Board of Education Meeting

001yeah sorry I just okay we're gonna call the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order please stand for the pledge pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we do have all of our board members here tonight I think Jen just stepped away for a second first up is public comment has anyone signed up no one has signed up is anyone from the public here that would like to make a comment okay seeing none we'll move on to our student representative report hello everyone so as of the past two weeks the biggest event that's happened was actually today just a couple hours ago we had our center school winter

002workshop so that was from like 3:00 to 5:00 and it was just a lot of fun it was very chaotic with 62 kids and 20 volunteers but it was a lot of fun we raised a lot of money for the Flint River watershed coalition the kids made crafts there was a gift shop which they could buy gifts with their parents their siblings and family members and they could wrap them at like a different station so that was like very interesting they had a story time at the end they got to hold bells and shake them to certain words and in the book and overall it was just a really great time it was really rewarding for all of us we've been planning it for several weeks almost probably two months now and so to finally

003see it play out was really nice and it's great that we just raised a lot of money for it for the seniors early decision results came out this past weekend so it was just very like stressful rewarding emotional time for everyone so that's just something that's been going on with the seniors there's like rolling decisions that are coming in for early action students and of course our final are due January 1st through January 15 so we're just trying to get those in before a break or after break we also had a Leo Club fundraiser so that was at the New Milford bowling lanes and that raised money for the harvest pack which is like a humanitarian organization that helps third world countries package and send food to them so it's just I think it's just

004very interesting to see like how there's organizations that like students don't even completely know about like this was new to me I didn't know that the harvest pack like was an organization or at least I didn't know that name specifically so to hear about it was just interesting just as some people didn't know that the Flint River watershed coalition existed but you know NHS was able to raise money for them so I think it's just nice that we are like reaching different areas of the world through all these like clubs in our school along with that Brookfield recently was one of the school's I got the CI a see Michaels cup for sportsmanship so there was a convention in late November we had a couple representative from our school go and they like were they

005participated in a video in which they talked about what sportsmanship meant to them and we also received we were like one of the 20 schools that received that award so that's just really special to hear especially that's like an athlete myself so in terms of the happenings in the past couple weeks that's that's been it great thank you so much you can make that announcement I see tell us I was accepted into Johns Hopkins University congratulations congratulations any questions for Monty okay we'll move on to your written correspondence Ron Jaffe will shared an article regarding media literacy and education Georgia stabile regarding today's decision for a two-hour delay and Ted yang and Vera Schwartz regarding a community news outlet okay thank you next up is approval of Board minutes recommended motion that the board approved

006the minutes listed below is recommended from the regular meeting on December 4th 2019 a second okay any discussion on that okay all in favor okay next we have our superintendent's update Thank You mr. Nunez so I will be brief I had a very lengthy superintendent report at the last meeting I really wanted to update everyone on the 2019 2020 calendar that's this year's calendar so far this year we have had two snow days on December 2nd and December 17th just the other day and we have had three days where we've had delays on December 3rd we had a three-hour delay and on December 11th a three-hour delay and then this morning December 18th a two-hour delay I always like to update the board on those at this time our last day of school was June

00715th now it's moved to June 17th so everybody knows that and then just a point of clarification I was actually at the middle school today talking with some of the students and they wanted to know we had an early dismissal this Friday prior to the winter break so I mean you know they've got to ask me about the important things so I explained to them that they're very lucky that their Board of Education voted to not have them come to school on December 23rd which is normally the early dismissal and this way they have to do a full day on the 20th which they're like that makes sense okay so they like the longer vacation so that's but I wanted everybody in the public to know that as well as a reminder it's a full

008day on the 20th that's important for people to know and the 23rd is off for the students and the teachers and that is all I have any questions all right thank you all right moving on we have these subcommittee reports healthy school start times is the only one on here today okay so we had our committee meeting last Tuesday and since Rosa is now our the chair of the port or the chair of the Board of Ed I'm going to take over as the chair of the healthy starts time committee to take on that responsibility and the committee talked about a couple of different things one is to begin our discussion about including the local private schools in what we've learned in terms of the research and some of our thinking about start times because

009it will impact them because we supply busing to Brookfield residents who go to those private schools so John and I are going to meet to discuss of communication plan with them as well as to form an overall communication plan with the public about our findings so far we started to review some of our survey results and we were able to see some big-picture trends but what we really need to do is we have to break the survey down into different components for example we had a parent survey but that those parents could have been from Center School from huckleberry from the middle school from the high school and in order to really analyze the data we have to break that down into its pieces same thing with the students middle school versus high school we

010have to break the data down into parts so we can make sure we're analyzing it correctly so that's our plan for our next meeting to do that data analysis and then our our plan going forward is to develop a communication plan which would include a presentation to the Board of Ed so you'd be updated on all the findings analysis of the data and bring the new folks on the Board of Ed into the discussion too so you can see where we've been going with that we'd also like to have possibly focus groups to follow up on the survey data so we can get more anecdotal information and ask some more probing questions based on what we learned from the surveys as well as some additional public forums and I Oh John John updated us that

011there's a possibility of some state legislation that might align with healthy start times if you're familiar the state of California decided that statewide schools wouldn't start till 8:30 and there's some discussion among other states including Connecticut and then John also updated us that his superintendent group is really discussing this as well so this is becoming a trend in the state and the region and even nationally so we're right on it and that's it thank you and also thanks to the 750 families that responded to the surveys that was our highest response rate even actually more than the new school project so yeah we really think that it's some representative data so it's good okay moving on to the consent agenda recommended motion that the board approve the items listed below and the consent agenda as

012recommended and that is the October financials second okay any discussion all in favor all right we'll move on to new business the report on the teachers contract okay so I'll represent the personnel and negotiations committee which was made up at the time we did this negotiation of Collette and Eve and myself after and so I get to give this report we entered into a contract negotiations with our teachers in the summer there's a whole - Creed schedule that we go on that runs through the summer and into September for for that sort of negotiation teachers negotiations for the board members and especially for the new board members are first of all they're the most significant item in our budget but secondly the state has so many of them that they have to run through and

013they force them onto a timetable right so that there's a very limited window upon which to do this we had I want to say four different negotiations meetings we went to arbitration I'm sorry we went to mediation and then we went to arbitration on one item which I'll talk about and we actually settled in the middle of the of the arbitration we actually didn't have we have what they call it directed arbitration Awards so because we actually found a reasonable agreement in so were there for items that are new to the teacher contract this year first of all and the most significant item was a revised salary schedule and you all ought to know that because of the last contract we ended up with a bunch of half-step moves and and we had a huge

014scattered diagram which effectively left us with almost 28 steps in our salary schedule which is not workable in the long run so the issue we were dealing with is how in this contract to go from twenty eight step structure to what is effectively a fourteen step I think is where we end up at the end of the agreement over a reasonable way without costing the town too much or shortening the teachers you know from a reasonable pay increase and it's hard as you can imagine something that's a big many steps salary structure to a few steps honor structure it has the risk of creating disconnects the result though so we had back and forth on different different salary structures year 1 year 2 year 3 the interesting thing is we agreed that we had to

015go get this fixed over the over the period of the contract and we agreed on the Hat the total give on terms of salary increase over the contract the only thing that was going to our to arbitration was the specifics of the step plan year by year by year we actually agreed on one and it gets us there which is great and the the net is that I'm just going to read these two point nine three percent increase in 2021 a three point oh five percent increase in twenty one twenty two and a two point nine eight percent increase in twenty two twenty three so both all right around that three percent and that is right in line with what's being given unsafe so so that's it was a successful negotiation and that it contained

016our cost to what our objectives were as going into the negotiations the teachers were treated fairly and we ended up with a better salary schedule at the end of the three years it's gonna be an interesting three years because you have to is every time you change the schedule you actually have to have a teacher on the step goes into this new new step structure in the following year and so there's an MoU that we also negotiated with the with the Union on how that process would happen so so it's a it was an interesting interesting negotiation not debating on the overall gif it was just debating on the structure more than anything in addition there were three other changes we had what we call the degree definition there are three categories speech and language

017pathologist school counselors and school psychologists whose master degrees requires 60 or more credits so these are high investment master's degree we're gonna place them on the sixth year step right which and we have and and so that's in line with what hat goes on in neighboring districts so that was a easy decision to make after that those groups of people most teachers have to earn their way into the six the sixth year my additional credits because these are so heavy they in terms of just to get the degree they get automatically into that so that's that's the uniqueness there we also did a change on emergency days emergency days were written that if you had an emergency and you had to document and define you know exactly what the emergency was you could have a

018the teachers could have a day off we've altered that to be two personal days in one emergency day still three right but it gives the teachers a little bit more flexibility on the reasons they might take that day off because what's an emergency - one person may not be an emergency - the person who sits next to them so that gave a little more flexibility for our teachers and then we've increased their the teacher contribution to the benefits from 21 and a half to 22 percent which is right in the sweet spot of where we think it should be and it's 22 percent over the life of the contract so so those are the those are the changes the the the the net give is right in line with what our strategic direction was to

019the committee and and the teachers would satisfy that teachers biggest goals were to get to the more appropriate schedule and also not lose the top of the the people that there was an interesting issue in the penultimate step they call it the second bottom step with all the negotiations that had gone on over the prior years that was a very big step increase and they wanted that group to be able of her in there that touch to the top step in the period of the contract which we also accomplished and there was a large group and it was a large group so so we worked our way through that so so that's the report I think that's been signed by yes that's been signed to yes and the board doesn't actually need to approve that

