Board of Education Meeting

001[Music] yes somebody probably met somebody who met somebody we got it okay good evening I will call the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag we have everyone except for Jen here tonight and our first agenda item is board recognition so I'll hand that over to you talk - thank you mrs. Fernandes so March is Board of Education Appreciation Month and on behalf of the entire Brookfield Public Schools we'd like to extend a congratulations and a thank you for all that the board does I say it every single year multiple times not just on this evening that in in small-town America and especially our system in Connecticut the elected positions of Board of Education elected volunteer positions are the hardest in

002terms of the difficulty in the commitment of time and and frankly the responsibility you all have so I we just thank you we really appreciate you and I just want to extend our best wishes for all you do and let's keep on doing it together thank you very much thank you and Rosa do you want to introduce part of this do want to introduce Michelle so tonight actually we have dr. Michelle and riku who is the chair of the new Town Board of Education and she has something that she would like to share with us so yeah good evening I'm glad to be able to contribute to this celebration good evening superintendent Brio chair Fernandes and board members of the Brookfield Board of Education first I'd like to take care of some business that cave

003has us do and that is to present you with a certificate of membership to the cave maybe to Rosa so the cave organization helps support Boards of Education around the state and so that's just a certificate to indicate that cabe supports you and welcomed you into the organization so I'm really here on behalf of cabe to recognize the efforts of the Brookfield public schools and to present you with two awards with these awards capes goal is to identify and honor the hard work of people in the school districts for their continuing efforts to communicate effectively in order to receive these Bonnie B Kearney Awards of Excellence for educational communications entries must meet all of the following criteria they must have a clarity of message image and consistency they must be readable have good editing graphics

004type format presentation design and a value of expenditure so I'm very happy to present the Brooke Brookfield Board of Education with these two awards for excellence for educational communication the first one is the category for special project in audio-visual it's the Board of Education Chairman's video for the new school the video is developed to provide the community with information outlining the rationale and vision for the new school project let's see if I can get these there we go and the second one is in the category of computer generated projects the new school project website the website provides information regarding the new school project by archiving information communications updates from the construction of a new kindergarten through grade five Elementary School in Brookfield [Music] take it out of the wrapper so I just wanted to say

005congratulations to you all on your good hard work at communicating and keeping the public informed and it's all really good work and cabe would like to extend their appreciation for all you do for our students around the state and especially in Brookfield so congratulations thanks for coming Michele thank you very much was the voice of that project oh so anyway so that first award I do want to publicly thank our former chair Colette Sturm she was the voice for that video that is recognized with that first award and of course we share all of these accolades with our administration who has been phenomenal with communicating the message and working tirelessly for this new school project so thank you and thank you thank you thank you Michelle we should also mention that unrelated to the communication

006working on our start times committee Michelle and some of her team came in from Newtown and actually shared their experiences with us so it's been a nice partnership between the communities so thank you for that as well yeah I really appreciate it thank you thanks yeah thank you yeah thank you and then I also have to share with you we've had these displayed because they weren't the formal actual winners but we had three honorable mentions for communications as part of the the Bonnie B Kearney Awards of Excellence in communication one was for social media another for our going green project that our own Lisa Grambling is the facilitator of and also for our continued work on the newsletters the brookfield broadcast so I'll pass those around as well so you can see those certificates and

007then we display these at the central office it's great it really is nice that's a nice problem to have [Applause] he's a really nice all set all set thank you so very much for coming and we appreciate it we can move on to public comment and there is no one signed up so unless I don't see anyone else here would like to speak probably so hi everyone good evening so I'm just gonna kind of detail some events that we've already had and are going to have in March so I'll start in Chronicle chronological order so actually today we celebrated national inclusion day and our word campaign day at BHS so basically the athletic advisory and Best Buddies they help spread the word in the cafeteria there is a large poster that everyone signed in support

008of inclusivity and actually I like to read the announcement that was shared today like in school so it goes brookfield high school BHS BHS athletic advisory and best buddies are proud to have joined the National inclusion and our word campaign today BHS needs your support for it spread the word inclusion campaign to help take a stand against discriminatory words and actions to create a more inclusive world we can create a more accepting world by working to integrate individuals with intellectual disabilities into realms of society from which they are excluded a lack of inclusion has become a hurtful norm to millions of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities their families and their friends please take the pledge today to spread the word of inclusion during the lunches also please think about doing the penguin pledge plunge

009at Candlewood Lake on March 15th to raise money for our unified sports and Special Olympics Connecticut remember today and every day to respect the unique abilities of everyone and spread the word of inclusion so bring you here so you guys are conviction yes this is our poster that's so many students sign today sure we got we always honor you stand here and yeah maybe it's written yesterday in front of mr. Beldon and mrs. Fernandes and there's a delay so you have to go to lecture longer there you go hey there you go mr. Poole and oh thank you thank you Martin so that's something very special that happened today that I wanted to share also on March 27th we have our junior prom so that's again at the Ethan Allen hotel and so student council

010is having their preparations for that which is great and then March 31st is our st. Baldrick's Foundation fundraiser in the BHS cafeteria from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. so this fundraiser is very close to my heart I've gone very close to at the past couple years especially as a peer counselor I'm like very heavily involved in it and we're really trying to make it big this year we're trying to reach out to every business possible or we just went out to the middle school yesterday to prevent sorry to present to their student council and their peer counseling so they can put up posters around the school we're getting the Brookfield Fire and Police Department again to have a competition so basically like the team that doesn't raise the most money will have their heads shaved which

