001you're all set okay it's uh 5 05 p.m on wednesday august 12th and i'm calling the finance subcommittee of the brookfield board of education meeting to order um we have uh two of our three board members and of course my phone chooses this moment to ring bear with me that part is it's probably junk um so uh um for those of you who are listening in um we are using a new format for our uh our board of education meetings uh in particular for those of you who are listening would like to make public comment i want to take a moment and describe that we have um we've decided as a town that the only attendees of the video conference would be the uh the members of the committee and the members of the uh
002the administration who are part of the committee and we also have members of the town and the board of finance on this call so it's a small group we'll be here on video for anybody who wants to make public comment um you could uh dial into one of two phone numbers that are posted on the um the brookfield uh public schools website under the board of education tab but just for convenience i'm going to read the two phone numbers um the first one is 929 205 6099 and the second one is 301 715-8592 i'm going to repeat those 929 205 6099 or 301-715-8592 but if you didn't get that you can go on the brookfield public schools website when you dial in uh you will be admitted to make a public comment i'll pause the
003meeting because i have to give people a chance to come in but um i will pause the meeting at that moment to accept your public comment and uh we'll deal with it when it comes um sorry for the inconvenience i'd love to have everybody here on the website in person and on video but that's just the way we have to deal with the event so let me ask eric did i capture all that correctly uh yes the only thing we want to add in is um they will be required to enter that meeting id um so if you could just read that aloud um under the two phone numbers okay there you go i'm glad you told me so there is the meeting id and the meeting idea is 976-9600-5999 and i'll repeat that it's
004976-9600 and it also was posted on the brookfield public schools website thank you eric all right with that we're going to go ahead and jump into the meeting um and for those of you who are listening and are observing us on youtube hopefully this is a useful and interesting meeting for you um the as i said we have two of our three board members who are here uh jen leighton's on vacation but rosa and i are both here we have our superintendent of schools our director of finance and operations our our i.t leader our accounting leader the town controller and eileen koch from the board of finance here in attendance um i'll skip past public comment which is the next thing on the agenda because people will call in when they call in first up
005is check registers um let me just uh can we send those out correct you're on mute ken sorry about that somebody somebody came and i didn't hear what you said i'm looking at the town employees and you guys are all in your offices it looks like well i actually went home and discovered that despite the fact that i got my power back four days ago my internet is now out tonight oh no i rushed back to the office so if i'm a little uh frazzled that's why i noticed some office backgrounds there um so check register anything unique in the check registers this month i didn't think so okay rosa any questions on your part no i looked through it it looks no questions here normal yeah it did look pretty uh normal as well
006to me so um all right so let's just shift over to the financial report and ken you want to give us an update sure so it is a uh still a preliminary report um right now the projected positive variance is 572 631 dollars and that includes the uh thirty thousand dollar transfer from the uh cafeteria fund the fifty two thousand eight hundred nine dollar transfer from the activity fund it also reflects the polar head items that we that we purchased with last year's money uh salary savings is a little lower than i had projected last month uh we had a couple of sick and vacation day payouts that i had not accounted for and uh we had a bunch of esy preparation work that was done in june that we had to account for in
007june and a couple of other variants that still need to be investigated in the custodial remind me what the bottom line number that we gave to the board of finance was when we last met with them was in june my may report said 485 000 and you're at what now 572. 572. so that's uh that's another uh 90 000 to the good yeah and so you told me something you mentioned some things that were you had more of what did we actually under run tomorrow um employee benefits were were more positive than we thought they were going to be one reason i think we talked about this last time but i hadn't had it incorporated in my numbers yet we got a refund of our dental insurance from may i think we just got that
008in july and our unemployment has been running lower than we originally expected um transportation variance was also more positive the refund we got back from all-star was larger than the number they originally gave me i think what happened was they the number they originally gave me was for a certain point in time and they ended up not bringing their drivers back for another week or two after that point so they saved more money and included in the refund okay yeah so that was that was good the dental rebate was in one time savings right yes um ken can i ask you two questions one on the unemployment on the numbers that you're using we've only gotten our unemployment bills through april is there more did you estimate may and june do you have may and
009june and we just don't have ours yet um i'm pretty sure we have may already and we and we estimated the the balance based on that bill okay um and then the other one that we wanted to talk about maybe we talked about at the last meeting i can't remember is that we have that sewer charge the 41 that's due june 1st but doesn't get isn't late until july 1st that we talked about the possibility of moving that forward um so that joan doesn't have to rush around july 1st every year and um get that payment as the first payment out before it's late um that is not in here correct correct so you're suggesting we should do a journal entry to put it back into 1920. to me it seems to if we did
010a journal entry just for logistics that um so that you have 30 days or 29 days to pay it instead of that one day we do pay ours um in the the year in the june month instead of the july month and it just seems to me that it would make your life a lot easier i'm all for that if everybody else is what does that do to the financials it would reduce the the give back by 41 000 or 42 000. for just this one year um it's just a timing to make the day-to-day operation easier on july 1st yep and and then that would be okay with the with the town i mean we're not looking for every penny it we can bring it up to the board of finance i to me
011it makes a lot of sense it's a practical thing there's a lot there's a lot of moving pieces around you know dealing with all the covert related spending and things like that so i want to make sure that we don't you know uh shoot ourselves in the foot if that makes sense yeah but but it's not like we're paying more money it's just a timing issue and um if we're if there's ever a year to do it to say we're going to move 40 000 back to the prior year this seems like the year to do it maybe we just put it on the list of items to talk to the board of finance about okay good idea and thank you for that marcia and did by the way i know we had our meeting
012today but i had to leave a little bit early do we know the when the special board of finance meeting might be held next week because they folks had no power or internet this week so they had to push it next week it will be when next wednesday as far as i know okay eileen was there any chance that that was going to be a little bit earlier in the afternoon like like a five o'clock ish kind of time because we have a board media regular board meeting schedule for seven so we just wanted to make sure we could attend uh harkening to bob's comments about covid and moving parts we want to make sure we're able to connect i'll reach out to the team um we didn't nothing had been said yet um about