020because that was an arbitrated great because it was arbitrary that's so so I think that's done and and we're now good for another three years and we have what's what are the negotiations coming up coming up it seems like we're always negotiating Paris custodians and nurses I believe this where were you where we're going they're not administrators no not yet not yet okay so so and it's afford we we do assign three different people for every negotiation the personnel and negotiations committee actually is by the bylaws of of the board has to do the teacher one because it's the largest but German is madam chairman well you madam chair me madam chair madam chairman you get to decide who the committees are for for each of those negotiations and I would just urge everybody there

021very interesting do do one at least it's a good experience it's a great experience okay but are there questions for Bob okay we will move on to the bidding procedure waiver recommended motion that the board waive the bidding requirements set forth in board policy 33:20 and regulation 33 20.1 and extend its contract with all star transportation for a period of two years as recommended by director of business and operations can post second okay ken sure what policy requires that we go out to bid for any purchase large like the transportation contract transportation contracts are typically done for five years as you can imagine it's a large investment for a new company to come in and bring in new buses and people and everything so we consider this the bus contract we have now ends next

022June two years after that we should be opening a new school we don't know yet how many tiers we will have what start times we will have and we don't feel that we have enough information to put out an RFP to to get people a reasonable chance to bid for the business so we'd like to ask the board to waive the bidding policy of the purchasing policy 33 22 allow us to sign a two-year extension we've talked with the bus company about this already they've agreed that we could continue with the exact same terms that we have now and with the three point five percent increase in each of those two years for all of the daily and hourly rates in the contract which is about what the rate that that has been increasing every

023year in the current contract are those salary rates I'm sorry if I can ask a question now those salary rates at all impacted by the minimum wage change at wage changes at the state level I don't believe so okay it's a why three and a half percent well with an aging fleet they will require them probably to replace some of the buses during that period of time and the ones that they don't really place will probably require more maintenance than they do now the current contract provides that the buses have to be at least 2010 models most of them are a little bit newer than that but not all of them are and when they did the original contract that they amortized the full cost of those buses over the life of the contract I

024would imagine that dated so shouldn't there be a savings because they fully amortize the most of the equipment there could be I wouldn't take the three and a half percent for granted I just I actually think I've dealt with contracts yeah you know I fully amortise all my costs over the first five years and now I want to extend that ought to be relatively you know at least the equipment portion of it oughta go down significantly more maintenance but less amortization if that's the case I can certainly go back could you please absolutely okay and the board would have to approve any even if you allow us to do the negotiation the board would still have to approve the contract okay so this all continue negotiating with them so this is a an approval to

025a to approve to go into negotiations okay any other questions for Ken I'm not clear though cuz it sounds like the motion is to extend the contract but I would read that as extend the contract per the terms that they've outlined do we have to modify the motion needs to be modified them yeah I'd like to move that we modify the motion to insert the words enter into negotiations to extend the contract I will second the amendment okay all my papers and we can vote on the full motion you sure okay so let's put the amendment to a vote all in favor hi hi okay so on the original motion any further discussion okay all in favor aye thank you approved as enough approved as amended yes okay moving on to new business we have

026a budget transfer recommended motion that the board approve one budget transfer as requested by director of business and operations can post wasn't seconded Oh second thank you thank you I usually start first and then I'm told so I'm requesting a transfer of three thousand nine hundred eighty eight dollars from extended duty salaries into team curriculum leader salaries to account for a middle school English language arts curriculum leader position that was inadvertently omitted from the 1920 budget so that's a stipend yes okay I just gonna say that's a pretty small number for us it's an existing it's an existing stipend to position we're just moving it from the extended duty is yes what does that do to the extended do you project it small impact lowers it the total extent of duty budget is well over

027$200,000 an extended Duty is like curriculum writing I think so much of it is and that's not a problem then you know I didn't discuss it with dr. Ruby yes especially as it relates to curriculum mommy yeah okay are there any other questions for dr. Ruby or Ken okay so all in favor okay thank you hey we can move on to old business now um a lot of policies so recommended motion that the board approved policy number 30 to 20 state and federal funds for a final reading as recommended by the policy and communications subcommittee the first reading was on November 6 2019 second okay so when I was chair of the policy committee I didn't receive any feedback on any of these policies unless you guys have questions or edits or statements about them

028we can probably move these move through these pretty quickly so and for the new members I don't know if you got a chance to read through them but they're pretty straightforward now this group was pretty straight yeah okay so all in favor aye policy 3000 recommended motion that the board approve policy 3000 concept and roles in business and non-instructional operations for a final reading is recommended by the policy communications subcommittee first reading was on November 6 2019 second okay any discussion all in favor aye recommended motion that the board approve policy 3280 gifts grants and bequests for a final reading is recommended by the policy and communication subject many first reading was on November 6 2019 second any discussion okay all in favor aye recommended motion that the board approve policy 33:13 relations with vendors

029for a final reading as recommended by the policy and communications subcommittee first reading was on November 6 2019 second any discussion okay all in favor aye so can those will all be updated with today's date then yes okay so next up we have a revision to the 2020 2021 school calendar recommend a motion that the Board discussed and approved a revised 2020 2021 school calendar as presented by superintendent dr. John Burrell thank you so they're just two two items that I want to discuss on the the 2021 calendar I wasn't here for the November 6 meeting and so there's a couple of things when Lisa and I were putting the final touches on this that were left out for discussion so the first one is very simple in June the last day of school shows

030now appropriately as June 9th on 182nd student day rather than the 14th which was the 185th student day and for those of you on the board and those of you watching at home just a reminder that the public act 19 195 has been amended as of July 1 2019 whereas you are able to schedule high school graduation day high school graduation date if you have less than 185 student days in 2018 and before you had to have 185 student days in order to before April 1st schedule the graduation date so what we decided to do is install emergency snow days to give us 185 student days so then mr. Malanda could work with western Connecticut and the O'Neill Center to make sure we got on the list to establish a graduation date well in advance

031so we'd get the date we wanted there's no need for that any longer currently this year we have our calendar set but we don't have to do it for this year he's actually already established the graduation date for this school year but for next school year I just wanted to take 185 days off we did not need it we have 182 student days so we end June 9th so that's a pretty straightforward change the other modification if we go to December if you look at December of the 2021 calendar one thing to consider in what I just talked about with our whiskey near students desiring a early dismissal if you look Wednesday December 23rd is the day prior to Christmas Eve day that typically and I benchmarked that with our neighboring districts is an early

032dismissal it's something that was just not considered when we put the calendar together no one asked about it or anything right now it's in decay indicated as it's a full day and I wanted to make sure the board was comfortable with the idea of making December 23rd a early dismissal day and that's what I bring to you and that would be the only two modifications to the next year's calendar so John just to clarify are we able to set the graduation date then yes we can we've already sketched scheduled that for this year because the Act prohibiting schools with less than 185 days so we in we marks be scheduled 185 for this year it's not to confuse people so we've already got a schedule okay and the other discussion on that okay all in

033favor thank you everyone okay so now we are moving on to the review of the superintendent's 2020 2021 budget proposal this is just an action so I had asked sort of a laundry list of questions that I had sent to they're coming around hardcopy as responses to the questions and there was other questions to rose to to Ken and John so most of it was just you know for clarification so I mean this is certainly a discussion for any other any questions per you know they don't have to be my questions or any clarifications on that but this is sort of the opportunity to further our budget discussions how do you want to do you want to are we gonna go through the responses or do you want us to all pieces did you get

034a chance I didn't know if you got a chance to read them ahead of time I read your questions but this is the first time okay I'm gonna respond so yeah responses were sent out of The Weekend Update on Friday there were all these responses yeah okay I remember where you'd seen there also is a you know just to kind of get the discussion going here we also at the Finance Committee meeting on on Monday night we also discussed the concept of the status quo budget the outliers in the investments and some of the investments some discussion about some of the things that I along with the team here categorized as investments might really be part of status quo for example needing new teachers at center school because of enrollment you're not really investing in

035new programming or anything like that we're just maintaining our class size and we just have more students so perhaps that should be part of the status quo so there was some discussion there so we can I mean I don't know where anybody would like to start but I wanted to bring that up as a particular topic and then also mr. Beldon had asked if mr. Baldwin would join us for the meeting to entertain some questions perhaps on athletics that had come up at the last board meeting so there's you know a couple of directions we certainly can go over the board would like to do so I'll start and I'll I'll say that I think that's a good sort of jumping-off point you know I I had sort of looked at a lot of our

036increases and I think that was that was a view shared when this was first proposed was that so many of them really weren't new investments they were things we needed to do and so I thought it would be best to sort of recategorize or operationally define status quo as something that may be different than what this town has historically been used to related to that I think I think that status quo and we don't even need to stick with that term but it's really what is it going to cost to keep everything the same including class sizes demographic changes enrollment changes keep our services exactly the same and that does include for next year new teachers so but I don't know what your thoughts are on on that or do we do our typical status

037quo with like a subsection of demographic changes you know there's a lot of things that we can do but the communication of this budget is going to be really obviously important well it strikes me that you're right right which is status quo is keeping our programs the way they are but this year there are so many things that are happening in turn in that status quo budget that even if we bundled it in there we can't just bundle it as a single number we're gonna have to spend some time with the public with the Board of Finance with the selectmen explaining what is that what are those dynamics and I think about the one that jumped out of me was this 2% increase in insurance costs right you've been calling that into a separate bucket

038that it truly is status quo it's just not something we like and and the additional class sizes due to enrollment I think fits in there those were two big drivers and John and your prison tailor and I think they are status quo right but we need to articulate that very clearly we could also just do away with status quo and put and just have a bunch of those buckets contractual and inflationary increases demographic increases outliers like insurance I mean well somewhere you have to talk about base increases you know so there'll be teacher increases contractually required salary increases and and we actually had a benefit I was surprised to see him there on our as an electric or fuel and went down yeah that was actually I went in there I said that's the first

