001[Music] okay good evening everyone today is wednesday october 20th and i call the regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order let's stand for the pledge 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 for all we have all seven of our board members here oh jen's not here so um okay we have six of our seven board members here um up first on our agenda is the student representative report um so a few things for today we have uh past events which i talked about last time as well as upcoming so um we had the pep rally last friday along with the homecoming football game which we had a lot of success
002with it was nice weather for the pep rally and the football game a lot of people came to support and then as far as the homecoming dance comes which is saturday october 30th at the amber room that's coming up as an event that's open to 9th through 12th graders so tickets are still on sale through this friday it was extended from last friday but student government's basically working hard to make sure that all of the grades can be included and it's an event that everybody can enjoy because they just want to carry that over so that one grade doesn't feel like left out after anything like that so they're working hard on that and they had class elections recently so there are some new leaders in for that as far as i'll skip down to
003clubs but um we have a lot of regular club meetings going on um national honor society um is making a 3 400 donation to the hole in the wall gang camp and 400 donation to ann's place so that comes from last year's mother's day 5k that we had and then this year's scrub and grow then future teachers of america were trying to kind of start up the word of the week program again that we had last year and we kind of revamped so continuing that in the next few weeks uh key club we have a center school halloween themed fall festival that a lot of people are going to help out with and volunteer that's saturday october 23rd and with peer counseling this friday we have a new student lunch for any of the students
004that are new to the district just to kind of see how they're doing this year and check in with them and then one last thing from kind of an administration perspective which i kind of talked to dr brill about already but um they're kind of having trouble at the high school with lunch services so getting things moving quickly some challenges are like for example students which even at the high school is an issue of students cutting the line and um so basically they're trying to find solutions to that which they're actually coming up with a lot of solutions for example um they talked about possibly using even like the what do you call them the uh different like banister or like line uh section off the line so that way like like you would see
005like a movie theater so that way there's not just this big blob in front of the lunchroom instead it's an actual organized line and then also the main point was looking into more personnel for whitsons the food company because they've just been having a lot of trouble finding personnel and they're kind of low on that right now so i guess on behalf of them and misheidi they just wanted me to say that like within the community and that they're trying to look for new people and they can always anybody who's interested can always visit the website and learn about possibly new opportunities for that so ben can you share a little bit about the the volume i know you had that in your report the volume of lunch is being served you know people people
006forget that lunch is free for everyone um all students regardless of free and reduced lunch status this year so talk a little bit briefly about that as part of what's contributing to this yeah so last or recent in past years they had it was around 350 uh school lunches per day were sold and that was being sold so they weren't free and students actually had to buy them but now this year with them being free and more options it rose to around 600 or more per day so it's about double and that's why they're seeing such an increase in that lunch service and kind of having trouble keeping up with it but also just the fact that um going back to the students who like yes like you said because it's free they also have
007some that are trying to go back and get a second lunch for free even though it's one free lunch and need to buy the second and stuff like that so it's just again multiple parts coming together that becomes a little tricky okay any questions for ben all right thank you very much so bad and tell them if they restart the uh if they restart the word of the day program send it to us we'll try and make sure we mention that word in our meetings oh yeah that would be fun that would be fun or that's how you get your lunch ticket that's how you do it yeah maybe that's how you earn a lunch ticket all right thank you um written correspondence joyce pacino wrote regarding and jen augusto regarding public comment procedures ron
008jaffe wrote regarding equity reports lisa zolbrecht wrote regarding iep services during quarantines mark ferry wrote regarding reporting systems and student welfare marnie mcniff wrote regarding media misinformation and kim gerardi wrote regarding busing concerns and mitigation strategies okay approval of board minutes i'll move that the board approve the minutes from the regular meeting on october 6th second okay all in favor aye all right thank you uh superintendent's update all right thank you thank you rosa dr sullivan said when we speak if we would like to take our mass down we can so i'm going to do that um the i'll be very brief because we have a lot of new business on the agenda tonight so i want to make sure i move things along in my report two weeks ago was quite lengthy so one
009thing i want to remind everybody is the town mask mandate has been rescinded mr dunn sent out that notification last friday to that end just to remind everybody that the governor's executive order is still in effect for schools so we have to um that they're mandated uh in schools just so everybody knows that um to follow up on a question that was asked during the superintendent report uh two weeks ago uh was there any uh reports for from to the counselors of anxiety and students regarding mask wearing or any reports to the nurses and in in medical issues in terms of specifically to to mask wearing we had one specific report for medical um to the to the nurses and the family and the the nurse in the school worked together on that and came
010up with a resolution so that's all there was in terms of those specific complaints directly about masks that's not to say that people don't complain about wearing masks because they don't like to i understand that but not specific to anxiety or medical um i've reported um last time that our 12 to 17 year olds there was a increase from about 60 to 65 vaccinated that was two weeks ago the report this week is that almost 72 percent of that group 12 to 17 are vaccinated at this time so we're seeing that increase um there was a couple of questions over the last couple of meetings about quarantined learning and students who might have special learning needs one of the things that's really important to remember is that first of all students with special needs are
011regular education students first and so we've since july with the board approved opening plan we have put the plans out there and then continued to update things um each school on september 30th we sent out an updated opening plan which included updated quarantine plans learning plans for each school and then should a student with special needs be on quarantine and be in that situation case manager the supervisors at the school will be working on different zoom opportunities for the students and or zoom teacher opportunities as well in in synchronous and the check-ins as well as asynchronous so whatever the combination is we have over 350 students and you'll see that in the reports tonight that have special needs and so you can't broadbush the reason you have an individual education plan for a student with
012special needs is just that it's individual so you can't just broad brush what you're going to do and also with the opportunity for seven day max quarantine with the test out um it really and by the time you back date and come forward we're really getting less and less on the quarantine really hopeful of you know continuing that trend so i wanted to share that the final thing i wanted to share was in terms of strategic planning and budget roundtable preparation the main question has been developed and worked on with mike and deb and amy from policy communications uh worked with mr costa from advance on it it's ready to go the thought exchange is set up we worked on it yesterday at administrative council with the administrative team and they started to give some
013input it's going forward tomorrow most likely i'll work with eric we'll get it out on a school message and parents and citizens can start contributing to the to the thought exchange so it'll be the first way first time we used it for for this purpose working toward budget preparation but really bigger picture what are those skills and experiences people want for their kids to learn going forward in the long term so we're excited about that and we'll be able to start capturing that information we can keep that link live and open as long as we want so through the winter time i mean we could really get a lot of information so we're excited about that that will be disseminated tomorrow if everything goes well and that's all i have any questions i have a
014question i think in our last meeting i think it was in the meeting we talked about busing issues and and we talked about all-star and how they were in a pretty good position as far as having enough bus drivers the bus driver shortage that a lot of districts are seeing really wasn't impacting us to the extent that other districts were affected but i think there's still some concern in the community about um mitigation strategies and kids being close together on buses and um i think back in september there were some uh children that had to quarantine and and the assumption was that it was because of the busing is there any development on that front or is there anything more we could be doing um to kind of lessen the concerns that parents have about
015the bus situation yes i think i think with two different issues here i think in terms just to answer the first one kind of where you started to go deb on in terms of the driver shortage we really continue to be fortunate and we've um uh mrs jones the the manager of the bus companies they're adding two drivers soon quite shortly to the to their driver um situation we did have an uh over a month i think it's over a month ago now or maybe three and a half weeks ago now um was the last time we had to do a combined bus um that's that happened six total times uh six total days i should say um in in september basically um so uh unlike other districts where they've had a call appearance last
016minute and uh you know we have some of the folks who are they work for us here and they're in new town or somewhere else where the bus run wasn't even able to to run until an hour or two later in the morning which really that's nice but it forces parents to have to find a way to get the kids into school um we haven't run into that situation knock on wood so we're in a good place there um i saw a um i can't speak specifically for all-star in our area but i saw a news news story it was actually this morning it was on channel 8. one of the towns their bus company supervisor was talking about that many of the drivers during the pandemic because they didn't have the steady work uh
017moved on to some warehouse jobs such as fedex or ups or um amazon that was actually you know they lost a lot of people to that it must be the area of the state where some of those those areas are so that's because people ask that question too what's happened to everybody you know they didn't disappear so so what's happened so that's that's part of the answer i don't know the full answer to it in terms of mitigation strategies it's through the cdc there's a national mandate that public transportation including buses there's mass wearing on the bus and that's really the main mitigation strategy then the common sense known strategies keep the windows open obviously to temperature toleration so we'll be careful about that of course as the winter comes around other than that uh
018buses could run at full capacity um so that's i hope that answers that part of the question there um in terms of the beginning of the year where there was an especially at uh huckleberry there was a number of quarantines that was not because the kids were necessarily sitting close to each other and there was a problem with infection rate what that was is those times where we had to combine the buses just give you a for instance if and these aren't the real numbers if bus or letters if bus a had a compliment of students on the bus and they had assigned seats one one of the issues was with it being such a new school year the drivers weren't necessary and the new drivers too weren't necessarily getting the seating charts correct that
019was a little bit of an issue then if bus b isn't running and we have to get the kids home the students from bus b were moved to bus a with the regular bus a kids rather than saying hey bus a kids slide to the back sit with the children you normally sit with but move to the back and we'll have the bus b kids up front kind of just a logical uh um cohorting they ended up mixing everywhere and it became very difficult newer children younger children with masks on they might not know who they're sitting next to the video technology trying to recognize and so what that forced was uh that as they say the abundance of caution and really looking and not being able to tell which caused more quarantine that clearly
020was not necessarily necessary in terms of knowing who was next to who but the reality is they didn't know who was next to who so we got to that situation we really gotten tighter on the seating charts and so forth and if we don't have to combine buses we're going to be in a really good place and we've been in a good place with the bus situation since so i tried to be concrete there debbie i hope that answered that sounds like you know there were some bumps in the beginning oh yeah there was it seems to have smoothed out now yeah so if i could just follow on that so just to recap you're you're you are tracking how many times we've combined buses we had six at the beginning and we haven't had