013a specific time so i'll bring that up and see sure sure and even i mean like a six or something even 6 30 if we could be first on the agenda and go through our pieces and then dismiss the board meeting to just if so we could all cooperate together considering the massive power outage this past week just really inconvenienced everybody is anybody by the way on this call still struggling with getting power is everyone here back i've been watching the ever i've been watching the eversource thing and the numbers that are remain at least that they're reporting that it's still on that power really low now so it's less than one tenth of one percent so um across the state so it's really i am open i was surprised actually that we don't don't
014have a board at finance meeting tonight because everyone should have power back at this point so um in fact i guess we'll look brookfield brookfield brookfield i find it useful to keep my eye on that stuff so brookfield has fewer than two are out [Music] my parents are in bethel they just got it back at eight o'clock last night okay i got mine back last night too so um okay well that's good news ken about the the results coming in better and i think that's uh we need to we need to make sure that as we communicate to the board of finance uh send them a copy of our report that we feature that it is better than last last month we ought to feature that we have a decision that we need need to
015make um and uh um and then bring that up when we meet with them next week so then we can decide what's the timing on when we actually call the ball on the books being closed well i have to file a report with the state by august 31st so i'm hoping that i have to have this finalized within about a little over two weeks so i'm hoping for the next week to 10 days that'll give me time to get everything in the proper format for filing with the state okay can i just ask on the revenue side the medicaid reimbursement was um less than we anticipated and i'm assuming that's because of the the school shutting down i know that that's a number that's kind of been struggled with a few times where it came
016in around 50 000 but we budgeted 75 and i didn't know if that's something we could expect for next year also or if this this um missing the target revenue was more in line with um you know the kovid shutdown well it's definitely a deeper problem than that yeah yeah the the bigger problem we've had is with uh a number of people not willing to give the parental consent for us to track their services okay i know that's been an issue for it's been brought up as an issue for years i didn't know if that and what did we put in the budget for next year ken oh i should call it this year yeah we're in this year now bob yeah by the end of this year so oh we are in this year
017we dropped it down to 50 000. okay eileen it's a real trust issue yeah you know it's it's very deep so thank you awesome um okay um all right so uh rosa any questions on your phone no this looks good yeah it really does all right i don't think i've ever would have expected to see a year where we under run a budget by over half a million dollars that's uh it's such a weird year we had last year so um yeah have we uh heard anything further from the ciac on fall sports because i think that's the biggest swinger we got facing yes the announcement just came out today they're going to go with their plan from june 30th and they're moving forward with their modified sports season planning to happen that's what they
018said today wow yes just literally just came out in the last hour i think that surprises me so it seriously surprises me how do you play football if you have to keep kids six feet apart with masks on in school locker rooms a chance to do remote football it's called uh called madden madden football be like it just i had one parent say to me they said you know you are being so diligent on what you're doing and very thoughtful about how you're approaching the startup of the school year and the athletic people just seem to be on a completely different planet and and it seems really odd that you can distance your kids you know six feet apart from one another in the school but the minute the bell rings they can start banging
019heads with each other it's crazy so it's interesting bob not not to get off on this because i know we have facilities at six o'clock so i want to give us plenty of time for finance but the um you know the cite their medical advisors as saying that those medical advisors don't have an issue with with the sports including football and um but i'm hearing i'm i'm hearing i don't know anything official at this point but i'm hearing some different things from uh department of public health at the state level so i i don't know again things continue to change so i don't know if anything cic recommends i don't know if something will change based on anything from the state so all right all right next up linda is the covent purchases so where
020are we on that do you have something you want to show us ken or uh um not really i mean the number um that uh item and the reopening costs are kind of and i was watching and i was wondering bob i wanted to share a few things because it's kind of a story behind this as ken said covid purchases and the reopening costs are so related uh items a and c um well let's treat the let's deal with them that together yeah we might as well deal with together if you're okay with that so you know like we just talked about cic that's a perfect example things continue to change rapidly you know every day um we're we're learning something new every single day um there is lots of learning and planning going on
021we've done a lot we've communicated a lot with our families we're we are i've never been so proud of the team and and frankly uh the effort that's been put in over the course of the summer and the hours and upon hours and weekend work for five six straight weeks now that's been gone going on to continue to adjust continue to plan um and uh to quote mrs fitzgerald our long long time music teacher in the district she was quoted in the the national education association uh met little magazine they had the trade magazine saying it's like trying to nail jello to a wall um i had never heard that before but boy does that describe what we're dealing with leave it up to margaret to be uh so uh loquacious so um so again
022we're doing doing a lot there um to be very frank um there are uh we have budgeted for part of our code it costs the hiring of monitors and things like that we do not have one bite um for any of those monitor positions we put out there that's a concern school's just right right around the corner to monitor lunch and isolation rooms um things like that how are we posting the positions for the non-pro not the non-certifieds yeah they're posted on our you know all the regular sites uh terry put them on indeed um we're moving toward western connecticut maybe there's some college kids who are going to be doing their remote learning i'll have some opportunity trying anything we can um you know i don't know you know how attractive of a job
023it is and who's available and and uh so anyway that's something that's out there as well you know hiring some of those new positions but also staffing in general around the state around the region um there's a there's a lot of um issues that we're trying to tend to in hr and and see you know to get ready for opening um my my belief is that the in these non-certified positions um there's a lot of kids who just graduated college who don't have work i mean i i just probably love to have an opportunity to make a few bucks don't worry you're trying you know oh yeah the reason i asked where we were posting is i think about where are they looking yes exactly he does one of them for sure yeah so so
