Board of Education Meeting

001[Music] good evening tonight is Wednesday August 15th 2018 I'd like to call the regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order if we could all please rise with Pledge of Allegiance [Music] can we have six of our seven board members here this evening Debbie was called away for our family emergency the first thing on our agenda is public comment we have no one signed up is there anyone in the here in the public that would like to speak okay moving on we have written correspondence so we have two articles that were shared from Ron Jaffe thank you all right next we have approval of Board minutes recommend a motion that the board approve the minutes listed below is recommended regular meeting on 718 any discussion questions okay all in favor aye aye opposed

002moving on superintendent sir quick dr. Brooke Thank You mrs. Thurman it has been a fantastic summer very productive very busy and exciting for all of us with a lot accomplished through our consent agenda and new business tonight we'll get into many of those things that we've been working on this summer however in my report I just wanted to do some brief updating our Parent Portal in PowerSchool which is our student management platform has opened so students know their teachers if they're in the elementary school they have their schedules if they're in secondary schools and they're all calling each other and comparing notes so all that's going on for those folks watching at home and for board members just so you know if you hear from anybody that says they aren't able to get into PowerSchool

003we started this last year it's critical for our seamless transition with data with the State Department of Education that we make sure and for safety that all of our records are kept and so to access parents need to update all of their information cell phones email health records etc so we have them go through that exercise and they've been asked over the last two months to make sure they do that if they haven't done that then their access is they can't get in and see and so the motivation is come on over to the school we'll give you the schedule or the teacher assignment and please go through it will set you up on a computer and you could go through the portal and update everything that that needs updating so we had accurate information

004so we won't even tell them the their teacher until they come back and they had to update their and we wanted to update their information so you won't tell on their teacher well I don't I mean the print typically that doesn't happen but the principals have they come to the next day and they get everything all their information okay yeah and it worked out we were able to update our information last year and we asked people I mean for the last two months we've been sending communications home to ask people to update their father of course I but parent hasn't filled out the paperwork and they agreed to come in and do it we should tell them of their kids teacher so that may be the case I mean I'm not on the other end

005of the phone oh okay then it's not the case in that situation so that spirit portals open in terms of projects going on this summer we have an incredible project going on directly under the auspices of the partisan Rec Department when the light poles were damaged in the may 15th storm they were rendered you never think of the work event condemned I don't know why that evades me all the time they have a rendered condemned and it was one that actually came down so they were removed immediately for safety purposes insurance covered and then the Board of Finance supplemented the remainder of funds to ensure that the light poles would be installed and we have just started this week and the brand-new four brand-new light poles 80 feet tall LED bulbs beautiful will be will

006be installed hopefully over the next two to three weeks and it should be ready before the first evening games so we're really excited about that an important note on the lights is we had done a light studies for safety and you can't play with the way our lights had deteriorated over the years and and the new standards we couldn't play small ball on the field at night small ball we talked about lacrosse and things like that or even soccer you know and field hockey because it was unsafe for the goalies the way things were played at the ends of the field so now we're gonna be able to do that Plus tournaments and everything else so we're really excited thankful to the board finance and thankful for parson Rex leadership along with our facilities director

007can you imagine that you can catch some more passes the other piece is with that we also have new soccer goals field hockey goals and the goal posts for football well everything's kind of a combination those were replaced because they were damaged in the storm as well and so insurance covered that the water project there's plumbing and some engineering pieces that have to finish here at the high school but that should be finished up in the next week or so same thing with paving project at we seen here the sidewalks are done in the front with senior and the whole circles being redone and I think another layer of asphalt and then the striping and it should be completed and the the roof project which that was seen here there was some damage up on

008the roof about 10,000 square feet insurance covered that as well on that project that's underway and I know you'll be talking probably a little bit about this in facilities but these are big news items I'm sorry that people are interested in yeah it's really really great stuff I want to turn over the end of the year fiscal fiscal year 1718 - can you just review for us then we're ending thank you early on in the fiscal year I realized that we were gonna be over budget in special education solution professional services and transportation and at that very same time last summer we were faced with the uncertainty of the state funding so for those reasons we implemented a spending freeze and continue to closely monitor all our expenses in the winter when it became apparent

009that the savings from the spending freeze would not be enough to offset the over-budget condition in special education that the Board of Education requested a supplemental appropriation from the town the boards of Finance and selectmen agreed to provide a revenue transfer before seventy thousand five hundred dollars to the Board of Education the revenue transfer savings from the spending freeze and additional staffing Sage's offset the projected overage as we neared the end of the fiscal year I reported to the Finance Committee that I estimate we would end the year between twenty-five thousand and fifty thousand dollars under budget since it is not uncommon to get fiscal financial surprises at the end of the year I was being quite conservative in my estimate fortunately we did not have any negative in fact we received some positive surprises

010including a $33,000 refund from our school for a module that we thought that we found on satisfactory and refunded for and larger than expected savings from the spending freeze and savings and electricity and use of absence so as we finished closing out the year it appears that we will end a year under budget I actually buy a little over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars so while I'm comfortable reporting this to you please keep in mind that we are still in the process of finishing up our reconciliations of the town and our records have not yet been audited the order will not begin until January but I'm comfortable that we will be under budget this year thank you any questions sorry John no no please okay Thank You Cathy well I'll just add that that's

011a Finance Committee we had a chance to also since the time with Kent on this it goes law and line by line detail so what was on Dragon Ball the solver it was very well done so thank you Ken you're welcome okay so I wanted to the one of the last items is enrollment just to let everybody know that our projections for kindergarten and first grade especially the kindergarten that's always we're not always exactly sure we do the best we can with with during the spring figuring out how many kids are going to come through registration we plan for 149 kindergarteners with eight sections and we actually have right now that this can change 151 so our average class size is 8.9 or you know 19 and that is actually our target in kindergarten so

012we're in good shape there would remain in range for the for the other grade levels as well in the range so we're right now two weeks from the start of school in good shape and then the final thing I wanted to just I'm sorry jack I go back to be as your overall enrollment yes yes and how do those compared to the Milan macaron study that just came out their update pretty question so we have let's see here just make sure we have two thousand five hundred ninety nine right now okay move along to make Bruns projection is 2608 so the difference of nine now melona mcbroom the one thing I haven't gotten clarity on is are they including in there the students to show the nor our place right now we have 30 children

013who are out placed so if you do 2005 99 plus 30 we're looking at 2629 so melow Newman would have been under you know a little over time okay okay and again Maloney McBroom is using the October 2017 formal consensus data that we have to report to the state I know in the spring we were going back and forth as we were making our projections what we have right now in February in March and April because there's a lot of you know I think will be interesting to see our October 1 report this year really look back and see we remember yeah absolutely thank you thank you and then final thing I wanted to just introduce we have a special guest here in the audience tonight Marsha Marian our new town controllers here and I

014just wanted to make a face introduce her to the board and to the folks at home I don't know if she'll end up on TV or not but Marsha our new controller and it's been an absolute pleasure working with with Marsha just in the first month here and we wish her the best and and thanks for all the help already greatly appreciate it thank you thank you for joining us this evening welcome Marsha and that's all I have things next we have subcommittee reports first we have the finance subcommittee all right so we met on August 2nd and and much like many of the other committees that July and August are not normal committee meeting months given all the summer vacations and the like it's always hard to coordinate so but we had special meeting

015of the Finance Committee because Ken wanted to share with us where where we were landing on the fans so we spent an hour ago that detail and I'm not going to repeat what can't just walk us through so thank you and very well discussed the important thing coming out of that for us as a board is we're gonna open discussions with a Board of Finance if the numbers land about creating an on lots of fund and we asked dr. Brill to meet with his cabinet about what would be the priorities on that use of that fund would it be used to offset some of the budget cuts that we've already had this year we had some capital items that were cut you know what what are the things that we might want to talk to

016the Board of Finance about when we have that discussion and we haven't seen that back prior to the probably revised list but it will be coming shortly so we'll feed that discussion we have some time here so other than that we had a small discussion on Medicaid this year Medicaid if you remember we had planned for Medicaid reimbursements of about 50k this year and 100k for next year but the take-up on submitting those and was extraordinarily low and can remind me it was like 5k or something five for this year for this year instead of 50 and so it was a pretty healthy negative exposure when we were went through the financials and so we've talked a doctor so Paul and Ken about how do we talk to the parents and given the constraints we

017have in this small program to try and get take the issue is that parents need to give consent to be able to file and sometimes it's a it's it's $100,000 in the self coming to your budget so that's big enough for us to be worried about so so it's an initiative that would kicked off out out of that meeting and other than that we had a brief discussion on the Pomona lawsuit and invested that I thought that had been delayed but we've all seen that in the press already so and that's it thank you any questions moving on to strategic facilities okay um at our last meeting Texan associates came with another plan that we had asked them to look at we had all agreed on option C at the meeting before hand this past

018meeting we looked at something called option C 2 and we all felt that it was not in the best interests of Brookfield so checked in presented us we have a combination of everything as the committee directed them to of our wishes our likes our desires and it was all based upon our community forums and the surveys we got back the feedback from them and then we had a good healthy discussion about we are we wanted the town to go what we wanted to look at what we wanted for the children for our educators and they were actually able to provide us tonight with something called option C prime and later on in the meeting we are going to be presenting that and I'm going to with the board's permission I am going to give a

019quick report before Jeff was in ski from Tecton takes over to give that presentation so I encourage you to all watch the presentation I believe that you got it in an email beforehand so you had plenty you know time to look at it and digest it and you know estimate healthy questions because this is a big decision this has been talked about for 20 years in our town and the past 13 months this committee has worked so hard and so well together that I'm proud to announce tonight we have our work done to present to the Board of Education for your questions and a possible vote so that's coming up so don't turn your TV's off but before I give over the mic I'm also the chair on the building and facilities and I was

020hoping that Joe I could tell us and spread some wonderful things that she has been doing a huckleberry for our students some of it of the past weeks and moms and three hazel of our high school students I'm working very hard to paint inspirational and powerful messages around the school go Barry we're almost done with nine completed URLs for from a portage each of the floors one being this arrow close like sprayer kind of like Betty crying it's been a really great experience our you know I'm really looking at kids'll come back with an excited feeling dizzy I think about start on the air it will encourage kindness and promote just a great morale school and huge change in beginnings that were open internal and actually a lot of the teachers have been wonderful and

021I've been really embracing it and I'm giving us great feedback so much so that they asked us to do their bathroom that we are working on and we just say relax refresh renew and we're decorating the mirror and we're gonna put a couple more coats it's not a teacher you're an educational rockstar we'll do that one so we want them to feel valued as well and be able to come in you know the building has kind of a not a great reputation so we are hoping to breathe life back into huckleberry so I want to thank you know dr. Burrell and Miss Liberty Anna for letting us kind of take this on and cons we sprung it on last minute but we're glad we were able to really push it forward and get it going

022and Sherman Williams was nice enough to donate all the paint and a lot of the supplies so that was great so it really didn't cost much at all they thank you a beulas and this is something that joy spearheaded with a group of parents that she knows on her own and so for all of us fiscally responsible people this cost of taxpayers zero dollars and thank you joy so much can we get some pictures of some of those males posted on the Brookfield school's Facebook yes I did some of them put them up at Joy's going to be going around or someone from the team is going to go around and do some final pictures of the century let's get him over to us thank you great guys thank you any questions for Eve or

023joy moving on um security task force report the security task force meant actually just yesterday if you remember during our first meeting or our first meeting collectively as the full group we had miss Dorinda from whisky near calm and we kind of asked him questions in regards to security and safety protocols and procedures yesterday we had the principal's from the high school the center school and huckleberry and we did the same thing I think we are getting better at asking the appropriate questions and the procedures because it went very well and the task force has enough information now I believe that next time we get together we'll be able to formulate a little bit about what our needs are and where we need to go as far as improving security or revamping security protocols we