011is what happened last June is really fun chick-fil-a comes as usual they send their cow in they sponsor us we're trying to have different school teams compete we're trying to have different sports teams sign up to shave their heads so I'm very excited for that event and like really looking forward to it so in terms of March that's what's going on it's great any questions it's exciting thank you Thanks possible up next we have written correspondence sherry Styron offski shared an opinion letter Ron Jaffe wrote regarding the attitudes and behavior survey Melissa Jaeger wrote regarding the budget Pete Peterson wrote regarding a program for schools on distracted driving and Jill and Jean ropey AK wrote regarding fourth grade curriculum okay thank you we can move to the approval of Board minutes I'll make a motion

012that the board approved the minutes listed below is recommended from the regular meeting February 19th twenty twenty second superintendent's update all right thank you mrs. Fernandez I have two items formerly on my update and then I realized there was something else I wanted to share the first one is we had our for the first time ever in Brookfield the Connecticut school finance project visited us last I think it was last Monday night and Erica Haines put on a very nice presentation I think was quite informative there was a number of folks from the community came out I think outside of some of the elected officials we probably had 15 to 20 guests there and everybody left I think feeling much more informed than they were before on how between the federal government down through the

013state government into the local government how education is funded so that was a great project and having those folks in the other piece I wanted to share is regarding coronavirus everybody's hearing about this on the news and I know that I shared with the board the letter I had sent to the families last week I just wanted to go over a couple of things that we continue to do here in terms of our vigilance some of you may have seen in the Brookfield patch there was an article that was either out last night or this morning I spoke with a reporter from the patch and shared some of those things and I thought he did an excellent job capturing what what we're doing in terms of remaining clean and being proactive so number one I

014had a letter that I sent out last week with appropriate links and guidance and so forth to reassure families that were on top of things but at the same time here are some precautions you can take and here some information for you in terms of the CDC Connecticut Public Health Department etc the department has met with mr. Dunn last week and we went through some of the preparedness activities that we need to be involved in and the town does have a pandemic flu plan and so that's certainly being modified for coronavirus and that kind of a thing the Board of Education in the in the school administration really isn't involved in that because if there is that situation where the schools have to be closed down we wouldn't be here the schools would be closed

015down and people would be quarantined however the buildings are always available and BHS is a shelter so if that was a need we would obviously be involved in that all depending on the situation we also work with dr. Sullivan our health director and our consulting physician dr. Ferrara in addition to that I have a call scheduled tomorrow with caps so the western Connecticut superintendent group my group that I'm the chairman of here on this end of the state we're talking with dr. Rabinowitz from caps who today met with the Commissioner of Education some folks from the Connecticut health department to see if there's any updates for us we're gonna try to get a weekly call calling a regularly scheduled call at least during the next couple of weeks to make sure we're on top of

016things and then finally literally at 4:47 this afternoon dr. Ferrara our consulting physician sent me an update on how the school principals are to handle students who are just coming back from being out of the country at affected countries such as China Japan Iran Korea in Italy and so there's a little bit more of a protocol there than we had before we didn't have direction and so encouraging the the children and their parents to go to the pediatrician to get formal clearance and a note before we could admit them back to school so those are the kinds of things we're working on in addition to that our custodial team is you know the the surface cleaning getting at the doorknobs making sure the you know priority of trash being emptied hit the doorknobs hit the

017surfaces those kinds of things door handles in the like and so those those are the things we're working on I don't know if anybody has any questions on that just being extra vigilant while business as usual I was quoted is that in the paper while it is business as usual where what's not usual is how quote you know much we're paying attention to this and being proactive Montse how are how are students viewing this are they being vigilant and careful about washing your hands and things like that I mean I would hope so it's definitely been a topic of discussion I think among students I think we're all wondering you know is school gonna be shut down and how far has it spread in general though I think people are like they are washing their

018hands I would hope more regularly so that's good hmm okay yeah that's good thank you and then I had oh wait no it's gonna say hopefully they're using hand sanitizers that the girls that's right yeah thanks to those Girl Scouts that's for sure yep which wasn't resented what's the truth number we have to we have to do a shout out what was the true memory it's a five I should anyway look at me thank those Girl Scouts that was a great project one of them is the next-door neighbor so I will make sure he's passed out I'll pass it on from the board and don't shake your hand do the elbow touch okay any other questions oh and then I had one more thing Rosa yeah was I just wanted to mention that the ruler

019as all of you know we're using that as our SEL tool hosted in New Haven this week their first ever annual conference the the first one and it's a national conference and dr. ruby was able to attend that so we're looking forward when she comes back and she let's share what she's learned there and some of the other opportunities that might be coming up because of our involvement with ruler and you know such a great relationship now with Yale and dr. Brackett so I wanted to make sure you all know about that that's great that's all I have okay up next we have some committee reports and facilities is first okay so we had a special meeting on the 19th of February mr. koala update us on many projects most exciting one the high school

020generator is on and working that's the high school generator is on and working the middle school generator has been ordered to be here in about twelve weeks we're continuing with the paving it's upcoming at the high school the driveway curbing at the athletic entrance and its upcoming at the middle school so this is phase two at the middle school so there was 240,000 set in the budget and it'll cost one night one hundred ninety two thousand seven hundred so we'll be able to just pay more until we can't go any further so we're looking to add a turning lane up to the street and it doesn't have to be pre engineered so we can use the specs that we have so that's exciting news for all parents that exit during the crowd at times at

021whisking here we will have a right-hand turn lane that goes up the hill so for buses or cars or whatever that's gonna make it a lot better for everybody so it's actually very exciting very exciting the high school HVAC controls so we're gonna have a bi reporting it's gonna be taking place over April break for phase one or looking to standardize our systems with a new school with skinnier because we're currently working with five operating systems for four buildings so a building management systems coming in and they're gonna do a really comprehensive reporting during April great couple we're updated on staffing there's still three open positions add a custodian at with skinnier add a head custodian at the high school and a night custodian to split between buildings and also a maintenance mechanic so we