024terry's on that um it's been a little bit less than a week that we've had to post things up but um we really we're looking for those people and it's uh you know it's probably a position for the year uh if people are interested in that so we want to put that out there but like i said even you know returning staff with some of the new laws hr is working on that the concerns people have for their own you know health and pre-existing conditions also uh staff that have concerns with their own child care and so forth so there's there's a lot out there it's a real juggling act um so that's something we're learning um not that it was necessarily a direct covert cost we're talking about existing staff to return but it's
025important for the public and the finance committee and i'll share this with the board next week at our meeting that there are some concerns for sure and i don't want to sit on that information i want people to know that it is a concern um so some you know we have we have some savings that we find and we have some new costs that we find so share a little bit about savings that are coming up and ken certainly could jump in on these you know uh as we talk um uh ipp has been a service we've used for quite a while uh with para educators um we've been transitioning away from ipp and mrs wygonic has continued on from what dr sapala started in bringing in our own people rather than some of the
026ipp services which is a significant cost savings and ken can go over some of that in detail in the special education portion of the agenda but there's some significant savings there it's a staffing piece but we still provide the same services um extended school year transportation uh we did the majority of extended school year was um virtual and it was actually the program itself was a real success this year as uh as i understand and um we are really looking at the transportation savings there's some significant dollars there and then we're continuing as always and kendall talked about this in a little bit more detail because gina couldn't be with us tonight but she provided the information um how we're monitoring out placements and staying on top of that because that's that is the most
027one of the most uh the biggest risks we have in our budget is the volatility of special education as we know from our experience last year and then two years prior to that we're also looking you know where we can pull back and maybe re-prioritize uh some opportunities in professional development that maybe are not as high priority now considering covet and the things we need to put time into as well as uh maybe changing up priorities in terms of technology um and uh so we share a little bit about that um so ken can add those to our known potentials as time develops of savings that he shared with the board of finance last week or two weeks ago whenever it was some new costs that we need to consider um we are the nurses
028are working to put a ppe kit together individual kit for each teacher so it's like an emergency kit if a child has fluids just just especially the little ones crying beginning of the year making sure they're protected and ordering that um technology uh dr ruby and eric and i have been working with the team um to ensure that remote learning is as high quality as possible there's document cameras we have many in the district but we need to order a lot more to make things work not only to share documents but also turn and move the camera so the teacher can be seen by those students who are remote some other significant software that'll really help um with some of the uh the not only the remote learning home but the remote learning we're going
029to have to do in school because remember kids are really going to be in their own little desk uh k through 8 and working on their chromebook the majority of the day you know the the collaborative um interactions will be less and we'll need the technology to do that um and then transportation remember we're doing the am pm kindergarten we really want to get our kindergartners in and um connect with them immediately and teach them school and that's really important so mary rose diamond our principal oversee us been doing a heck of a job with dr ruby and putting the kindergarten um essentially half day program together to start the year that's kind of like our mini hybrid so they're in four days a week to get those kids into the routine and have a
030nice slow rollout and a shorter day for the little ones and the gardeners will be four days a week but morning or afternoon correct correct so that's extra transportation runs so um you know ken's been working on that with all-star um and then just reminding everybody of our biggest exposures like i said about special education we have to watch that very very closely but also retirements you know we're not um at our threshold yet of savings with the aggressive stance we took with uh with the historical on retirements um and then the finals um the kindergarten four day a week is that just uh for the first month um well i think we're i think it's uh we're gonna go eight weeks on that one i have to double check the exact weeks but sorry
031the the am pm that's the amp and we want it we want to have that so we get the kids used to it and that was with our november ninth goal that we put out earlier this week um because the state still requires that we should be focusing on trying to get to 100 um we all know the health data is still very positive in connecticut and states all around us are either becoming hot spots or not hot spots anymore and that's back and forth um so so one of the things that we talked about early on was the fact that we were going to do this platooning by alphabet so the parents would all their kids would be in or out do we know if we have a lot of kindergarteners who have older
032siblings who this is going to create inconvenience we already have talked yeah the the principal has been talking with the parents about that so that there is some convenience issues but we're working those out so we're on that and we actually our survey closed at four o'clock today for grades one through twelve we did a separate kindergarten survey um in pre-k survey great uh starting this past friday um it just closed grades one through twelve the turnout's been quite good um i believe um of every possible uh response we could get of uh 24 2500 that we would get back rates one through 12. we're probably missing three 300 400 so we're going to be doing some calling um you know all hands on deck starting to tomorrow with the schools and um you know
033look comparing unless seeing who who isn't there and then making those calls are you coming to school are you um coming for hybrid are you choosing remote uh learning or are you even choosing we put a question on there are you even choosing to withdraw and decide to homeschool right now generally speaking i think we're 83 84 coming back um again for the hybrid model um but but you know the goal remains being prepared for um 100 in person and obviously the data has to remain where it is it really for the most part isn't going to get better has to remain and we need to get used to the routines of school learning a whole new way of doing school and um enrolled that out we still need to get those desks we talked
034about in the the second half of the desk shields for the other students so that is something you know we need to go to the talk with the board of finance and have that conversation next week so we keep order that to be ready and give us enough lead time um and um we're also doing a look we had a wonderful plan that said we're gonna phase the purchases but and it'll be a little easier from the uh having to buy all the desks that lasted two weeks yeah basically before we actually had to buy the desks and i don't even know if it's if it's two weeks i think it was last monday so it's a week and a half bob i mean that's that's how quickly this goes and i've got to give
035um you know all of our principals credit for actually um they're all working under the rooms and so forth and mr belanda has about half of his rooms done and he's actually moving and looking at extra desks and seeing ultimately even for one hundred percent if he will need it the full on 252 that he actually put in his order so he's doing it you know like we said we just keep refining and refining because we don't want to buy extra we want to buy what we need and so i'm just on the phone with him this afternoon so i just this is the finance committee meeting and eileen's on i just want to put that out there that we continue to fine-tune that we would be able to bring this to the uh board