039time I've seen that and then 15 marginally involved on this so and I think one of the things to communicate is that almost the entire budget is really salaries a huge percentage of it so it might make sense to communicate how much of the budget do we actually spend on people and then how much does that increase clearly so then I think folks realize that's what we're dealing or through dealing with really the human resources of the organization I think that's important to communicate it clearly because John you didn't have that many real investments in very small look at that on real new new things we were we started to break that down we pulled the pull the slide out right from the presentation a Finance Committee on Monday night and about half of the

040items on there could fit into what we're calling right now status quo absolutely for example the the enrollment with center school we need more sections there this year paid for out of a grant are a number of hair professionals a special education clerk has started halfway through the year so that that is really a status quo rather than an investment and so we have the difference in there and then there's some monitors there as well for the increasing number of students at Center school a coach you know a coach position in cross country we thought my fitness that as well because of so many students and it's something to keep that program alive with a incredible participation that one would be an investment you know so well exactly and that's for the discussion this was

041what we talked about at the Finance Committee meeting and then the BHS turn it in and the whiskey near newsela subscription those would also be status quo because they're either free or very minimal investment so they've just increased so much that we called them an investment they certainly could that's not new to the school so that makes sense that that would fit into status quo and then certainly the subsequent supplies text furniture etc that would go with the new sections the center school you know to outfit those classrooms that would be status quo so I mean there's that there's a number of things there that certainly fit in that base budget to base budget communication bucket however we want articulate go so I don't know how you guys you know feel about you know communicating

042some of these changes but it's certainly guidance that I could use in communicating this budget to other boards so please I agree you know and I was reflecting from on Monday night and thinking about the fact that we've got really a short turnaround time when you consider the holiday break between the opportunities we have to meet together so I was thinking that that this might be something we really talked about tonight and it could be a comeback for the team and I so we can make sure on I think it's January 8th and 9th is their next meeting that that's clearly articulated and you know there's still some questions or some adjustments we need to make we can do that together as a group because three weeks later after January 8th we're handing this over

043to the Board of Selectmen in history we have two more shots on yeah especially in which we always you know we've done traditionally we typically do that but I was thinking maybe that's something tonight we kind of get some agreement on the investments the status quo of what we want to call those and then that's something pretty straightforward and concrete that we can get done in the next couple of weeks before the next meeting and we could actually put it up on the screen as a slide and get people very comfortable with that you know and if it's different nomenclature then that's what it is and then you go forward with that as we bring it to the community February and throughout the rest of this Frank so the most broad definition of our new

044status quo would be keeping everything everything the same including all of our services and programs and what that would cost we could shuffle things into sort of sub buckets if you wanted yeah and I think Bob's point is though and then to communicate well why is it look like it's more than usual well it's the demographic story so that's the story that we have to tell is explain what are the demographic changes and what impact does that have on a school budget sure so that's really the story behind the difference in status quo even if part of the outliers gent to the earlier point about the 2% fee for the insurance it's a significant dollar about the town's experience the same thing we shared we have the same insurance so if that's part of status

045quo and again it's explained color coded however is that really communicated clearly to everybody involved all of our stakeholders yeah and then really the investment should be new program sure right new programs new positions that enhance our right right right like the math interventionists I would think of it as an investment and then that's clear I'm just gonna if you guys don't learn I'll take two minutes I'll just go down this and see if we agree and that would then maybe give Kevin and John direction from the board there were no patient best the investments paid the chart that's called it's like the PowerPoint it's in the PowerPoint and it's like the seventh chart in 6th 7th 8th show then let's kinda there's the word investments in yellow it's after the word charts and after

046his summary numbers chart this one yep I think the next flap is the next one I think there you go so just quickly going down I think the kindergarten teacher is kind of more of a status quo grade one teachers as the status quo of the reduction in a grade three teacher is status quo that was not those were all driven by enrolment the PE teacher at centre school was a status quo that kind of went along with the additional enrollment the math and interventionist I think is an investment agreed the eol teacher is an investment I could argue that both ways but it's a but it's you mean I could argue that status quo I could argue that's an investment it's because we've had a big increase but not this year right we're just

047kind of catching up with the growth we've had enough we had agreed a couple budgets ago that we would not go for the full teacher and we go with the tutor who's right and well that helped and we've really I mean - Kevin's credit have done a wonderful job with supporting students with that it's still not enough and so we're just coming back and being totally transparent saying no I don't I don't doubt that I'd actually think it's an investment well we're investing in a real program that's a great investment trust me the word investment doesn't mean word not supporting it we don't think it's a it is an investment the American sign language teacher no Bob that's just a tree that's just a trade off to the virtual eyes I'll get a teacher status

048quo yep yep right the three ABA para fat professionals would be in the status quo the sped clerk this is the one because of the what we did in like two meetings ago I thought we were funding that from surplus money we had available that's four we redirected this yes the addition for next and it's only part of the year this year it's also because it was just a part yet this was to account for the rest of the year I got to status quo math tutors investment monitors investment we need two more monitors because of the increase in the part-time yeah that has to go with the actual sections that Center then it's status quo okay that's the classroom the ASL facility oh that's that's the trade on that status quo correct and the

049coach I think is an investment and don't be people who disagree with me but it's um I understand deal either way rationale either way folks more uncomfortable with investment as we go down to $2,500 it's not as well you have question very buds okay the BHS security service investment yes right the virtual high school is part of that trade-off that saw status quo and writing texts definitely BHS textbooks is that a second policeman or was that these are this the Spanish ones that's a status always well there new Spanish textbooks they're replacing old low it's not lately so grand it's it's we have we originally had a plan presented by chemin Holly I I'm losing track of time here but I think was two years ago where she presented what the roll up would be

050for the replacement of new books because the only ones that we have are obsolete and so it's not new programming it's supporting the program that we already have and I heard clearly was they were way out of date yeah that was replace yes status quo can I ask you a question about for your opinion on the handwriting text I'll tell you what's going on there we we developed a approach to teaching handwriting more systematically and so in order to do that because we weren't teaching cursive writing in a systematic way that was uniform across all the classrooms we and those of us who can write in cursive know that you have to be able to print appropriately in order to build it right cursive if you're making your circle letters backwards that's not going to

051translate when you go to cursive so what we did in our plan missus various and I worked with the principals we had everybody K through 3 working on manuscript for a couple years to get everybody on they're on the same page and the plan from three years ago was that we would then once we knew that everybody had had explicit direct instruction in manuscript write and printing then we would be able to then move to cursive so we're there and so that's what this isn't something new says there are new books because now the children are ready and the teachers need the material so I don't know like what your feeling is on what we call that investment it's a good investment it's a good but it's an investment I think not we're just we're

052expanding our scope of what we're doing with the kids is the way I think we're not just doing the same old thing turnitin.com that's the rate increase right that was a rate increase the turnitin yes oh did I miss one the flexo edulearn program would be an investor as its brand around yeah yeah for the Turnitin and newsela were just rate increase correct the new the equipping of the new sections is the status quo health benefits is status quo or proportionally portion it'll be proportional and the FICA would be proportionate to the news death and can I'd like to just suggest that we take the health benefits on the FICA and put it in with the salary with we are bored of finances used to hearing $85,000 first your head and you've got 68 up

053here and then you've married the health benefits and FICA down here I think it's just simpler to communicate whatever we even if you had there's a footnote down on the bottom here's what makes that easy here's how you get to 85 but it just makes it easier to digest is everyone okay with that absolutely okay and then John I think it would be that test is gonna be not just read a brigade in the details there's a lot of work there how would you explain it sure so people write because this is it makes it easier to digest in my opinion and because you're tying it all around to the goals from the us meaning was actually hard to get through it was clear once you got through it but it was hard because you

054were flipping through that back and forth on charts and trying to follow your thread I actually think you're gonna end up with a very few real investments you almost do it on a page yeah right and I think and then you spend have to add a second page on an unexplained er what's going on to our status quo because that'll be not to point what was the percentage I have two points two point six seven percent it's gonna be it's gonna be three points right and so they're doing people who look at us and say how could you have a status quo three point seven well there's recently yeah there's reasons for why that's happening to and I think Bob what's what's great about this exercise right now and this is why when we we

055have these conversations as a committee of the whole essentially is exactly to the point I made when I present that this two weeks ago is it's not necessarily gonna look exactly like I proposed it because the board needs to own and adopt this by the end of January you know and it really is the communication of the budget that's really the important piece here anybody can put a spreadsheet together on what the increases are and the investments it's how do we explain it and I wanted to be crystal clear and transparent of the precise kind of we call traditional way of looking at the status quo but really understand the questions that came up over the last two weeks with the board that some of those things I was categorizing as investments really are status

056quo through this exercise tonight so I think that is really important because the our stakeholders and our elected officials who will ultimately be looking at this budget in a couple of months can see that we went through this exercise and it's very transparent so I think that the the process is incredibly important and having it on tape for those who are going to be taking this budget very seriously and making determinations really important and I think that'll leave them with a lot of belief and credibility in the board's process I think you know we started with your presentation was $700,000 of investment and I was having the reaction that that's not all investment correct you're probably only looking at like two hundred thousand dollars of investment I mean as investment items so that's that's not

057a big investment amount on the size of your work the end of the day we have a lot we must do with our students that has to happen yeah can we just go back to the textbooks for a minute because I missed part of Maureen what you were saying when I go back when I go to a few pages ahead we see that the textbooks include world language English and social studies yes so what's this the case with English and social studies are they new could actually have more come talk to that as well mark do you mind coming up to the podium yeah and just the just so you know that the curriculum committee did hear presentations throughout the year at the Cape committee meetings and had seen the materials them that mark is