024will be also talking with Dan Caldwell next time as well to just kind of give his idea and impact perspective as far as the security and safety I'm on that committee and I will just say I'm very impressed with our building leadership and their their knowledge and their honest response protocols we ought to all be very proud of the teams and what goes on in our schools if there was ever a threat or a danger it's not just threats its dangers and you know it's you know what would happen if what was the term that the police chief yes the dance of the imaginary imaginary portables that's what you tend to do in those meetings you know you you come up with these crazy scenarios you know what the protocols dealt with every single one

025of them and and it was great and the police are very tightly connected with our leadership they really aren't and I was very not been very impressed so far other than that board retreat report that I think that was just a placeholder right before this meeting the board met in what we hope to be an annual retreat just as a self-evaluation it was meant to be self-evaluation and goals we spent the entire time doing self-evaluation which was an executive session so we will be meeting again publicly and we'll post that at a time just to discuss our year goals going forward with that okay so drop this next we have the consent agenda recommend a motion of the board approved the items on the consent agenda as recommended new hires and resignations any questions as

026usual during the August meeting we have a large list of new hires how many how many people there's a little less to or is this the total horde we have already had from July and then we have some hires that were still processing so those will be formally on the new staff members doing well we're looking at about 20 20 well 20 okay after what we have a chance to meet from oh yes typically we'd like to have the September meeting where we bring everybody here to introduce them and they'll be introduced also and you know some of the principals depending on how they like to introduce them give a little embarrassment a little fun and welcome their convocation on the 27th in the morning so we'll have some problem but we really brought in

027if I if I may you know I have to thank the HR department Terry and Beth and Michelle are just you know or benefits person as Michelle and we know Terry Cavanagh is our HR specialist they have just processed you know the not only when people retire or resign there's a lot of guidance and mentorship provided during these transitions in people's lives and then of course onboarding our new people we do three days of onboarding of our new people beginning this year will be on August 22nd 23rd and 24th before the rest of the teaching staff comes in and it's not all teachers it's lots of substitute teachers that get processed in the summer as well some paraprofessionals we have some exchanges there our part-time occupational therapists we've hired so it's not just faculty there's

028you know all kinds of employees so it's it's a big job big responsibility and we're really pleased with the people we're bringing on just so everybody knows is there's a statewide shortage in the following areas special education teachers speech language teachers Spanish teachers and English language learners are outstanding positions in some areas that we're still looking in the interview process of special education speech and language and Spanish so you know when there's there's openings in all the communities and so teachers are looking at their ideal positions where they can be closest to home and so forth and you know what they think might be the best fit for them and so if there's an opening in one area and they already have a job there they're moving around we're all we were talking about that

029at the commissioners back-to-school convocation today in Hartford with my superintendent colleagues and we're seeing we're all seeing the same issues so that's an area we need to we need to fill in quickly and we're working on that [Music] all in favor I'm opposed okay moving on to new business we have textbook approval recommend a motion that the board approved the following textbook for both filled high school ap physics as recommended by the Cape subcommittee college physics author Raymond and a serwe Chris vo 11th edition pronounce that better than I could I was as we went through that thank you for having me come and present this uh this textbook for AP physics and I think it's important just to give a little background about AP courses and how that works at a school in high

030school so basically when we have an AP course we're gonna run here at the high school there's a couple things that have to happen number one we have teacher has to be trained they have to go specific training usually it occurs at apt over like a three-day period we send our teachers there to be trained specifically in the techniques and skills required to teach that AP course at that college level those AP teachers then also have to submit a syllabus that has to be approved by the College Board so it's not approved by me the College Board actually reviews the syllabus that the teachers are going to use and then they approve it so what we've done here and we've had a textbook that we've been using I think was 2004 was the publishing date

031when ap physics was around back then and has continued to evolve since then it was more of a calculus based program since then College Board has made some changes in 2015 they made the change to a more algebra based program so that students and they split it to physics one and physics two so that more students could have access to it and that was a real conscious decision made on behalf of the College Board to allow more students to come in and participate and experience a high level course in physics our book was in 2004 so as a resource nothing really it didn't the line all that well the teacher was struggling coming up with ideas and how to use resources they were there certainly but the course sequence didn't follow is naturally cows board

032is really clear they don't really vet textbooks because that would be kind of a conflict of interest as you can imagine so they do contract out with a program called learning list that does this kind of reviews of textbooks they don't recommend they just review textbooks that say things that could possibly align with AP college of AP curriculum and since there's a pretty static curriculum and teachers have to align their syllabus to that it's a pretty Universal approach across the country so there's only two or three four books that really are gonna align really well to what we need to do for our college physics one and two for AP so our physics teacher physics teachers because we actually have two physics teachers now we have a second teacher is also certified in physics thank

033you to the board for that hire that allows us to bring somebody else in so that's great and so reviewed the curriculum with a alignment syllabus took a look at the the resources and the books are pretty close there's a couple options there's there is an online completely open source textbook which was an interesting perspective what we really kind of felt that we wanted to go with more of a print version there was one that was called Wiley's plus comprehensive advanced high school physics another one we looked at that was college physics from Pearson was called the strategic approach they're very similar textbooks because again they're aligned to what the College Board has said they have to do the reason I bring this book to you before you is a couple reasons number one well

034the price is great quite honestly the price is right is where it needs to be within that price we're also going to get some really great things we get a a workbook that goes along with it so not only do you have the book here and I'll pass around so you can see it [Music] so not only do you get the the textbook and the workbook that goes along with it that's called the road to the five that's gonna support all the resources that are in the actual book you're also going to get students get online access for free as well so that's the teacher can actually use a program called WebAssign to give interactive online assignments as well so now we're hitting multiple modalities kids have a workbook we have online versions there's a

035lot of different ways that kids can get practice to help us improve our AP scores one of the other pieces was that it also has a free PD that comes along with it so now we're not just buying a resource and throwing a teacher out and say okay figure out how to use this well she certainly could do that it's also nice to have somebody to connect with to say okay how can I best utilize this textbook the other piece is is that this textbook doesn't just align to the physics one it aligns to physics one and physics two so when we move to get more enrollment and increase our physics numbers to physics 2 we can also have the opportunity to use that same book we're not purchasing a new textbook for that but

036with the digital there's a lot of flexibility you know I see with a digital version of the textbook online as well as a print I see a lot of flexibility for us as our enrollment numbers increase that don't require us to continue coming back to the board and sang need to buy more textbooks need to buy more of these we can I can see using one set for physics one I can see using an online set for physics 2 there's certainly ways that we can look at doing this as we expand the program and this one one of the other great features about this particular book is at the end of each chapter there is a structured AP practice right that mimics exactly what the test is and none of the books that we looked

037at have those options so this is why we brought this book forward to you for approval and here to answer any questions that I could have answer for you any questions for mr. so so how many kids are sign up for the traditionally right now it the numbers that varied I have the numbers right now for what we had but we were looking to purchase I believe it was 34 books right in general we're gonna have anywhere between 15 to 20 kids on average usually 15 kids that end up taking AP Physics is where we're looking so we have that cushion so we can use it but as we expanded physics two and have two sections you can run it concurrently we're not worrying about running around handing books back and forth ap physics has

038we've seen some not-so-great results quite honestly and you know I've had conversations with the former science department chair as well as a few of the teachers in the department it's hard to really pinpoint what that might be I'm not gonna say it's because the curriculum works because the textbook I can't say that this is gonna be a cure-all to improve those scores but certainly the alignment and the resources that we now have will better structure the learning experiences for kids so that you know we're hoping to see that and I'll be talking later on in September when I come back we share on our plans for goals and things like that we'll talk specifically I'll talk about AP courses I pull over all to share with the board some of the things that I've shared

039it them last year and some of the things we're looking to improve to continue on this year [Music] I'm the science and math bag I will go through that book whoa I love the weighing the fish in the elevator that's what I turn to the first time bungee jumping married ecology the physics of bungee jumping any questions okay all in favor aye aye opposed thank you very much for the yeah look sensational hey so now we have the VHS last program presentation recommended action that the board to receive our presentation on the proposed VHS blast program as recommended by the Cape subcommittee fancy seeing you here [Music] thank you dr. Pro I have to die also to comment on these microphones these are amazing now I can hear you you can hear me I mean

040there really is an upgrade it's it's quite amazing I can tell I know when it's on I don't have to push the button repeatedly so I really do appreciate that um you know thank you to the board for allowing me to come over tonight and talk a little bit about some conversations that I've been having with mister Stane George who's here tonight will also come up and talk a little bit more about one of our proposals to restructure the marching band program at the high school I want to take a few minutes we created some slides that we'll walk through to really kind of put people on the same page we understand a little bit of historical perspective what we're looking to do here why we're doing it and where we see this going down

041the line because there are certainly some flexible options moving down the line so again as you can saw as you saw on the motion it's looking to revise the marching band program for an outdoor competition model which is the classic model that were this rehearsals twice a week on Tuesday and Tuesdays and Thursdays after school and evenings and a competition on Saturday to an indoor blast model which I'll describe as we go through what we go through this but it is important to talk a little bit about history right and so band programs in different high schools which are extracurricular programs are really judged by class you know class for being a bit program and that's where we're in the mid-90s you know we you can see as you look at these numbers class two

042by 2004 class 1 by 2010 so our numbers were certainly dwindling in the program still competing well though if you look at this you know when you go to different classes you know you're competing in schools programs of your same size you're not competing against and I used to work at New Milford the New Milford size programs that Trumbull size programs those are large marching band programs really dominated the circuit for the large size programs but you can see we've won championships in 98 2005 2006 2008 and mr. st. George actually won one my first fall here in 2015 I was a class 1 right class 1 championship in 2015 so we've seen some success certainly in our marching band program but the challenge has been the numbers continued to drop we've seen that over

043time and so I just have you know four years of data in 2014 there was 28 students 2015 we went down to 24 then down to 20 and down to 16 this is discussion when I started that Steve and I had multiple discussions about what we can do recruitment efforts how do we get more students into the marching band what can we do and whether its recruitment efforts down the middle school he's visiting elementary schools he's trying to talk up in fact I believe two years ago so would be for this the class of 2020 one who was just freshman when they were in eighth grade he went down talked to them I remember this we had this discussion and he's got these kids jazzed up and excited and I think we had one student

044that came the marching band program 50 people there in the hall so they were gonna do it zero and zero then came so what working you know so we're working against is you know we start taking a look at okay what is the cause what's the root cause what's going on wire why are students not wanting to necessarily participate in the marching band program you know what we don't want to see is where it got to you know 2017 with 16 students we're concerned about the trend going down so we want to take some take a couple steps and take a look at one of their options is there anything else we can do and what's really causing it you know and participation for marching band and programs I've been part of or seen and

045see who has worked as part of them seen sometimes it's a mandatory expectation if you're in the band in school then you're also in the marching band after school I've seen those programs when I was at Watertown fail because kids did not want participate after school so it diminish the numbers of band in the class during the school day which is something I can say is not a concern for mr. st. George because his numbers in band during the school day continue to climb those numbers came to go up and then we also had voluntary which is where we are now a voluntary marching band program so 2017 fall season we are over four thousand $1 for costs right things like you know travel you know we have to rent a budget rental truck to

046transport musics and instruments this is not including stipends that we pay stipend positions for people to work but those were the general costs additional cost with music and competition fees and things of that nature we were getting up close to planning about six thousand dollars is what we thought we might spend for the marching band when you have low participation when you only have 17 students to participate and you choreograph a show I think the best way that Steve describes it to me is imagine you know if you've ever been to a band competition and see these large programs like Trumbull and your Milford and you see you know ninety kids out on the field and you have one student that makes a mistake as they walk by it's not that easy to see when

047you have 17 kids and four kids missed that particular week or you have to rewrite it's a really obvious mistake and it becomes a challenge to choreograph around those things to plan shows and to write shows which which people have worked really hard to do for those numbers so when your numbers are that small it becomes a challenge if there's any attendance issues and it's a big commitment we're asking kids to do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then also on Saturday mornings for the entire fall so relying on volunteers becomes a challenge you know like Steve talked about the larger crew during events we just didn't have a new enough new members continue to commit to being a part of the program and so the way Steven I feel is that without intervention the