036finance i guess it'd be wednesday late afternoon if that's what the meeting is going to be and just share that you know and then we would need jerry to you know he's good as far as i understand from ken he's got his orders ready um pretty much ready to go so we you know got to pull the trigger and get moving on that because at some point we're going back 100 percent you know um but we we definitely got it you want some new learnings and you have some new savings yeah so that's that's the story and you know i wanted to just stop there and then let the conversation well so is that on a piece of paper somewhere say again is that on a piece of paper somewhere that we can socialize i
037mean i don't think you could we could go to a board of finance meeting and we shouldn't go to this meeting without uh here's the savings that we're seeing and here's the here's where we are on you know we had 500 was the 572 was the sure last list and where are we against that and uh that has to we have to get into a kind of a repeatable routine on this that we can all look at it and we ought to be showing that not just at this meeting but at the board of ed meetings from the board of finance meetings in a kind of a standard format so we all see it right and i think the second form is on the things we need to buy what are we at the point
038we need to buy now or or start launching because you know we had so much approved at a time we have to get into a very disciplined uh presentation on here's what the next uh trigger we have to pull is yeah um and uh we're because we're gonna we're not spending all the money at once which is a good thing but i don't i i i'm a little uncomfortable that we don't have a chart um because it just tells me it's a lot of talk around it and by the way i appreciate the insights that's very helpful but i think it's time to start getting into uh yeah routine and i'd like to see that before it goes to the board of finance yeah well i think rosa you'd like to see it too yeah
039for sure both of this committee and i think our overall committee our board should see it right so that they're all part of that sure is there anything that we've ordered that is back ordered or is going to take longer than we thought to receive i'll defer to ken he works with jerry on this supposedly we're we're good on the the desk shields uh for the students and for the uh offices and for the teachers that's the ones you weren't worried about i remember right those were the ones you were worried about it's yeah we should get them by around the first of september okay the partitions for the nurses office we had a supplier lined up and it turns out they did not have them anymore so we're going to another supplier and jerry
040was going to be trying to confirm that today i did not hear back anymore from him about that so those are the only things that we're really concerned about uh gloves you know sometimes you can get them sometimes you can't so there's a little concern possibly with that also but i think we'll be okay there and those are the reasons um maybe on this list that um bob suggested we have sort of that list of everything that we had ordered or will order and we just have maybe like a status update sure um that would be helpful that makes sense good idea and eric actually could jump in with technology on the orders and how that that's going because not only perfect so so we have good and bad news um good news is the
041board of finance approval of the laptops those 80s uh 91 laptops for the um whiskey in here staff they came today they literally got here at 2 30 today they're in the hands of my department and um they're already being configured the seven the 300 chromebooks that the board of finance approved plus the 450 that i purchased um with my you know operating budget for the year um currently have no delivery date um and um so i am not anticipating them um i i can't even um say anything other than i don't anticipate them for the first day of school um there has been a lot of communication around the state that many technology directors that placed orders for chromebooks back in may and early june have also all seen their deliveries uh be put
042on delay um and they will not be seeing their chromebooks until october november which is about the time that we will be seeing ours as well so we uh have to work on a contingency plan for that and the state is helping us i mean the state can only do so much but but we have uh the the commission of of educational technology is helping support us um in how we're gonna move forward with an adaptive solution um you know we are working on byod for the you know for the for the district um oh i've got a lot of parents who've been asking us um recommendations on what kind of device to buy for their kid um you know what it should look like what should the minimum specs be um you know and
043and so um unfortunately we're gonna have to start the school year with what we have um there's been a lot of factory shutdowns um this is the direct information i've received um there's been a lot of factory shutdowns in in china due to various violations um and has put um i'll use lenovo as an example um has put a eight to ten week delay on lenovo chromebooks um we bought dell um but they're all manufactured out of the same factories so we're unsure if we have do we have enough chromebooks for the kids that we know need it um we are based on i'm getting emails that i get emails from people that are like you know um you know are we going to be able to get chromebooks and um based on um what
044we handed out in the spring yes um you know because our high school students still have their one-to-one devices um uh and we handed out just under 300 chromebooks which um we're working on getting back to prepare for the new school year um but uh you know i just talked with newtown director today for example and and were having discussions i i said are you anticipating your chromebooks in on time and she said no i'm gonna have to work on prioritizing needs and and which students we we need to make sure have chromebooks and and and um and then i i had mentioned that we're working on byod district wide and there was seem to be a good amount of interest on that um but every every district in the state is seeing this problem
045right now um and then all of a sudden at 10 o'clock on on a you know on a tuesday morning um somebody goes oh i just talked to this company that has you know 15 000 chromebooks in stock um get your orders in and by the afternoon that stock is depleted so um it's it's it's that crazy is this might sound like a crazy idea but i feel like every anything at this point doesn't really seem that crazy anymore but um if there are parents that are you know willing to buy their own device have obviously they would be paying a higher price than we would buy um considering that they're only buying like one or two or something um have we thought about maybe any kind of like a buy back program um if
046they didn't want to essentially hold on to that device and the cost of it so we would have it for future use um you know once the student is done using it this year do you know what i mean in other words they in other words though we essentially sell the families the chromebook i'm confused i'm sorry yeah so uh just i mean obviously if a parent wants to to buy one and then you know keep it fine but let's say there's a parent who's like well you know my kid needs a chromebook i can't really afford it if they could potentially buy it with sort of a promise that we're buying it back from them at the end of the year so we essentially you know have the chromebook physically for future years after