021any in six weeks you said uh over three weeks between three and four weeks i think okay is it possible for us as a board to see how many times we do combine buses on a regular basis yeah i mean ken could check i mean when it happens we could take off on the calendar you know just i just i think was a board it's a sensitivity in our community and i think we should be aware of if it's if it starts ramping up we have to start thinking about mitigation strategies um if it's not a current issue i don't see why we would go do anything especially if the one of the new bus drivers coming on board can you have a sense of timing on that i do not okay we should know
022that um so um because that would help a lot right because the only reason we're combining buses is bus drivers right exactly okay and in the meantime is someone speaking to the bus company about some of these other more common sense uh mitigations oh absolutely the prince that the principals in kent actually sat down with the at the bus depot and they had a meeting about all these things and that that's why we're it's better because we've um i think the bus company need to needed to experience those mistakes which we were talking about from the beginning of the year that this has to be done and to take it that seriously and uh you know some newer drivers perhaps uh were part of this and so i think they understand the gravity of their
023decisions because if they're not assigned to those seats we cause all the problems with students not in school we cause all the problems any anxiety for families and it's very frustrating for everyone so we can't have that well it's they're crowded buses too it's a it's a problem because they're crowded buses and kids are near each other and there's a lot more kids jammed on the buses so um i just think if the if we've got to take it seriously as a board that we need to see the data right and we really do and i appreciate it if you would can if you'd organized that we see something like every week like when you're sending out your note notes on fridays not a problem at all or maybe you can add add a column
024to the dashboard or something or yeah or or a note right when it happens on that day say we had a combined bus i mean we haven't had it in almost a month now but if it's not it's not happening that often that's not a bad order yeah sure we can do that okay i wonder just one more thought i'm having you know the other the other consideration i know that we have to provide transportation but there are parents who prefer to to drive their children to school but i think a lot of times they're deterred because the parent drop-off line is so long and it takes so long to get through there so if you need to get to work or whatever some people just don't have the time to wait in that line
025so i wonder if it's worth looking into um you know a little sort of out of the box thinking about how to improve the parent dropbox you know in a school like huckleberry is it possible for some kids to get dropped off in the front of the school and some kids to get dropped off down at the lower level by the playground maybe instead of everybody funneling through that one drop off in the front or you know i'm just trying to think of ways i think part of it dev is you know we look at those logistical pieces and safety pieces bus traffic etc i mean now with huckleberry under construction i mean that to that that particular example it probably wouldn't be feasible um very limited space obviously at the center school um uh
026center school uh you know some ideas that are out there that we could explore and we could explore as we think about um the new bus contract that we'll be you know getting ready to go out for uh forbid on is i you know there there are ideas that are out there and it's not unheard of where um there could be a um a small fee for for child care uh a half hour before school for example and parents could you know that are working and they're doing drop off could drop off beforehand and that would eliminate some of that that car traffic so there's there are ways and things we can think about for sure um so we're open to ideas if people have ideas and we're certainly opening to open to thinking outside
027of the box for sure yeah i mean i think that might be worth looking into you know especially some parents might appreciate that extra half hour or 45 minutes in the morning to drop off early and maybe that's i mean i have no idea if that's something that will be eligible for like covet funding but that's maybe that's a way because it's directly dealing with the effects of the pandemic and the busing and everything yeah i i wouldn't have to look into that i couldn't tell you that yeah let's do let's look into that sure yeah we can maybe talk about that at the next finance committee meeting absolutely right as a way to think about we could engage or something offering a tutorial and paying teachers to yeah yeah i mean are paying you
028know and that's always an issue too you know teachers also you know and i'm with you joy you know there's people who would be interested yet you know we posted the the contact tracer uh opportunity um and so far we've only had two people apply so you know there's labor shortages everywhere you know we think of these extra things but you know i think of our teachers they're rushed just getting into school because they're dropping their kids off and they're waiting in a line somewhere out of school you know sometimes and those kind of things but if we can it doesn't have to be teachers there could be other people you know we hire monitors and different people that um have a little more flexibility in their schedule and they may be interested in helping
029out and yeah and making a little extra money on the side there's a lot of things we can look into okay anything else all right all right thanks everyone uh subcommittee reports first up we have facilities there's actually two meetings so go ahead so our first meeting we met on october 6th we reviewed the schools of reports we got an update about the water at wisconier the treatment center is online and has been running for about two weeks we're continuing to do routine lead and copper tests the state will come in and do a final inspection we are updated on the status of open capital projects the hvac project is still active the contractor's working on it and it's getting done this year and the changes will be for next year there's not been any
030movement on the high school boys locker room project it's going to go out to bed later this fall our building management system at wisconia has been restored it's been replaced and has new software it was built off-site and brought in so it's on time and on budget we're waiting for a quote for replacing the whiskenier cafeteria floor which we'll discuss later the wool update at wisconier the structural engineer needs to come out to assess the damage ensure it's safe and structurally sound and develop a restoration plan the engineer will provide us with a plan to winterize the site to prevent further damage and decision will be made in december and then we'll it'll go back out to bid we had some new business the center school roof there's been a lot of leaks more serious
031ones above the nurse's office several attempts have been made to repair the leaks in the roof over the nurse's office unfortunately it has reached the end of its life expectancy so we're working on getting a quote to re-roof that section we did a building condition study but we're looking to do that dr bill is working with tech don to get an estimate for detailed building condition study in hopes to bringing the middle school and high school up to where it needs to be i inquired about the vandalism in the bathrooms at the high school mr coldwell reporter reported that the extent of the damage has been approximately 12 soap dispensers six paper towel dispensers and four toilet paper holders we had some miscellaneous discussion we'll be engaging at contractor to get a roofing assessment across
032the district the last one that's been done was in 2015. mrs brooks suggested the possibility of seeking donations or sponsorships to make up for the additional funding possibly needed for the high school boys locker room project or possibly seeking a full private donation for maybe like a new field house stadium seating or concessions those are good um suggestions we also had can i just say the special meeting yeah okay we also had a special meeting on monday probably the quickest meeting ever three minutes um we just had to vote on um the estimate for replacing the floor in the wisconnier cafeteria mr post met with mr dunn and miss marion and they recommend submitting the capital plan with you'll notice later in the agenda it's to be determined cost for that item we do have
033an estimate at this time which we'll share later it's going to be part when the estimates receive the town wide capital committee will determine if the project will be brought forward and then we made a motion to approve the plan and bring it to you today so that's it um i just have a question on the building condition study when we did the one with tekton five years ago a lot of things were already at or past their useful life is there is it easier or cheaper to just update that study looking at the things that maybe were still good five years ago but maybe are now at or past their useful life so part of the i and ken if you want to come up because you actually were able to get to that
034meeting last week one of the things that we're talking about is going even deeper than what we did uh for whiskenier and the high school um but ken and dan were at the meeting with techno i think it was just last friday afternoon so ken maybe shed a little light on rosie's question it was last friday afternoon and what we've asked them to do is to really get in a little deeper and and you know they went around and they looked at how old the boilers were and how old this was and that was we're asking them to to uh commission a study where people will actually get in there and do a little more kicking the tires things like that seeing what kind of condition things really are in for their age and you
035know whether we need to accelerate things or or modify things or if we can wait longer on things so just get a little a little more deeper especially in the mechanical systems of the buildings and to your point things are five years older yeah yeah yeah so i i expect anything that was past its useful life five years ago is even in worse shape now yeah yes i would agree okay any other questions for joy okay uh finance all right so we met on october 11th it wasn't the shortest meeting ever that's the first time we've had a two page minutes in a while the important news for us as a board is we had our first projection for the current year budget spending and we're actually running ahead of budget by about 151 thousand
036dollars uh the reason for that is that we got an unexpected e-rate immersement of 122 000 um and it was not something we were expecting so that is now a benefit to the district and uh we're going to just leave it there and monitor it as the as the year goes on so the whole situation the uh there are the other important news is remember we always put an assumption in our budget for how much turnover we're going to get and mr posted reported that we actually have come in on or better than that budget on turnover savings so that's actually one of the risks we always have in our budget the other big risk in our budget is special ed costs and he reported that we're continuing on track on special ed especially outplacement
037tuitions so there's a lot of other smaller items we talked about um uh you know with some substitutes and professional services and uh the like but the net they were all relatively small so um the net of it is 151 thousand dollars better than budget as we stand right now so now we'll continue to monitor fifty one thousand at the beginning of the year is not a it's not a uh something to write home about and it's not something but it's at least in the right side right we've had years where it was the other way so um we uh we talked about the arp esser um grant we're gonna what's on the agenda for later so i'm not gonna talk about that here we also talked about the busing rfp i remember last month
038i had reported that we were looking into extending it for a year the problem we're running into is that the bus fleet is old and the bus company really does need to go to a a full new uh contract bid in order to actually update the buses right because they're they're exceeding their useful life as well because we've already extended it one or two years two yeah so um so we agreed that we're going to proceed down the path of doing an rfp process so that was that's a change from what we talked about last month we've had some discussions about student activity fund and in particular around how tickets are being paid for because athletic tickets have been an ongoing issue over the years of do where does the money go who's handling and
039the like and the good news is that we're implementing under mr baldwin's leadership a online ticket service which will take the cash handling out of anybody's hands so that is good and we also confirmed that it is going into the general fund it is not going through the student activity fund and it is not going in anybody's hands but school employees so that was an important that was a question that had come up to us so we've responded to that so um we talked a little bit about some we got an update on the facilities things that joy you just briefed us on so that was just an update um including uh the the high school and the center school roof um we are um we do have an after the after school grant does