058going to talk about and then we discussed it at board meetings all right I think we're on okay so in English some of those questions are really about actual novels so really a constant textbook so it's like novels that kids would be reading in classes we're really moving to kind of moved to a much more thematic based approach we're not adding any new English classes are not adding like an English to be or anything like that it's so good meeting this one two three four but we're looking to do is give students choice an opportunity to read different different books with different themes so and then we're also updating you know we need extra copies of Catcher in the Rye there's there's so many that some of the you have to get and then in

059terms of social studies and the large chunk and I know Kevin's here the large chunk of that textbook money is really towards world language it's a huge piece you know because of the books actually are expensive in social studies those are to buy additional textbooks for ap government in politics you know those enrollment has increased their ap psychology the same thing so we're looking to just bolster the numbers that already have to support the number of the higher enrollments that we that we've seen over the last several years and so we're not sharing books or things like that because as we go back and forth we've got dr. Ben I've had this discussion about the importance of actually having a textbook versus reading something online there certainly is a value to that as well so

060that's what those are it is status quo there's no new courses being it's not part of any length out it's just really to bolster the current correct class sets and do we have I mean we bought textbooks this year I'm presuming we did buy some textbook so as you would looked at these there's a some of that we you know it's not real all growth year to year no it's not all growth rate yeah and so is this the raw number or just the change in the year to your budget we're looking at so the number and I don't have that number right here that you're looking at because I think you probably a huge number that you're looking at that's going across the board for textbooks I'm not sure what exactly you're looking mm

061yeah it's a 40 through 10,000 showing as an investment so okay so I mean I just don't know if that's your total budget or if that's the year-to-year increase in the budget that's the total budget yeah yeah you're here yeah thanks mark this is so one of the things I'm thinking about in terms of communication is really this idea of like budget drivers you know so what really drives the budget to people so people understand and so what we think drives the budget well number one is obviously contractual obligations increase in salary health benefits that go along with that whatever else are our big drivers well they're an increase in enrollment in changing demographics in our community and maybe you know third is some of our special education needs so those are things that drive

062the increase and they help to sort of explain perhaps why we need additional investments and that doesn't mean status quo or not it's just what drives or the the budget to increase so I think that's one way we could think about communicating it and then you take a small subset of that and call it new investment right right right and that makes it so it jumps out as in a list of things so for example if you go to the I think it's a seven slide I apologize it was printed PowerPoint numbers [Music] but there's one title budget drivers and so it has those pieces that you're talking about Jen in there and yeah you know as we think about how we come back on this title 2020 2021 budget drivers I think it's about

063the second slide in so it's got the contractual inflationary increases you see them and then certainly the International Education Commission and transportation mm-hmm staffing to match enrollment and then obviously the strategic things we need to do to enhance the programming so I can easily put together a list like that with dollars and percentages next to it that would be very helpful I think when people know you're on when people see these drivers if what you're talking about Ken if they can actually see the detail behind it it will tie everything that we're saying together because I think that you know we we live with this budget and the few folks have looked at it but somebody who's just saying it for the first time and and sees drivers but doesn't really know what subsumed under

064those that are connected to what's on the other page for what's already being done compared to what would be something that's totally new you know you just can't connect those dots when you're not familiar with it so I think that what Ken just proposed would help I've already had multiple people just call me up and say what are you guys thinking they didn't even look at the presentation we did all they saw heard was a bottom-line number but yeah when you hear the bottom-line number and that's all you react to your gonna form on the opinion right and so we have to take every chance we have to explain what the drivers are right there's no doubt in my mind but it's already 6.8% what are you thinking maybe that's their way and I'd rather

065tell the story mm-hmm all right we have a story rather than list everything under status quo or investments we just listed under the drivers drivers yeah yeah you do that yeah I would I would also say there's a big story in here on special education because about you know from the you know that we talked about it the last meeting right it's it hits this year and it also hits next year but it shows up in the budget and we need to tell that story more fulsomely than we are in this package right it's taking assuming that our audience is taking it for granted here's the trend of the number of kids who are out placed right here's the average cost per child but when you do that here's you know and without with of

066course we can't reveal is you know student specific stuff but tell the story of what the trends are what's been going on there's a story here that we've heard right and but others happened and then that links into both 2019-20 and a 2020 21 budget you know budget was phenomena that is it becomes the story of this budget when you actually step back from it right it's it's the same as we had was a two years ago or three years ago to two year two month there were some good charts and object by the way that we took us a couple of iterations to build it up right in different forums I know they actually work pretty well but that that's a they yeah I think each of the drivers have to have a storyline

067behind it right here's what's going on here's what's happening with the teacher here's what's happening with contractual increases think think think think think right here's what's happening with insurance costs well there's this kind of increase on you know because of the I mean I still am amazed that we have get it was a two percent surcharge present we're getting a two percent surcharge from the insurance company because we're in Fairfield County I mean I just it's it's appalling and for our Board of Finance member in the audience it's gonna hit the town side too it's cuz it's the same program so it's just it gives a huge year-to-year increase so I think in Canada you're thinking about it the black sheep behind each of the points is important in that fact sheet on special ed

068is really important right because it's the story of this budget and I'd like to go through that in our next meeting I would be probably the best out of the night is kind of teeing that up so that's what we could see how that might look we think that's a perfect comeback that was my reflection over the last 48 hours really thinking that through what we could do tonight to get us ready for the next meeting really helpful yeah and I think that gets us away from this idea of status quo which is kind of nebulous I'm not sure if people understand it it's really about what's driving the budget increase what are the ideas behind it and you know within that you can explain well this would be a you know type of a

069status quo thing versus an investment you could address that but I think it's really why is the budget changing so people can understand yep that's more clear so speaking of the status quo myself and another board member had asked to look at sort of now that we're we're saying okay status quo includes our existing services existing programs one of the UM board member had asked if there was an exercise that we could go through to take a deeper dive into those existing programs to see because a lot of them are not mandated but there's something that we value and and we have historically done so I didn't know if anybody wanted to kick off that conversation with any specific questions about programming or so this is under letter a so these are things that are

070not mandated correct so I'd say if we were to number them one being what we value as the most important figure to number them one before how would we number those I [Music] wonder if there's a way I'm not sure if this is the right way but to monetize each of these two like helmet well I know it's the Athletics like what how much do we spend on earth let exhale we spend on stipends how much do we spend on the World Language Program you know how much does it cost us to keep within our current class size versus increase it that might give us some data to look at I mean in the proposal we're adding keeping the class sizes the same by net adding to Elementary section right so so I'm saying you

071get done exercise before yeah yeah it's a simple exercise in the elementary schools it's much more complicated in Wrightsville school and we could go through I could certainly quantify you know one extra section in every elementary class would be easy to do I'd probably have to talk to Dean and mark about how we would quantify anything at the high school in middle school even that is difficult because then you're talking supplies furniture everything I mean you can say he's one less teacher in every major subject with that due to class size yeah so I mean I guess part of this exercise is to sort of yeah sort of reframe where our values are because that obviously will determine our budget for next year so I mean we sort of have to ask ourselves how important

072are our class sizes and at what grade levels you know how heavily do we want to invest in the other things because I think we are gonna have to I do believe it's a worthwhile exercise for us to understand on the take class sizes you know if we reduced a teacher in each grade level elementary if we and and at the middle school right those are you know those are that's harder I got that too all that size but maybe you define what you reduce but if you had to if you were faced with reduction what would that mean right sometimes it's class size sometimes it's something else and at the high school you know what would a reduction of four across the high school for teachers business for greatest right maybe it's you know

073three in the middle or four in the middle school today but take a case work and say if you were faced with a reduction of one right what does that mean right what does it mean to class size which are the applications like that and let's I think that's a worthwhile exercise as a board that we go through Frank I'd advocate that but it's but I think it's worth less than the number so for the exercise just for the elementary school schools I'm sorry exercising that just for that at the elementary level maybe do it for oh absolutely no but as far as exercise easier right I can easily quantify the savings and the impact on class size for the Elementary's and I think we ought to understand the spending on the world language K

074through six I think that's something we oughta and say here's what we spend on it right and I saw in the answer you talked about the number of FTEs and things like that but we have to just lay that out here's what the spend is I'm not gonna have another set of January meetings like the last time we have that does and then after school clubs I think we ought to understand what we're spending there right and the sports we ought understand what we're spending sure I try to see an exercise there yeah the club I think playing house for letting us understand what we're spending Charles and and one of my questions which I haven't sent you yet I'd like to understand what we're spending on the Arts not that I ever would advocate

075taking it away but you know we've had in the roundtable that was the one question we had was about the Arts right when we had our community roundtable and we had don't have anything in here yeah that really should be and we ought to at least to understand what we're spending across music and the fine arts one of the reasons it wasn't in the responses is that the arts programs that we have minimally k-8 but through the high school are mandated I have to have art and music and PE knows that those are musts yeah I would just language at elementary school is not a mandate for us yeah I would sort of try to separate that two versus what's man if you're gonna look at arts low summated versus what's right well what we're

076going to look at yeah our existing but not mandated right I think to keep that together as important to the not and oronzo because we can't look at but I'd like to know what we're spending on the art yeah sure we can do that I think what you'll find is we're spending on what's mandated for them for the majority of our arts pieces okay so that would make a healthy it's a lot come back that's a lot of time at a reframing of the presentation and some detail on this would be a very healthy meaning sure it's what we spend on vocational school the magnet school is that mandated or not mandated yes magnet school yeah no go AG program oh and also the magnets ball like though our alternative sort of placements would we