022have we're in the process of interviewing interviewing for the day head custodian thigh school and we have some quality applicants for maintenance mechanic so that's looking up we discussed the locker room project and we invited Tecton architects to our next meeting we spoke with Eddie from Tecton to get more clarity on the cost estimates and discuss available options we're looking to do a presentation for the board at our April 1st meeting presentation to have more further discussions about how to proceed so look forward to that and mr. Koh will also inform the committee about a burst pipe in the high school nurse's office that happened that previous weekend so currently the heating coil has been replaced it's been cleaned dehumidified and furnitures been ordered and then gestures came in so that's the update so far

023for the nurse's office and that's about it any questions okay all right next we have policy okay our last meeting was on February 19th and we continued discussion of policy for one one eight point five two which was use of web tools we just felt like we really needed to spend a good amount of time discussing what kind of web tools that included but you know we were in a good place right now with that policy and it is part of your packet tonight for a first read so we'll go over that a little bit more later we also had terry cavanagh come to our meeting she's our director of HR and she really sort of gave us an overview about sexual harassment harassment in general and the idea of staff student fraternization which we

024needed to sort of tighten up our policies on so you'll see again later tonight that those three areas policies are in your packet for a first read we had policies in place that you know were sort of wordy and overly complicated so you'll see when we get to those later that we've really streamlined and simplified those we also talked about the tutoring policy for teachers tutoring outside of school hours that is also in your packet and that was pretty much it for policy we did talk Communications is included in our policy meetings and we talked about the need for a budget flier coming up in the next few months before before we vote on the budget and I'll be working on that with Mike Murphy and dr. Brown that's it great any questions for Debbie

025for the policy committee all right well we can move on to the consent agenda I make a motion that the board approve the items listed below and the consent consent agenda is recommended resignations and new hires second any discussion all in favor all right move on to new business policies and I make a motion that the board approve policy for one 18.5 to use of new web tools for first reading as recommended by the policy and communications subcommittee seconds ok so again this policy is the Cape policy we didn't currently have a policy for web tools so we redeveloped this policy to include things that they use in the ASL program and things like Google classroom and blackboard so I think other than that it's it's pretty straight forward all right any initial questions on

026this okay all in favor aye aye next policy I make a motion that the board approve policy for one one eight point one one two at sexual harassment her first reading is recommended by the policy communications subcommittee second okay so this is what I mentioned previously this is sexual harassment policy we had a policy in place that actually dated back to 1992 it was very wordy overly complicated and had many many examples of things that could be considered sexual harassment and what cave has recommended is to really streamline it and and make it just clear and concise and convey the message that sexual harassment is you know not tolerated in any case but that really the definition of sexual harassment is what the victim perceives it to be so there won't be any really negotiation

027or interpretation of anybody saying well that's not on my list as something that qualifies for sexual harassment so so the cave policy just really simplifies it makes it very direct very clear and in Deb if I may add to that just so everybody's aware there will be there there's a new state law that I think it's by October 1st all staff has to be trained so Terry's working you know with with myself and dr. Ruby and trying to look at time and how we can make that work many districts are figured trying to figure that out this was almost 400 employees so that's that everybody has to be trained so we have to get that done by October first so there's a lot of means if we could use technology there's some other things we

028could do but we're thinking of using at least one of our initial professional development days in late August to make sure that happens to stay in compliance here we do like I've any have wait to do a video yeah there's this video and there's some other ways you can do we that video yeah yeah it mentions in the new policy that the superintendent will develop a regulation that underlies this is not something that's underway it's it is talked about being underway I can't confirm if it's actually underway yet in Terry's office we weren't quite busy over there but yes it has to be done yep okay that's why good so it could be at least good day because they kind of support one yes okay okay any other questions on that one all right all

029in favor aye next I make a motion that the board approve policy for one one eight point one one three harassment for a first reading as recommended by the policy communication subcommittee second okay so again this we didn't have a version of this we didn't have this as a policy previously but it is recommended by cabe so this is capes version and again it really just simplifies the idea and basically conveys the thought that any harassment of any kind will not be tolerated you know in the we're here to provide a safe and positive working and learning climate and there are some examples of various forms of harassment what harassment might include we have we feel comfortable with cabe's version so we're recommending that we go ahead and use their version so this wasn't edited

030at all but from what cave right there was one word that we did take out under on the first page number one where it says so that the incident had to be sufficiently severe persistent or pervasive that it affects an individual disability we took out the word sufficiently because we didn't want again we didn't want there to be a gray area where someone could challenge it and say well it wasn't that severe or whatever so we took out that word but other than that we recommend adopting their policy as written any questions on this one okay all in favor all right that's policy okay I make a motion that the board approve policy for one one eight point two for staff student non-fraternization for a first reading as recommended by the policy communication subcommittee second

031okay so this one's joy this one is short which is a good thing because the previous version we had was much longer and it put put sort of had a lot of fluff in there what I'll call fluff talking about what the relationship between a teacher and a shouldn't students should feel like and you know we should be encouraging and of all that's true but I don't know that it belongs in a policy so again we're recommending that we go with the cave version that basically just says that staff members shall maintain professional relationships with students and there will be no interaction of a sexual nature with any student at any time period so we sort of stripped out everything around that language and got concise and to the point we tried to make it

032as short as the petty cash policy didn't we didn't quite get there that's still short though this is as long as the fiscal year falls I heard you snicker over there he was thinking about that I did have one question on it's excellent on all three of these if ever one of these policies was broached or breached it would be an immediate legal issue for the district has Terry reviewing these with counsel before we as a board approve them we can double-check that but I'm pretty sure she said she had I just don't know that cave actually runs them through Council well okay actually does they don't have through ours obviously but there's not there's attorneys at cave that bend these policies okay before they're sent out yes want to make sure they're consistent with