040need to come for our formal approval so that's on the agenda today um the we we approved and the the thoughts of contract tracing investment and and then we talked i think we talked about the last meeting about the enrollment study so um that's that's old move that's kind of the new news on the on the finance committee so it was an hour and five minutes so not three minutes but i went a three minute uh finance committee one day about i had a question on the uh the tickets so is that online service was that covered by the sound well now it's on is that what's the cost of that online service dollar fee per ticket dollar okay which is paid for by the purchaser so and ken you told us it was actually
041the take-up on doing online ordering was actually pretty good that is the way we started the implementation it's been uh relative it's not a hundred percent yet but it's starting to really um it's been positively received yeah i was going to bring the actual data to the next finance committee meeting but i know as at least the first two football games uh the first game i think was around 50 or maybe a little less than that and the second game was a higher percentage of the online so be curious to see how that continues to trend well that's perfect actually good controls for us i mean the the ticket thing is it's not a lot of money for the district it does cover you know some things for us but um the controls around cash
042handling it's very valuable to have an online tool like that all right any other questions yes thank you equity and inclusion so the committee met last thursday it was also not the shortest meeting ever we hadn't met since last spring so we had a lot of catching up to do we opened up with a welcome back kind of icebreaker activity that's called what's in a name and everyone shared um something about their first or last name something that was unique or that they liked or disliked so that was really interesting and enlightening uh then dr brill shared with the group that when he and mrs holly met back in june that they decided that she would step in as the administrative lead for the committee due to dr brill having so many time constraints and
043other demands it was becoming difficult for him to put the time in necessary for the committee so we thank him and mrs holly for stepping up to help lead this committee we did a quick check-in on meeting time we were having a lot of issues with people not showing up to meetings last spring and it's a large committee with important work to do so we sort of set you know this is our set time it's an hour and we sort of set a rule like three missed meetings and it's time to re-evaluate your membership then mrs holly presented the presentation that she shared at the board retreat in july that covers where we've been where we're going how she and dr burle took a lot of effort in examining the equity and inclusion process that's
044already going on in other districts and states to help guide our work going forward we have a proposed timeline that begins with an equity audit so beginning with our next meeting and into early 2022 is a coordination of data where we're going to divide into four focus groups to gather information those groups and groups include teacher quality programmatic equity achievement equity and stakeholder equity so before our next meeting the members are going to choose a focus group and in november we're going to have one of our high school teachers he's going to be consulting with us mr andrew hill who's going to provide some lessons on data collection and analysis from what i hear he's quite a whiz with statistics and then next winter into early spring we'll present the subgroups we'll present the um
045findings from each focus group to the full committee and then we'll eventually come to the full board then after the slideshow we had some discussion and feedback from the committee so everyone has kind of has a lot to process going forward and thinking about what they'd like to pursue and then before we adjourn we took a quick vote and we added an ad hoc member we voted unanimously for ms jackie whiting who is the technology integration specialist new to the district so she will be an ad hoc member and will also provide tech support to the committee and that's it many questions thank you any questions all right um okay so that's it for subcommittee reports um next is the consent agenda i'll move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which
046are new hires resignations and the september financials second all in favor on to new business first item is overnight field trips for a field trip i will move that the board approve an overnight trip to killington vermont for the bhs outdoors club from friday march 11 2022 to sunday march 13 2022 as requested by club advisor chris buckley and principal mark bellanda come on up chris um so second real quick oh i apologize that's okay i'll second thanks thank you joy um first of all introducing uh mr buckley our uh teacher of the year for brookfield uh school district so we're really proud of him thank you for being up here chris and all the extra work you do outside of the classroom for the district the other part about that is overnight trips by
047policy must be approved by the board and as you as you all will recall we have gotten to a point where our what we know is overnight trips uh in when fell swoop we now uh have a system where once a year we we approve those and bring them to you for consideration for approval this is a new club and chris is going to do a brief overview and you've all had a chance to read the trip it's a very detailed plan i really appreciate the work that went into it but chris i'll say no more and turn it over to you sure thanks for considering the trip uh you have a copy of it uh the trip is in march it is at the end of what we do for generally winter activities um
048the trip goes to killington vermont um the kids would leave friday after school be back on sunday kids need to know how to ski this is not a trip for kids who aren't aware of how to ski we do other opportunities for kids to learn this is a trip for kids who kind of know what they're doing it's a great opportunity for kids to spend some time with each other um it's a unique opportunity killington's a great mountain um we keep them busy you'll notice there's something to do on saturday night high school kids in hotels that are not exhausted are not a good thing so we keep them busy we take them to a rock climbing facility keep them there for a couple of hours get them tired bring them back they pass out
049get up in the morning take them skiing put them on the bus and pass out so it's a pretty good experience the trip is facilitated through a ski company called ski 93 trips i've been working with them since 2006 they're a very thorough and very well organized organization and they do a fantastic job they typically send a travel agent with us who facilitates the hotel experience the tickets keeps us on task the bus company is datco which is also a very good reliable bus company that we've worked with before the trip costs you can see up there are all inclusive i typically ask for a little bit of cash from them that we keep in envelopes give it to the kids that way they don't overspend all at one time and you have some kids
050starving on saturday afternoon because they spent 40 bucks at mcdonald's on friday night which would happen um so yeah the the the trip understanding that it is a experience during covid i did add that kids get a kova test prior to leaving the kids would be spending time in a hotel room together and i think it's a good idea for us to know with that said kids are masked when they're in side places when they're on ski lifts they're supposed to be masked for the regulations of the mountain but most of them wear gators anyway when they're in lodges when they're in hotel rooms when they're in the gym when they're outside far apart from each other and skiing on the mountain you know that's kind of their prerogative they're outside um the trip is
051a great opportunity for kids to show their responsibility to be kind of spending time with each other and to show kind of what they can do and represent brookfield high school and our community so it's a good trip i've done it many many years i've taken kids away on overnights since 2006. so i have some experience with it chris when you said this before this was at your other high school before prior to coming here although i did tickets to killington on a day trip um literally three weeks before covet yeah so how many kids are in the club in the club total um ben uh kids we are not taking 73 kids to killing them the bus carries 30. we um on the overnight we typically take 20. um but honestly it's actually a
052division of how many kids in rooms per like gender right so like it's typically like three rooms of boys and three rooms of girls typically is kind of how it breaks down although if there's more girls or boys that want to go we tend to figure it out that way but 20 is like the sweet number to take okay is there any um a cancellation fee you know because obviously yeah they're uh hold on so covered make sure yeah makes that a little bit of a challenge um typically they refund it if if we don't go after a certain point you know once we've paid a certain point and they've lost certain money then then we can get a certain amount back um if students get coveted after a certain point that's a great question
053they're working that out for us they they had a rough year last year they didn't take very many trips so i don't have a great answer to that frankly we kind of cross our fingers but if if a kid didn't go because of a reason outside of their control we would refund as much of their money as we could possibly refund but it's certainly a risk when you plan anything like this that if a kid gets covered like a two days before we're leaving i don't know how much i can get back the trips are paid for at that point um but we do our best we don't want anybody to lose money on something that's out of their control i think it's important to communicate that to the parents yeah absolutely and you're going
054to have a meeting with parents correct yep it's in the beginning but we're very thorough and and have a meeting go over everything with them answer any questions you know that they would have this would be our second ski trip we're taking a day trip in january so most of the kids would go on that would go in this and the same policies would apply as far as covid refunds and things like that so um with that said we would be very clear and upfront about how that works um and that's actually in the in the what i tell parents to like if you cancel at the last minute i can't get all your money back you've canceled right so we would get more back clearly for covid but um you know those people run
055a business too so we trying to be cognizant of that what about i know we can't control it but the weather because it's tricky it's march i know it's vermont but uh it's marked as a tricky time and then what if it rains all weekend um it's not safe if it's icing yeah so um my experience going um we go unless the mountain is closed if the mountain is closed their policy is they refund the whole thing so the mountain is unskiable and they close we get a refund and we don't go i've run into it where we've gone to take the trip and the high school has been closed because we didn't have school on friday which has happened to me before and so that we typically get our money back because the school
056is closed and therefore we could not leave so those things are all built into our relationship with them and our and our contract with them but if the roads are open and the mountain is open by our contract with them we have to go so even if it's a crappy ski day we still have to go because in my experience working with them they've had high schools who have just decided it's just not nice weather we don't want to go and that's not a way to make a sustainable ski company so unfortunately even if it's not good weather um we're still going i know the lodge is open this year the lodges are open this year and killington has um they have three lodges so there's enough room um to spread out and uh they
057are limiting the number of people who can go um so when i tried to organize the other day trips we were very limited in which mountains would allow us in fact killington made an exception for us because of my relationship with ski 93 to allow us to go on a day trip if we had wanted to but there are not a lot of day trips going to mountains this year because the mountains are not allowing it so it's a lot more space up there in theory and my last question is there anything um [Music] talked about as far as fundraising for it or not um the club has certainly talked about fundraising the challenging part with fundraising for a trip like this is i don't typically know who's going on the trip until we start
058to get closer and so kids who fundraise but don't go on the trip there's a disproportionate like i'm raising money for something that i'm not participating in but once we start to narrow down who's going and who's committed then those kids are certainly welcome to work with me to raise money to defray the costs um skiing is an expensive sport unfortunately and that's always a a problem right um so yeah some of them sorry for all the questions not a problem at all happy to answer um how you know how are you assessing or can you even assess like a student's ski ability i just want to make you know sure um so i don't um and i can't so i tell the kids you have to know where you're going and you have to
059know your ability and you have to ski within that within that ability level i'm very clear with the students and the parents that skiing is a dangerous sport you need to know what you're doing and if you don't know don't go i've been doing in a very long time i have very rarely run into a student who pays this kind of money to go on a ski trip who is not a skier it's a lot of money to go skiing if you have no idea what you're doing with that said i just tell kids up front you know you have to i ask the kids directly i ask the parents directly does your child know how to ski and how well and i'm very clear with them that this is not mohawk so a green