077consider that mandated or not mandated or is it or is it GRA believe it's mandated but I think we have some control over how many students we allow they have the right to go to those schools and then then you once you have spaces that were agreed upon years ago you have those spaces you have students in those seats now mm-hmm it becomes very difficult to take them if you went to a reduction in that area you'd have to have a slow phase one yeah yeah cuz that wouldn't necessarily help in the current yeah oh just curious if it was mandated or not for them the responses that you got from on all these detailed questions did you see anything that was bothered you know most of it was clarification for me so I think

078one of the things I'd like to go through is a detailed review of our technology investments sure um maybe this next meeting maybe the one after what to figure out how to balance it but I think there's always a structural thing in here on i.t which i think is really important for us but I don't think we understand it and enough depth to understand the whys and the wherefores and what are we investing in enough that I could stand up in front of anybody and say and and say this is absolutely critical right I mean I know a lot of the program's you do a great job of explaining them to us but I think we got to go through that exercise absolutely and because I think it's a bigger chunk of money than people

079know you know with some of the credits we have and things you know I saw some of the questions in here which were great with technology we're actually level funding we're not asking for new funding but there is a healthy portion of the budget dedicated yeah but the level funding is interesting it's what is it what's important right you know or let it what is it that we're spending the money and what's that getting us right so that's because no matter whether you level fund it or cut it in half or double it you're you're doing operations you're doing it for a reason sure right it's because there there's n things in there that you need to do a lot of IT investment is not the same every year is not a sum of it

080is but not all so a lot of it's real new things new equipment new capabilities replacement capable is ever see all the time a lot of good things in there yeah I mean even what I'm sorry DEP your turn I was just gonna say on the response about the field trips hmm that the list of field trips there I understand the ones like when eighth grade is going to be HS to practice for the looming up ceremony but the ones that are more like competitions conferences cultural trips are we saying the district is paying for participation in those events or is it transportation to those events what's our cost yeah this is transportation costs dis account so we're providing the teams or or clubs are going as a club and we're providing transportation to to

081all of these events parents don't pay us I also hoping to get some clarification on alarm systems proprietary yes what is that we feel that means they have the company denied alarm if it's their system that's that we use so they are the ones who have to monitor it for us so I guess I don't understand why can't be bedded fitted on if we replace the armed systems we would bid it okay but just this was related to the monitoring of it we have we researched sort of other companies where we might switch I have not it's an interesting question I mean whether bidding and one of the lessons I've learned over the years is when I hear the word proprietary I hear the word expensive so I'm just I don't know what it would

082mean for us to business and we've had that issue with some of our building management systems which we tried trying to get away from and we've had the conversations with Tecton about what they're gonna be doing in the new school and trying to do the same thing as we upgrade our systems in the other schools to get away from the prices proprietary stuff we really are gonna be looking at that because if you think about it in capital we have a I think it's just over a million dollars to upgrade our management system here for HVAC looking at the same thing in the older system at the middle school and then obviously we're having to have a brand new Elementary School so one of the major pieces of that is with Tecton and what they're

083advising us on with the new buildings it's matching all of these organs she's been coordinating all this together so not only it's more efficient but what can we do in terms of the system itself yeah but I just say I'm gonna piggyback on Mike's point we have closets the monitor that stuff or maintain that stuff I would want to make sure that whatever if you go down that path they all have the ability for us to bring in different support structures if we choose a great that's as opposed to once you sign up with me you have to stay ready forever exactly why we're working with tech grain we've had that conversation with them our unhappiness okay but is that kind of your point yeah isn't it hard to have a hold on the cost

084increases when things are proprietary yeah yes what's the increase on the cost on that line it's not increasing that's not it okay I was also curious about I don't know why I went back and looked at previous prior years but the electricity line 562 - OH just seems to have these crazy fluctuations you know back to 2016-17 it was five hundred ninety seven thousand the following year it went down by thirty thousand to five sixty-six then it swung back up to five hundred and ninety eight thousand then it went down again I could see these kind of changes like throughout the year seasonal changes or whatever but year to year just why is it up and down and up and down like that I would have to research that I would speculates the wrong word

085but I know that huckleberry is on all-electric school so the weather impact on the heating and cooling that school would significantly affect yeah charges per year to year and do you know if we've ever done any kind of energy audit in the other schools like huckleberry we know is going away but can we it would seem to me that over time our energy efficiency would get better with you know better lightbulbs sensors things like that that we've been implementing over the years so I'm just curious why that number is still so high yeah we did have somebody come in here a couple of years ago and do an audit of the lighting but at the time the facilities committee committee did not move forward with that it's probably something we should look into because you

086can gain significant efficiencies with lighting probably something the service that we would have to bid out in a court nor our policy but that's something just has not been resurrected do we do we know how much of that that electric bill is tied to the heating of the one school I would have to look I don't know off the top of my head because if that's you know 50 60 % of it that would explain a lot but you know and it would also say they'll what you do for lighting and things like that it might be behaving differently mm-hmm we just talked about on the Facilities Committee um you know staff having their personal belongings that could really put a damper on our electrical bill as far as refrigerators and microwaves so I definitely

087like to look into that as far as making cuts that wouldn't affect students there's I have a million dollars in electric lamp and like I said if there's these big swings just I'd like to understand I mean true if it's all coming from huckleberry or a big part of it is coming from huckleberry then that's easy to explain of it I guess on our next Facilities Committee meeting we shouldn't talk about you oh yeah we can resurrect that and start talking about what we would like to do when is the next facilities meeting January game yeah for our next step why don't we make that a topic on the Facilities Committee I was thinking back to the issue of communicating the budget and we know we invest a lot in curriculum and I was wondering

088maureen if that could be something you help educate us on - so what are looking forward what will be the where will we be spending the money in terms of curriculum writing so we sort of understand the story and you know to what extent is a continuation of last year you know so we really fully understand the vision for the year and that would help us communicate the spending of that type of money maybe in a future meeting absolutely you know we're said number of comebacks of getting 20 slides in there just repackaging it differently that's fine yeah absolutely well speaking of curriculum I did have as you guys all saw some questions about our K through six Spanish program and since Kevin's here you know I wanted to make sure that it was actually

089an education for me when I read this was that we really don't have a language acquisition program K through six so it is considered an exploratory program and maybe you can explain the differences between that but I think it's an important thing to sort of you know make sure if we want to you know keep some of these very big-ticket items and this is one of those we really have to understand sort of what's behind it so in order to have a bless program one that promotes foreign language acquisition research tells us that we need at least 90 minutes a week of world language instruction for students to be able to build on their language proficiency currently our K through six program has we're averaging 45 minutes a week you know which in terms of

090language acquisition is frustrating for our students and also for our teachers because year after year we're not seeing the growth we would be expecting from a language acquisition program until seventh grade which is when they start receiving regular world language of instruction daily currently at Center students take world language Spanish once a week same thing at huckleberry and you can imagine for example with the snow days and with the delays it might be several weeks before a world language teacher sees her same class again so that that is quite frustrating and we actually met you know Google hangout two days ago to discuss that the implications for our students because you know our our plus team the K through 16 that is our priority to try and build proficiency however you know we we don't

091have the minutes currently therefore we could only say that it's an exploratory program where students are exposed to the Spanish language but there's not enough minutes weekly to build upon their proficiency and they're also explored they they're also exposed to cultural topics as well of the different types of cultures from spanish-speaking countries and it is it correct to say that we took away from the socialized curriculum to to get this program that we have in place currently hey it would seem that way yes for grades 5 & 6 we had a huge debate on the five six no it was the other way around now even in elementary grades we we are still taking time for to have the minimal Spanish that we have from what would be given to social studies in science in

092the middle school there's and maybe chem and you can explain how that works but we the students a couple years ago we're getting 50% of their social studies time as they would be getting if we we're it's a school district that was providing the hundred percent because 50 percent of the social stage time went to Spanish when we made the change we did not get back all the social studies on time so social studies is obviously an important subject it's a mandated subject and well there's no social like we have then the next generation science standards for that's a you know a state test for science and we have the smarter balance which is for literacy and mathematics there is no state test for social studies however the work that's done in social studies incorporates

093the standards for English Language Arts in the social studies and that's where students read different types of texts where they would read primary source texts and then they would apply what they're learning in social studies and in English language arts to do work that is engaging students in higher order thinking and creating arguments and using evidence from more sophisticated text and that bear that experience that a student would have in social studies does bear itself out on the state assessments for English language arts in the smarter balanced and also at the high school level and at the middle school level in PSAT and SAT so some people I'm just putting this out there will say well it's not it's not a tested area so it's okay that you know take time from it it doesn't

094have its own test but what we are what we should be doing in a full social studies program impacts how students develop and it does show up on those other assessments so chem and back to the world languages would it be fair to say to call this arcade a six program like its enrichment the way it would you say like our Spanish program is an opportunity acceleration exploration is better yeah i would say exploration kevin how would you say our students fare with students from the magnet school who receive a much more extensive spanish program so let's say a fifth grader coming in to Brookfield compared to our current fifth grade we actually have that data we used what's called the Apple proficiency test and that test is endorsed by the American Council of teachers

095and foreign languages we actually had incoming students from the magnet school tested with that completely unbiased standardized test and compared to our students and they're the same they're both falling within the novice level which is just your basic survival skills in the language what do they receive at the magnet school do you is daily its daily and starting at what grade I think kindergarten are yeah that's interesting interesting and was it a statistically significant enough number of kids we looked at big yeah where we actually used to have the two honors course that we give at the high school at the middle school for this cohort of students but as part of my coming in my position I worked with the teachers to measure the proficiency levels of each student by the end of the