047this year um i mean any of those options are available but if if we did something like that i mean i still need i still need the stock well they would be buying because they'd be buying into them the problem is they can't get them either i just swallowed them i should have specified that it's a stock issue across the board i mean um not just like a bulk product you know when you go to best buy or target or walmart and you buy a chromebook you're buying a consumer model right whereas when you know school districts and businesses are buying you know the business model so obviously we can't buy consumer models in bulk um but you know um based on what consumer models out there the pricing is not that far off from
048going to you know to best buy um and buying a you know 250 260 chromebook is is not that far off from what we end up paying um depending on the year and price adjustments and all that um you know that's um i mean that would that would get us more chromebooks in at the end of the year i i to talk about a buyback program i don't want to commit to that without no i know i just i'm trying to think but um you know that that's certainly um an option and we are we are doing um we are sending out our communication regarding byod i know we've talked about it in our public q a sessions um we we've we've had a lot of conversations with various families who've been asking um about
049chromebooks you're getting the emails where we're getting them as well um and i am doing a chromebook request so we're gonna announce the byod and and specifications and and you know um tell people about the program and and what our policies are and all that we're going to do that this week um this way for those that are interested and are able to do byod um can start looking this week and this weekend um uh you know lim although limited um i i saw a couple in stock today at target um i saw a couple in stock today at best buy so some of these companies are getting them um it's just a matter of being first in line to get one it's it's like when uh the power went out last week and i
050tried to go to every store around town to get a generator even though i knew it wasn't gonna happen um you know just you happen to get lucky and you're the one who gets it um and um you know unfortunately that's that's that's kind of the window that we're in but also fortunately um you know a chromebook's not the end-all be-all device here um a lot of what we do now is device independent so ipads can do a majority of of the work um and and so we can repurpose some of our older ipads i'm working with my techs on getting the account of what we have in district for that um not even close to ideal you could do the work off phones um again not even i would never recommend it but it's
051not impossible um you know we we've got older windows laptops we do have the laptops coming back from whiskenier staff um you know once our teaching staff is set um you know we also have devices coming back from support staff um so you know we we generally recycle uh unusable devices every year through the you know the district's recycling policy um but we're not recycling anything this summer um uh the techs have asked if we can recycle and i've told them to hold on to everything we can um and and um i um you know certainly not opposed to that idea rosa but of course i'd have to defer to ken for that um and any other ideas we've even asked we've even asked if um if the vendors would do partial orders you know
052even if you can't give us all 150 can you send us 300 and they won't do it um they just won't do it they can't commit yeah i while we were talking um i've been kind of scanning google news and article after article after article is chromebook delivery dates are anywhere from october to february right don't hold your breath if you're looking for chromebooks because everybody's looking for chrome so here's here's what dell did as an example um here's what dell did is is they there was people who ordered in may and june um who stole who's you know i have emails here that said we're getting our chromebooks the first week in august um first week in august came and went and they sent an email and said oh our delivery got pushed back
053um they delayed us um they're putting uh delivery dates right now um of december for a lot of people just because they don't want to commit they're just throwing a number way out into the future and you'll get them when you're in when your spot in line comes up yeah it's a it's a it's a crunch it's a that's an industry-wide crunch and part of the issue has been factory shutting down in china right and it's not just the chromebook manufacturing factories it's the downstream of the parts because i've heard that even in my company right is getting for a computer of equipment whether it's a monitor display or uh or the components on on motherboards it's uh it's been really bad right um and at the same time demand is high so it's it's
054very difficult but um okay so um so i guess ken the question i would have for you is how can we create a simple repeatable format that we could look at you know as we meet through these various meetings so you don't end up having to have a different format for every meeting but we also don't talk around it right by just having a lot of words but no show-and-tell is that is that something we could uh you know mess around with and see what we could build this week and um or early next before our next meeting but not not this group's next meeting our next meeting which would be the board of finance would be the first time we'd be showing that and i think we'd want to rosa and jen and i
055would love to take a shot at it give you suggestions and inputs and ask questions all right yeah we can work to put something together yeah thank you i think that would help because then it supplements your story john that you're talking about because i actually think um we're there's probably with some of the things the savings opportunities we've been talking about there's some healthy offsets right that that's we go with new discoveries so exactly exactly and and we need to i mean the shortage like eric articulated for technology is legitimate but that's you know we have to do our best and we're doing everything in our power to try to be able to open up the school year and be ready to operate and ready to go um we're giving it everything we got
056and and ken i would i would uh um i would then make the first sheet a savings opportunities on the budget uh school opening costs right it's kind of so you can see the balance of those um and then i would take the net of that and on the second a second chart say here's what we've already been approved for and here's what i'm ready to go for my you know you know my next step right so you always have a uh something that you can talk about the timing and you know uh rosier thought of doing a little report on how we're doing on the stuff we already bought you could put some little notations on that sheet on stuff we've already bought right that you know even if it's just a red yellow
057green right you know these are green they're all fine they're on track these are red because they're back ordered you know you could you could do with something very simple that would allow everybody to have the same information because i think that's the important thing right now is that we're socializing it and even if you're coming to us i would say send it over to the board of finance so they see what we're looking at all right um it's just i think we have to be very light on our feet you know the other thing i i had a question on bob and you because there was a lot of going back and forth on the motion last monday night and i don't know if eileen might have any insight or marshall might have any
058insight in terms of the way the approval was we obviously always need to be informing the board of finance with these kind of purchases but is there is there i don't know that they have to actually approve it's almost more like we're communicating with each other and working together and i just was curious about that um anybody recalls or has any insight on that i feel like it kind of went back and forth about you know you have money in your budget right now um and you know if you go over budget you come up with you know because you ultimately get the bottom line the bottom dollar line um amount that it's not you know we can't line item choose what the money is being spent on so if it comes to an appropriation