060a killington or black at killington is not a black at mohawk which we run into um kids thinking that they can ski a black and mohawk and then they end up at killington terrified because they are stuck but um these are kind of life skills that i think the trip is really really good for it's about kids recognizing what they can do and working with with adults to figure out you know their capabilities and and it's in my experience having taken kids for many many years i really run into it thank you sounds great thank you what uh what else does the outdoor club do inside the ski so i see the rock climbing is that something that you guys normally do or is that um i normally do um they can do it uh
061so the trip is the club is run entirely by students actually ben is one of the student leaders of it and chris brooks sitting over there is one of the other ones and then we have two other students who run it they decide what trips we do we do a lot of hiking here in brookfield so we are go to williams park the kids have organized a scavenger hunt hiking experience they hit all the public lands here in brookfield to kind of explore where they live last year we did some winter hiking there are kayaks here in town that we're looking to do some stuff with so most of the stuff we do for kids is very accessible and very inexpensive though skiing is our winter activity one of our winter activities um it's kind
062of exciting a little bit of an alert to come be a part of the club because we go skiing but you know we do we do do a lot of other things uh here in town and then there's also a service project component so they're looking to work with the town to try to improve some of the areas that have come into disrepair and stuff like that for me it's a big part of what the club should be about and so they built it last year we were kind of limited in that capability but how many chaperones did you say would be on the trip so it's typically one chaperone for every 10 kids that goes it could be any variety of faculty members or certified parents who have done all the chaperoning certifications for
063the town typically the deal for the for the teachers who go is you have to be on duty in the lodge there's always a teacher on duty sitting somewhere in the lodge we pointed out to the kids that this is where they are um we hopefully rarely need them but if we do that's where they find them so the trade-off for the chaperones that are going is you get to ski kind of for free you're spending it with 30 high school students but you ski for free but you have to spend time in the lodge being on duty and being available for kids they all need to know how to ski for the most part i think one of the things that keeps the kids safe and keeps the kids effective is the fact that
064they don't know where the chaperones will be on the mountain at any given point i grew up in vermont i've been skiing since i was 12. i tell the kids if it wasn't any place in killington you won't find me and that keeps them honest um but yeah that so anywhere from three to four chaperones would be going on this trip that was sort of my question are the chaperones skiing with the kids and seeing them yeah there are when my my previous district actually my co-chaperone was not a skier which worked out well because she would just sit in the lodge just be on duty she just liked the coco i think um but usually they're skiers or snowboarders and they're out about on the mountain and so the kids are aware that they
065should behave because at any given point behind them a chaperone could be sitting on the lift but again it's a lot of money to go up and be silly so um i again i've been doing this a really long time and i can say one time we've had to send kids home for being inappropriate they just it's a lot of money to be out to get sent home on saturday morning because you were not doing what you were supposed to do most of the kids know that and they really want to be there so it's a good experience generally good thanks all right any other questions about the trip okay so all in favor hi thank you very much thanks mr buckley and mr conklin wanted me to ask if he could be a chaperone
066rit director just so you know unfortunately a very long list of parents who want to go on this trip he's been all over me dr ruby did you want to say something oh dr ruby oh geez so i i just wanted to add that mr buckley was one of the 17 semi-finalists for the state teacher of the year so he represented us very well thanks very much thank you chris have a great night okay the next item on our agenda is the american rescue plan elementary secondary school education recovery grant update so this is just um an action if we could um mr post is going up okay uh since our last update on the arp esser grant uh and we filled the finance committee on in on this in our last meeting we've identified
067the need for social worker services beyond the current year so we've added the cost of a social worker to the arbester grant in 2223 and then to the operating budget for 2324 and beyond to offset this addition to the grant we're taking advantage of additional e-rate funding that's being made available to pay for 55 000 in chromebooks that was originally planned to be purchased in 2324 with the grant and we're also absorbing some of the technology integrator salary into the operating budget in 2425 so that allows us to use the grant money for the social worker services other than that everything is the same as it was when we presented last and i'll just say it had unanimous support from the finance committee thank you any questions okay i guess that's it thank you you're
068welcome okay item c under new business is grant's approval i'll move that the board approved the attached list of grants as recommended by director of operations ken post and superintendent dr john burrow second [Music] just the point i'd like to make ken before you start on the detail of the grants um one of the things that that ken will share is that grants we have a policy where grants get approved by the board how we've handled that in years past is all of the grants are included in the annual budget binder so the board always sees those grants and all the way through the budget for the eight-month budget process that we have here in connecticut all of the boards see the bud the grants et cetera we wanted to really formalize the grant process
069before we enter into the budget uh really go full fledging into the budget season which are actually going to kick off with some discussion tonight but ken let you take over sure uh you covered a lot of it already i'm sorry nuts that's the point right so with that in mind i developed the document that you have in your board packet which seeks to give you a brief summary of what all these grants are used for the time frame they're going to be used in or they can be used in and the dollar amounts so these are what we have applied for this year most of these are called entitlement grants which means that the state tells us what our allocation is and we submit an application telling them what we will use the funds
070for based on the guidelines that are provided for each individual grant so they all they all have a fairly specific purpose and these are but a lot of these are not funds that have already been allocated to us right they will be sort of in incrementally over the over the term we draw the funds down as we need it oh okay during during that time period so has anything already been spent or encumbered yes okay i think that's other than i mean i hear it in the finance committee but um i don't know if the rest of the board would be interested in that information just knowing how much we've already spent from this i can certainly make that part of our finance committee and if you like the format i can bring it to
071the full board also yeah that'd be helpful yeah you know and i think it's important because some of these terms are are rather long and they'll go into several budget years and it ties into a lot of what you see on the rfs or sheet as well it coming into eventually the operating budget so um so yeah i think that's the only piece that's missing under here but yeah and most of the but the reason the our besser funds have to be absorbed into the operating budgets because those are one-time grants most of these other ones like the the regular idea the title one the title two those are grants we actually get every year and we have two years to spend the money typically the idea special education grants we spend most of the
072money in the first year which is what they want uh and the other grants varies depending on our needs at the time okay so we don't typically roll anything from those types of grants into the operating budget that's correct the the um especially the entitlement grants are designed and and by law are supposed to be supplemental okay yep that's right not supplant okay i don't have any other questions does anybody else okay um so all in favor all right thank you item is the special services caseload report so i'd like to invite up director of special education genoathonics all right you have the sheet in front of you correct and this is the october one count for the state of connecticut and for us to identify how many students we have in district and out
073of district and as far as caseload and services for students so i'm just going to go right down starting with center elementary school we have 55 students that are identified as special education our preschool program this year has 18 students which it is down two students from last year we have 29 students kindergarten through first grade the case loads there at our about 14.5 last year was at 11.5 we went up a little bit there our elc program we have eight students which we had 12 students last year huckleberry hill grades two through four we have three special education teachers and we case sodas approximately 11 students last year it was the same the elc program at huckleberry we have six students last year it was at five the social emotional enrichment program we had
074six students we have five students in there to date and again just keep in mind the caseloads it it may go up and down but it's also based on service hours and that's how we identify how many special education teachers that we need um so it's not just a matter of how many students it's really the service hours that we go by so when we see when you see the average there may be special education teachers who may have more students because the service hours are a little less okay at wisconier so total at huckleberry is 45 students i'm at wisconier grades five through eight we have seven special education teachers and the average caseload is uh 12.9 last year was 13.7 our elc program we have six students in there to date last year
075we had five the social emotional enrichment program we have one teacher 10 students last year we were at nine with a total of 106 students identified as special education at wisconsin on the next page we have brookfield high school we have seven special education teachers um to date and we do have 152 students which the caseloads are at 21.7 they were at 19.4 last year there is an increase from last year from 136 students to 152. so there was a big jump at the high school we have our life skills program we had nine students last year to date we have seven so there's about there's 161 students as far as the october one count at the brookfield high school our related services case loads again there's not a minimum or a maximum because it's
076all based on service hours at center school we have three speech and language pathologists and the average case load is 20.3 last year was 22.6 huckleberry we have two speech and language pathologists and last this year we have um 51 students on that caseload or excuse me 51 students for two case votes that's 25.5 whiskenier we have two speech and language pathologists and the average caseload is 34. last year it was 36.5 at brookfield high school we have a 1.0 speech and language pathologist and because of the service hours that were needed at wisconier the 0.5 speech and language pathologist does spend one day down at wisconier because of the service hours that needed to be to be addressed so if you look at the average caseload you have approximately 36 kids for the full-time
077at brookfield high school in the part-time split 14 at brookfield high school and 18 at wisconsin middle school and some of those services are pushing so that's how we we were able to to have that many in each building the school psychologist um just be aware that last column is not the case load those are the evaluations whether it's initial evaluations or triennial evaluations that each of the school psychologists on the average did last year so at center school we have a caseload of seven but they do oversee the 504s at center school so they oversaw 22 504 plans so the case average caseload for students identified with ieps is seven but the amount of testing that takes place is they did 38 um whether it be initial or triannial evaluations at uh huckleberry we
078have 11 identified students who see the school psychologist three which are five additional 504s and approximately 31 evaluations were completed there last year it was 35 and also keep in mind with the pandemic and not being in school for a period of time with the quarantine some of those evaluations are still being made up so there's additional there would have been additional to that number to date uh wisconner we have two school psychologists they are there's 30 students in their caseload is 15 and the 504s there is one last year they had split 63 this year it's 34 evaluations and at the high school case load is seven and approximately 68 evaluations were completed to date and 65 were last year and if you notice even though the caseloads look small for the school psychologist
079they also see some regular red students so keep that in mind and so does the speech and language speech and language pathologists can see students through regular ed social workers huckleberry hill um to date as the october one count their case load is 14 and there are 42 504s that the uh social worker does oversee so their case average case load is 14 with scanier 18 and they are overseeing six of the 504s keep in mind that the school counselors are responsible for most of those 504 plans in addition with working with the nursing staff for the students who are on 504s for medical issues brookfield high school we have two social workers their caseload is a little bit larger and their average caseload is 36. we do have one of the social workers attached