033law and they're insistent with issues that we would anticipate might ever come up with one share hopefully that never happened you have to trigger an investigation if they was ever breached this is this but immediately becomes a legal matter okay any other questions okay all in favor okay I'll make a motion that the board approve policy for 134 tutoring for a first read as recommended by the policy communication subcommittee Oh second okay so tutoring we had a policy I think that originated in 1999 it was revised in 2012 I think it gave some allowance for tutoring and we do allow what we're suggesting now is that teachers may work for an outside service provider and do tutoring and teachers may also tutor students who are not in their buildings and at their grade level so

034in other words an elementary school teacher can also tutor middle school math or something the what the policy says though now what we're recommending from cabe is that teachers not be allowed to tutor students that are in their building and at their grade level it doesn't say their grade level serious their own students right so a building where the teacher provide tutoring include don't you show the private students of any school make sure so so so the city knows where the teachers lots of classes so it doesn't say anything about their classes but it applies to the whole school yeah applies to the whole school sauce helps all arrow eighth grade teacher couldn't to order a fourth grade fifth grade yeah yeah right okay yeah they couldn't gotten their own school right and uh a

035science teacher couldn't in the high school couldn't tutor someone in math right correct we would be looking at you know the extra help and those kind of things rather than a charging parents for tutoring right no situation lead if it's not really a major issue early on in my tenure here there was it was a bit of an issue because we're the some faculty members were also using the building to tutor their own students and make a profit from that so that was problematic so it wasn't rampant or anything like that and we just appealed to the good faith of the people to understand the conflict of interest and it was it was easily rectified okay any other questions or comments on this okay all in favor aye okay old business the first point Oh

036actually before we move on to that um what day would you like us to have comments back for these policies sixteenth right or does it is an absolute it's this organism of the AG that said things that you did yeah we put up one on the twin is that I suppose every problem because April's issues the way that April's a short motivation is it March 18th yes it is the okay so it's not for April yes going on it just by the twenty so by next week then next Friday maybe did you want it is that okay that's a week and a half yes I'm Millie's are pretty short okay yeah so by Friday March through stressful yeah okay thank you thank you okay so now we can move on to old business and the

037first item is the Board of Education budget for the year 2020 2021 just to kind of update you guys as a sort of a quick summary when we initially adopt the budget we had proposed a six point six five percent increase over this current year's adopt approved budget the first step after we had presented to the Board of Selectmen and board of Finance was the First Selectman gets to review and make deliberations on that and he had reduced our budget at that point to 4.8% since then he has presented to the board the entire Board of Selectmen and it has gone up slightly to 5% so we're still looking at a pretty sizable but the cuts the same is just the 5% is just a different way of how they present to the percent yeah

038well okay we looked at today Rosalia it wasn't in a you know a less of a reduction to the budget it's incorporating it took out the kindergarten teacher that was appropriated at the beginning of the year okay this is showing the percentage often different privacy issues in our original looking at the same exact number same number yes so um do you have any dr. grill any updates in terms of where I know you know at our last meeting we sort of said there wasn't much that we could yeah so it's sure so in terms in terms of an update the first part of the update is really nothing's changed in the last two weeks because we were waiting at the port of Selectmen and they voted last night so now we're waiting it's going over

039to the board of Finance so we'll see where the board of finance lands in terms of leaving it where it is or putting some more money back or taking some a further reduction so we just don't know that I tell you what we've done is the the the principal's well first of all the Board of Finance and Board of Selectmen questions there's well over 100 questions that were asked about the budget line line by line and so can the principals myself Department its we've been working on that for the last two weeks essentially we're nearing finalizing that and then the plan would be to bring that before the Finance Committee on Monday night make sure you guys are comfortable with that the committee is comfortable and then Roza I guess what you would send that

040off so that's that's the thought process there so we're working on that in addition to that the principles and I met with Ken Eric was there too yesterday and dr. Rubin everybody else and we went through and we continued to scrub the budget they are looking in every one of their areas I know a big area where the town the town officials were asking questions was the actual budget from last year compared to what we're asking for in the adopted budget and they're looking at that increase and a lot of questions about that many times what that question comes down to is every year we're on a budget freeze so we don't spend what we intended to spend and it had budgeted for so that's part of the explanation with a lot of these things

041but we're really digging in so we could provide a lot of justification and they could understand where these costs are coming from so we're doing that work and then preparing for whatever happens next week with the Board of Finance and then I would imagine if that timing works out we'd have a very lengthy discussion I bring forward recommendations from the team to the board on them at the March 18th meeting it's kind of my understanding of where we're at in terms of process we did have some very good news and hopefully it stands working with the town and paying attention to our sure insurance premium we had budgeted nine point five percent increase and it looks like it'll come in at six point five percent that's the difference of about a hundred and seventy thousand

042dollars 167 $167,000 can you had an exercise we're going to do you're gonna really go through with that yeah I tzer's did the initial budget back in October with our census of employees at that time and I'm sure some of that has changed so I'm gonna update it since I'm going to be updating the number anyway I'm gonna update the most up-to-date information I have so it may be a little more or less of a savings Etna than the hundred sixty seven thousand that I've calculated at the moment but considering a reduction of 817 thousand dollars to the adopted budget that's a nice chunk right off the bat that doesn't affect programming at all it helps in our administrative costs so that's really positive news so what we've the the the team and I have

043been discussing is kind of how do we want to approach these reductions so we start with looking at the strategic plan our strategic priorities what are the most important to continue with so again we're going to continue the banter going back and forth and really pushing each other we look at the budget goals for this year which worth the maintain class size meet the needs of all students in terms of state and federal law continue to provide the best curriculum we can and make sure it's aligned to standards and up-to-date and then of course the technology to support our infrastructure in our learning environment and then finally maintain and continue to enhance programs and again when you get them the budget cuts sometimes you have to look at either slowing down or really bringing back