048lower trends this program would start to continue to go away we're looking at we could look at lower numbers and then something we don't want to happen and that's why Steve came to me he doesn't want this program to go away we talked about doing what else could we do could we try a fresh start could we try something different and that's where we came to this proposed model of blast I'm gonna turn this over to Steve to talk a little bit about blast because he's the one who seen it more in person and we have a video we'll show you so you can see what it looks like again I'm Steve st. George I'm the band director here at the high school again thank you so much for taking the time to hear us

049out tonight so the proposed model is a show called blast which is it's a nationally syndicated that's that's a trademarked name so we're not going to call ours that but it's it's done on stage as a sort of like a musical so if you go to like a high school musical production you'll see things that are choreographed with singing dancing that sort of thing with blast show they do that with musical instruments they do it with vocalization they do it with colorguard manipulatives that they you know toss around they do with dance maneuvers it's is wildly popular it's it came out of the drum corps international circuit which was 16 to 22 year olds who do marching on the field and this is the they would audition for the blast show in the offseason so

050that they would keep their skills up the important thing to note about this is that the only thing we're really looking to change by adopting a model like this is the presentation of the final product where we would be presenting it in auditorium using our lighting system which is of course state-of-the-art and brand-new and our sound system in there to kind of augment what we have on the stage and the delivery of the instruction and the instruction that's delivered would be the same so they're still going to use those same great marching techniques they're still going to get that you know that set of disciplined structured activity where we're going to be moving in specific format it's not a free-for-all out there so I visited a friend of mine is the director at Amity High

051School and he went in a similar direction because when he arrived there I believe it was 2004 that he arrived there he had a very strong marching band background and Amity did not have a marching band program and for his first year he just did everything that they would normally do in the second year he said we should really have a marching band program it will you know enhance the productivity of our students and will also create a nice thing for the community and he decided that they would you know Institute that the following year they went through all the proposals everything was good and he found that he had a 50% drop in the number of participating students just in that first year and looking at his numbers for the following year it was

052projected to to drop even further and so they were fortunate that they were in a position where they said okay we're just we're gonna walk away from that morning switch to this blast model so they actually instituted that at their high school when he arrived there I believe the numbers he gave me where he had 120 at first and so that second year when he had that 50% reduction they were down to 60 which is still a sizable force but not enough when you're looking at where he came from within six years the program turned back around they now have over 250 kids who are involved with this blast production and if they have to actually turn people away who come unprepared for things some of the things that we're looking at based upon their

053model is that all students will be required to perform but only within the large group numbers so even if the kid who doesn't want to be at those after school extra instructional things they will get that instruction during the day and format they're comfortable with so that we have large group performances for at least four or five cohesive numbers where they'll kind of go through and tell a story from beginning to end of the show but students can this is where it becomes really great for for a program like ours they can arrange their own portions of this for smaller group settings we have things like the chamber strengths group who's been here to perform in the past we have things like flute choir who's been to performance past the Jazz Ensemble all of these

054very very smaller groups which if you put them out on a football field it would not generate enough sound to be effective but within an auditorium it's the sky's the limit because you can amplify them and the the sound is you know purposely shaped so they are they are able to take on more of a leadership role earlier students can attend will attend the the night rehearsals for four pieces that they are involved in so if a student wants more instruction they can come for more instruction if they if they are comfortable with where they're at that's fine as well and will allow them especially with this first you know iteration of it we would we would allow them to kind of you know come in and dip their toe in the pool and go

055out as necessary because there'll be more of that flexibility in the schedule so the most involved student would still have their Saturdays free and I know mr. Blenda alluded to it as being a Saturday mornings but it's really a far far more than that we show up in the morning and we're here all day and then we would go someplace to compete and generally speaking they're not back here until at least 10:30 11 o'clock on a Saturday night and those are for the early shows so it's you know it's it's very very long day and that's really I think why a lot of those younger students who were so enthusiastic about our recruitment model wanted to come and do it and then when they realized how long they were really gonna need to be here

056you know as a parent myself I wouldn't allow my child to stay out that late so I can completely understand that but I can't change the competition schedule either that's they do it at night that's when they do it so rehearsals will run from the start of school until the end of October start of November you know on an average school year we'll still do the two nights per week we'll do a third night if needed for smaller groups I can always do those individually I don't need a big staff to run a rehearsal for a small group I can I can schedule those impromptu they can be after school they can be before school they can be at night they can be in the morning it really doesn't matter I'm available so I spoke

057with a few parents who had you know that concern you know will my child be able to participate and still do X Y or Z yes they will because all of those rehearsals can be smaller one weekend show it would be on a Friday and Saturday evening right now we're tentatively scheduling them for October 26th and 27th pending your approval we could also do a performance for classmates during school if if that's something that's approved it might be a great recruiting event it might just be a nice way to kind of encourage them to come back and see it again how many no I don't want to do it like that but if you've come and seen a school musical here you'll find that many of our students come one night and then they come

058again another night with more of their friends so it's it's not uncommon to see our student population come to multiple events and we're hoping to see the same type of thing with this model did you okay and so from a staffing perspective looking at some stipend positions that we would still look to do Steve serves as the marching band director that's something we'd still look to have him continue to do we'd also support with a marching instructor percussion instructor and color guard instructor those are highly specific text skillsets Steve could certainly work on that but we really need those these people here to help support that the particular specific instruction I want to Eve talked a lot about it I'd wanted to see at least what he's done I was impressed with this when I

059first saw this this is taken directly from a Matisse it was on YouTube it's their one of their shows interesting there they're actually in our same Dirk it's interesting that they have that same same issues at some point in time and they've worked creatively to find a solution so Amit put this on here and give you a chance to see hopefully it's not to love these new microphones [Music] [Applause] [Music] so that goes on for about another minute I was gonna make you sit through that but you can you know my experience has been and I work with a music department and mr. st. George when I look at that stage and I see the number of students on percussion which is typically a pretty popular place to be you've got kids on strings as

060well it's an opportunity just the energy that's there is amazing and I have a friend who's the associate principal over at Amity and talks very fondly of this program and how much the kids really enjoy this blast model you know we also looked at alignment you know what are some of the things going to this teacher coherence plan things that we've talked about you know from the perspective the the plan that's been developed you know we talked about opportunities for communication and collaboration some of those small group student performances this happened to be an example of one but you can see collaboration there and the creativity innovation Steve and I talked about the possibility of involving some of our electronic music students or digital student music students that take that course that works with iPads

061what could they be doing for stage transitions and you know you know music between you know acts that go in and out you know somebody said you know what about the dance teams let me brought up which is oh another thing I was even thinking about but there's a lot of opportunities for kids to get engaged in this and a lot of different ways and a lot of different student creativity which is I think what we look to do second part is active engagement through performance options where students choose a size the group or the type of their performance so students have more flexibility to choose what they're going to do and how they're going to do it there's still some basic parameters and expectations but there is choice right you know our motivation and

062I'm really I applaud Steve for coming up with this you know really having a growth mindset like this is a problem that he's seen he's worked to try to figure out what's going on and he's figured let's try something different let's see what we can do Steve is committed to music for these kids right whether it's in school or after school there's I have no doubt about his commitment to what he's wants to do for kids and we know we need to provide an opportunity for them outside of the school day it can't just be exposure when you have one instrumental music teacher Steve knows he's an elective teacher he gets it he knows that if we're gonna provide opportunities for kids with just one teacher he's got to do stuff outside of the school

063day so he's looking to do something different and you know we've talked about who knows maybe our program continues to change and evolve the last model works we see what we get participation up we've talked about a pep band do we bring a pep band you know that would help our numbers we I can't put 17 kids because they're not all instrumentalists in a pep band I've had a football or a basketball game I can't do that but if our numbers increase that could be another vehicle we could do that you know we talked about the possibility and even if it if the numbers continue and there's a desire to need to go we can look at bringing a marching program back when our numbers continue to go up maybe we can we can do

064something like that the sky can really be the limit but we're really looking for at this point is some sort of change because we don't feel sustainable we're concerned about numbers and what's going to happen there you know I really have like I said applaud Steve's you know let's try something different and really it could be a more cost effective solution as well I did mention cost very briefly what we're looking to reduce the number of stipend positions that are connected to this and then without the travel and the rental of trucks and things along that make sure everything is housed here end up saving some money as well that's not a primary driver because we really want about opportunities for kids for music but it is something to certainly be considered so I just

065want to thank you for the opportunity to let Steve come and myself talk or both available for questions certainly I imagine you might have questions they're probably better answered by mr. Steve George last night come up in case you do have questions but I just thank you for the chance to talk I don't have a question but I'd like to make a comment if that's okay um you know thank you Mark and Steve you did an excellent job really delivering on the understanding of the last format and I thank you and I know mark you kind of mentioned that but for thinking outside the box and having that growth mindset because I think that you know historically I think margin has had a negative connotation as well and this really kind of breeds a new

066fresh you know why don't they change and I think would be really motivating to students in many different areas of music and the arts to really you know express themselves and it's just a great new avenue I feel like it would be a wonderful thing and I really support it it's very captivating and like I said you can't change it the data is the data and I think that we need to go with the changing times and be proactive and you know I appreciate all the work that you've done behind the scenes to get to this point Steve even he brought up at one point in time we were discussing about different options and models we talked about that band and what could that look like and there was issues there was issues where at

067some point time things are being thrown at kids and that was prior to my arrival but I mean that's anecdotally what I had heard from the staff so and then the kids who are in the program so but and I and I understand that it's it's too bad that that there was any feeling of a negative you know image from the program because it was it wasn't is that it's a very positive program and the kids who are involved feel very strongly about it and the staff is motivational and it's I know marks hit some of the data with with with you folks about state championships but I mean in the past several years we've also gone to national championships and placed sixth nationally which is I think a credit to how how dedicated they

068are to the activity event but we've we've done things to try to really amplify the positives that you can have with a smaller group for example one of the things that we did was rather than if you can picture what what twenty kids looks like on a football field that it's small you don't want them to be lost in the sea of green and one of the things that we did is we actually took a mat is like a large tarp from indoor color guard season which is meant to be opened up into our gym we used it as a staging area so that it would refocus the judges and the the audience you know in this one specific area and once we kind of did that it it really did open up a lot

069of new possibilities for us it came with a drawback the things 400 pounds and we had that you know we lit out there and those kids had to you know hoof it and really set this thing up and a typical traditional marching band setup you have 15 minutes to get your stuff on present your show and then get out and you're penalized if you don't adhere to that so I'm proud to say that we always did a very wonderful job with that but here with switch into this model now we can we could really create a show that's entertaining and and quite a bit longer as well it's it's not an easy transition this is gonna be very difficult bite to swallow for a lot of people because we're looking at moving from what essentially

070six and a half to seven minutes worth of music to about 35 so it's it's quite a quite a big undertaking but I think we're really up to the challenge and I look forward to it unfortunately not with this model no it's and I don't I don't want to slam the door on it there are other venues that we can look at one thing that's starting to become really popular now in this area is what's called winter winds program which would go indoors during the winter season like like the winter color guard program or a winch a percussion program there's also one now for for wind flares so those players who you know maybe that is those sixteen to twenty kids who are really hardcore about I want to be here and do marching everything

071we can look into doing winter winds and that would be a competitive program for them as well were you able to talk over this idea with any of the students from the marching band to get their feedback yes they they're cautiously optimistic you know anything new is you know Kent can be frightening the the one thing it's the same point you know that competitive piece of it is very exciting and in when you're at a marching band show it's especially the later it gets the bigger the bands get and it can be very it's it's very powerful and so I think in that's not we're not ruling out going to those things we just wouldn't officially be there in a capacity but we could certainly still go socially on but it's I think that's really

072the the biggest piece of it they're excited to still apply their craft and certainly excited with the opportunity to draw more members into it so will this be mandatory for bands students so yeah right so bands students will be mandated to participate with those four or five large group numbers if they don't choose to be a participant who comes to those extra rehearsals and learns how to march then we'll do it with we refer to in the businesses park and bark like we'll find a place for them to stand and play their music from there for them to be more like a typical concert right and instead of seeing but instead of being seated they'd be standing in a location that we would determine for that so it's almost a combination of marching band and