080to the social emotional program but she also does see other students not just the students in the social emotional program the occupational therapist we have 2.5 ots and a 0.5 coda a coda cannot assess students they can provide services and a coda cannot do medicaid they have to be overseen by a um occupational therapist gina can you just did i miss something no say that what ot means and what coda means no sorry occupational therapist and the coda is an occupational therapist assistant okay thank you um so the number of students uh for the uh it's the 2.5 and the 0.5 or 100 students a lot of students with ot needs so their their average caseload is about 33 kids and last year we were up to 45 and that was one of the reasons
081why we did add an additional 0.5 ot because we just couldn't service the the service hours that were that were being um suggested what i did on the bottom is a little bit different than the information that you were provided last year i just broke it down a little bit more total students in district special education students are 367. the out of district students when i say out of district these are the students that are at different facilities because our professional staff here can't support the students meeting the needs here and accessing curriculum and i took out and broke down and i didn't do this last year it was really just a total of students who were out of district but 12 of the students out of the 34 students that are out of district
082are 18 to 22 population which we are obligated by law to educate so seven uh 12 of those students um are 18 to 22. last year there were seven um in the budget but i didn't break it down so i just wanted to be are they all doing the danbury program no there's a variety of programs we have posts we have danbury we have newtown okay so it's depending on their need because the three programs do provide a different program okay that's that's it if you have any questions can you just go back to the school social workers and um the average caseload for those compared to what they were last year sure um let me start with huckleberry and you know we have a new social worker at center school but october one count
083is um meyer glaser who is our school psychologist with supporting those students now that we have that social worker there where she will be supporting a lot of the students because meyer does see over the the 504 students so huckleberry we have one staff member she has 14 students on her caseload and she oversees the 42 504s that are in the building which is also supported by the assistant principal and principal but for the most part the social worker does run those 504s with an admin as needed in those 504 meetings with scanier we have 16 18 students last last year was 23. and keep in mind the social workers not only see students with ieps but they also see regular education students so we try to be very careful of not overloading since we
084do have school counselors at wisconier and at the high school and at the high school we have 72 students which caseloads are 36. last year it was 28 and again one of those um uh social workers are attached to our social emotional program and what was last year's number for huckleberry uh last year's number for huckleberry give me one second was six okay thank you and wisconner was 23 and the high school was 28. so i'd like to get your opinion on uh where is he coming from um these case loads right your judgment about right too high too low again we go by service hours we uh try annual evaluations you know initials we never know when the initials are coming in because we push for them to go through survey prior as as
085a state mandate they have to have some type of serbia but prior to being um recommended or referred for special education um initial evaluation so gina can you hold there yeah serbia is srbi sorry for scientifically research-based intervention so that's a regular ed intervention period of time prior to if that is not as successful as we would like it to be then the consideration would be to go to ppt and consider and do a full scale evaluation yeah so we we do we look at the service hours we look at you know there for example we may have a student that has 18 hours of special education but those 18 hours may be divided between otp which is ot as occupational therapists physical therapy is pt pt slp is speech and language and they could
086also have special education services so we we do look at case loads by service hours more so than we do by caseload and the high school caseloads are getting getting very large and that's the core of my question where are you where are your pinch points right now high school high school i did notice that if you looked at almost every category that you've got a four year school at wisconsin and a four-year school at the high school but the numbers at the high school are so much larger is there is that a natural progression with kids age or is that something that's unique here in brookfield well no what happens on when we go back to the survey process we tend to have kids at serbia at the elementary levels so they're they're that
087time at the elementary and they're in the intervention they could be in for a period of time and released and they could sometimes they go back and forth which we don't want to get into but that serbia process is very very intense at the lower levels when you get to the high school sometimes the continuous of survey they start to hit a wall and then you start seeing more evaluations and more referrals um for your typical ld student more so at the upper levels than you do and then at the high school it could be a variety a variety of reasons for referral okay yeah and are these students that are reaching the high school have they typically been students that have received srbi for a good portion of their time in the lower grades
088it could be um but sometimes that survey is more hit at the upper middle school and then they hit that high school level and it's it starts to show because it becomes a little bit of a different of instruction a little more independent so you start seeing little little things starting starting to crack let's just say so um i would say yes okay and you never know how many move-ins we may have true so is there any trends in specific needs that kids are now i mean this i'm talking about this big jump at the high school are we seeing needs in a specific um area i know you can't get into yeah i have to because if you have like are there is there a big trend you know where there's a lot of
089kids with social emotional issues um i'm gonna say not more than the average year that we've had even though with covid we we we really have um a lot of supports at wisconier and you know when they go to the high school it's it's just a different ball game up there and sometimes where they you know they were they were just on the cusp it becomes it impacts them once they get to the high school of accessing that curriculum some of the kids that may be a 504 has worked for them you know through through a whisk and air and then they get to the high school and it's just not enough and they need a little bit more but again it goes back to initial referrals it goes back to move-ins it could be
090a speech and language student it doesn't necessarily have to be just a learning disabled student there may be some students who are identified as ed which is emotionally disturbed because their emotional state is getting in the way of them accessing the curriculum so to say a trend i'm gonna say no because we do we do have a variety and it tends to be um pretty pretty even um throughout the years i don't see anything skyrocketing if that's what you're asking gina do we have a specific model that we follow at least a huckleberry as far as for the school social workers um as far as the social worker pushing in to provide kind of those services in the classroom like mindfulness lessons that can benefit all the students and yet kind of meet those caseload
091requirements we do have the social workers push in we are doing the ruler um throughout the you know the entire building we also have school psychologists that push in and we at the middle school we have the school counseling um and at the high school so there's a lot of support there um as far as when the kids get a little older may need some more more needs sorry i'm trying to talk yeah i'm sorry okay my uh the district 18 and 22 year olds is that is that 12 number is that an outlier or is that that's pretty common like a pretty stable number um it depends because we um in the past two years we've had a um transition coordinator at the high school who come is from ed advance and we have
092had him involved in all of the transition for the 18 to 22 making sure assessments are provided making sure that the need is there we're working with level up so it that could be a pocket of students you know in a certain grade level that you never know until they hit the high school and that transition piece starts happening with the the transition now at 14 and we work with level up to get kids out into the community and doing some vocational so it really depends on when they hit that sophomore year we really know from the transition evaluations whether or not they're going to need that 18 to 22. and our typical life skills students will be doing the 18 to 22. but if that's typically like a third of the total number sometimes
093yeah it really depends on the population thank you i just want to go back to the whole middle school high school stark difference thing that i keep i think i'm receiving from you is that's what i'm getting um is there anything that we can be doing at the middle school level or even earlier curriculum wise programmatically so that there isn't this wall that kids seem to hit at the high school well remember the intervention services have to take place for a certain amount of time so that usually happens at the lower levels right so when you when those lower when the students start moving forward you know grade four grade five you know some of those intervention services are not working so now they're transitioning grade five and we're we have initials at at the
094middle school level so the intervention kind of pushes it a little bit further more so than what you see at the elementary so those intervention services down at the elementary the reading piece of it is huge you know as far as the data collection and kids reading the fluency the accuracy all all of those type of interventions are happening so it's developmental so you put them in the intervention for a period of time and they tend to be growing over time and progressing over time but sometimes they reach a point where it's that serbia is not working so there's something else that's getting in the way and that tends to happen a little bit later since serbia was put into place by the state okay i don't know if that answers your question if that's
095what you're yeah i just want to make sure that we're we have wonderful intervention or escalating the issue as quickly as i mean not as quickly as we can but at an appropriate speed so that kids are not sort of like thrown into the high school which is a totally different beast and and now all of a sudden they're dealing with this new plan no because again there could be move-ins coming in there could be initial evaluations for different reasons and it it it's it's not anything specific it's just it tends to be sometimes there's bubbles sometimes there's not so you know to pinpoint that no but what i can tell you is when the state implemented the serbia we have incredible survey here in both center school and huckleberry and it really supports the
096students in closing those gaps but again it pushes out the kids you know more so when they hit that middle school where that initial evaluation starts to come up or at the high school okay as far as occupational therapy um is it district wide really or is there more of a trend of students needing those services at the elementary level or middle or high school it's it depends on the on the disability so um you know there there are um at we have a uh one ot at center school we have one ot at huckleberry and we have the coda that splits between wisconier with the part-time and the coda or or the yeah the coda up at the high school because it's service-based however we have our ots who can only do the testing
097that will have to go to the high school and do whatever testing takes place so we have our full time more at the elementary than we do at the upper so yes at the elementary level because of the programs we have there they're fine motor skills and that tends to improve over time again with the program that they put in place at the elementary and you tend to see the services drop as they get older unless disability requires it i know you can't say what the needs are as far as occupational therapy services um at the elementary level but is any are they um more aligned to handwriting um needs you know would that just fine motor okay all right any other questions this is really informative this is great thank you any other questions
098thank you thanks gina okay the next item is the district enrollment report all right so after gina tired you out with all that information i will be uh i'll be able to be brief here this is the report we do each year again as gina mentioned this is why gonna mentioned it is the october one based off the snapshot on october 1 that is a state requirement that all districts take the enrollment snapshot it and then provide the accounts there so we report it accordingly so this report has the last um four years and the enrollment as of uh october one and that's on the second page we always just let everybody know that was as of october 1. every day there's changes with students moving in students moving out just like gina was talking