044your momentum on whatever the projects are that you're working on we want to stay away from people we want to stay away from those things that are as directly directly related to kids for as far as we can as we continue to chip away at getting to that $800,000 number and so then the other pieces we have to look at you know programmatic data in terms of are we getting the value we expect out of a program and and those would be other other pieces as part of the decision and whatever the recommendation would be coming forward so that's kind of our process if anybody has any further questions about kind of the thinking from the team from me any recommendations like you know suggestions of how we might approach things we're happy to us

045so will that process culminate in a discussion on our 18th that would be the plan and it in it I would look for direction from the board because I'm assuming and again I don't know the the can't get into the exact planning of the Board of Finance but I'm assuming at their meeting some of their meetings next week they may make an a formal decision on the board of its budget in terms of the timing so that's that's really the question I have at this point they don't have to me I don't think they have to have to make a formal decision until until after their public hearing in April okay um so they might choose to make stepwise decisions but considering that we don't have a plan of attack on it they make ask

046us to come back right there that if I was on that board that's what I was - sure so again 817 thousand dollars is quite a bit of money to to find and so we're gonna continue to work on it we've been prepared to have a conversation on the 18th hopefully we'd know more if the Board of Finance anticipates or it makes a formal vote on reducing it further so we would you know when there's another couple hundred thousand dollars if that was to happen we need to approach it that way so it's a conundrum and and it's not gonna be a pleasant conversation it's going to hurt so we're prepared to have the conversation so we're continuing to work on it and the principles are are literally as we speak we were answering their

047questions and going through each of their budgets at the principal's meeting yesterday of the kind of the key areas that we need to really look at sharpen the pencil scrub look at the actuals double-check triple-check and so they're doing that have to give them a lot of credit they've been working very hard on their budgets so we'll law will be prepared to have recommendations for the 18s for sure so as much as you can any those placeholder values or numbers that were sort of estimates at the time the budget was constructed or gonna be sort of tightened up yes so he's spending possible yes so so I mean I think of two that came up at the joint meeting that were discussions sewer for example Ken and hoi and Joan did all that running around

048on that it's actually gonna cost us two thousand dollars more than what Kant had in the budget when we actually really really got the information from them is that interesting and yeah I meant let me put that in writing to us I hope yeah well you have emails everything yes oh yes yeah make sure we have a copy of that sure mixed ones you sure so it's even more expensive you know considering the usage and then the number of students and that kind of a thanks number staff we're really digging in on postage you know there's some reasons for increases such as sending IEP s for students with special needs home and those kinds of things it's not as simple as pupils just send it electronically yeah parents actually have to sign permission for that

049there's there's there's a specific legislation there you have to be very careful about with those kind of records they have to be protected there's other things that have to happen so there are um there are expenses so but we're gonna really go through so long as you package up the responses to the questions because that's a big piece of work yes a lot of questions and I would have to say half of the questions as I read through them were just because they didn't understand our budget changes over time and how we pre bucketed things or it was tied to freezes right thanks very much so two claims my advice would be to have a little one-page or on the front that says updates on estimates they're right where you have updates on estimates you

050know the insurance point is number two top front sure I think the sewer costs you know what did you get maybe with a backup Charter to order like a copy of the email because we got criticized at the last meeting they're not communicating as we found those updates yes and it is part of our solution right that we have to deal with here but I think we need to be open and communicative Dickinson and I said I think that's just the same that's probably not a very long page is probably you know three or four five items the second thing I'll to say that that can is at our retirement benefits committee the town controller mentioned that she had recently gotten an update from our actuary on retirement yes and I just want to make

051sure we have the latest number on that yes I have it okay good it will actually increase I was gonna say that sounded like it was going out it right so we're considering that when we sure sir but that ought to be part of that update on it yeah sewer yeah yeah sure it's just that just add to the salary thing the increasing and numbers it's I get that's that's kind of hard to budget for when we started when 18 I believe in November for the salary reductions as far as mistime retirements their children all right so we had but it seems like that number always ends up being a lot higher towards the end the year there's two different things we're talking about we have teacher turnover is one ingrained that's where we hire

052new people to replace the old people that have retired and then we also have savings on leaves on vacancies which is the number that continues to yeah so change during that number maybe to the board finances you know defense'll that they bad member isn't on the budget as far as you know subs and we hired a new substitute contract we have the contract we new substitute third party yes yes and that number is 375 375 is it based off of how many hours really based off of history it can fluctuate so much history our history well it depends over here here there's some useful inside it's a lower yeah there were it depends on how many long-term subs we met and typically when we have long term substitutes we have salary savings yeah to offset

053it just so I mean we could you could pick a right or substitute number and then there's no longer there's no line items underneath it like with the teacher salary and turnovers there's no line items on that so that's that it doesn't make it hard to follow it makes a pretty hard to predict which I go into your job also I saw what is a special EDC ba that's a board certified behavior analyst so those services from certified behavior analyst those folks work with our students with social emotional issues and our students and our ELC program and they work it's all about behavior and socialization and so forth and so they are part of helping us with our internal programs that we have in relating back to our programs for our placement it's so we

054were able to help service our students here in district look good and so it actually is an investment cost savings I just I wasn't part of the other slides it just was on this one page it wasn't hard at the other like initial presentations on the new hires it's not new it's no no we've had not a bad no okay so the way this looks like it looks like is no it's just the the person is code it's accounted for it within the teacher's account but it's not a certified teaching position okay so it doesn't fold on that grid so now they're separately they're not part of the teachers union they're they're like but I have teachers on here - yeah second grade teacher it's all part of this line here so I don't I