096courses and the teacher that was actually teaching the two honors course saw that the standards of proficiency that we were using for to honors they were too high for the cohort that was in that to honors class so we use this test as evidence to say this to honors class at the middle school is not sustainable because the teacher was actually teaching the students at a novice level instead of the intermediate level that that to honors so you know the assumption was made that they were coming in at a higher proficiency level but that proficiency level was never tested with a viable assessment tool until we did and we saw that they were coming in at a novice level I wouldn't have expected that yeah any other questions for Kevin I'm sure we'll have more

097on this subject but I think it's worthwhile to to consider as we're looking at all of our programs and you know assigning value to them Thank You Kim would you mind that we we had some questions for the athletic director of the last minutes and maybe you have him come up and talk about in particular the question we got about gymnastics and sure what we what the cost might be or what we could or could not do come on up Steve thank you perhaps maybe like athletics as a whole so we're sort of just don't want to avoid the request from the member of the public so I just don't want to avoid the request from the member of the public oh yeah no we'll get to that but I just want to make sure

098that Ivor is aware of the other sports that have been requested not only from from that one parent too so just go to the next one so these are the ten sports that have been asked by parents students and other members of the public over the last couple of years strength and conditioning coach ski team freshman girls lacrosse our numbers are very high in that and that's the quickest growing American sport eSports which we'll pass out lacrosse very soon freshman boys soccer team based on our numbers several boys have been asking for volleyball hockey our hockey team our kids still pay two thousand dollars a year I was speaking to a parent who has - - will have had two children she's paid $16,000 to have her two boys play hockey at Brookfield High School

099and that's just to play it's not skates shoulder pads helmet everything else that entails middle school girls volleyball girls volleyball is prior our biggest female participation rate four teams we usually have about sixty kids try out middle school girls cross-country in gymnastics what I learned I was away in Washington DC at the national athletic directors conference and I wrote down with some of the area ADEs and interesting enough I did not know this that Masek Joel Barlow and Weston three years they have new programs self-funded before they actually pay to have that be program and this helped to it's the sustainability so for us what we do is right now we fill out the program propulsive form the doctor Burrell has created and it's been in place since he's been here well we determined the

100sustainability based on our students need identify future cost and research what other schools especially in our league are doing if approved at the building level therefore to additional levels for review for inclusion in the budget referendum superintendent board ad Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance the last couple years we've asked to add strength and conditioning because that will service all 500 of our kids and a couple years ago when our trainer left we went to a service and we've had a rollover and now we have a local girl who would like to stay here but they don't pay so we'd like to go back to where we were to have you know a trainer she's good with our kids we like to keep her for a long time so trying to looked at you

101know based on what everybody's come to me about you know obviously a lot of this is new to everybody here you know based on what we see in conversations with the you know with mark and Dean the building principals and I'm with John you know I like with other schools do I think that's a good idea because if we're investing into a program we want to make sure it's sustainable so having three years of doing that but that's up to you it's not up to me and then are what I thought was prioritized I mean we have hockey kids that this is one of our programs that they pay $2,000 a year and then just going down and I can send this out to everybody strength and conditioning coach freshmen girls lacrosse next year we

102the numbers I got we're this year we have about 22 girls freshmen next year we're going to have more many other schools in swc have freshmen girls lacrosse eSports I'm learning a lot about that now it is huge it Eric yeah I'll call Eric up he can give a quick one-minute because he knows a lot Jamie it there are a lot of college scholarships it's huge there was more people to East more finals than any other sport and of course we bring the technology guy up for the game yeah this is this is where sports I'm just worried really excelence really quick I'll keep it short but um I mean eSports is exactly how it sounds a lot like electronic sports video game is now a competition right so years ago when you sat you

103played Mario Kart on n64 or you play Madden football now and you're having fun there are students who are actually competing and there are Madden football championships seasons where these these students actually maintain their own football team throughout the whole program you know now with video games being internet access and stuff like that there's constant updates to them live data and and these these students are actually managing a football team and then of essentially playing you know in a big arena playing a video game against another student for competition and a yeah then I can all that mark jump in on that as well I use Madden is an example but um there are national championships for for video game play and it's very exciting and it's it is it is being widely known as

104a sport and more and more recognized and I can provide more detail in future but I'll let March up in here as well thanks the CAC is three there's three Cup games that they play one is rocket League which you may have heard of before rocket league is kind of like an online it's essentially started as a soccer game but it's like cars the teams of two or three up to five and they play against each other trying to get a ball or a puck they can rotate all the different things into a goal there's strategies and all kinds of bonus and power-ups and things like that they do and then there's these they're actually third-person they're these it's League of Legends and also a game called spite spite where you can pick your characters

105you're one of the gods you can pick from any number of different you can go Athenian gods you can go Roman gods you can go Norse gods you can pick all these different and you play in teams of five against other it is huge and that's spite and then League of Legends is a similar thing where it's a teams of five online in Marty's rcic OCAC section yep sanction events yep where there's there's a coach there's the whole thing yep and that's and we have we have demonstrated interest from our kids to come in and want to play this I've got several kids who are looking forward to trying to form a team in the next year yeah yeah like multiple teams of five assigned there'd be five kids we'd probably have 30 kids willing

106to play yep I'm happy if you'd like I'm happy to give you some full presentation all the time but you know that is that is certainly that's much condensed race isn't growing you know you watch things online you talk to you know there's you know these these there's people that go professional they're sponsored there's kids that are 18 19 years old that are playing video games 12 to 13 hours a day and making you know six figures playing video I have seen that you know so yeah that's that's the extreme end of it but here it's more it's you know teamwork and competition and yeah so it's it's something that's out there just a curiosity Steve what's sorry what's your opinion I know you like put it somewhat high and on your sort of prioritized

107list okay and no offense Eric I'm just struggling to see sort of like the athleticism component of it but I see like the strategy you know I get I I see that I guess but I just I know that question came up that's not that's the question that you got yeah it's not all of what I get so I wanted to share that with you and I want it all I don't want any child to miss out on anything but when we look at it it's how do how do we prioritize that could be just my fire my priority list I want it all I don't want to see any kid in our district not having opportunity to play what they want what they love but it's we have to figure out how do we

108do all of it you know how do we add things do we do like the ski team you look at the ski team yeah explain explain Hotel fund yeah coaches went through got their coaches certification they got their van license they drove the van to the meets and he folded and it's not interest not not due to interest due to paying a coach coach got a new job cooking got here now it's you know he did a he he had a son on his team he wanted help he wanted to try to start it I think if he was still in the same job he would have done it but not having a paid person made it made it falter not having a budget made it falter I mean listen I I can find any

109means that I can't to do anything for any team I just don't have the money for everything so I I'll go anyway you want me to go with any sport you tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it it's just like I said that wasn't the only request it was the only request to you but not their only request to me well what I before the only thing that I had asked put in the budget this year was strike two conditioning because it was the most kids and like I said you know the cross-country coach cross-country coach will be just you know that was looked at because they had 75 kids at whiskey near last year so all the other items on this list are still thinking process correct not in

110the budget their soccer at risk and year yes so they play in whiskey near and then there's nothing as a freshman but not this past year I believe we caught 12 freshman last year we caught twenty boys freshman and JV program in that's trending up just like girls lacrosse we have 52 kids signed up this year next year we're looking at close to 70 and we're gonna caught 25 30 kids and that that's gonna be sustainable I believe like I said I want all these teams but it's I can't add everything because you guys just hope yep no we can't we're trying to keep budget at a number what do I add now I'll sit down with everybody try to figure out every team how to get it and means to do it but it

111can't do it in a week give me time I'll figure it all out this was honestly really helpful just to understand like your process because this is a lot of new information that I didn't really realize when it I mean there is if you have less than a certain amount and despite the sport like gymnastics you can do let's call the team one if you have two kids they can go to another school and be that team team of one once you get over to then you can't do it what you get over for you can't co-op you have to have your own team then it becomes it goes from very low to very high budget and you assume with the team of one that there is another swc team willing to take us on

112and I don't believe out of the goodness of their heart they would take us on there's cost to that they would take the number of students and then they would proportionately divide the paying for their coach or whatever it came in transportation so there's a lot that we have to check with the insurance company I mean there's a lot that goes into this yeah I mean even at thought about say they take out kids this year they may not take a my next year or we go over to then what do we do at four or five then all of a sudden you know those kids got to do it last year but not this year I mean so realistically I there has to be some kind of plan in place where did the parents

113want to pay okay but then what happens if this happens and then what happens if this happens so we need to understand how do we get here where we want all of our teams to be without failing we don't want to see our kids fail or not have the opportunity or have the opportunity and then it's taken away correct likes it because of numbers and I have a question on the strength you said it was the most higher on your list strength conditioning is there a way to create a internship program with let's say West Wescott where the hpx majors can get some kind of coaching certification I don't know how I'm just throwing out there is there is a way to contrast A's out maybe outsource the strength and conditioning to a local gym

114or like I said maybe provides or have a local gym certified trainer work with a an intern from West Kong if they're gonna do it for free I'm all for it well let me there do it for an experience free well then again they have to get to Connecticut State coaching certification first aid CPR they have to be reliable so we're gonna take kid from Southern I got exams I'm going away I mean I'm Miguel but what other schools are doing this is what they're going to this is a thing yes okay so our coaches do it yeah why don't you explain how we utilize strengthen conditioning what it cost parents now absolutely the last couple years second our parents have paid to have their we have a trainer come in and the parents have

115paid so like the models that West and Joel Barlow and Masek have this would be year or two where the parents are funding it but then you run it to the issue of kids who can't afford it okay I go on than we earn with baseball some kids go out to other gyms to left I take the kids who need to be in there so they have a place to go and I do that because I don't want them not to lift yeah and you know I I all of our coaches don't do it and I don't I'm going to throw this out there and that's not why I'm here tonight is 18 years was the last time our coaches have got a percent and we're starting to fall to the bottom what's happening is

