an illuminati plot which i read about from a book written in 1991 by bill cooper called behold a pale horse he's described the what we're seeing right now to a t i reviewed the cdc data including the vaccine adverse event reporting system data over the past two years and myself as a former medical device engineer and pfizer executive the data proves covit is a fraud it's just the flu and it's been renamed covet the cdc data if if accurate is definitive you have to realize that there are compromised people in our government who are trying to kill us and our children you can ignore you

116need to ignore the state board of education rules that are giving you because these are coming down from an illegal group of orders that's based on lies you're abusing our children by making them wear masks which do nothing but cause psychological effects and they have to rebreathe their co2 this is no justification for them there's no justification for them on healthy people requiring masks is simply tyranny any rules that violate the constitution or the nuremberg code can be ignored this includes masks faxes and mandates the state department of education policy may provide you with misguided rationale for requiring masks but i don't care what these unethical bureaucrats say i care about the science and the truth there's no justification for the masks for the vaccine all this is is another holocaust understand that these perverse

117corrupt elites and their minions are the enemy it's not left to right it is the new world order this corruption is all over the place and if you're supporting them you're either criminal stupid or corrupt yourself your time's up sir don't think you're going to get out of jail free by pushing these masked mandates you're going to have to take a stand this is good versus evil you're going to have to choose which side you're on thank you all right next up is uh i'm handwriting's a little off awkward sean sheridan did i get that right sean yeah all right perfect couldn't tell if that was an iron l hello everybody i'm sean sheridan uh i'm at 96 perry drive into milford my daughter attends brookfield high school she's an athlete on the cheer team

118and i want to use this public forum to address my concern that members of the team expressed their concern over bullying in the team an investigation was performed by the school the conclusion of which omitted critical testimony and unfortunately i don't believe that anything was really done about the concerns of the students and now we're in a situation where there's a program of reconciliation where presumably students who had quit the team and have been absent from the team for six months are going to be admitted back onto the team something i don't believe would happen in any other athletic program in the school but the small number of students who did not quit the team remained with it will be penalized in two ways first of all they're being forced to accept people that were

119essentially bullies back onto the team um and in this interim period where it looks like there will be no competition cheer for the athletes on the team they won't be permitted to pursue composite competition teams outside of the school so the students that did not quit the team are going to be penalized in two different ways and i find this to be unacceptable and i would like to see a solution which would include allowing these athletes to do competition outside of the sideline share program which looks like the only thing that will be available them to them for the rest of the year and i would like to see the students that decided they were going to quit to be barred from rejoining the team because that's unfair to the students that stuck it out

120that's what i have to say on the topic thank you thank you okay next on the sign up list is mark ferry my name is mark ferry i live at 52 optus road south i'm coming to talk to you about partly about the cheer issue but more on what i think is a systemic failure within the schools to address complaints that are brought to the school i am the person who filed the complaint which was uh responded to with a with an attorney that honestly the cost of the attorney i'm pretty sure was more money than i pay in taxes so you basically took my entire tax bill to come up with a lawyer to tell me that i don't know what i'm talking about i have worked at mental health for over 25 years

121i've conducted over 500 abuse and neglect allegation investigations including some that ended in death i've never led with an attorney before i've never done what you've done which is to refuse to speak to me it is now 57 days since i filed that complaint and i still have not spoken to anybody at the school about this other than dr mcmorran on october 11th when he was brought in and then after that i was written by both the board of education and the superintendent saying that you're not going to discuss this with me there are several children who've come forward and said that they said what happened to them and it was not in the investigation report everything our kids said the investigation said were lies or didn't include it at all your reaction to it

122what i expected and i actually wrote to you several times in this which you've never responded to me what i expected was i was going to notify you of a concern i had you're going to bring me in with my daughter and have a meeting with me you would do an investigation using a clinical specialist not an attorney and probably do some sort of retraining of the employee and that would have taken care of everything probably within a week and i told you that that that was what i expected instead you responded with an attorney the attorney told me that nobody was going to talk to me only them she was misrepresented as an independent investigator but i don't see an independent investigator excluding testimony of several young girls about serious incidents such as abuse

123so what you've done essentially is you have silenced all of these girls and you continue to silence all of these girls as recently as last week you met with a parent and told them to date you still have not received any other complaints you we have all seen the emails that have been sent to you because we all share them and then you say well it didn't have the word complaint in it okay well title nine has some pretty strict rules that says that it doesn't have to say the word complaint in it the minute you become aware of it as a mandated reporter you have to do something and you have not done anything what instead what you did is you issued a press release that made it sound like our girls were having

124sex with employees mr fairy time's up and they were bullied and you were notified of that bullying and nobody contacted us about that nobody did an investigation on the bullying and you're supposed to have somebody called a climate specialist as an employee the town and they're supposed to be in charge of that and nobody has heard of this person so what are you doing [Applause] okay next on the uh sign up list is marnie mcniff mrs mcnamara okay then next up is grace perry you pass okay and last is irene korea irene korea 45 west wisconia road i read the redacted report of the cheer investigation i found several lincoln's history inconsistencies and missing information and inconsistencies and dates the original complaint was a 13-page document and the investigation the investigator only submitted a 16-page

125report i would ask the boe not to accept the report as written and ask follow-up questions tax dollars were used to prepare that report which was completely inadequate and incomplete i also found the conclusion published in the news times as unprofessional the district owed the families an email as the report's findings thank you thank you [Applause] so that's it for public comment i'd like to thank all the speakers this evening for giving us your input um i think that that takes us on the uh on the agenda to three main points okay i was thinking of um just doing a brief covet update based on dr brill's latest information to us then going through the budget presentation and then as the third point i would combine our postponement of the school start times with the

126candlewood lake elementary school building project update sounds good any other suggestions i had good all right good done um all right um then upcoming events all schools have an early release this friday december 3rd at center next week they are doing a toy collection in support of the brookfield pd toy drive and they're also doing that at huckleberry ongoing this week and next week center also has pto on tuesday december 14th huckleberry has a third grade dental screening tuesday december 7th and friday december 10th and a third and fourth grade author visit wednesday december 8th pto wednesday december 15th wisconnier pto wednesday december 15th also and at brookfield high school the winter band and chorus concert is thursday december 16th that's all i have okay any other input from the board on items okay so

127that's it for our agenda this evening and without objection we'll we're adjourned for the evening thank you all thank you all for coming [Music] you