059at the end then that goes to the board of finance um but marsha i don't know if you understood differently um that is the way i understood it as well that um um i think that it was an exercise of working together more than legality so john um i would say it very simply um you need us to say yeah we're okay with you going and buying that stuff right the board of finance is about giving us additional appropriation to our budget and as glenn said you can be operating as you go and if we catch up on the uh catch up on additional appropriations after the fact that's okay we'll deal with it you know you have our support that's what i heard um and uh so if if on a monthly basis or
060even every other month we go in and say okay here's where we are and it's not as long as we're not surprising people right it should be okay that we're all working our way through it so i think for these decisions i don't think you need to wait for the board of finance to give you another approval in order to place okay all right we can work with jerry tomorrow as soon as tomorrow but i think every chance we have at the board of finance meeting we ought to go in and say here it is and would you agree with that marcia and eileen yeah and just to add to what i said working together more than legality assuming that you're going to have at least that amount of savings that um but right now
061that savings number we haven't committed to anything so that it could be an additional appropriation nobody knows yet yeah i i agree right there was an appropriation for the the first tranche approved at that board so anything past that we just got to treat it like an appropriation request which is different than the approval to spend specific money i think that's i mean and if we're getting way out of line on your additional buys versus your savings then we have to go talk to the board of finance and say okay it's bigger than we thought um and we need and we're gonna need more appropriation but i i don't think we know that yet i haven't seen it on a chart i'd like to see it on a chart can i ask about another expense
062that i thought of today um do we need to pay for additional like police officers to help with directing traffic because i imagine with the number of parents that are going to be dropping students off i've tried to get down wisconsin at west wisconia during middle school drop off on a normal school year um and that's it's taken me 15 minutes to get less than a mile and i don't know if that's something that you know we would need to request some help from the police department to direct traffic and if that's an additional expense that we would need to cover or if that's just part of the town expense because they're part of the town yeah i haven't heard it as an additional expense yet but i'll double check that with the chief it
063sounded like we're going to just have some help to get the year started and see how we do especially with hybrid we're having hacking uh the population so that the we didn't think that would be the case but i could double check that yeah what is one of the questions on the survey how many people are going to drive their kid if they're going to school what are you seeing in your preliminary numbers on that we were only looking i when i checked in today with our principal meeting we were only asking uh eric or maureen was just reporting out on uh on the attention we weren't even looking at the the transportation at this point trying to get the cohort letter out we've got it's just there's so many things in the air bob
064and finishing up the ventilation and desks and it's just it's uh a lot no no i know it is i just was curious no i don't i actually think the chief should be thinking about managing of traffic patterns um because i yeah i live around the corner from wisconsin i agree with what eileen said it's almost impossible to drive through there at drop off and pick up but if you told all the parents you're only going to be able to do a right turn in no one can come down west wisconia and plan to turn left in right um you know we're just going to make you go straight through you're going to have to go do a u-turn somewhere else and come back right they'll get used to that in a day or two
065and start coming up a different route right and it'll just it'll it'll solve itself but the the i can't even begin to be an expert and i think the guys who live with traffic management need to give some thought about the different schools and how they might control or guide parents on how to be effective um and uh and i hate to say it it's like a simple thing no left turns out of the wisconner parking lot eric can share that percentage by the way i just want to make sure eric has the percentage he said he can share it so that's great um uh before you show that is is facilities at six o'clock i just want to make sure because it's at 6 30. okay we have time thank you okay because we
066specialize we have to go over thank you so eric what's the percentage you said they're going to drive yeah um sure so so this is grades um one through 12 i have to pull up kindergarten um right now uh take the bus is 61 um and uh be driven to and from school is sitting at thirty four point four percent um that does not equal of course one hundred percent um because four percent have marked um that they're either withdrawing from bps or or homeschooling or that or um some some have marked in that box that they are doing the remote learning option um but 61 are claiming to take the bus and that 61 is of the total respondents or is it of the people who said they're sending their kids to school total
067so what i think john what you said was close to 85 percent are sending them to school and 60 percent say they're going to drive them that means 25 percent of the total population that is going to school would be being driven depending on i think at least yeah that's a lot of cars that's a lot of cars without being able to carpool so much right yes there's social distancing for you and uh just just for your idea um out of 158 responses at kindergarten um it's a 40 driving wow can they stagger start times not that you need to add any more complexity we're looking at that um right now we're not sure that we need to do that we had a conversation about that today too yeah 60 to 75 cars trying to
068drop off kids yeah yeah the survey is uh is critical and part of the team is starting to look at that tonight yeah okay all right that's cool all right um all right any question any further discussion on the opening costs okay i think that to do ken you know what you need to do on that right okay um special education costs which was item b on the old business what news do we have so i have two items to talk about one john touched on earlier with the high school life skills program we're moving to replace that the outside contractor who supplies one bcba and three aba paraprofessionals at a cost of about 277 000 per year with a 0.5 bcba which will be from ed advance and three of our own aba paraprofessionals
069which would be a cost of about sixty one thousand dollars plus benefits i don't know what level of benefits any of them are taking yet so i our average is around twenty thousand dollars so even if you add sixty thousand dollars onto that it's still a savings and aside from the savings we're doing it for for several other reasons with the ed advanced bcba that person can train our staff members the current bcba service would not train our staff members so there was no opportunity to build our own capacity um the staffing has been less consistent over the last year or two and having our own staff obviously gives us more consistency and more flexibility uh with uh meeting the needs of the kids and or moving folks around if we need to so i