099about students might be identified a student with profound needs might move into the school which changes all kinds of dynamics and services so if you take a look at the second page we really we break down holistically by grade and then by the the three big sub categories which is students with special needs students who are english learners and students who are economically disadvantaged or what we call free reduced lunch and so as you look down you will see jumps in certain grade levels where we would expect that for example in kindergarten there was 132 students in kindergarten last year but now there's 176. well that was obviously because of the pandemic because the year before in 2019 there was 176 kindergarten kids it's a pretty stable number matter of fact uh bob mentioned in
100enrollment uh a quick enrollment study we did with dr prada who's a a known um statistician around the state uh he's he's projecting for next year so it's still a pretty stable number about 180 182 kids uh that was his draft report so that'll be part of this what gina presented tonight what i'm presenting here leads into the report you'll receive next month which is the just doing a little uh look ahead here what dr ruby will share which is the the class size reports next week all this is going to feed into december 1 when the superintendent's budget proposal comes forward this is all the backup data essentially that we're starting to front load for you um so you can see you know you've had the report you can take a look down there's
101some you know classes that are a little less classes that are a little more um you can see um our total student enrollment as of uh the 20 the 21 uh october 1st excuse me is 2588 students and then when you look at the students who are in the 18 to 22 program or outplace those 34 kids that brings our enrollment to 2622 as you can see there and relatively stable but considerably up by you know to 58 kids 58 kids more and remember a few years ago everybody was projecting that enrollment be going down and we think in brookfield obviously we've had the pandemic people are moving from the city to the suburbs the real estate boom um aging population turning over housing turnover so all of that's uh contributing to that um and
102you can see that we have i mentioned earlier that we have in my report my superintendent report that we have over 350 students so going back to some of gina's data students identified with special education services is 367. we have 103 kids identified as english learners that's been relatively steady for the last couple of years of course there's a little drop off last year and again you know we're not sure exactly why that is in terms of drop-off but again the pandemics affected a lot of a lot of families a lot of people and then we're pretty steady in our free and reduced lunch was at with it which is at 539 students there's about 20 percent of our population uh receives free and reduced lunch services john i know this is as of october
1031st but to your knowledge have we had any large group or influx of students blood in um nothing that stood out to say oh there's a group of kids from this area or for any particular reason they've not had any questions okay all right thank you everyone uh next is the prioritized 2022-2023 and updated 10-year capital projects discussion and approval and the facilities committee has been reviewing this plan for several months and given the fact that we have several approved projects from prior years that are still in process we agreed that it was best to uh limit ourselves to bringing forward our top four priorities those are paving and concrete at the middle and high schools seating in the whiskaner seminar room and flooring in the wisconnier cafeteria as joy mentioned earlier there's a tbd
104in the cost for the flooring project because at the time of the most recent committee meeting we did not have an estimate we've since received an estimate of thirty five thousand dollars which can be added to the document if the board approves the plan with that modification and ken if you could just share it share with the uh with the board that the timing that we try to uh work within to get this over to the town into mr dunn for the town planning as well sure the uh the plan is for the town wide committee to meet sometime in november which is why we're looking for approval uh at this meeting tonight obviously we probably could go to the next one if we need to but we'd like to get over get it over
105to them as soon as possible and i have to once it's approved i have to do some more detailed worksheets that have to be submitted to the to the town for the uh the committee's uh consideration so the sooner the better um could you remind me about the item that says design construction of outdoor restrooms food service and storage um i know that's different from the locker room project but the locker room had restrooms right i think our outdoor accessible restrooms it does so restrooms accessible from the outdoor but they weren't right they weren't in the school yeah could you just remind me about this particular project this is a project that has been on the plan since before i even got here and it was to um like it says construct outdoor uh food
106service and storage and and built out buildings out in the in between the fields um and hundred thousand hundred ten thousand dollars was for design money much like we had uh designed money for um the boys locker room project and this has we've generally put the hundred and ten thousand dollars in the first year of the plan in a number of years i've been here and it's always been deferred it's like another building like almost closer to the tennis courts made a suggestion of maybe getting some donations or finding a sponsor to have an outdoor concessions yeah there's something yeah we've talked about it trying to get this uh it would be a concession stand multiple lavatory so student athletes and and the public can use the the facilities as well as can uh concession
107and storage so like almost like a field house that's what i was gonna ask i think i've heard the term field house that was this project many many high schools put these field houses in because at one time they were like we are they are using porta johns for all of the um you know for all the events and i mean we've been doing it forever and um you know there's a there's i think more attention to hygiene than ever and now the way we have our new bleachers set up and so forth you know concession is well behind the bleachers it would be nice to have the all those great folks who volunteer at concession to be able to see the athletics going on and then kids being able to use the facilities uh
108you know go to the bathroom but also wash up and so forth have electricity out there so as you know the fields go on and on and on and we really want to have a healthy and safe environment in proper storage as well and this 1.5 number is just a placeholder i assume right because we don't we don't probably wouldn't have any idea what the estimate would really be that's what this is correct does there a reason we're deferring that to year two the only reason is like i said we we've got a number of active projects out there already so we tried to just take bring forward our top priorities that we really believe need to be done soon and that we can manage so yeah my biggest worry with uh with the sheet
109is you've got 270 000 dollars of projects you're screening for in the first year but then you've got a list of things that are between two and a half and set six and a half million dollars every year for the next ten years and uh it just it feels like we're we're under shooting in the first year and it's just making the pile bigger later and i just said it was not clear why it was that we're not trying to get to a kind of a steady you know that's how much you have to spend over here sorry my microphone wasn't on sorry yeah like i said i think the the real reason is that we have we do have a number of projects that are still in process that were we really so this
110is a capacity issue yes exactly exactly bob well so how will we handle projects that are two and a half four and a half six and a half million dollars over the next couple years if we i have such little capacity that we can only do 270 000 worth of project well i think if we get two of which are two of which are paving correct yes so those should be quite easy to do and we should be able to get caught up then and then uh hopefully with our building condition study will help us prioritize which projects we can bring forward and you know and the ad fight off more of them the ad hoc committee for the town maybe meaning the capital the capital yeah yeah i think the town capital committee bob
111i think that's the this is the first year mr dunn is implementing yes and so i think that's a big part of this too bob is that um like like you're like looking at um and i really appreciate your perspective is pushing reality onto people not only the capacity of what we can do but the reality of of what it costs to maintain and improve our facilities and i think related to the building conditions that it could help us prioritize with that um but it's a little bit of a budgeting question um and how the town thinks about budgeting right if we add this up over the 10 years this kind of goes to your question rosa earlier about updating our needs study there are a lot of needs here and i would think we
112should be asking this capital planning committee that we ought to set a amount of maintenance budget that is more steady right and then we fit projects into that right um you know so if we're looking at i agree we're looking at an average of two and a half million dollars a year maybe we ought to be budgeting for two and a half million dollars a year and then we start filling projects in underneath it because what will happen here is you're gonna come in with a six million dollar a year and it will never get approved it'll just never get approved and and so i think there's some different thinking and it's how they approached the paving question years ago is we know we have the needs we have to build up to it so
113maybe it's not all that you don't leap to it in the first year but we have a more of a strategic view of how much capital we should be setting aside and then we start fitting projects into it um because this is i'm looking at this as kind of an overwhelming problem and it's um it's like we're gonna trot around the track in the first lap and then we're gonna have to sprint the next nine laps right and it's kind of not how you run a race right you want to pace yourself when you run a race and so that's just to me it just felt light in the first year not that if you don't have if you have capacity issues it's one thing but i'd urge us to talk to the capital committee
114about a different way of thinking about our major build these are our most major buildings in the town now i say that in light of the fact that town's just spending a ton of money building a new school so um so i've got a i i i defer to it's a very capable committee given the membership of that committee to think about it but i don't know the answer yet yeah and one of the problems we have is we had like i said we have a number of projects that are ongoing and we have a certain time frame where we have to complete them and and we just don't have the capacity to do a lot more plus what we've already got going on yeah i guess a lot of these are you know boiler
115replacement steam piping electrical service kitchen appliances you know fixing a buried tank they're they're all smaller right they're not they're not like like people think oh i have to re-roof the entire building or something like that although that's on the list too um but it's i think we need to think differently about how do we budget for capital right and i would urge the town to think about that and i can't solve it here tonight yeah no but i do worry if the capital committee is going to be meeting next month that this doesn't really present them with a very accurate picture of what we can not only our needs but what we can actually do so i worry about bringing this forward to them and saying these are this is our plan when there's
116no way that we can follow this plan i mean is this what has the facilities committee what about capacity yeah and it's also about what's to to the the root of it is how we plan for strategically capital which is a town function and how to how to fund capital and i know there's been a lot of conversation over the last couple of years that mr dunn and marcia have talked about and to the points that were just being brought up the the issue is in our first year even if we didn't have capacity issues and we asked for things um because of budget you can't get everything and it always gets deferred and pushed that's another big part of this so um yeah but but that's a self fulfilling prophecy and the problem with
117the low capital budget in the first year is all budgets are done year to year right so that's now the basis on which they have money for the following year so eventually this is what happened to us in paving in this town for years we had this little tiny bit of money in the budget for paving because somebody made a decision back in 2001 because i remember that we were gonna we're gonna bond everything and they it took us 15 years to get the nut up with a lot of hard work from the current finance committee and their predecessors to get it up so it's more self-sustaining and uh um the building maintenance is the same way all right it's something you have to consciously say i have a strategy and not i'm going to
118look at a couple of projects so my worry john is with a low number in the first year you're going to never get more than 270k ever and that's a problem so i mean we can go back as a committee and talk about it and we look at it no i would just recommend that you when we bring it to them it comes with a different discussion right how are we going to go deal with this right 10 years worth not just one year's worth and get the focus on the broader picture and i'm not sure i would change the submission because they're going to look at all these projects and move them around anyhow as a committee they have to think properly as a committee and just for everybody listening capital is not a