055just don't say ye so this this 101,000 this was two already taken out in budgets prior this is a salary this is so now I see it's a salary because it's personal it's person who was in the budget last year also so okay so it's not it's not it's not new it's not way as he is known to see the plus here also and I thought I was looking at some of the salaries and it appears that we have three people in the high school that do curriculum writing it depart department heads at their departments but they're called curriculum specialists do sometimes world language span may also not teachers they're administrators there in the registration group yes so I hear in other districts that those those positions also teach so can we maybe use one

056of them as the math interventionist instead of hiring another physician they have evaluative responsibilities and curriculum respite responsibilities and coaching responsibilities so that's the depth okay so yes they're they're administrating during the day right um there have been times in our not too far go on past where those curriculum specialist positions or when they were more categorized as department chairs of single subjects so for example just to give you some history here right now we have a stem curriculum specialist that person is in charge of at least 20 maybe 21 teachers in their stem department which is science technology and math I might even be close to closer to 25 science technology and mathematics that was part of a consolidation effort a couple of years ago when we've reduced an administrator to bring the math

057and science together as one and also to bring the social studies in English together as one and so we were actually net reduced an administrator in that particular year for savings and so but when they were just department heads of one department where they may have had nine or ten teachers as a responsibility there was years where they taught either one class or sometimes two so it's not unheard of we'd have to look at that but with the greater responsibility now I don't know that it'd be realistic to have that as just part of the job description that they they teach a class but we've actually had mr. bland in our class some math interventions I know yes yes but they couldn't such a full-time class there's no it's already a full-time job so they

058wouldn't be able to be as far as being a math intervention yes they just couldn't but maybe teaching a class we've had those discussion one class or something we had an overflow or something one year for a short time but in terms of picking let's see if it but yeah no no no we've we've talked about it a little bit that's definitely yes I do and in the past when it was smaller Mike we definitely had a teaching her piece not gonna work they were separate they all had one set two classes yes to at least at least one and sometimes two yeah yep and we actually made that decision to not have them as in classroom teachers when we we squished him and saved a lot of money by share having fewer right in

059in these coordinator roles you were three instead of five yeah yeah we reduced it was it was a good saving sir thank you the budget that was that was one of our budget cuts like this year so that we had to go figure out how to do it are you saying that one of their jobs is curriculum writing we have teachers do curriculum writing too right let me pay extra yeah for that for weekends and that sort of thing so I mean they're doing curriculum writing we're payments you should do curriculum writing it's an enormous task and right oh yeah isolation so it it's collaborative we want everyone that is willing to have ownership of the curriculum and we can't forget that writing of curriculum doubles as professional development and so we really get a

060two-part bang for your buck with that because the process of writing the curriculum and the thinking and the reflecting and the the researching expands the capacity of the individual or the team engaged in that so and then yeah just just to reiterate the the you know the scrubbing part the WPC a the the guess that's this the sewer there's a little bit of this is overhearing what the Board of Finance and bourse Luckman said yesterday the group life insurance I guess there's like $12,000 their savings or so and I don't have the hard numbers economy but it was there was something there maybe at least seven now think about it but everything's being yeah so yeah just wanted the savings in that account the at they spend rate we're going at this year no I

061think was I mean it was I think was budget 72 and it's didn't move at 64 so that's there's something spend rate that we're going this year I just did the calculation yesterday the spend rate we're going because that was one of the questions from the First Selectman at the spend rate we're going this year will end up about four or five hundred dollars under the seventy two thousand one hundred the second attempt from the sixty four and it seems like a big jump from the pre from when I saw the years prior so they're just the big jumps is there a reason for that I don't know I did not I just did the calculation yeah yeah and I don't have all of the I mean the little things the the seven thousand dollars

062here twelve thousand dollars here I guess cafeteria tables was a thing that was taken out of a general fund and it should've been taken out of the cafeteria fund so maybe can we maybe I wouldn't say that that's some kind of that's alright we bought them we budgeted them and bought them out of the cafeteria fund last year and we can't use the capture ones money to buy it to the repay us so was that a cafeteria Lee yes no no it was borne out of the general fund but I was last year and we can't use cafeteria money to reimburse us for a purchase we made it's kinda my question they are buying more cafeteria tables with the lunch money lunch fund this year okay we we are very well with our lunch program

063and so we're you're only allowed to use any excess funds in the cafeteria fund which is only raised by purchasing lunches it's not taxpayer money yeah I mean any the money there could be used to buy tables could be you know whatever whatever things we need stove fridge whatever so that's what that could be you're starting in a new range hood over the panini machine in the high school cafeteria from that lunch phone line so they're they're very specific guidelines of what you can and cannot use that money for you cannot use that money to reimburse for Fernet at the end of four prior year's purchases we kids looked into that cannot do that no also what I wanted to mention you know hiring teachers at you know specific steps obvious that dictates how much

064money they make we hired a pre-k teacher that you know I'm not gonna throw a specific number out but it's significantly higher than the kindergarten teacher that we were looking and I was kind of wondering it can that be a factor with you know future hires that we kind of look at the five-step range that the 7.5 so part of that Mike is it's a great question because when you look at it there you don't know what goes into that decision um a big part of what goes into hiring a number one let's just make it clear for those folks who might be watching at home I think can it's a step 7 with a master's is the kind of average we use for hiring a person in district in case we really find someone

065that's the right match that has a lot of experience in shortage areas we typically end up hiring people with a lot more experience because it's a shortage area so they want to come to Brookfield it's it's desirable place to work someone with a lot of experience in a shortage area where we do not have a lot of candidates and all the candidates that apply they're not all of the Brookfield quality that we desire and so we tend to in a physics or maybe a specialized math area or in speech and language higher more experienced people in pre-k in that particular example you're talking about there was a dearth of candidates it's a certification issue there's not a lot of people with the pre-k certification and if you're in the way pre-k certification works if you