070think uh gene is looking at it as a win-win financially and program programmatically that's great how much business well that depends on what level of benefits the the folks take i think they take 20 000 a year how much is it that's an average district-wide as you know you may know from negotiations the paraprofessionals pay a larger percentage for family and employee plus one coverage so i'm hoping to get real numbers when we find out exactly what they're taking but assuming they did the twenty thousand how much savings is that that would be about fifty thousand dollars okay yeah that covers some of the significant that is noticeable yeah okay and then the other item i wanted to talk about was the um the out placements so what we're doing is we're using that model
071that we came up with last year where we had you know student one through whatever was 36 um so with our starting point being this past year you know who's not coming back what new kids are added and uh gina put set this up in a google sheet so that i can have access to it also at any time and she's been updating it as she gets contracts or information from the schools where the students are going so there's there's some information in there right now but not not enough to tell you know whether we're going to be up or down for the year now but i think just having this process in place will be very very helpful we've already i already met twice with her and her secretary to go over this and
072to you know talk about the importance of getting all this information as early as possible and getting it in the that format as quickly as possible so that we can keep monitoring it and raise the red flag if we need to or you know give peace of mind if if the data warrants so we're pretty excited about that i think we're in a much better place than we have been in the past marcia has been wanting to drive a series of key and budgetary key indicators into the overall board of finance process i think that's a great thing and that's one of the key ones that one and the savings for retiree turnover right then another well those were our two biggest risks we have in the budget and this will be a good standard
073document that we can show every month and the third one we talked about was substitutes um and actually that's the one i'm working on uh tonight long term and short term substitutes and ken and i talked that that if if it's affecting us with long term and short term maybe what we should do is set up a new um object number so we could track them separately that um and just get more data on on how that works and since we don't have any costs yet for this year it would be easy to set up yeah i think that's a great idea actually i think that's a great idea and i see joan taking notes so i'm assuming that's going to happen okay um so ken as you're talking to mrs um [Music] you know
074i keep reading and hearing about concerns on how this whole remote learning has had you know the impact it has on kids is she seeing any directional trends on needs for additional supports and things like that for the especially for the the kids on programs i think for some she has i think i think it worked well for some and not so well for others i think they made great strides i think by the sounds of it in the esy program which was more synchronous which will be what our remote learning will be look more like in the fall i'm just i'm worried about that being an emerging area that we don't have our hands around yet yeah um it may not be out placement and maybe in school programs paris uh you know the
075different types of professionals that we that we have that uh kids need that sort of social work type of thing yeah and well and bob one of the things that we'll we'll be sharing uh during the reopening of comments i make about from the superintendent's report as a highlight and it's important to your question here is one of the things we have our hybrid plan but some of the most vulnerable students in some of the very specialized program either sel or our elc program so forth um there's there's an opportunity for some additional special programming on the opposite days of the week so mrs wagon has been working with those students to ensure we're in alignment with ieps you know and and uh you know idea and so forth uh for the hours so that's
076those were personal calls and letters that went home in addition to the survey that went out over the weekend so parents of children in those particular programs and with those significant needs most profound needs were addressed personally in terms of how we're handling that so she's really on top of it with the team i that's an excellent thought because the hybrid thing isn't homogeneous right when you come to special ed kids right you have paris who are with a specific child who aren't with that child some days a week you does give opportunities so um so i thank you for the question okay i'd be interested in hearing more about that as as it keeps developing i think um okay anything else on this ken no that's all i had okay uh rosa question no
077thank you okay all right any new business i don't have any do you want to talk about the grant update here yes thank you i i talked to marsha yesterday about the grants and so forth bob and marsha got right on it for us so please please um and none of it's good news so or any news to be honest um there's the new grant that came out last week that they're talking about the 160 million or what have you um and um the connecticut conference of municipalities is dealing with the state department of education on that every day um there is no timeline there are no application form oh marsha you just checked out oh no she's at the office so it should be hopefully that something didn't change over there i don't know
078this is brookfield and eversource i mean it never source right isn't that what they're doing i i will say ken's still with us i think yeah he's not across the hall so you're down but he's frozen as well yeah as i say i think i think ken froze too yeah go well i was gonna say i could kill some time waiting for marcia and that's kind of a question but i don't think that's gonna work let me text her it may be because steve steve dunn complained so bitterly about uh eversource that they took care of him and shut off the power at town hall i was astounded at the tone of his last red alert phone message yes last night right it was last night whoa that was almost bitter that's frustration there a
079lot of frustration in that oh god like i mean for eversource to keep its first selection in the dark it's just not right i mean i hate to say it oh there's ken okay just worry that he went out of town while there too yeah what happened i don't know you just relaxed and came back up oh you lost marshall was everybody else froze up before i disappeared no ken cannon at least um ken at least came right back in march is back in the waiting room here she is i'll just let her in there we go oh i did let her in that was interesting oops hey there she is uh i just lost my internet um and and there's a second grant out there that has the potential for education that's the community
080the the um um [Music] coveted relief fund through the office of policy and management i talked to the under secretary there today um that we're using half or less than half in this first tranche and i said so what's the second tranche going to be used for when are we going to and um they've extended the due date from august 31st to september 30th and they're not looking at anything considering anything doing anything until after september 30th when they see what the forced reports look like at least that's their public comment on it is are either of those tied i keep here watching the news and hearing statements like every state got a billion and a half dollars are either of these tied to federal funds that are a billion and a half dollars that
081came to the state of connecticut or is it hard to see it the first one is definitely federal funds um um but it was small it was like 160 million right you said yeah both of them are are relatively small compared to what the total costs are i keep trying to figure out what happened to this big amount of money the feds were given the states so so that corona violence relief fund that second one is money from the federal government um and and um um that is um part of it that um um that passed through and then the second one um this new one that he talked about last year is last week is the second one there was one that was called the education the uh e-s-s-e-r-f um that's the first one