119school board item we submit things to the town and town approves all capital right so it's a it's a function it's a separate function of the budgeting process and so we're influencing and providing input to it not approving it per se so correct i just i'm treating this this way right you know we have a list of projects here and i just worry we're we have to change the discussion you know it's a capacity strategy how we're going to deal with it over the long run so to the people who make those decisions right so joy do you need approval of this tonight when you take it so that you can take it like approval yeah and what i guess like what's the if if everything's going to get switched around when we give this
120over to the committee okay fine but are we proposing is does our approval mean that this is the plan we are this is our submission they're making our subjects what you're recommending it's our submission i wouldn't even call it recommended it's our submission for their consideration okay all right when is the next meeting joy the next month so the first wednesday was it november second third the first wednesday third third third and when are they requiring this input from us they said they're going to be meeting mid-november right i don't know if there's an exact date i don't have the exact date yet i don't think they've set a date yet sometime in november okay now are there any other questions on this okay so then when you bring this to the committee you will
121just have a more broad strategy discussion are you on the committee yes yeah i thought you were so you know you've kind of gotten my thoughts and if you need me to help you with that i thought i'd be very happy to help formulate the speech yeah they said they would be in touch about the exact date but it's going to be soon i'm also on the committee you're on the committee too i think they're waiting until after election right that's probably wise so i i would suggest we submit it as it is and then work the work the process okay can i suggest that we change also change the tbd to thirty five thousand dollars since i do have an estimate do you need a motion for this a vote probably let's do that
122yeah typically we do i will go ahead and move that the board approved the 2022-2023 updated 10-year prioritized capital projects list as recommended by the facility subcommittee with the addition of the 35 000 um for the flooring at the middle school in in year one in year one second all right any other questions or discussions on it all right all in favor all right thank you okay all right um the 2223 budget assumptions and priorities okay so again annually at this time as we get ready for the budget season and we talk about the budget being a financial statement of our values and what we believe is important for our students and for our facilities in our district it's important we start with what's called we call it assumptions and priorities so the first page
123is our assumptions and our assumptions really is a framework for how we're going to operate it's kind of a statements of agreement that we agree on certain things as a board and administrative team as we go forward to give us those uh what's the term you've used before about guardrails as you say you know that framework dr ruby likes the term framework i know she likes that term and you like guard rails so it all works for everybody so you know that framework really starts with our portrait of the graduate our strategic plan goals uh ensuring the students are critical thinkers and collaborators communicators and change makers as they um move and matriculate through our school system um and so this this is a uh i think it's ten point or eleven font type and
124two and a half pages so i'm going to summarize and hit the highlights you've had this since friday um and we will continue to go back and forth and revisit this through um us starting on october 1 which brings us to mid-may which is our eight-month budget process here in connecticut and in brookfield and so the first thing is supporting the strategic plan which is making sure that the budgets provide sufficient appropriate resources promotes continuous improvement affords sufficient flexibility uh for entirely including it in the operating budget but being ready to continue to support needs and contingencies should the pandemic response to the pandemic have to continue in the next year next year's budget making sure our commitment to ensuring appropriate districts in schools organizational structures that promote the plan the strategic plan and intentional
125implementation of that plan maintaining our valued and established programs while responding to changing needs working to attract and retain highly competent faculty and staff things like having ski trip chaperone opportunities available for them is always something nice and fun um and uh making sure that uh board approved practices concerning class size uh and adjusting uh are maintained and then adjusting staffing patterns based on enrollment and we just talked about enrollment we talked about special education and the caseloads all of that impacts our guidelines for class size as well and who who teaches the students teachers and support personnel and all that enrollment and how it's based on student needs is affected and that's how that impacts the where we prioritize our finances provide the necessary resources for social and emotional needs for students after school
126programming so when we say after school program all those stipend positions we have for faculty and staff that are advising clubs and sports and uh everything else that we have for the kids are our drama productions et cetera um working to continue to develop our curriculum um and really supporting technology in a digital learning environment and really making sure those specific areas i emphasized in my report english language learners students with special needs etc making sure we bolster our pre-k programming to make sure our students are ready to go um and that kind of thing technology infrastructure is another important one and then really adhering to in this is a big one for us because we have a lot of laws and mandates that we must follow including state federal idea et cetera and all
127the contractual obligations that we have in collective bargaining and so forth as well as purchasing and transportation we just talked about that tonight and then adhering to policies and practices of the board specific board policies and then always working on cost containment and any efficiencies regional or otherwise that we can achieve so that's hitting it hitting it quickly but that's the framework we work within and we kind of agree to as we go forward and certainly as i'm presenting if you're having ideas and we'll discuss it afterwards if there's other things to add or reword or think differently about that's what we're here for tonight so this list is the same pretty much as last year it's it's it's um thematically the same it is there's there's been changes but it's it's pretty much the
128same framework we work within it's really important to define that for all of us in the community as well so they know why we're making certain decisions um then you get to page two and that's where we really get into the priorities that you can start to envision we'll be thinking about uh prioritizing for next year in the budget and whether is that continuing to put resources there or looking for enhancements and so forth and so and that's not all fleshed out yet because the principles are working with their school teams and then we have to meet to get ready for the december 1st presentation so important pieces for curriculum instruction and assessment which i just like to say simply teaching and learning it's it's it's the most important thing we're doing right we're keeping
129kids safe and teaching and learning that's why we're here in school and so we want to maintain and support digital curricular tools for our students to support blended and personalized learning continue advancing uh the integration of technology and resources into daily instruction supporting access to digital tech so a lot of you know the there's a lot of investment in technology that we must continue ongoing support for our faculty to develop the capacity in assessment literacy and evaluation expanding curriculum development aligned with the state standards specifically working on continuing to develop our social studies curriculum through the grades extending the development of the aligned assessment in supports of standard based grading as we have completed k4 and starting to really look into grade 5 now revision alignment with the science at the high school as well
130as k-12 social studies i just mentioned in alignment with the connecticut frameworks and ngs standards we do need to some of you who were on the board four years ago and five years ago were very involved as community members we'll remember that early on when dr ruby and i got here we started to really work with the teachers and and the principles and look at some of the curricular tools we had it's time to you know five years into having different ela and mathematics programs start looking into are these programs we're going to stick with are they do they need to be enhanced or adjusted and and or do we need to go with something different so we're going to form committees next year as we then analyze and look toward where we're going to
131go and we need a lot of input on that and a lot of analysis um let's see what else obviously um using the art funds for our instructional coaches our tech integration specialist ken went through some of that today continuing that in the very intentional plan of how we over time work that into the budget so we don't hit any kind of a budget cliff working with gina who's just up with mrs weigonick with finalizing talented and gifted identification process um and also revising and refining the the policies and alignment with new legislation that's come out and that goes to you know i see amy and mike and deb over there and our policy audit and the work we're going to be doing with dr mastaro from cape there's also a state mandated state mandated
132curricular course that needs to be offered at high schools that's black and latino studies that there are some districts piloting that this year but you must offer a course next year and so that's we have to be prepared for that and the high school has been starting to ramp up and plan for that comply with state mandates for bilingual education uh it's important for we've talked about this on and off with our resource provision for english learners when you have students in the number of of 20 speaking the same language in one school in a given year and this year we have that at huckleberry spanish is that language the following year by state uh legislation you must have a bilingual program so we have to prepare for that and that's part of our will
133be part of our budget preparation um let's see looking and then and then examining our tesol uh teacher student ratio uh we as as you all know you invested last year and then a second um english language teacher so we have two now in the district um success plans uh grades six through twelve we have those in district um and there are mandated a new mandated uh parent collaboration with staff requirements and that may um we're digging into that will likely require more release time for teachers and staff to meet so that there's a cost to that because there's a substitute provision and things like that similarly social and emotional learning there's a new assessment requirement through legislation and so we need an assessment tool that's the first thing the second thing is we need
134time release time for staff to analyze the assessment and plan and then the other part is we need to be aware you know it's we think these things through an assessment may reveal significant needs in one or two or three areas and so we need to be prepared to provide resources if we have uh rising uh areas that are of need so we need to be ready for that um and so that could that could be some kind of uh in the form of some kind of intervention beyond just a regular classroom intervention uh so that's all kind of in the teaching and learning area that really is student focused um in leadership we want to continue today oh sure sure you would stop there that's fine it's a good section to stop actually joy
135please so this new legislation um is there a a place that we can look quickly or find that or get access to that absolutely absolutely there's um just so you know the csde has a memo out there's a number of different memos but if you wouldn't mind i mean i know lisa will be writing it down but send me an email and i i'll make sure i send it out to the whole board there's a there's a whole we have a whole legislative to-do list and so i can get that to you and many much of that is focused on some of the policy work that we have to do as well okay the state mandated course is that gonna go come through cape oh yeah that's all that's all got to be worked through
136that yep absolutely john real quick the uh t soul because uh you mentioned that we get we add that t soul teacher we also lost two tutors so are we is that gonna is that part of that uh teacher student or sorry the teacher student ratio yes so what we're gonna do mike is that that's where that's where the bottom up uh budget development process is so great we we start at the school level so we look at this we start with all these student needs we're talking about right all this different information this data and then we'll work with miss holly with kevin she will demonstrate to us and show this is the data and this is why we need this program that program this staff member and that kind of thing so that's
137all part of that and it's not finalized yet we're not ready yeah we're always just really getting i don't want to kind of make that but we're also trying to read the tea leaves and and project for you folks so you know what's coming you know to get you ready we've got to be looking at these it just it just didn't seem that you know to kevin holly's presentation that one teacher was going to solve the overwhelming need for the the tutors as well so i was i was curious about that and cameron could always come to a cape meeting and and talk about how things are going and i'll give you guys an update there's added needs that'll be in the budget of course so of course okay how about i enjoy himself uh