116and those on the go she a ting committee might know this I don't know it was a big item of discussion but the stipends for coaches are at a lower level in comparison to the neighboring districts and things so it's getting harder and harder to attract coaches to our jobs and the strength and conditioning coach was something that we've had previously been requested but it's been cut it was cotton question yeah we tabled it last year so it's like I said I want all this I do I know you and you guys want a male we want all of our kids to have every opportunity but we have to come up with a plan I mean looking at you know 10 9 10 things you know what's the plan and I'll sit down with anybody

117who wants to help me with the plan I'll figure it out yeah well in the thing is seat Steve's right there and the timing of when we talked recently at one of our retreats with a strategic plan we you know talked about the profile of a graduate and we had a lot of work we knew ahead of us one of the exercises at administrative council we're going to go through in January is each of the department heads are going to be working on kind of a three to five-year visioning of their particular department because this will dovetail nicely with some spring work we'll do as a board at a higher level in terms of what we're looking for for the learning experiences for our kids and develop you know revitalizing the strategic plan [Music] then

118it's like it's like I said it's we need to look at how many kids does it affect in and what is the is it sustainable what like like I look at freshman girls lacrosse our numbers are huge in lacrosse on the town right now huge so I we know we need that otherwise we start losing kids eSports and Steve let's just and girls lacrosse for a second you also know that we're talking with the youth lacrosse folks that there's a pipeline of kids coming through historically your argument on sustainability yeah so in like interest which elastics I'm trying to find out what maybe do a survey at the younger younger levels where are the kids going to the gyms now I it's not like like lacrosse soccer we have those programs in town I know

119what we're going it's easy to reach out with the people I work with already to find out what's going on we need to know that you know the numbers like it with gymnastics also to is we have to find the gym say it would be awesome if we got ten kids we know we're going to have a team but where do we put it all these surrounding towns have wrestling rooms were within the wrestling rooms they have dance and cheer practice we don't have that right now it's very limited space for what we have and then where do we put the gymnastics equipment so now we have to go and find out what gym could we use can we use it long-term as our coach able to get there what's the cost was the insurance

120you know this is a much bigger undertaking than it appears so I mean that's just it's like I said we have to find out you know what the trends are and how many we're gonna go and you know a big concern that you raises this whole issue of equity - so I mean that shocking how much those hockey parents have to pay yes yeah and to say that that's a high school team but yet we charged like private school tuition and we haven't it's like I said the one parent one parent we have her second son's coming through has paid $16,000 for him to play here both of her sons to play here and that doesn't include the $500 skates the 50 sticks they had to buy you know it's we want to start new

121things and do everything for everybody but how is that fair to them that's that's why that's number one on my list and that's been sustained over yeah is every sport paid a player just now talking not just talking white four years ago we took away pay to participate hockey is one of the few sports where I'll use the term acceptable in the state with either leave a solo high school team or a co-op program because of numbers that the hockey players pay it costs so much to rent the ice time and you know I know dr. Brill son plays in blender sup play so you know that they know the cost of up I mean just for swimming we pay twenty twenty-five thousand dollars to the YMCA every year twelve thousand five hundred per season

122for girls and boys so I just so it's not pay to play for swimming No is it because that hockey is just that much more expensive way more do we pay some of hockey or we just don't pay anything we pay transportation for hockey okay how many students are on the hockey team we have six six like how many kids would be on the swim team I approximate roughly boys have 30 girls how about 25 we're gonna say I was gonna say we co-op with Danbury and Bethel karate is is the de coach hired by Dan Mary and Beth look gives money and they still have to pay on top of that so the parents are paying to Danbury yes nothingjust and the Danbury kids pay and yeah everybody every kid pays the same they're

123also that whole programs paying correct every kid from each school pays the same so you brookfield couldn't act on its own oh no well we could we could pay for for our kids but we would pay into the organization hey so no I understand that yeah other parents on the other the communities are paying themselves and Brookville is paying it would become a major issue maybe they were moving here we'd have more hockey players so we have our own team yes that's all not the parents know that belt Oh make this Bethel pays a fee towards ice time but every kid still pays $2,000 they can all three times so that's tells you how much battle not pay to play I thought Bethel was pay to play I'm sorry his Bethel pay to play for

124all their sports I don't know I was I was on oppression what they were so like I think hockey players only paid like $200 so I'm like I put every sport word also he paid it was like two hours that's not the impression I have this is just a quick band-aid but is it possible for the youth programs to pay for the coaches or there's no way around that is there a way to account about that we have a policy on accepting donations but then you would have sustainability come into question that also you know I know boys youth lacrosse has approached about asking about recently about paying for another assistant I think that you know what we have to look at is for each request what are the options so if paying to play

125for hockey is an option for those families then would paying to play be an option for some of the other sports I didn't see why not like I said whatever way we can find to help the kid and I think that goes back to the to the the process which we have up on that last slide which is the three-year sustainability kind of piece and having it be self funded would be by parents to make sure that we can get the interest up and go in that direction I mean it's an idea and it seems to be working in some other districts so we could certainly adopt that model to that point even though philosophically I don't think any of us like pay to play four or five years ago we made sure that was

126one of the first that was one of my first acts was to work with the board at the time and eliminate that but for some people who might be doing that particular sport privately paying to participate within the district for part of the year might still be less than whatever they're doing now so you know I think Debbie I can tell you as a parent of a hockey player that who is on a high school co-op team not our team certainly paying for the coop team is probably 80% less than I was paying for travel so I welcome the high school opportunity it was it was a nice positive to the budget I can tell you that so I understand exactly where you're coming from so it's at that point parents probably wouldn't mind self

127funding to wait where you're going understood with the the goal obviously being that we can ultimately take it on our side a lot of the users would just be sort of transportation costs right it's some other programs well all the things like you said space well if you go I'll go to just go through quickly like hockey team that that's included in their psychic conditioning that's just a coach girls girls freshmen girls lacrosse that would be transportation coach umpire are officials I don't wanna wouldn't need equipment and an equipment I would ask youth lacrosse eSports I'm still looking into that I'm pretty sure that our are a lot of times our devices the kids have would be good enough to use but I'm not positive freshman boys soccer transportation officials coach uniforms would matriculate down

128gymnastics would be gym space travel coach uniforms would probably be treated like dance and swim they would buy their own because you can't use those for anybody else ski team was 311 dollars per athlete last year plus transportation boys volleyball would be we don't need equipment because they were just use the girls that we already have uniforms transportation and officials coach Coach coach a space that's in the spring yeah different there were okay and then middle school volleyball actually would be kind of pricey because it would have to buy a system for the gym which is about five six thousand dollars uniforms coach transportation and officials so III have break down some of estimated what everything would be at which I can share with you at any time I think they could be what system

129is needed for the middle school volleyball system is or its I call it it's called the volley but it's got to go into the flora Co the actual you gotta put the sleeves in the floor and in my honestly I've had a lot of inquiry on that I don't know how many teams in the state have it that's kind of why I have it that low cuz I don't know the feasibility of that for us to be honest need kids to you need other teams to play yeah yeah oh there's densive amount in the area yeah essentially went over the line New York girls voice is growing pretty quickly to just just ten years ago was non-existent in this area and now I see it over and over again yep I'm innocent Richfield bent like

130state champions multiple times recently they obviously are finding competition yeah what I was talking about middle school girls not boys yeah boys boys we won't have a problem yeah that's a legal test WC sports all girls we'd be all cut and so you didn't request the strength and conditioning coach for this or for the next this budget I I did I did yes Desmond's yeah it's not investment it was taken out before it got to 40 oh so it's not okay so but let's please feel free to email me at any time any questions if you have any suggestions ideas please share them like I said we're all here for the kids and whatever we can do to get everyone in these sports calling would be great thank you thank you Steve thank you that's

131good information thank you Steve okay do we have any other budgetary questions on line five seven three three Oh furniture and fixtures the question was well it's an almost an 84 percent increase so the question was is that due to the increased section in Central School and the answer was yes so this might be kind of a silly question but we're increasing a section we're adding a section but we're not like adding a room to the building that didn't exist before right so at one point we had 10 sections per grade level or whatever so where did the furniture and fixtures go that we used before when we had more classes per grade level when and now we're you know that's a good question how does to go somewhere yeah most of the furniture in

132huckleberry and in center school is quite old and when we've put stuff into storage and then we use that to replace as broken furniture breaks in subsequent years instead of buying new furniture and I asked the same question of principal abhrush I know at huckleberry what she plans on doing with the vacated classroom and the the answer is they're going to use the furniture from that classroom to replace furniture that needs to be replaced in other classrooms within that building so we don't have to go so we don't have a new furniture we don't really don't have a supply of furniture that we can use they're used for different different purposes right now there's no they might be used for you know the comedies and things like that used as a resource room that doesn't

133have desk might have some tables that understand thing like that but not 20 chairs and desks are okay things break and then the broken you go get the new one out of storage so Deb are you suggesting are there any desks that we can use yeah I don't know it just seems like a lot of money it seems like a big increase for adding its 84 percent but with Sanford over $15,000 $15,000 yeah yeah I mean 84 percent is a large increase because it's not that large of a budget yeah in the first place our line that's why we keep that furniture of lying down so we really don't besmirch her because we use whatever extra furniture we have so we don't have to spend the money and if we have new furniture I'm assuming

134it beats some cool stuff that we could move over to the new school to be hopefully whatever $50,000 combined what happened Alex can buy a new but relatively inexpensive per unit got Mary Rose supplied a very detailed list and what she would need okay so just to add on to that I always have my eye out for things that we need and if you go the high school I really Drive Marc secretary crazy because every time I go in there I'll say oh look at that chair nobody is using it what is that for and she says don't touch the chair but you know we poke we poke around in buildings before like we needed to buy some desks and chairs for adults and you know we you know shorted crews and dumpsters we look