066don't have the special education certification as part of that you cannot be a pre-k teacher you'd be out of compliance so you have you you have a you start with a very limited pool because of the nature of the state certification so that's a big part of what went into that decision and then we thought that was a very super high quality person and so we brought that person on is me we also know the numbers no but no no no into your point there was a new kindergarten teacher we brought on much lower on simulation of you know first real job less than we budgeted for exactly exactly and so Mary knows it all there's usually a like you were talking about earlier there usually ends up being a salary savings every single year

067anyway um so I think we're managing the grid quite well yes a couple of years was over five hundred thousand dollars in his house yeah well with subs and all that yeah yeah and yeah I guess you know when I went to look at the sub number of the 375 it's just kind of like I know it's kind of a placeholder but it is it you know it could be based on you know how many subs we typically use a year I think that's why how you doing history right well it's okay again it's it's really difficult it's been kind of out over the last couple of years because we've had so many long term leaves and we have when I first started here the recent history was it was much longer we have I

068think about forty leaves all different kinds of leaves last year that's ten percent of the staff that's not just teachers that's that's across the different six different bargaining units we have so you know the family leaves or whatever they might be and so that it's volatile and it's it could be very expensive you have someone who's on a leave entitled to their salary in terms of eight or twelve weeks of sick time and then on top of that you have to hire a sub as well there's also a role with with subs so sometimes you get a great amount of savings like you're talking about Mike other times it's very expensive because the substitute after forty days you have to hire the the person if they're in the teacher rank at a step one salary

069they can't just be at the sub rate so there's a lot of mandates and rules that when you just look at the grid you don't want you don't know and so these are great questions what the warning team that you put in November I mean it's already what over two hundred that's four yes Oh saving them yeah yeah and then vacancies do know how them in vacancies so for example looking at over yeah you mean we can maybe easy extrapolate that we 180 November and well that's what that's what I was doing I try to get it so we can cover you know why we're on the freeze to so we could cover the overage and special education is the big part of it the other part is you know I'm thinking to Mister Blanda

070back there for over you know almost the I don't know a year mark where's mark how long has it been without a head yeah so it's been over a year that we have not been able to fill the head custodian position here at the high school with a permanent person we had a person join us who wasn't right for that person I mean another person join us in the last few months wasn't right for that person and so there's a significant savings there because you don't you're not filling a full-time position that's in the budget so there's other areas where you get savings on the other hand it's very difficult to manage the building without that that position right so we can't assume we'll continue with that savings no you have to and I refine

071that calculation every month before I do ie a financial report that's why it changes yeah Julia's up doing 170mm position right but then also we have to factor in the subs yeah yeah so okay I just wonder program hold that number cuz it's a big number is a great question Omer it's a discussion on this salary point when we're meeting with them next Wednesday I think that's gonna be a very critical that we go slowly and deliberately on what's been happening with salaries in this current year because it was very clear to me with listening to the last meeting and I think you were watching the video we got from yesterday it seems to be more viewed as more happenstance then in fact this is exactly what's happening right and so I think we need

072to be more factual and more deliberate in terms of saying here's what happens in the summer and then here's what's happened through the year here's what's driving substitute costs and here's what's driving salary savings and the morning that's why I asked you for some of that data that you have recommended to you yeah thank you for that and I'm gonna look through that and maybe on Monday's meeting we can sit down and say how do you tell that story because it's very clear to me our brethren in the Board of Finance and the pool and the Board of Selectmen seem to say they just keep under running it so it must be something you're miss budgeting right instead of it's real things that are happening right so and why is it that it continues to

073get under more and more under it's because positions are open and here's what's happening would it be beneficial to make that part of that update that we have this help that ought to be absolutely part of that update right I'm on Wednesday so but I think that's a story that we're talking about to generally and both the substitutes and the salaries that needs more specificity right just because I think it will help our brethren and help us tell the story of what's happening in the world John I'm also trying to think of things maybe we haven't thought of and one thing I that just crossed my mind was we currently have 182 student days but we're required to have 180 is that correct so I would be curious to know your thoughts on first of

074all what would the the impact to the kids be the students be if we reduced to 180 and then Ken what would the financial implication be what would there be enough of a savings doing that to make it worth it that's a very difficult question to answer because I don't know if that would save us any money especially with the teachers because their contract says that we pay them 487 days I'm thinking of busses definitely transportation saving power of Paris I don't think it's an easy question to answer but that's why I wanted to ask now in preparation for our next measure because I think if I can so quick it's a good thing to put on oh well yeah I think we should again I'm trying to think of anything that we haven't thought

075of that you know everything's gonna be painful but maybe if we can find things that are less painful ya know that's that it's the lesser of the evils absolutely and the parrot contract might also have the number of days but I'm not positive enough they have to look at the language nurses you know whatever ever we could get I know it's only like five thousand dollars but they were mentioned audit five thousand savings received $5,000 audit yeah I don't get what does that mean Marsh is doing some work right you couldn't show that yeah we normally reimburse the town twenty five thousand dollars for our half of the town audit and we were expecting that to go up to thirty thousand dollars but since and I spoke to Marsha about this a couple weeks ago

076since she puts the financial statement here in financial statement together it's saving the town money so we can back back go back down to twenty five thousand so that'll be one of your up there yeah fan so I think when you know it's little ml again it's like 5000 8000 some thousand whatever I mean is there like a ballpark on maybe what was called insid iary incendiary findings we can get that well that that's what we're cuz I mean it sounds like as for reporting together that's what we're working on it could it could be a that could be a a good decent chunk cuz when you talk about the insurance we talked about the insurance tonight there might be 160 thousand dollars and seventy thousand other 407,000 the essence you know and there's gonna