082um that's 74 000 and then there was this governor's pot of money that's the second one as i understand it but it's not a lot of money either no could you when you're chatting with those guys could you ask the more generic question is we keep hearing the state's got these huge buckets of money and what happened to it i'm just curious where it went did it go to magnet schools did it go to special cities programs are they using it to cover non-education stuff because they keep saying it's education related um so all of it is there that everything that i know about um is there they just haven't done anything with it yet that it doesn't sound like it's adding up to the size numbers i would expect either so so they're sitting
083on it they're really helpful when we're trying to open schools right yeah it's a nice luxury yeah that's that's our state sad to say okay that's useful um one other uh old business item ken um is i had reached out to you on our 403 b plans and the need to ask for the rates we had a discussion at the last rbac meeting that we've confirmed that it is a fiduciary responsibility that we have to be able to know what the charges that are going to our employees are and there may be fiduciary responsibilities to communicate to our employees and so we seem to be operating on a fully delegated way to this outfit that we did contracting with but we still have some primary responsibility so i know you've been busy so trust me
084at the very least can we make the request from from most from the company saying we want to know all your all the rates that are being charged to our employees right whether it's direct or indirect um uh and if they because we need to know if they're going to hold us off and say no we can't give those to you or we can't give those to you um and john just so you know we offer this 403 b plan through i want to say it's omni is the name of the outfit yeah they're the administrator um and the our back committee's had some expat experiences with some of these people who run those types of programs that they charge astronomical rates to employees and we worked hard on the town side to negotiate very
085low rates for the employees who put their money into these things so the town is looking out for its employees that way but the question came up because the 403 b is kind of independent from the town side uh it's kind of a two level question one is are our employees being treated well or not right because we and we ought to stand up and look out for them that's part of our duty um and then the second is if they're not or we conclude they're not then should we be maybe offering them the way to participate in something that's a lower fee model which is a very good townside program that we run through mass mutual so um and uh and i think we think that it's going to be hard to match some
086of the rates the the in the rates that we get um but you know we have a whole population that's used to dealing with the 403 b so ken we can't just let it idle as i guess my point i wrote it all down in the notes so we have things that we got to work on it's really that first step at the very least asking to see them right we can do that i think the way it works so i think the way it works is that the the individual investment companies are the one that charged the fees to the to the uh employees not omni omni doesn't charge the fees but we'll find out we'll find out as much as we can trust me on these charging fees to those individual funds who
087are then incorporated so yeah and then there's these revenue sharing funds in the investment options that are hidden fees you know that it's uh they're being taken out of the each individual fund so you have to ask about direct and indirect and how is omni's costs being recovered and how are the individual funds being recovered and i think you gotta ask omni and when they push back and say you gotta talk to the individual funds tell them no you were acting as our uh fiduciary uh person running it we need you to go get those for us that's what they're gonna give you or they're gonna give you the runaround and i'm predicting that we're looking at fees being charged to the employees on average on these types of funds you can earn six to
088seven percent right on the long run and i'll bet you you're getting two or three percentage points of fees being taken out of the employees and we've got this mass mutual thing where the fee is 0.65 percent it's i mean so that gives them the long run a much better rate of return for employees um and uh by by looking out for them and that's our fiduciary duty is to make sure we're aware and taking action if we think that that's not if it's being charging too much um and uh and i'm very nervous about this um it's been kind of lazy fair for a long time i think we did this long before you even you know came into this job um you know your predecessor signed the contract and i don't think we
089just let it run so i'm nervous about it well we'll take that first i don't think our employee does any of do any of the folks who are here or who are school board employees or do you participate in any of those uh investment funds yeah all of you do um do you get disclosed from the fund you're working with what fees they're charging did they tell you i think i think they did when i signed up but i don't remember what it is now yeah i mean my provider's axe i don't know about the rest of the group yeah me too yeah i'd have to go look i honestly bob i'd have to go look i i remember when i signed up getting told the fee same as ken um but i haven't looked
090at it in a long time which is my own which is my own fault which is bob's point right which is not a point so so part of it's which you know how do we act right to look out for everybody right and uh if we found out axa was we found out voya who was doing the townside 401 plan they were charging i want to say marcia it was like two percentage points or something it was like triple what uh mass mutual was charging and uh they were giving a lot of hand-holding support but it was a very high rate and most employees didn't realize it they thought they were they just kept going along put money in and uh they're not most of us aren't sophisticated investors right that way right we put
091the money in we choose some funds and it grows right we're happy right and i'm that way a little bit too and i'm a financial guy um but uh a lot of our people who work for us don't at all sophisticated right they they just will say i'll choose one on axa right and um and i'll start putting my money in there and they were looking at the gross return and um and a little bit upset that the gross return went down and didn't realize the net return went up yeah so uh so it's just uh i know we've spent as a committee a lot of time on this sort of thing marsha's on the committee and and it's just the attention is turned to saying what are we doing on the school side and
092i want to make sure we've looked at it um and and uh just just i think it's an easy thing to launch the request and see what we get i think we're gonna get pushed back i think i'm convinced of that and will because that that and you know what the people in that industry are required to give us that information right that's that is not under law something that you can uh uh you cannot you cannot not provide but boy you can you can evade right um by saying oh you gotta talk to someone else and make it so hard for people to get the information that they give up so we just got to get that um any other miscellaneous discussion items all right it's 6 17. got 13 minutes i can give
093you before you have to your next meeting thank you thank you thanks everybody yeah wisconis parking lot looks great it looks like that i drove in there earlier today it looks fabulous so really nice but it does look really nice so thanks everybody have a great night we'll call the meeting and without objection we're adjourned all right see some of you at the next meeting you