073concert at the same time correct with the idea that we would kind of slowly rope a few of those kids once they see the activity and understand the fun part to it that they would be more motivated to to come back and as mr. Blandon alluded to you know if if they're all kind of on board with that then we can say look this is the program you know we could go do this outside and compete with other bands do you want to do this we're open to it the sky's the limit so then because all of the students you know it'll be a mandatory thing it'll be easier to have the practices that is what you're saying because it won't have to be always after school you can incorporate it into class time for

074the music yes for the motion portion of it no you just need you need a lot more dedicated focused instruction time for that and that's really where those kids who are coming for that extra time are gonna be earning the marching band credit portion of that because that would otherwise it'd be trying to doubled it yeah turn that on how you can hear the button yeah and this one we preload I had two kids go through the marching band it was one of their life-changing experiences and and I was on the parents Executive Committee to support the marching bands on the big marching band supporter I went and looked at your videos from the blast season it is amazing how small the bandhas right I mean I lived through the ones class three then class

075two then class one and this is so small you're right they get lost in the field right anything in that class one number just to define that that's anything from zero what one really 240 right so yeah and the first year I was there was like 75 and all those Championships you listed I think my kids were involved in them so one way or the other all right the competition portion of it is lost here and that's very important developmentally for the kids who do put their heart into it but it doesn't work if you have so Phuket's so I applaud you're trying to take some action I guess I have a couple of questions one is what's the root cause of why we're having fewer kids coming and getting an interest and it's not

076I'm busy and I have competing interests because we've had that all along right that's not changed that's been there for the last 15 years it was always the thing why are they not coming is there something in our programs at the middle school is it something about the kids is it something changing in society I'm very interested in why if I I mean if I have to pick one I would say societally because if you as Mr bland alluded to earlier only three programs in our area and those those are the big large Class six bands New Milford Norwalk in trouble those are the only three that have grown in size in the last ten years uh-huh so I I don't know I don't know why that affects Brookfield specifically but I I can tell

077you that that is [Music] the trend in the area I don't know exactly what it is about the activity that makes it that way and and the kids who are involved with the program would tell you that they love it so and and they would tell all their friends they love it and they do tell all the Front's they love it so it's it really I'm very much at a loss to to give you a solid answer on that okay so the related question is am i I'm putting on put words in your mouth you tell me if I said this right we're canceling the marching band program and we're implementing the blast program I wouldn't put it that way I'm saying it purposely that way because they're Defra clarity are we doing a marching

078band program of any ilk yes okay tell me I I thought we just did but I guess I wasn't there marching band program includes competitions on discuss extracurriculars and intelligence then know if you're if if if curricularly your statement is that a marching band program must include competitions then yes we're canceling it and replacing it with a different model okay I just want to make sure I'm clear that's what we're doing secondly numerically how much are we saving by doing this what is the actual reduction in stipends the actual reduction in implementation costs an actual reduction in cost that the music costs and the like yeah I can get those numbers well Mark's looking for that Steve I wanted to ask want to follow up on sure mister felt his first question are you getting

079this any kind of a sense I mean you had a big turnout in enthusiasm from the middle school in the spring I'm assuming that was the right ring when you write Mon and then the kids didn't show over the summer would be able to ask any ascertain him any information from that glean any any insights and I don't say in either anecdotal or some right interpreting and anecdotally there were there was there was a strong sense that this was going to be a lot of time spent out of the house and so when you go and you do a recruitment event and you invite all the kids there they're on fire they want to do all of these things and I think once it gets home to where these you know now they're at the

080parent stage where they're the people who need to drive them to all these events they're that people need to make sure that they you know study and practice their their craft I think that the time constraint was really the the heart point keep in mind to the the the the bulk of the students who showed up for this recruitment event were sixth and seventh graders so we're talking about you know children they're 11 and 12 years old they're not 17 so then they're not providing their own transportation but if you're gonna build a program you have to build they're the people who are gonna we're gonna see it through so while I thought it was a great effort and it was certainly well received you know we did it a few different times and went

081and worked with them but it just it didn't turn out the kind of numbers we needed to really save this current format thank you ends up being from a stipend position you know the total stipends we were paying I was close to $19,000 for all marching band we're just filling these three end up getting close to about $7,000 savings is what we do by not filling some of these extra set of extra statements you know as far as cost for the program that is gonna you know depend on travel and budget and what we're looking to do I don't have those numbers right with me as far as what Steve spent specifically on you know the budget rentals and things like that but we're projecting based on his historical spending was about $6,000 last year

082for those travel expenses in addition to the $19,000 that was spent on stipends you know so you're looking at closer to you know total marching band program was about twenty-five thousand nine hundred thirty dollars is what it cost from the marching band program those ancillary pieces you know we're looking to save seven thousand plus at least you know without the travel expenses it's hard to really tell what that's gonna be at this point around those firm numbers I can't said exactly what it's gonna be but it would be a significant cost savings because we're not traveling every Saturday and doing those there's a six thousand for the our pocket spending including but it was included buses or no no so that was on top of that it was on top of that okay was this

083budgeted i but I did budget approximately $6,000 for those transportation costs and you know for as far as stipends are concerned when we're looking to see you know we had this discussion multiple times about what we can do to cut stipends I had to cut back stipends anyway you know that was the discussion that came to the board so some of these stipends were already gonna be cut and we're gonna fill them with what we had with those four that we presented I think it can we ought to make sure we scoop up any of the savings here and put it in a place where we easily trollin yes so that cludes bussing because that's always ones that get hard to get our hands on have to settle well it's you're dealing with the reality

084of the situation I said I guess what the way I'm dealing with it so we'll the marching band program come back do you believe I'd like to say so you know that's that's really the the end goal of this is that we would then have this blast type of model which could be really theoretically done any time of the year it doesn't have to be during the fall but that would be hopefully in addition to a competitive marching band season I am totally in favor we have all the equipment that we would need to do it and the uniforms I paid for right so I mean like I said we have everything we need to do this so it's to bring it back and you know this this can be done almost at any time

085I mean you can go to a single competition if you if you want to just do one you know to kind of dip your toe back in the pool like that's it that's the thing that most circuits do allow for and and it's you know it's a small fee to to do that for the one week so I mean it's it this is not something that we're looking at eliminating and walking away from it so it's got a good history it's got a strong tradition it's just my main concern was that if we do nothing differently then we can't expect any different results I agree but at the same time I'm not sure we're at the root cause of why kids are coming got so much energy coming out of huckleberry I think you see

086let's go band it we've all seen that at the parade's and then you can't get kids at the high school to go do this sort of program and there's something missing in here who actually owns the the Chilam from K through 12 the Amarna from your partner this is our rough parts leader I just there's something that's I'm not getting my hands on and why the energy doesn't build through the 12 years instead it said it's yes to build and then drop and then your and then the high school struggles to get enough kids and and it's a wonderful program I'm just gonna I'm just I'm gonna give an advertisement yeah the numbers drop the huckleberries and that was talking about and and I'll just you said it's you know that may be a bad

087reputation it was the most formative experience for my two boys right being in the marching band and as adults they are better for and so I'm a big fan of the marching band program the competition the outdoor the discipline everything that goes with it is a very positive I see some good things here too but I would hate to give on to give up on it forever but I think it needs that root cause well you know but it needs the root cause of why how do you build the energy at the middle school level to get it so that that's in one of them one of the things that we have going on this year when we talk I don't we talked earlier about the strategic plan in our five-year matrix one of the

088things that's going to happen this year is we'll be sitting down with Margaret and really taking a little k12 at our programs in the arts and music and so forth and replanting and seeing what we need to do for 1920 if there's changes that need to be made so I mean this comes at a good time in that regard in terms of Marc Marquez with leadership in the review there I did have a question though Steve if we're seeing statewide with the exception of those three communities this drop is you know that that Saturday is an enormous commitment that you talk about and society changes and and this is a big question so I don't expect to have the greatest answer in the world there okay but I mean the powers that be the entities

089I know when we have on the ice hockey humid for example with CIA C we really talk about changing dynamics in society we talk about su at the board tonight we talked about social media and how we communicate I mean things have changed you know the society moves faster than the the entities change you know our institutions and so is is there any talk among your colleagues that that are involved in marching band of taking a look at lessening or changing the way that Saturday looks I mean that's a lot to ask you know our varsity athletes don't put in a 12-hour day on a Saturday when they have a competition I mean we're asking a lot of in these ones do ya there's a varsity athlete I understand but but my point to that

090is they they're putting in 12-hour day that is a lot to ask from adults from anyone sure um and these often are kids who are in very competitive and rigorous courses they have part-time jobs and they have other activities they're involved with volunteer and service and so forth so that is that is it's a lot to ask and they're learning what's the talk if we're all if we're seeing it statewide role in the dropping or we couldn't do anything about it we can try to adjust have you heard it I think the real problem becomes logistics because it's an activity that's done outdoors on a football field so you need to do that activity when the fields free you can't do it on Sundays not in Connecticut there are some New York circuits that that

091do that day they use both days during the weekend many bands what they what they try to do is they try to get the the most reward for their time spent by doing some of them will do double and triple shows on a weekend we've done a few double headers and I've found that tents that really exhaust the kids but it's we do it when it's when it's feasible it's really the only way around it the treble the the reason it becomes like a 12-hour day is you know you might only have three hours of rehearsal time and then it by that point it doesn't make any sense to send them home and have them come back in an hour they won't be back so you take that as a communal lunch break which is

092a great time for for you know fellowship and an understanding where we're all going and then you have to travel to wherever your competition is and then you know where a class-one band so we might be on at 5:30 or 6 o'clock but you're gonna go through the whole night if you have 10 or 12 bands play the last one doesn't play until you know 10 and then you have awards that at 10:30 and then you're back on the bus to come home and that's what makes the day so long really it's in in part the day becomes longer because we're smaller because the alternative to that would be to leave after you perform and in which case you'd miss the award ceremony which is when you you know you get your recognition and even

093you understand like what you are doing there in the hole you know the other the other downside to competing as a small band is that you generally also compete for a small audience on those Class six bands they might start later in the day they might they're definitely going to show up later there's no incentive or reason for them to show up at five o'clock and not play until 10 it's it's a very counterproductive for them so on sometimes we have looked as a director community of altering and alternating when large bands of small bands go it's had minimal success honestly it's a lot of the show hosts that have tried to do this to have found that their profit margins have suffered because those big bands might just stay until intermission and then go

094someplace else and they take all their burger spending and all their you know I don't know I mean it's laughable but it costs a lot of money to put on show biz y'all didn't know so you can tell you it's it is a lot of money to put on a show to host the show and unless you really recoup that it it doesn't make sense to do it so it's there's a lot of angles to it it's um there's no one right answer enough I appreciate that thank you thank you very much well personally I love it and I think it's engaging there's a lot of energy behind it it's moving with the times and I really think that you're going to get more student participation by you know through this different mode oh so

095I like it thank you thank you appreciate you taking the time sure to be here as a presenter does Joe something else we have this as an action versus emotion does this need to be moved and approved by the board yes okay so we need to yeah so reckon recommend motion with the board receive a presentation on the proposed BHS bless program ins recommend event capes subcommittee and approve the proposed gun blast program second we've had the discussion already I believe is there anywhere that wanted to read something else okay all in favor aye aye aye opposed so we are back to one of that thank you very much [Music] alright next we have the strategic facilities steering committee recommended recommendation possible motion I am a recommended action that the board here a brief presentation

096from [Music] John Posen schema cysteine was this since key from Tecton and discuss the recommendation of the strategic facilities steering committee to build a new pre-k K k25 school on the existing huckleberry hill elementary school site second the motion and we we might have a possible motion we might have a possible motion I would like to do a brief report before Jeff takes over if that's okay with Jeff and then I'm going to stay up there with Jeff in case anyone has any questions because I just I've been living and breathing us forever if that's all right with everyone on the board [Music] okay we are finally at where we have been working so hard to be for so many months so many years and it is my pleasure to stand before all of you