135through rooms and if somebody isn't sitting down we could take their chair and throw it in our car literally we do that to go through taking furniture from one place to another we did that with our special education clerks oh yeah you should see their equipment it's beautiful but it's usable and we didn't have to buy snow stocking we even bought rust-oleum to make the rust not show decent you just painted on at night but it always breathing no we just bought that out of our own money and we did it at night you know so people wouldn't it's no way we'd do creative things okay any other budget questions put this to rest tonight okay we've got work to do so we can move on to the new school building project so we've had

136a couple of meetings in the within the last week actually and so the biggest sort of happenings with that project right now are that originally the schematic design phase was supposed to end mid-december tacked on is has taken a bit longer to finish up that phase trying to incorporate all the ideas from the public forums but also we had an increase in our enrollment as you know post bond so the design has changed a little bit so at the last public forum we had talked about because this enrollment adding 10 classrooms to each grade level that changed the square footage the envelope and it started to sort of encroach on some of those really vital shared spaces like the gym and cafeteria and everything so the design I'll pass this around I'll just show you

137me so I could pass it that way what you'll see on the first floor is sort of like a dashed outline most of the wings kindergarten will keep at ten classrooms but the other wings will have mostly nine classrooms we wouldn't be able to get ten essentially but we do have optional spaces for future builds for those additional classrooms yep that one and that one here so I can pass them in this way so you can see what I'm talking about it's those spaces so you see about half the wings have ten classrooms and the other half have nine and so that swing space depending on so we don't we what we don't want to do with the constraints of working with the state square footage reimbursement and those kind of things the MBC working

138directly with Tecton thought it was a little bit more of a creative way to look at our projections and when we need ten classrooms will have them integrate and if the next year that particular grade doesn't need ten classrooms that leaves an open classroom and then the lower or the grade ahead can come and use that as the extra swing space I mean that's really the concept behind it so rather than adding we have we had sixth grade so adding 12 classrooms to the eighth per wing sixth grades in total we're essentially adding about six yeah so overall we're still if you consider it from the original design we're still up I think five classrooms yeah so we still have more classrooms than we had originally thought of but the only way sort of to

139get there was to either reduce scope or increase budget so I think this is sort of you know the best well and it works with our projections if that's the case that was gonna be my question to the class site would we still with this classroom configuration as we have the projections today will have to be flexible on a certain class yeah but with the structure we fits the projections within the class size guidelines oh yeah we kept everything you know we'd use the 18 to 20 rule on those classrooms I understand but you had total enrollments by grade over 20 years if I remember um long long outlook yeah it was a tenure if you simulated them that's what we said me to keep up with and every year we keep within the class

140size and the other thing that that Rose was talking about that was the dotted lines was a really interesting ideas while you're building a new school one of the most expensive things when we talked about originally that we would have areas off the wings where we could add classrooms should we need them in the future to make it easier to add classrooms one of the proposals in the design development is to while we're digging up the site excavating the site that's the proper word we building in on a couple of the wings in the back foundation or new classrooms and that's not just for one it would be the foundation for the stackable so you would have to I think that's really a great move because that's then it's built you're not disturbing and then

141you're not dragging excavation equipment back there and everything else which is quite expensive as well as disruptive and then you could just start with a build and it would be a lot less expensive so built in build the foundation work into the cost now and then we really have a sudden spike or we know a gradual spike coming we can accommodate that it's the dotted line space the dotted lines are those where we put foundations over crackers yep it does not know yep because if you I don't know if you got a chance to see it but they're all there on the end of each neighborhood so it would really sort of be like in addition to as of the last public forum we had those as actual classrooms sort of in the schematic that's

142what we essentially had to lose so what's the schedule of their own now um probably mid-january and schematic design once that is will get the final approval and before it goes any further into design development so we still do have to approve that in January so what would happen there is one of the thoughts that our executive team meeting was having maybe utilizing one of our board of education meetings where we could invite the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance or vice versa of one of their meetings and they can invite the Board of Ed to hear one presentation from tacked on to all three boards because all three boards need to approve the design including the MVC obviously so getting us all together as one community team to hear the same presentation ask

143the questions and that kind of thing and have not only Tecton there but our folks from the NBC who are focused on this project at this point along with us what well we're thinking by the end of January so maybe our second meeting in January we would be able to make that decision approving that the only the only issue with that is that I think the MVC meets the night before we do so it would be at our second meeting of the month but that's also when we will maybe adopt the budget if we don't have a special meeting for that so it could be a hefty sort of heavy meeting it's gonna be a next busy next coat you know we know that with the budget anyway there's a lot on our plate my

144observation is that once we get into February the Board of Selectmen is very busy on the budget themselves it eases for us a little bit but we'll have the big group meeting that we have and by the time we get into March the Board of Finance is just up to their wazoo and in meetings so we just have to we ought to be proactive on selecting the meeting time and I would suggest a special meeting okay all right and not try to do that and budget meeting at excellence because it'll be a special meeting for the other two boards any chance make it special for all could be a very special evening together it'll be a very special Rosa can I add the other really good news I know I emailed the it's important for

145the public so a big part of a project like this is state reimbursement and we had anticipated a net of about fourteen point eight to fifteen million dollar reimbursement the state has looked at their calculations in looking at our plan thus far and what's eligible for reimbursement what's not eligible and they publicized the figure of sixteen point seven million dollars in reimbursement for us so we're in a really good position what that doesn't necessarily mean is that we could spend more money on the project that isn't what it means so everybody needs to know they'd be premature to go in that direction and it also would be premature to say oh well John it's it's almost two million dollars more so that in in reimbursement so could we bond almost two million dollars less again

146premature we have to let this play out the state as we see through our own local process with two thousand six hundred and fifty students the level of bureaucracy we have to work with when you're working with the state and millions and millions of dollars and a major construction project there's a lot of bureaucracy there's a lot of time but we're in an incredible position to be very candid with everybody here and it's just exciting because there's a lot of effort to get to this point and to be at a point where by the end of January we are likely voting all together as a community on what this school is gonna really start to come together and look like I mean talk about a labor of love who's been working on this quite a

147long time well could I ask a couple of questions I think I know the answer so they may be leading questions but where is that 16.7 in the approval process the formal approval process happens during the legislative budget process in the spring so while we are it's a publicized were a prime priority a it's approved by the office of school construction sexually gotten through the office of those guys and they've made a recommendation to the governor they made a recommendation to the governor I left that out thank you Bob Thank You great and when where are we ranked on that list I'm right at the top so there you go all right I thought those questions the answer those were when I saw that letter and I said not only are we approved by the

148staff to write what to make a recommendation to the governor not only is the dollar amount of reimbursement higher than we had recommended that we had anticipated and we were on number one on the list for the state and they went through I want to say they were 1015 projects yes not list yes and I think a four or five new school projects oh yeah and we were number one of yeah new school project right so that's that was great to see yes very good news thanks for asking thought I knew the answer so any other questions on the new school project okay so that just leaves us with three main points right so we started doing three main points last year as sort of a way to our minutes are publicized but they often

149don't they leave out a lot of the juicy details so we started doing through main points as we collectively sort of decide what were the three main takeaways of our meeting where we can embellish a little bit on the detail and you know sort of inform the public on you know what's really going on and I think to give Rosa Bob and Deb credit that came out of the policy and communications subcommittee which Mike and Amy are on we didn't even talk about that tonight at our meeting before this may be perfect yes exactly and they say go to a minute 16 whatever and they can just watch that discussion of yourself that's good well I want to put policy number 32 [Laughter] [Music] so if you have any ideas Mike and Amy you can

150feel free to shout them out yeah that's a big deal what I think it's worthy other than those pens of everybody wants I mean interesting because the the budget is the big thing we talked about timewise but it's a step in the process I actually think the athletic reason stood out do you want to mention the update on the superintendent's update on the number of snow days that the last day of school is currently jalisa calendar and that the calendar for next year has been approved yeah that's a nice combination yeah that's a good idea sounds good didn't-didn't go from a Friday till Monday well no because Christmas Eve is aa year next year the current year current year with Christmas Eve on Tuesday the 24th the 23rd we didn't change that that was already

151off last year decided for this year was already off so this Friday the 20th is a full day of school okay yeah yeah so let's loop all the counter stuff and let a presentati0n smudger 23rd through Wednesday January 1st Center elementary school has a community meeting and the holiday winter pajama day this Friday December 20th huckleberry hill has student council spirit day pajama day this Friday December 20th also and the next PTO meeting is Friday January 3rd at 9:30 oh these events are from December 19th January 8th whiskey near has the middle of a leadership concert conference at Sacred Heart for seventh and eighth grade members of student council and peer counseling that's Friday January 3rd and the winter chorus concert is Thursday January 9th 7 o'clock at the high school auditorium and for Brookfield

152High School the band and winter chorus concert is tomorrow Thursday 19th in the auditorium at 7 o'clock that's rescheduled from last yesterday due to the weather and also this Thursday morning is coffee with principal Belinda from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and there's a grad party meeting on Monday January 6th in the cafeteria at 7 p.m. that's it thank you do you have to say one thing that whiskey near did have a pajama day and I saw mr. Renda in an abominable snowman onesie and I've been changed in a deep and profound 'we see that you cannot unsee that debbie how come that wasn't on instagram it's on my twitter check out check your Twitter it's there all right is there anything else all right so wish everybody a happy and safe holiday break and we

153will see you in the new year thank you all right without objection meeting adjourned thank you [Music]