077be a lot of things we don't do I'm gonna be very honest with you that's what the price bulls are looking at you know we're gonna slow down on a lot of things there's no doubt about it talked with dr. Ruby on not doing some professional development you know to try to find some significant savings to get to eight hundred seventeen thousand dollars and possibly much more you have to take drastic measures we could do all this you're talking about Mike and we could find some significant savings we can scrub our budgets and not have memberships for a year or dues and fees to other things and knock down on some of the travel and some of the some of the PD events but at the end of the day that that doesn't get you

078hundreds of thousands of dollars doesn't all soon that was in the one hundred and what someone questions that work well that's what we've been working there's well over a hundred questions so which and we want to give a thorough responsible answer that people can understand so working on will you send those question responses out before our meeting on Monday my intention is to get it out to you with on Friday thank you thank you jeff has useful gonna be able to look at it a little bit sure yeah no no no no Monday's our Finance Committee being and Wednesdays the Board of Finance Mina which every which we're all welcome to attend I don't think we're in session but but but we're all welcome to attend does anybody have any other questions or comments on

079that okay so we can move on to our last item well yeah which is the new school building project not too much of an update on that actually yesterday I met with the media center specialist and Tecton to kind of go over there they're deep look at how the latest version of the current floor plan is looking for them how they're going to use the space programmatically and some things kind of shift it around inside the building so I think you know it was a really positive meeting and I think you know we're sort of really trying to figure out what's best for students and how are we gonna have this multi-level Media Center and how our students really gonna use in how are the media specialists actually gonna you know maintain and manage their

080collections which was you know a big part of their concern so so I think it was it was really good communication with that group and you know those those types of meetings will continue to kind of really finalize everything yeah and Rose I thank you for being able to attend that I wasn't able to attend the meeting and it was nice having you there and actually the media specialist commented to Eddie after you left that they really appreciated a board members presence there in addition to that Eddie was down to me with mr. Baldwin our athletic director phys ed Health Coordinator and work with Matt cutting one of our visit teachers he's an elementary phys ed teacher and so they went over the spaces again and looked at the office space and the gross motor

081space and the health room and areas and swing spaces and they really had a good discussion and as well as met with our technology director mr. Conklin so you know the user groups continue to meet with the architects as we need to and it's been really positive we just continued to refine things that's what design development is supposed to be and so we continue to do that and one thing I'll just say sort of like as an aside is maybe something to keep on our radar for when this school finally does open but you know one of the things that they were talking about was in terms of managing I really two separate collections one on the top floor and one on the bottom floor was the real necessity of having two full-time library clerks

082to help them manage those collections while they're doing you know classes so you know those are positions that have been cut in the past so we just need to keep that on our radar as we have to today we have one school we have one at huckleberry one open and we have one at the high school and one at the middle school but none on center there's an honest Center so I mean so there's so basically saying that we need to hire an additional person that's what there's that's what they said to Rose that's what they owe ya they're intervening Meister always clear on whether we were maintaining or attic this is an app yeah okay so yeah any other questions about that okay so this was a quick meeting but we can move on

083to our three main points the actual presentation what's that the what the Monday school finance meeting oh okay yeah yeah should we have something in there on the budget rule Mike sort of Hetal a lot of really good questions that might be good to sort of actually put out around a quick song that the administrative team is gonna come back and on March 18th and really just do you think recommend it's laying on the budget yeah something like that that would work mm-hmm talking about all our awards table words Oh a generator well I I said I'd actually I would take this opportunity to synopsize what you just said about the building right continuing the design work and talking about the layout of the floors and then I talked about the awards yes that's what

084I did be three good things in the whole agenda was policies yeah oh my gosh what do you have there Deb finance meeting I have a bunch of discussion I have cable wards and we talked about the new school project with the finance project that we send enough information out on that on Facebook do we need to say it again I don't know if that's a little bit old news I don't know just trying to narrow it down a three yeah I think we should talk about our awards I don't think we bragging off the bars we do good things well it's about communication I think people ought to know that you know the award the primary awards were about the school project and people of complimented without this the school's about that communication so

085the fact that the state recognizes it is a really good thing okay all right thank you upcoming events okay upcoming events for March 5th through March 28th I did cuz we have a couple half days coming up Center elementary school has a PTO meeting at 9:30 on Tuesday March 10th on Friday March 13th is pi day a principal diamond we'll be sending more information on that to the families and Thursday March 19th and Friday March 20th the spring parent-teacher conferences dismissal at 12:20 at huckleberry Friday March 6 is a PTO meeting at 9:30 Friday March 13th is the PTO movie night abominable that starts at 6:30 Wednesday March 18th report cards are available on the portal and Thursday March 19th and Friday March 20th spring parent-teacher conferences dismissal at 12:20 at whiskey near we have

086on Friday March 6 Brookfield high school counselors will be visiting to speak to 8th graders on Tuesday March 10th spring parent-teacher conferences from 12:30 to 2:45 dismissal is at 11:40 Wednesday March 11th is the seventh grade cultural assembly birds-of-prey sponsored by the PTO Friday March 13th bingo night at six o'clock also sponsored by PTO Tuesday March 17th is a 5th grade cultural assembly that's the Dragon King Tanglewood marionettes sponsored by PTO and on Wednesday March 18th is an eighth grade cultural assembly that's also birds-of-prey and also sponsored by PTO and at Brookfield High School on Thursday March 12th we have spring parent-teacher conferences dismissal at 11:00 also on Thursday March 12th is the BHS career and tech ed Department date night for parents I don't have a time on that I think it was six

087times between 6:15 yeah 6:15 Thursday March 19th Friday March 20th Saturday March 21st and Sunday March 22nd is the VHS musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying the evening shows on Thursday Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and a matinee on Sunday at 2:00 okay anything else tonight all right well without objection meeting adjourned [Music]