097tonight and to give a formal report as the chairperson of the strategic steering committee the objection of the strategic steering committee was to tour and evaluate all four schools put out to bed interview and hire an architectural firm meet with this firm to develop options taking into account current enrollment anticipated enrollment conditions of the four schools great configuration and to meet with educators and host informational public meetings ultimately it was our goal to agree upon a plan that would serve Brookfield's for decades to come I am pleased to report to you tonight that we are confident that we have found and unanimously have agreed upon what I call the perfect plan the committee throughout the process has exercised transparency health public forms solicited advice through surveys and provided the opportunity for public comment during all

098meetings our committee benefited from a mixed political group consisting of two unaffiliated they're Democrats and three Republicans our mixture included Board of Education past and present members a selectman aboard a finance member a representative of the PTO our superintendent to municipal building committee members and a representative for our senior citizens this committee has done and done well our due diligence to the residents in educators of Brookfield as a fellow board this is an exciting time for our Board of Education and for our town we are embarking on a new horizon with thoughtful ideas for embracing the value of learning while taking into account everyone's special talents working towards enhancement and wholeness we believe the presentation you see tonight encompasses those desires this has been a rewarding journey it has been my honor and pleasure to

099facilitate this group I would personally like to thank the following people to a learner passport number and beginning facilitator representative Steven Harding past board member and a valuable wealth of knowledge for me concerning our town and state Eric Conklin our director of IT Erica for those of you who do not know he coordinated the website the Facebook page and the surveys dr. John Burrell superintendent of our schools he represented forward-thinking and was always a voice of reason select women sue Slater who is respected maintained and retained Brookfield first Eileen cook for the finance member Kristina's immerman PTO representative in parent Debbie Brooks fellow board member and parent Joey Goldstein fellow board member parent educator and work field education enthusiast Paul Loftus retired businessman representing our senior population Paul check Oh past Board of Education member

100architect and current member of the admissible building committee Josh plumbers architect and current member of the building municipal building committee that made up all of our committee and they have been an absolute pleasure to work with so after the presentation and you have a time to ask your questions and in your thinking what happens next if the Board of Education tonight votes on accepting the strategic steering committees recommended plan for the future of our public school system according to our town charter the next logical step for this committee is to pass this on to our town's Municipal Building Committee for further development we are excited to be at this point in our adventure although we will no longer have a primary leadership role as a committee our new role is to ensure a smooth and

101seamless transition to our municipal building committee we will continue to have input meet with and continue to voice the interests of our community's educators and vision for our town and for our children so I hope that you enjoy the plan that we have been working on so diligently for months I encourage you to watch keep your questions if you can until the end and without further ado I am pleased to present Jeff Wilson ski from Tecton Associates our architectural firm Thank You Eve again my name is Jeff was in Skype from Tektronix I prepared a presentation the agendas up on the board there and items once before I kind of want to recap fairly quickly they were part of the first two forms so you should be familiar with those and then spend a little

102bit more time on item five which is the preferred option and then modifications or alternatives that we study within that preferred option and then discuss the next steps as far as a high-level schedule so as even mentioned the thank you to the planning committee they were wonderful to work with they worked quite a bit over the summer as well at various different meetings but really took the time to analyze every option possible which I'll review tonight again consistent with previous presentations some of these slides or repeats are updates we've tried to keep do the lines of communication open multiple we had a couple of public forms multiple community outreach meetings couple surveys were received about in addition to about a thousand responses really helped us inform some of those decisions relative to the options and

103over the summer as I mentioned all the way back from I guess early December last year we have met I'm working on this plan our team at least again consistent communications providing handouts brochures factual information based upon the process snapshot of the survey results you can see some other quotes that we had presented previously but also the last two I think are important is they really kind of boil it all down where the community was really concerned with minimizing disruption to the students faculty and staff and then really makes the what option makes the most sense overall for has felt most long-term benefits to the to the community Brookfield so again recap our charge was to work with the committee to establish a a 10-year master plan sort of look at all the schools we

104analyzed the existing conditions the exist of the educational needs we had many multiple meetings with faculty and staff to talk about existing and current and future trends in education and how that would inform our programmatic requirements we engage the community we looked at the options holistically a comprehensive approach across all different schools combined it with some potential potential for some early capital maintenance improvement projects and the ultimate goal was to have a kind of a guide a long-range plan overall so work completed so forward or just about wrapping up all of our hard work related to to the study of this project here and it started with the existing conditions the the input sessions with the stakeholders relative to the educational needs we reviewed the demographics we developed multiple options on originally and we had

105ten total options and they were down to four for the for the second public forum which we presented and then after that we took the input received debated at numerous meetings about what makes the most sense the benefits concerns and and the most beneficial impact long range and ultimately settled on an option called C prime so there is a method to the madness as far as the number and sequence so quickly the basis for the options as presented previously you take basically relative projections updated enrollment projections over an 8-year period and you pick basically the largest projection and you take those numbers for each of the classes for each of the grade levels and you apply it to a state standard square footage and you get your maximum allowable square foot that's how the state

106reimburses projects they'll give you reimbursement at a certain percentage based on a maximum allowable square foot so we have to stay within that that square footage from and from there we looked at each school this was a table that we analyzed just the existing conditions that documented site area floor area grade levels great configuration we analyzed each site relative to topography site access a variety of different components we did that for each of the schools huckleberry risking air and of course the high school as well some of the again on the basis of the options some of the clarifications that are important I kind of highlighted in a certain in the orange square there all the costs that you'll see tonight are kind of escalated to a midpoint of the potential construction period at 2021

107so those are the numbers escalated to a midpoint of a potential construction the reimbursement percentages that you see are the percentages that the state is given currently to the town of Brookfield and that's based on a whole host of statistical information that you submit to the town and then maximum allowable square foot is based on the current square foot and standard per student as the state so basically they gave it a costume a table in order to compare a variety of options we have to be consistent with our data in the input that we put in so the cost summary table that you see here is broken at the site components building components existing with renovations proposed renovations or school so we'll see all of these metrics they're kind of the range they're not the

108highest they're not the lowest third they're kind of the mid-range based on a lot of historical information that we've had and collected over the years you'll see towards the bottom the reimbursement rate book field for new construction is twenty two point five and four renovate as new is thirty two point five there's all the rumors that you'll see we're all refer to tonight our total project costs that means that includes the construction costs of the building so everything that you see physically can touch and what's called soft costs and what's in soft costs is if you take this building you turn it upside down and shake it for I'm sure that comes out the computers that come out the architects that come out those are all soft costs related to related to the project so

109it's all in costs I mentioned historical averages supported this this this effort was to also look at viable options for new sites so we took a look at basically 6,000 tounging properties we didn't look at private properties when we looked at Tom women stay on properties and felt that them from from a deep perspective from our area score a foot perspective and and analyzed the Navi site happy landings we actually looked at a property immediately adjacent to the town hall what that can yield and ultimately each of the proposed sites yielded a lot of different concerns so we we took that and then we focused our efforts to what you know the existing campuses that you have currently there's a series of options here and I will tell you that they're all set up in

110a variety of different ways we've looked at great configuration we looked at square footage of buildings we looked at age of building the costs that it would take to bring those buildings up to code both from a code perspective but from a program perspective as well so a lot of different options basically ten in fact that was studied initially and kind of the summary there were who really took a hard look at the student population a projected population of each of the options great configuration and how what when exit has overall to the to the options and then this is a summary table obviously there was a lot of other work and data behind this but on the left side is really where you should focus at left column which we analyzed cost the duration

111of construction disruption of the students faculty and staff quality and aesthetics Pampas drop-off safety fields and amenities and then the ability to deliver a 21st century educational space so we we tried to analyze these and prioritize the options and then we came up with basically four options which were the four options that were presented at the second public forum which we relabeled just for clarity purposes a B and C at a b c and d excuse me and we presented those at the public forum and really a couple of the options within those are new construction or renovate as new so either you're gonna build a brand new building and we looked at the benefits and challenges of it and for example for new construction the benefits are it was disruption to the faculty staff

112and students which was a key driver the challenges may be that you end up with ten percent less reimbursement you'll see those in the numbers but when you look at it and the holistically in the big picture it tends to average out renovate isn't so many challenges there you can't pick and choose you have to go in and basically renovate everything in the building so those numbers as you start to renovate the more complex the renovation the numbers between the actual construction costs of renovation and get closer so ultimately ultimately we land it on a preferred option c and this is the option that we presented at the public forum as part of the four options but the committee narrowed its focus based on the feedback we received from that that community outreach program and

113some comments from the survey and what it is is three schools in total it's a new pre-k to five at the huckleberry hill site demolition of the existing school that's on that site repurpose Center Elementary renovate is known for the whiskey barrel school and that would be great configuration six through eight and then targeted capital projects for the high school which would remain obviously nine to twelve here's a little bit of the detail as to what would happen on each of those projects and the costs associated with so now the costs associated on us highlighted here are the cost to the field after reimbursement and again every option that we analyzed and presented had this had similar information so we were comparing apples to apples all the way through the project so auctions see basically

114is pre-k to five what you'd end up with would be projected anyway would be eleven hundred and thirty-eight students the building area maximum allowable area according to the state for reimbursement would be only one hundred and thirty-eight thousand square feet just for comparison the building that's out there now is two-story and a total of sixty seven thousand square feet so you're basically doubling the size of a building on that particular site and then you see on the bottom the project cost summary where there's site improvements parking new building demolition of the existing it all totals up to [Music] project costs summary of 64 million dollars yeah the soft cotton which are on average around 18 18 percent you end up with the total project cost of a 76 million dollars to deliver that project risk

115animator school plan to be renovated as new what's interesting about this option is you take pre-k to five and you put it on an huckleberry you automatically right size risk and air according in the state size so six seven and eight total 715 students and you can see you know in this in this chart here the maximum allowable operating the state is around 115 116 the existing buildings 125 so you're right there so without spending a penny it gives more breathing room it gives the appropriate size four six seven and eight so that's that's a key factor that was discussed many a times during the during the meetings in the high school at this point is targeted capital improvements there's a laundry list of items that we collected during burn our existing conditions analysis and

116the heart engineers and consultant team have provided more detailed lists along with that to give you a plan for that school so knowing that we wanted to focus in on option C we wanted to validate the program so in that hundred thirty-eight thousand square feet we wanted to make sure basically validate that we could fit all the classrooms all the pre clay classrooms grade grade grade level classrooms one through five all the special education and applied academics all the health and physical and all the program elements in that building we basically validated it through a detailed program analysis that's obviously draft but it proves out in the end when you take all of the program elements and the efficiency factor that you see in a typical new building the total gross building area would be

117around one hundred and thirty-eight thousand which is at or near the maximum allowable for the state so you're within so it works basically is that that was the point of that exercise it works for for your proposed program and future educational needs so then we took that program and developed a conceptual site plan and a conceptual floor plan now these are very high-level and this is what the building and indoor site could look like as far as layout and you can see we're maintaining if you can along our Candlewood there's an existing site access point that I think is in the ideal locations for our sight lines for entrance and exit to this I went to the site this option and all the options that you see tonight maintain that entry point the lighter gray

118area is the footprint of the existing school that would be removed after the footprint of this proposed yellow or orange color footprint is the bad new school and the gray area what's what's nice about this option or one of the benefits of this option is that you see the parking fields you could have lost Parent PLUS bus and parent drop-off separated you have from security purposes you have administration on front of the building you have distance between visitor parking and the entrance to the building you set up for all of the current needs of a 21st century educational facility the other benefit is we are able to maintain a couple fields at the completion of the project once the existing building comes down you can maintain two fields a baseball field in a soccer field

119and what's nice is you can now share the parking that is basically servicing the building so we looked at a conceptual plan where if you fool with the site the the back portion of the site steps up about 20 feet from the existing baseball field that's there it steps back to the back property line about 20 25 feet which is about a story story and a half if you grade it out so it works so that this particular building conceptually anyways could be stacked so that we heard a lot of comments and we're concerning the community was concerned about making sure that building maintains a character quality and pedestrian scale to it and 138,000 is a pretty good-sized footprint but stacking the building up the hillside maintains that no portion of the building is over