138the mandated parent consult is that a plan that is coming out of covid or that's just a new i think that was actually i think that it's hard to remember all these laws that legislation uh was passed maybe uh a couple of years ago and so when these laws are passed sometimes they have implementation so that we have to get ready for them and is there a time stamp on these as far as um when they have to be implemented yes some actually there there's implementations to get started on this year in this current year and then really ramp up the budget for the following year and are these priorities in priority order or are these in just 16 here's 16 items we're going to focus on these are the items we're going to focus
139on there there isn't we didn't prioritize them that way what we'll do is typically i mean if you think back to the i'm glad you asked that bomb the um the budget presentation we usually break that down into you know four five six goals big goals then we break it down that way we try to prioritize for you folks in within those budget goals those specific budget goals okay so with leadership uh we have a real focus area as you can see on um social emotional learning developing our our leadership capacity i'm part of that our school administration special education supervisors you know you know the folks here um really getting better at that understanding more learning more about it focusing on school climate one of our district implementation goals the fourth goal there's reading
140writing math and then there is a school climate goal um and also a lot of great work has been going on uh dr ruby's been a big part of it and so what ghana's been a big part of it are building administrators in terms of trauma-informed instruction you've heard that before so a lot of work there and then um collective efficacy you know and how are we together better as a team than as individuals so um those are areas we're going to focus on we plan to focus on and then the next is operations and facilities which really will go into some of the pretty quickly you'll see operational things but also kind of kind of capital focus so in operations and facilities which is the last section um we want to make sure we
141implement our transition plan to the new school and so there's summer preparation preparation work to be ready to go we need to have ready in terms of getting ready for candlewood lake middle the middle school needs to be concerned too because you've got different scheduling you have to think about with six through eight um and then so all the considerations right you've got staffing certifications leadership uh organization enrollment transportation we've got plans for start time changes and things like that we're getting ready for uh all general operations and protocols so we need to be thinking about all of that as we prepare for the new school um just like i was talking about sel there's actually new legislation for school resource resource officers to learn about social emotional learning um that we'd have to work
142with jay purcell and chief purcell and that would come from pd from the uh from the police department so it's it's a focus it wouldn't come out of our budget necessarily and but it doesn't mean the sro couldn't participate in our pd as well so there's that kind of thing but there's very specific things for officers as i understand it at this time um eric will be looking to update the classroom presentation stations um uh real with a real focus on wisconsin has been completed over the last couple of years continue to invest in our chromebooks and really get it get us to a point of completing the the full one-to-one initiative looking at adopting a new adaptive website that's something we want to uh eric's really looking at how we can improve our website
143part part of our our our website limitations uh we we have stayed with this the i think it's called uh oh gosh what is it community in town or something is the name yeah yeah and uh but it's the same as what the town has and so there are other options out there that eric's going to be taking a look at so it could be a more user friendly and uh just a better enhanced experience new transportation contract we talked about that a little bit tonight ken's getting ready to go out to bid on that finance committee's talked a lot about that um engage the arc architectural firm for the building condition study we just talked about that one of the things we have to remember is with a building condition study that's how we
144started really analyzing center and huckleberry and was it worth the old phrase a lot of people talked about when i first got here throwing good money after bad to keep fixing these schools but they're well past their their useful life or to go with a new school so what we really need to dig in on is you know while we know 10 or 12 12 years ago maybe now there was a major renovation to the high school um we still have lots of issues at the high school that that you know we've all kind of inherited and so um we need to to really start to think long and hard about the high school and the middle school really analyze what are the needs and you know do we are we gonna have to go
145into something as big of an investment uh as any kind of renovated new renovate as new type of a project or like bob was talking about with roses you know going through um and and having a more aggressive capital plan that isn't necessarily a renovate is new but we we really tackle these projects that may mean we have to have some kind of additional project manager that we hire to go with that so we have the capacity to do all these projects so those are things we need to think about but the buildings are older and they need serious maintenance um we need to action plan for the strategic plan so that's something operational like i just talked about tomorrow we're going to start to get that first link that thought exchange out there which
146is really exciting for everybody it's really fun and exciting to talk about the future and what we want for our kids um rather than this constant survival mode we've been in for a year and a half so you know the administrative council yesterday you could just see the joy in the administrator's faces start just talking about this stuff again and thinking about kids and what experience we want them to have and what skills that we want them to to leave us with um we really talked seriously about the need um the need at the k through eight schools to have a secretary available all year long uh the current practice is that our secretary or principal secretaries are available 11 months and not 12 um and so um there's consideration of that as well that
147we'll be seriously talking about to to really staff our schools properly uh in the summer um i think many contracts and the way we've operated is that everything just shuts down in the summer and just a quiet time where everybody can relax and as as the board knows for sure summer is is in a lot of ways our busiest time with hiring and getting the schools ready it's you blink your eyes and it's over and there's lots of family needs and so forth not only for registrations but everything else that goes on maintenance et cetera we've already talked about contracting contracting with cave for the policy service um making sure the arp ester grant is properly implemented and transitioned through the operating budget over time which we just talked about and then the last piece
148is really just advocating for the constant upkeep of our fields and and with the parks and rec department and so there's a lot there folks and that's why it was important to get to you last friday to give you a chance to take a look at it ahead of schedule that's all i have thank you so what what are the next steps on this then in terms of our budget planning schedule so the the next steps are if the board is comfortable tonight with this make a motion to uh approve it and move forward with it um if the board you could also approve it with a couple of amendments if there's some other ideas for it but between now and november 3rd november 3rd is the next meeting um we're going to be talking
149about the transition to the the plan is to talk about the transition to the new school and then december 1st very early we might be the first one in this in the state to be presenting the budget for next year um we'll we'll be presenting the budget so it's important that the administrative team has that knows the framework and knows that the board is supportive and comfortable the framework so we could develop the budget because in the next week or two we start the meetings with the principals and really thinking through what we need for next year and you'll get us the information that the administrators are requesting or what the teachers are requesting as far as budget yes i'm glad you're reminding me of that any other questions all right um well then i
150will move that the board approved the 2022-2023 budget assumptions and priorities as presented by superintendent dr john burrell second okay all in favor okay moving on to old business we have none um about the candlewood lake elementary school building project um dr brill do you have any updates to share on that i know you've been in touch with um yes actually paul and i had a brief chat today um he really the main thing he talked about is the one one continuing um action item for the nbc uh the other was you're just talking about some of the concrete forms and some of the pores the concrete pours he uses all that industry language that i'm not super familiar with so thankfully he and josh are on the committee um so he's talking about that
151a little bit but but things are moving along um as best they can at this point and um but the main thing we're still waiting on is to really get a um i was gonna say concrete but that wouldn't be right a firm uh calendar moving forward um he's expecting something next week he's asked ong to do that um to make sure that i mean everything's hinging on no right now assuming we're going to be uh moving in in the fall so that's gotta you know partially moving in with the you know the the uh the kids so we've got to get that ready um in short order and we've got to know that that's gonna happen so omg should be getting us a calendar in the next week and um we'll make adjustments based
152on that and we'll make adjustments to what our our current thinking if we have to if not we'll move forward with our current thinking uh either way we'll be talking about it in two weeks for sure so as of now we're on schedule as far as i understand we're on schedule and well they have the basic building enclosed so it can be in inside work before the weather turns cold and bad that i'm not sure of and one of the things that that you hear talk of but i haven't had any official word on is what we're all thinking about holiday presents paper goods supplies of all kinds in in the supply chain and what you see off in the pacific so um up to this point we've been on time um and so that's
153i think that's where paul's concern really lies is he wants to make sure that they can commit to being on time with everything um and so that's what we're waiting for and i know i talked i think i talked about that two meetings ago and still really waiting for no more talks we really need to see something on paper so we could you know budget start time staffing everything hinges on knowing that um because we start we have to start the budget process so early which is all the resources that go into this and we have to be very cognizant of the lives of our staff members and you know transitioning and moving people around as well as our families and our students so people just need to know and that's what we're waiting for
154thank you all right um moving on uh to public comment um we don't have anybody signed up in this book um the crowd is very small tonight is anybody would anybody like to speak sorry i i just don't understand why you know you give us certain words as to what time we have to sign up by and then it changes i just wish there would be consistency okay well then we'll have everybody sign up by seven o'clock then okay okay moving on to three main points uh i was thinking of the covid update dr brill provided and maybe a mention of us continuing discussions about the buses also i thought it would be important to mention the special services update from mrs wygonick and then the 20 22 23 budget assumptions that's what i was
155going to say yeah i'm good with that can we roll in the enrollment maybe with the case load yeah absolutely yeah i think that's important to be able to share that in a lot of different ways and all those reports there was a lot of reports ever every meeting every it's important for the public to remember to every subcommittee that we talk about uh anything of the board all the minutes the agendas everything is online uh on the website people can ask access at any time and within a short time period we turn around even even the minutes from these meetings but you know when we do our three main points it also gets it out there on the facebook page i think it's so valuable absolutely to let people focus on right now on
156facebook it really is yep [Applause] okay uh upcoming events okay at center school the fall festival and book fair is this saturday october 23rd from 12 to 2 and october 25th 26th and 27th is 1220 dismissal for conferences huckleberry has the virtual book fair and the huckleberry hustle fundraiser is ongoing through october 30th they also have 12 20 dismissal for conferences on october 25th 26th and 27th and they have spirit week the week of october 25th culminating with the huckleberry hustle on october 29th whiskenier has a psat for eighth graders on october 28th and they have a spirit day wear your costume on october 29th and the fall ball and homecoming dance at the high school is at the amber room on october 30th and all schools have no school for students and professional development
157day on tuesday november 3rd november 2nd thank you all right um any other uh upcoming events all right well the state foreign oh yeah jj stacks this saturday october 23rd from one to four is this brookfield skatepark fundraiser everybody's interested yep okay all right then uh without objection meeting again thank you thank you [Music] you