120two stories which is which is a nice feature to have it fits well within the context of the site and some of the concepts on the conceptual floor plan were you can see and I won't go over in detail in this plan anyway the early childhood pre-k and K and great ones are in kind of neighborhoods great - a great warning - for that matter it could be in our own neighborhoods in the idea or concept behind this plan is that all the shared spaces which are the orange spaces kind of in the middle here and the blue spaces of the community spaces are shared amongst all the grade levels but you don't have to travel past I know it purses neighborhood or through another student's neighborhood to get to those those common core shared

121areas and that's a that's a theme that you'll see consistent through the development of this concept the other pieces the blue areas is in a location and that it could be easily locked off for community and nighttime use as well so we want to make sure we want to think holistically about the the community use of the building so the benefits and challenges of this site and I think the the committee was restricting towards this option obviously it enhances the ability to improve the siting of the building for safety and visibility and enhances the opportunity to meet the 21st century gives you a maximum flexibility to do what you want as far as the design of the building you're not you're having to deal with the constraints of an existing building whether it's Florida floor

122Heights or structure it leverages the realization of the existing site one thing that should be noted is that we recommend whether this built project goes on whether this building is built on the site or not a secondary ingress and egress out through the Navi Road site which is a it's a site that's dedicated to open space but allowed for vehicular traffic through and I'll go over that in the next site plan it the other benefits to this option are it reduces or eliminates the disruption of the occupants consolidates the two schools from an operating and energy efficiency standpoint as well so there's some efficiencies related to combining these two schools and again as I mentioned it basically right sizes Wisc inerrant without spending a dollar the challenges you know senior further back on the site

123so there might be some more infrastructure cost phasing and sequencing a site logistics obviously the students would be in the existing school as this this building would be constructed if it were to be constructed for their back which we don't think is an issue it's done quite often it's not like you're renovating within the school itself that's why we chose the new versus the run of it is new there are some flood planning considerations that you can deal with items that should be more but challenges that certainly could be overcome with big design due diligence is required obviously we don't know much about the the site as far as geotechnical piece you would have to consider potential reuse of the center elementary after this program is completed and the multiple points of ingress and egress

124and there is for renovate ever do a ten percent swing in the reimbursement rate but you'll see how that that weighs out and various different options so the committee was kind of drifting in fact improved this this before option and to their credit asked for additional due diligence on okay let's take a step back just make sure and validate that that we have our thinking correct with a couple of different couple more options and I'm I labeled them c1 c2 just to stay within the option of with that with any option of c1 so seen wagon is goes back to four schools its renovate is named for the center Elementary which would be pre-k and K and add some central office in there because it's if the buildings too big to house just pre-k and

125K and then building elementary school grades went through five on the existing huckleberry Hill elementary school site demo the existing school on that site renovate is new for for Riskin air and the high school remains the same so the costs associated with that obviously are a bit more I'm is there's more projects and you lose the efficiencies of combining the buildings so we'll see those numbers vetted out here a would be the grade levels one through five at 53 and the center schools in order 14 cost Brookfield and I'm whisking air in the high school remain the same so the detail is here but I really want to get to C prime so I can really dig in a little bit more detail and then when it does is it does affect the the student

126populations of obviously grades 1 through 5 it brings it to about 950 student building placing the pre-k and K into center Elementary which would be about 192 students so the challenge with that small school is obviously the complication of all the services in each of those two schools you can use some of the efficiencies so then we looked at what we call option C to what if we what if we tried to save some of Huckleberry Hill Elementary for some kind of assignment grade level configuration and then build also build a school up on the hill maybe a slightly smaller school so that's what this option is it looks at placing pre-k and K in the existing huckleberry Hill elementary school with renovate as new so would be completely renovated we demo a portion of

127that building in order to make and you'll see in the site plan make best use of the site we build a new very level one from five up on the hill with my purpose Center elementary and then renovate his new skinnier and targeted projects at the high school so that option costs 50 92 for the new school and about 10 for the renovations to the huckleberry hill for pre-k and K and then whisk in air in high school are the same you'll see the great configuration breakdown is similar to the previous option is just all on this site now which is 192 pre-k and K and 954 grades 1 through 5 in the new building so this is what it could look like and what you can see is we again maintained the existing entry

128access exit access point to the site we removed a portion the one-story portion slab on grade portion of the building and the portion of the building that is out back which is I guess the the Moore's most recent addition to the building in order to gain access in and around to the site - to the rear new building now what's important here is there is other factors that for the reasons why we maintain this this point here is because the grade level believe it or not is around 400 elevation 400 at the entry point and if you follow that path along the top there it stays around for 100 405 so we're trying to kind of minimize the amount of site work there and provide a safe level entry point to both buildings well we

129would do or at least what this conceptual plan is indicating is we could flip the entry to the renovated building - to this courtyard side and we'd run of a basically 28,000 square feet of this building for pre-k and K the footprint of the building would more or less stay the same although we would kind of shift some of the grade levels around in the new building the square footage would come down from about 138 to about one hundred and sixteen thousand square feet so what happens here is you lose some fields you pick up some parking it's a little bit more complex as far as the vehicular circulation on the site and then we summarize these because we thought this was a fairly decent one but then you really have to look under the

130hood under this option because the benefits are great okay we're using the existing a portion of the existing structure it may be less costly initially Daewon AMA kit provides there was some concern about the level of separation between the various different grade levels that was a theme that we wanted to address and you'll see in our final option how we did that and the other benefit is it allowed for future expansion of universal pre-k because of the building if you save a portion of the existing building for expansion you could do that but the challenges are that the sequencing site logistics during construction have become a lot more complicated because you're trying to work around all of those components it's not impossible just you're paying a premium for that you'll need some field space The

131Renovators project is a bit more disruptive this it is more disruptive than if students faculty and staff albeit we could probably maintain some of them in Center Elementary and lose the operation efficiency not only from from a programming standpoint from personnel but from building efficiency related to utilities and maintenance you're paying double what you're paying or there's more billing envelope there's more to maintain so those become long-term challenges from an operating budget perspective the other piece that you have to consider when you only put pre-k and K about 200 students in a school is that the spaces that were in tonight the media centers the cafeterias the kitchens all of these you have to start combining spaces and and narrowing them down limiting the the maximum effective use of that space because you can't you

132know we have you have a the percentages become less as far as those those four spaces so you often find that you have to have a cafetorium you have a limited kitchen for for this option you may have to use the full kitchen in the new school bringing bringing lunches over and have a warming kitchen and the existing pre-k renovated project so that was colleges that I think I'm really pointed to the last option that I mean we considered which was because it's really option C which is a pre-k through the five new society that's what we heard during our community which was the relation and then the five so could they have a transit credit the physical design support a transition year up to the middle school for grade five so we established basically

133to know the childhood Learning Center and I'll show you in the plan and a fifth grade academy at least conceptually so this proves out that it is possible to achieve all the various different aspects within one comprehensive building project so the dollars associated with us are very similar to option C they're tweaked a little bit as far as parking and the site improvements because the site changed a little bit but right side of this slide is the important piece so it's totally by me welcome this project rota to proceed is about 78 million dollars for for pre-k to 5 138 thousand square foot building the cost of boat filled after reimbursement is around 63 and the detailed statistics we can get into that if there's questions yield out here you can all the math is

134there and so we were asked to look at take a second look at option C we reflected back on some of the original conversations we had relative to the education educational needs and and we heard consistently from the community and from the faculty and staff that that someone actually does have this term I have this sense of scale this sense of community to it so we documented that we took another look at what it is that's that works so well I mentioned the scale the simplicity of Circulations neighborhood quality the dedicated court hurts and try to and then translated that kind of feeling that's those statistics those elements into a revised design or conceptual design anyway for option C crime so what's changed a little bit again the entrance exit we remains the same location

135the field configuration changed a little bit and became a little bit more organized and simplified which is nice from an approach standpoint from vehicular and pedestrian circulation it maintains the national parent bus drop-off it gives a long queue line for for drop-off and pickup for both busing a parent gives an idea setting and a set up for a mystery that offices super visionary eyes on access to the site here which would be in this block and I'll show you in the detailed floor plan and gives good good circulation control access and she went out of the building this is a floor plan diner and I'll go walk you through each level so starting on the right side of the plans that's the first level that's the mid level and that's the upper level so it's

136still maintains that two-story feels so you'll never feel like it's bigger than a two-story in fact it will feel like a story and half of most instances building kind of climbs up the side of the hill the purple shoe is the location of the early childhood Sam and it was refining so that it is it's only basically school within a school it has its own neighborhood its pre-k and K has its own dedicated courtyard has its own dedicated entry drop-off entry areas for administration so it's basically its own in school on but benefits from leveraging all of the core spaces that you could share the the media center the gymnasiums the cafeterias that also has some name for Boris motor schools with sales and physical education within there setting itself the fifth grade academy on

137the left side is all the way up on the fifth floor it creates this kind of a transitional space that's a sure community that you may may help them in their journey to to middle school and then the green is the shared core spaces which more or less remain the same but became a little bit more refined so you see the keys on the right hand side as I mentioned the established neighborhoods create this this early learning center is very clear for people that are approaching the building that it is a separate pensions exit' drop-off separate school separate will set up protected court notes for for that those grade levels shared spaces the fifth grade academy as I mentioned and we feel will go through the plan is it the layout provides transitions for multiple

138grade levels from pre-k to k2 one to two and then three to four and up to five so it can be structured depending upon as the curriculum develops for each grade level II it has a built-in flexibility to it which i think is a nice option for future future planning so this is the first floor drain level you can see the elementary school entry could be on this side this is a public day entry for visitors so it would be a controlled area and then down here on the lower portion of the slide is the think ADA - early childhood learning Learning Center and what you see is that you have the admin all the public spaces on the front side of the building so they have eyes on kind of the access points and

139then the classrooms are for back into the building they all have natural daylight a couple surround outdoor gap protected outdoor gathering areas which are here and sorry I'm trying to use the which are located here on the light green color okay the colors coming up a little better there and then the blue on the top of the screen is the the gymnasium cafeteria the core spaces as I mentioned that still provide that my time or off our community use as well so as well the gray level what's nice about the Early Childhood Center is daily activities and circulation all could occur within that neighborhood within that portion of the building I'm if needed the special education space and there's some dedicated special education spaces that are immediately adjacent to it there's some outdoor play as

140I mentioned there's a multi-purpose room that could function as PT ot could be gross motor skills could be play could be or lab so it's that's the idea is to have biffed and flexibility in this area and then you know this is really where these shared specialty spaces for the entire school can be used as well which are in science and engineering innovation labs you see a lot of nowaday maker labs there are art labs music world languages if those exist as far as multipurpose classrooms and these are located on wrong the left side here maker in language and then the specialty of curriculum smaller classrooms for smaller group learning kind of sprinkled throughout so the adjacencies of these specialty spaces are are easily accessed from each of the grade levels without having to again

141travel through another person's neighborhood the other piece that we were asked to look at to make sure that we build in because of there is there's going to be a bubble year where you need an extra classroom and I go somewhere maybe something happens in the town where you you see an increased population but not enough to build an entirely new school you see in the light dotted areas on either end where we've designed kind of the neighborhood of the pod so it could be expandable by one by two classrooms so that the core spaces are there the utilities are there all the planning is in place so that if you see a consistent increase in population you could add one to that for our classrooms two to a building without having to basically build

142until later start from scratch and that that forward thinking was really something that was really pushed to him during the committee's and that kind of that can happen I hope on pre-k and K but it also could happen on the upper grade levels as well as you can see here these dotted lines there now again additional flexibility built in if it's just a building year and you don't you don't understand the ability classroom just for that one year you see the media adjacencies of a similar size classrooms right too nice too many limits that could be easily translated into an additional classroom should they need it so so there's this whole idea of flexibility forward-thinking was built into these plans and then lastly on the I guess the upper level which is basically one-story above

143the grade on the hillside the center there is the grade five Academy where it basically puts them in their own suite if you will that has the general classrooms has a place for great gather and presentations and makerspace experiments presentations is really a highly interactive collaborative space which you see a lot in some of these designs the 21st century environments so Adam so I think you know after this presentation or a few weeks ago to those there committee I think everyone was satisfied that it really addressed all of the comments that we heard my life from the community but from the committee itself I'm so that's why Reardon this evening um so we also talked about okay you know the next steps you know it's the community outreach now to communicate the facts of the

144project the process that we went through and that's why some of the presentations that I give out repeat but it's important to communicate that the consistency in the communications has been the same and is based on a natural progression for the project I they just highlight this area because I know in our thunman than planned this is a real draft schedule so it just gives you an idea our charge was to plan out for ten years if this first project if this project was the first step it takes about four and a half years from now to open the door into a new school so there's a lot of planning and I have another detailed schedule that go over so on average it takes basically an additional one you've been at it for another year

145and a phoneless two so six and a half years from national concept are we through to ribbon-cutting and in soon as coming into the school as far as the process so you can see that you could spend them out every four and a half every six and a half obviously the has to be folded into other capital projects in the community but that gives you an idea of how how you can lay out some of the future school projects now detailed schedule the orange I mean the green box is where we are basically right now we're almost into fall where we're presenting our preferred option and some of the key elements and these are all draft settles so those are meant for interpretation and modification but there's some hard dates that you'd need to be

146aware of and so we're here basically in the fall of 2018 where we think you know wave three to four six-month kind of public awareness campaign of the project and the pros and cons of it that take place for some time some spring level referendum in March April of the five year 2019 so what's important on a schedule is the state right here June 30th in fact is the submission deadline for grant applications you need for that you need a host of kind of checklist of items about ten the biggest one is obviously the bond referendum successful bond referendum short proving that you can successfully fund the project he oral board education specification need a host of other items but obviously the biggest one is spawn referendum approval so you would submit their application in

147June come out with what's called a priority list they take all the applications that they received throughout the state create a priority list and issue that priority of us typically I've been on December 15th someone was second third week of December where you basically seem to be falling in the list you get most likely being on that list we have enough projects that never made that list but they listen in priority a B and C you'll given beginning a priority and that list includes all the dollars the description of the project it's basically the legislation that then gets sent through all the difference different committees for a spring state funding approval so that we did that that state funding approval so when we play this out so so in December of 2019 Nick's not this

148year next year you'll get where you are in that list and then you're sitting wait some years in spending march april foolís some years it's been in all the way there was a year to musical where they they had budget issues and didn't approve it all the way into the fall typically it's only spring where they give you that list they say you're approved you're finally approved what that means you get a fine you get a fish estate number before that you have a temporary number you get an official state number and you can if you start the planning like all the design documents before that period before the spring of 2020 you could probably put it out a bit basically you need that permanent in order to go too big to for contractors so

149if you play that out you can see the overlapping design pre-construction element here so if you started back in some time in the fall of nineteen with the detailed design and planning for this thing and you're almost ready with bit documents the spring of 2020 you get that that notification you send it out to bed and you can get get moving it's probably an 18-month 29th construction start to finish you would be looking at reposed occupancy of the fall of 2022 now that's if everything goes as according to this plan obviously there's some some maybe some changes into the into the overall milestones in this planning but if you want to do this now start now and follow this process you'd be finishing the project particular project up in the fall of 2022 some so

150thank you for hearing me out of lis it kind of illustrated the process that we went through and I think we're excited the community is excited that it were found the right solution here so thank you it's very informative thank you very much I think we can open up now video in this questions I have one ok um was the cost to demo huckleberry in there I couldn't like see ok yes yes that was and did you as a committee maybe ask other town boards are there I guess groups if there wasn't another purpose for center relatively immediately I'm just trying to I'm trying to think about what people are going to be we're gonna have senator just sitting there right up line that we'll still have to maintain someone so if there was another

151use for it that at least people could see coming down the line I think they would be a little more favorable to the project so if you haven't read and I would say that's something that needs to be a priority before this goes to referendum know the answer to your question is no we have not gotten to that point yet we felt that by giving center back to the town you read all the time and I'm hearing and maybe sloth moments later can if she has any information she could pop up here for crunch for space Town Hall is really crunched so we thought that by us not having the need for center school that giving it back to the town would provide an opportunity for our town G is a you know do you

152have any I I'm not sure if you guys have talked about it yeah she is yeah this is later I'm on the committee also we have not any conversations within the Board of Selectmen itself I've heard conversations within town saying well you know we wanted to place a library so maybe that's the place in library or maybe we just you know get it off the books all together and sell it so those are the options that we've had so far but nothing you know official I don't either thank you question for Jeff um a so weak you know down the road we prove it tonight it gets grouped a referendum you know it goes to the state we get assigned a priority a B or C um and then I'm not holding to this at

153all but based on what you have seen in what you have done whereabouts do you think we would fall and we're of what do you think the probability of getting state approval and funding for this would be is good because of the process that we went through I will say that the dialogue should start relatively soon in fact we've been talking about this with the state to explain this is the process we went through these are all the options we study this is where we've landed the community is starting to look into supporting this option and have a dialogue with them to make sure that they understand the history behind it and that it's coming and the chances are pretty good the dialogue should start relatively soon so relative to prior a B and C

154as long as you're on that lists that's really what you want to achieve and we haven't had an issue with that some so generally most of the projects that are on the that's it yeah sure content thank you sure so so I have a question actually this is murder dr. Moreau they in one of the earlier presentations way back one when we had the initial consultants come in and look at the demographics and the like they had made a comment about elementary school large elementary schools yeah are sometimes problematic vanish and it says eleven hundred and thirty eight students what are you seeing with eleven eleven hundred and thirty eight student I home every school is that a good thing is that hard to deal with I mean I yeah is that would be big

155for Brookfield it would be and I mean frankly to be bigger than high school and so it's so in in terms of population of students so that was the key that Jeff really went throwing is what we talked about as a committee is the nature of the smaller communities at both of our elementary schools especially talking about center school and the community feel that it has the smallness the safety the protection the just the feel for that and we wanted to make sure right from the start with the design of the school that we talked about that concept of neighborhoods and we really bought that word as a committee I don't think we officially have were voted on it and I'm aware and initiate we initiated that phrasing but talk about different neighborhoods for the

156grade levels and importantly was the concept of an early childhood center as we evolved an option C prime which was at the separate entrance for a younger students the option for administrative or super supervisory oversight of the space and then one thing that we really haven't talked about a lot as time goes on we will is is the almost doubling of the size of those prior classrooms from 780 square feet I think to almost 1200 square feet so the opportunity for the gross motor work the space for planning and group work and centers the opportunity to bring specialists into those classrooms that we would like rather than transition the students out into the gymnasium for example or into an art room and have have it worked on there it just gives you all kinds of

157flexibility the bathrooms are also in the kindergarten rooms that's important for people to know in this design so we really wanted to have that cozy small safe nurturing space for our youngest children but the neighborhoods gives us that space for all of the children the way we have them so we break down the largeness through the school within a school in terms of pre-k and K the separate entrance as well as our neighborhoods and to give you any logistical information about like cafeteria usage inch amazing the usage in terms of that many students trying to come compete for the Common Spaces yeah I mean we talked a little bit about that Jeff I think you know you really crunch the numbers on that in terms of it's a great question popping spring yeah it is

158a great question I think I skimmed over some of the there are some flexible program elements as part of the Early Childhood Center which is a larger multipurpose gross motor skills space for those activities I don't foresee pre-k and K going into the larger gymnasium for those activities they can they can take place here they have immediate adjacency to an exterior protected exterior space so we've built those kinds of spaces at a smaller scale into the early childhood center oh cool yeah and the other thing we don't the committee talked to we spent a good time of the amount of time on was not only those protected courtyards but also playscapes and playgrounds for the children ended in different locations so there would be one place Cape that's for larger children that the little guys

159have to figure out how to use we would make sure it was appropriately sized yeah again I mean conceptually it's set up to support the idea that you could in fact have you know gray level exterior playscapes on each kind of side of the building and they are further back and protected from kind of the public aspects of the buildings so I'm still struggling a little bit with three layers so the elementary students the pre-k K they come in are they in a two layer two to four yeah it's basically like a split-level if you would think of it that way so you come in you'd come in the dedicated entry here admin comes specialty spaces here there's pre-k K there's four pre-k classrooms which are just to speak to the size up for a

160second 1200 based on 1200 square feet today you have an average the size of the classrooms are 789 so that's the difference so we continue on there's four there you could see kind of up the hallway the corridor be open to above you come up a half level and into six more so that's a half what look like a straight that's a full letter it's a full level it's 0 up 14 at 1415 and so this is their best too high of a front yeah - I'm not front and too high in the back so the middle level of the building is kind of a second-story on the monitor yeah exactly but when you're approaching the building and when you're circulating around the building what's nice is it only feel like two storeys so the

161front the front facade is a two-story exact lot but you see this all third storey the back so you may not from a perspective and you can see it because it's it's further back deeper to the building center yeah so I think it's coming in and then they go to the classrooms they go off the set of stairs yeah the yeah okay yeah favorite so that and that's the reasoning behind kind of a wider kind of Main Street there kids come in they can go with the circular up through to their classroom pot and if there are different or viable times they could you know one grade level could come come through this kind of Avenue and another grade level could go through there so there's opportunities for flexibility for from an Operations standpoint and

162this again it's a conceptual plan but it I think it proves out some of the concerns that you have I think no I just was having trouble picturing it and you know one of the things we'll probably need to do as we start taking us around is a kind of a front view you know artist rendering surfing's yep the what as you went through the different cases was one of the cases of renovate as new for all the schools yeah and that was the difference in price on that versus this case so the renovate is new there with new segments we're going to find the so centers school keeping it as a pre-k to one and huckleberry Hill keeping it two or four the center would be cost to Brookfield would be 19 million again

163cost the Brookfield for the huckleberry Hill Elementary would be 21 so I can get the detailed information but with that option you have to keep in mind that you have five to eight at whisking here it doesn't resolve the right sizing with Skinner that's why they would tell me a whiskey near would be a little more expensive it would be a little bit more expensive and you probably would at that point consider an addition a permanent addition that was scare to properly accommodate crates fire and you did necessary we did that and I don't know if that was option one but the only reason I'm asking it's a very simple question is is you're talking to the popular the general population while we're building a new school they're going to say well how is that

164different than just renovating what we have right that's a very simple logic and I'm just trying to get my head around how much money it is so that's it's looking like about 20 million dollars right and that option was actually presented at one of our public forums at the high school and when we looked at that as a committee we decided against it so this was just more to get contest yeah absolutely and again tonight this is all you know very conceptual tonight we're presenting to you our findings and our recommendation of what we would like to look at from here it would go on to the MS Municipal Building Committee where they would actually take lead with this and we would be more of an advisory our committee type situation and this is again

165this is we're following our town charter we're following the natural progression of how things should be working in town and and how we're going to have it work and then they would actually put out to bid another architect taking Tecton associates work in into context and they would be working with the NBC and then actually drawing up the finalized plans so let me let me just put my question in context as soon as I got out I don't want it to be misinterpreted we're showing a bill here sixty three point three million dollar cost of rough field for the first big project right there's a second project around Roxbury and but the real cost of Brookfield isn't sixty three million because what again we have to do some renovation anyhow right so I'm just trying

166to get in my head the difference between building a bill that just rent it just renovating all for us I don't think or just renovating the - right so you just gave me those numbers were like 40 million versus a 63 built new so the if you if you take on board that we're gonna have to renovate anyhow these are old schools the real net have it costs the Brookfield's about 20 million dollars those schools I think that's what that's what that's what looking for that we have to do so we got that on there there's also a cost to temporary temporary housing students and their cost yeah so but so that's an important number yeah yeah I got this I think that's a really important number to have this s in context if you

167assume we have to go renovate anyhow that's gonna cost you something and this proposal were bringing is twenty million dollars more or fifteen million that's more or whatever I just and that'll help people digest it I sure yeah those options and overall costs were summarized in the second public forum where option a clearly identified was often a a renovator everyone is due for all of basically all three we didn't count the high school yes so if you had the difference between a and C yeah agency pride what was the difference so what was on a slide for option a project cost to town for pre-k to one an option a a was 18 to 20 million yeah grade levels 2 through 4 at huckleberry Hill Elementary was 20 to 22 million yeah and then you

168have to consider great the renovation for western air 5 through 8 because it doesn't pick up the 5th grade and that was targeted at 44 to 48 million okay all right and then option C if you were to build basically new pre-k to five and you should probably use the C prime number yep that was the 63 points right yeah which is back here on your chart yeah yeah 60 yeah exactly say I know and what was the huckleberry number that one with this one I'm sorry that whiskey near London over there like with this one a lot of 44 well the whisk and our number would be basically revert back to the original option C which is 37 39 37 39 okay but now you're I guess the point of option C is you

169could get closer Wizkid and I wouldn't we wouldn't advocate immediately a renovate as no to whisk in air so if you build that new pre-k to 5 and alleviate the fifth grade and whisk and Eric gives you gives you Tommy's and that's why that often came up you don't know so but I'm a pendulum I took the midpoints of those that says the added cost for doing a renovation it was near by doing renovate his new was about eight million dollars so I kind of calculated those about 623 million added cost for builders new - the 8 that you'd have to spend more at whisking here yeah and then are the other so it's not tangent listen dollars is what we're talking about that's kind of a net new costs to get a brand-new building

170that's kind of cool yes also to minimize disruption to the students and our staff yep oh yeah huge huge yeah we were kids in that do those numbers include temporary classrooms and stuff or not they they did include you look in the detail it did include temporary modulars and the him for phasing what it does not include is the operating efficiencies related to utilities operations which you know it's really your real cost because you know that state one cost that you're talking you're really paying every year for to operate the building and that's where the true savings would be to the overall sure so you had said that your suggestion yeah yeah so you see kind of secondary entrance egress there there's in maps that we found there's kind of a dotted line that was

171related to some kind of easement we couldn't find the history behind it but it would go along the edge of Nabi which is owned by the town and dedicated as I think recreational open space so um but regardless of whether there's a new building here or not it's good practice nowadays if you have the ability to have secondary means of egress and ingress to a school site you do it so in other words for the existing school it's a nice to have especially because the light blue area which we presented this this kind of shade here that you see coming through the middle that's a floodplain so by a matter of fact you need to means out if you put a building on the other side of the floodplain what we're saying is you may

172want to consider if nothing happens you may want to consider an alternative needs to be this alcove burial site from safety logistics all those kinds of things thank you just on numbers have we done the work on our infernal staffing and operating costs on why should would this model would save us over our existing structure and not done that analysis yet okay we're gonna need to do a little later we haven't done that analysis yet and we Jeff does that we do have the utility operational costs they did that analysis I go it from the floor to three buildings how much does our food Jeff is that one cost avoidance of I'm thinking like $200,000 per year $220,000 um yes in that range but let me give you the specifics so we did there is

173yeah and the conservatively $200,000 a year range and savings and utility costs now that's a conservative number depending on costs and stuff it could be as high as 253 but to hundreds the safe numbers so that's average ancillary costs how I'm just thinking back to what happened with a library project and and and when they've got into the Board of Selectmen at Board of Finance meetings and so we'll remember this it was every single question was about operating costs you know what is what Safa costs you know what do you need to do to manage the buildings that's different so we need to probably kind of get ahead of that in this case we're consolidating schools from two to Elementary's down to one and but yet that the early childhood center and there's gonna be

174some staffing implications and that's we just want to have a good crisp story and a vision of what that looks like so [Music] I am just a comment I'm thrilled with this plan I think it solves all of the problems that we have from the onset we're taking fifth grade out of listen here we are keeping our our pre-k K one-in-eight a more closed environment but yet pulling it under the same roof for efficiency purposes we're building a school that we know is going to last us I'll say 50 years it's in our average schools are sixteen hundred sixty-two years old now but yet we're still keeping a neighborhood feel for all of our grades so we're supporting them within that so I I think it addresses everything and it's exactly you know we'll be

175it asks define I just have one quick comment I think it's appropriately named the perfect plan because I think just as Colette said I think it's it's not just a new building and we have to keep remember I know we can talk about renovation but it's not just a new building that we're getting I mean yes it is of course but and safety we're improving our safety which is obviously about most importance but I love the emphasis the collaboration spaces and the innovative educator I mean it's going to be a new educational experience it's not just a new building and I think that's the direction that we need to add so I love it yeah I think well so that's really important too because it would be such a waste of our time and effort

176just to build a pretty building if it's not for thinking and doesn't you know move us ahead to reach our goals as a district and even just the the idea that you had sketched out possible extra classrooms because you know who's who knows that the community will change over the years and and that's something we should think about to be prepared for because it's gonna happen you know another piece of flexibility that we talked about was dr. spawn I've had some detailed conversation on pre-k we have an increase we're looking at kids mid-year and for the end of the year that will be turning into the 3-year old range and we'll be looking at four year olds and our pre-k population is is booming and where does that go just in the natural progression of

177things where does that go in terms of us as district strategic planning and thinking about the opportunities for pre-k and more offerings perhaps as a district if legislation changes where we may actually command it the road to have universal pre-k again that might be a decision we want to make as a community having said that the flexibility to add a user side of the building is also really important did I see that there's an extra field on this last plant to be net up a field I think you just maintained I learned it I thought I saw two soccer phenom as a building there is I think a better arrangement of the athletic fields in this scheme it gives you a little bit more opportunity to have multi-purpose fields okay there's one of the site

178today there's somebody feels there's basically one athletic warning that he spotted a baseball field an or two of two baseball fields are kind of am jealous yeah I came in in the soccer field um at a soccer field how long yeah okay we'll probably want to have parts in rec time actively part of that field structure yeah absolutely yeah okay I think this is really cool hey thanks to even little committee for all this great work it's really impressive thank you thank you it was actually our honor to do it was very exciting for all of us and it was a whole community of sorry too much community committee effort everyone on the committee really really spent a lot of time and it gave their input and it was a whole committee effort to get

179to this point is there gonna be another public forum that basically presents okay where it goes from here if the board decides to vote for it yeah I would then we would then bring it to the municipal building committee they would review it they would pick it up they would work with us and then yes the short short answer is yes but this committee would not be leading it and even work would that be do you think prior to the whole gist do you think they were at that point you wouldn't be on the committee but prior to the public meeting where we would set the referendum a yes yes almost most definitely most definitely know what's gonna happen next is we do have another committee meeting set up and that is enough for August

18030th at six o'clock there we're going to be discussing your vote tonight and where we go from here so at that point it would be up to whoever on the FEC takes over as the new chairperson and most likely they will invite us to be a part of it so we will continue to have a voice and be a part of it but they would be the entity really leading it and moving it along from us because that's really their specialty and I think you just making a comment because just a little history on this community because we set it up not with this this board but the prior board is one we've got it going we actually had a discussion about the structure and and we said it would be best first of all

181that it's not just the court event and it's a you know that we wanted a broad broad representation on this committee but then secondly we anticipated this moment instead said that would be a point where the Board of Ed responsibility to cly's doesn't go away but it declines because we're not building experts right and the NBC increases and we purposely asked Paul chucko and Josh flowers the Chairman and vice chairman of the NBC to be part of this committee so that this transition is seamless right and and we wanted to have a Board of Finance now on and a Board of Selectmen on it so that we the processes when we're going through those boards that they're they've been part of us it's it's this is this was very consciously thought out on the makeup

182of the committee and Anna spent so great watch I mean I just I've been loving watching how they give it taken but now is when the powers known take off because as we go through a transition to the NBC needed to do it we're not like starting fresh I know that's really good that the other thing not it's just from a process point of view that and to go to your point is the formal process is the NBC has to grab it and kind of build up the planning and the planning and presentation material to carry for we need to be part of that and part of the selling of it but the formal process it goes to the Board of Selectmen for their review there's usually a public hearing as part of the Board

183of Selectmen review process that they vote on it and it has to go to the Board of Finance they often have a public hearing as part of their process and then it goes to town meeting right which has another chance to present all of us and then it goes to referendum process and I just saw it with the library - by the time it was at Board of Finance it was like the project was lost by Sunday because they were like well what are you talking about it's already with the port of finance like I don't know anything about this project so that's what I'm trying to get ahead of I actually think there's a great opportunity to have the community as part of this handoff process to have a meet read or let the

184public see that the final proposed I think there's some really cool stuff in there that's hard to understand just looking at a schematic on a website that if we got Jeff up saying okay here's you see that the committee finally settled on we could build some excitement long before we get into the process I think so too and I agree and thank you for that Bob um but before we get to that and go through the process and then maybe that's something that the NBC would you don't like to join us we already have josh and we've had Paul on the committee and you know I have to say without really having two architects on that committee with us I don't think we'd be where we are today they have been a wealth of knowledge

185and they're supported tech done associates right away the whole time that Paul and Josh done and they started talking to each other but yeah and these are all good discussions that we can have on August 30th which is also a public meeting anyone from the public is welcome to come it is at six o'clock at the town school offices so are we ready to bring this to a vote okay recommended motion that the board approved the c-prime plan as presented by Jeff Kaczynski any other like because I asked that we modify the motion and as recommended by our staff I'd like to move to amend the motion to include all right so this is the move to approve the amended motion all in favor all right okay so now we are voting on the motion

186for the C prime plan as presented by the strategist presented by the strategic facilities steering committee and time time all in favor [Music] I would say okay Mike Oh Eve and joy and Debbie for all of your tireless work on your and the entire strategic Facilities Committee this has been a long way going and we appreciate all of the work that you bought this and thank you for having faith in us in for listening to our proposal we appreciate it it's great all right okay um we next on our agenda is upcoming events but before that I would like to make a motion to modify the agenda to include the session of three main points so write a second in its second amount of modification all right all in favor all right okay so for

187the three main points for those that are hearing it's not on the agenda um this is something that involves actually just out of our self evaluation board retreat before this but it's been something we've been doing is aboard for the last couple of meetings on our Facebook page will resend just present three main points from the meeting so those that don't have the time to sit through one of these meetings or read the minutes or watch it at home can instantly grab the main gist of it what we decided to do from there is just the site as a board together just very briefly what those three salient points are going to be that we're going to bring forward I know number one says yeah we've got number one how about the other two I

188think the last mile yeah I was thinking what about the fact that the budget during budget was under budget by approximately 50 okay are we all agreeing with us yes all right I don't think that's something we have to another thing is just know I just really should and that Lisa we on a public put that as a standing item in the agenda just before mrs. Ramirez yeah yeah we can call it decide on the three point thank you yeah three main points and then typically as a matter of process Rosa drafts with us going to look like for posting on Facebook and they had ankle at night helper take a look at that together and the great thing that I'm Eric head did during the last one is he included a link to this

189video meeting but then included the exact time stamp yeah oh man all of those ways happened so should someone want to watch that in addition to this we were right to go into those time steps so we appreciate that work how long how long the section it's a two hours of ten minutes and it goes for forty five so that's right good luck for now yeah okay okay we events hey most exciting I'll say first first day of school Wednesday August 29th however there's no school on Monday September third for Labor Day at Center elementary school on August 28th at 2 o'clock is a meet-and-greet for new students entering first grade and at 2:30 is the first grade meet-and-greet and from 3 to 5 is the center school playdate at Kings kids Kingdom on August

190try 9th is the first day school of her first grade also there's a kindergarten we agreed that day on August 30th is the first day of kindergarten from 8:40 to 12:15 and this is the time until September 12 at 9:30 is the a.m. preschool orientation and at 1 o'clock is the afternoon preschool orientation on August 31st at 12:45 is the first day of afternoon preschool and on September 4th at 8:45 is the first day of mourning preschool and at 6:30 that same day open house at huckleberry on August 22nd is a New Student Orientation and on August 27th is the open walk through from 3:30 to 4:30 for students at the middle school on August 21st at 10:30 is the New Student Orientation on August 23rd from 2 to 4 is a student walk through

191and on August 24th is also a student walk through from 9 to 11 they give it was exciting things happening boys a great time here it is all right now we have an executive session anticipated recommend emotion at the board enter into executive session to discuss a confidential legal student matter and the lawsuit filed by former superintendent Anthony Bhuvana second all in favor right that includes the out public portion of our meeting thank you very much being here have a good evening [Music]