001at 7:40. Mr. Jazenski, roll call, please. Here. Thank you. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. With that, we're going to kick it off again with our student representatives. We have Connor and Madeline. All yours. All right, great. So, good evening. As we continue to move quickly towards the end of the year, we are in a season of closing and something that was really great for us in wrapping up the year at Cheshire High School is all of the opportunities to recognize the many special students at Cheshire High School. So, today our seniors had our honor cord ceremony. It was nice.
002We got to be recognized for our academic achievements across all of our subjects. And then, in Cheshire High School's way of not just recognizing seniors, we had sophomores and juniors and also some other seniors recognized on Tuesday's awards convocation. So, it's been a great week for recognizing all of the wonderful students and wonderful achievements of Cheshire High School. Um we would also like to recognize Bradley Fang as the salutatorian for this year's class, as well as Suchita Srinevasan as the valedictorian. Speaking of our graduation, we would also like to thank the CHS PTO and the Cheshire community for organizing and sponsoring our annual post-graduation event, the all-night grad party. Um furthermore, we would also like to emphasize that seniors are not the only students having fun this time of year. Students in grades 9 through
00312 participated in CHS's very own Ramboree, previously known as B1 Day, this past Wednesday. Students were able to take part in a wide variety of activities, including tennis, pickleball, spikeball, scrapbooking, junk journaling, and most importantly, the volleyball tournament. Each team was asked to pick a charity of their choice to donate if they were to win. The winners of yesterday's tournament went by the name Spike Tyson, and their charity of choice was the American Lung Association. Yeah, so I know Maddie mentioned that seniors aren't the only ones having fun, but I'm convinced that we are the ones having the most fun. Uh between the award ceremony, the honor cords, there's not a lot of class going on, and that'll continue on Friday. We have our >> of learning going on, right? >> Yeah. We have We
004have our senior picnic tomorrow at Holiday Hill, I think, and I heard there's going to be plenty of opportunities to hang out with classmates, play games, eat some food, and even go canoeing. So, there's going to be lots of fun to be had tomorrow. But, like Ms. Rosenberg said, there's still learning going on, and us as seniors, we will be getting our final exams on June 4th, a day before all of the rest of Cheshire High School begins wrapping up with their exams on June 5th. To close out the month of May, CHS's Aries Ensemble will be performing Kodachrome, set in a small town of Colchester, Connecticut. The production is supposed to be deeply moving and includes a photographer guiding the audience through the lives of several ordinary individuals, revealing that grief and everyday conflicts
005that everyone can endure in their lifetime. Although the show is considered to be a drama, it is light-hearted and hopeful has hopeful ending that leaves audiences reflecting on their own lives. It encourages viewers to appreciate the meaningful moments that can often seem mundane or taken for granted. We hope that you will all support the cast and crew of Aries in what will be the seniors' final show at CHS. This production will be taking place on May 28th and May 29th. So, more fun things happening at Cheshire High School today after the honor cord ceremony, our senior British literature classes put on the Renaissance Fair, uh um kind of centered around the book London Alive. Uh they did a fantastic job. I will say the commitment of the characters that were there were fantastic. Uh I
006spoke with St. Thomas Beckett, and that I don't remember the name of the king, but whoever he was fighting with at the time, they they very did a very good job explaining the struggle between power, and then they beat me in tug-of-war to kind of really show that struggle in power. But, in that I also watched a witch trial, and got to enjoy some some prizes. So, the students did a great job. It was very, very well done. Uh as much as it was fun, and as much as I joke, it was really insightful into the the book London Alive that the British literature class spent so much time with this year. Um it was an event that was both enjoyable and memorable for all who were able to attend. Um I believe that is
007all the announcements we have for you this evening. We hope you have a great rest of your night. Thank you. Any more members, questions, comments, Ms. Fitzgerald? I spoke to I think both of you about this already, but I um had the pleasure of attending the London Alive this morning, and despite the rain, everybody had such a great time. I didn't under I've had two students go through CHS, and my daughter was in Brit Lit last year, and she kind of mentioned it, and it sounded cool, but I didn't quite understand the undertaking, and the whole what what it all is, and seeing it um firsthand, and going through it was so fun. Everybody in character, um what just like you know, the projects, and the games, and the kind of educational component, but the
008mix of fun. It was really, really awesome to be able to see it. So, I'm happy I was invited, and I was delighted to be able to go. And congratulations to you both. I know this is a super awesome time of year, so soak it all in, and enjoy it, and uh you know, congratulations. Thank you. Dr. Harrigan. Yeah, congratulations to both of you. Um it is a fun time of year and a little melancholy kind goes along with it. Um I'm just wondering um what the change from B1 day to Ram Bree How did that come about? What's the implication for that? I love the name. I think it's I think that's why we changed it. I think more people were intrigued by it and I think it encapsulated what the school's all about.
009Like go Rams, things like that. Yeah, and I think the the shift we kind of shifted focus a little bit with the activities that we did and it was more kind of I think structured and designed to keep students in school. Cuz I think a problem we've run into in the past is a lot of kids with cars just decide, "Well, I'm going to have a fun field day. I might as well just do it where I want." And I know we have some students that haven't come in the past, but this year with the way that the activities were designed, especially the volleyball tournament, we did have a good turnout and there were a lot of students that did show up. Thank you. Who What is it in Was the name changed Did Does
010it come from the students or did it come from the administration? I think a combination of both. Uh there were a ton of people working on this. I think administration did do a lot of the heavy lifting, but there were also groups that really I know the Young Republicans club played a really big role in organizing the volleyball tournament, so I'm not sure they might have had a say in the name, but I'm pretty sure it was mostly the CHS administration that organized it. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other board members' questions, comments? I was going to ask the same thing if if you guys were heavily involved in the selection process of the name change, but it obviously sounds you did have a voice in it, so that's great to hear as well,
011too. Um I I personally want to apologize because I know I was going to be a part of the leadership um event as as So, Connor, can you tell me you know, I'm assuming it went really well. Yeah, uh I'm really glad that you asked about that cuz I would love to talk to you about it. We had [laughter] We had I think 10 10 high schools show up. And this year as opposed to last year I attended, this year I had the opportunity to kind of organize it and I would say the students got a lot out of it and I think especially the peer health educators got a ton out of it. Um It's such a cool event because you have so many different students coming in from so many different schools and
012they're kind of put into an environment where they have to interact with each other. So, I know I saw a lot of students who had We had name tags so you could see what school someone was from and throughout the entire event I saw a lot of students who had different name tags. So, I I actually ended up making friends with some new students. There were two students from Amity who I actually followed me around for most of the day just because in the beginning when we're all in this big room for our um our activities where we have, you know, our obstacle course and all the other like kind of warm-up activities. Everyone's in the same room so you kind of have to talk to each other. So, I was waiting in line for
013the obstacle course. Um and the two students from Amity were next to me and, you know, there's no There's nothing to do but talk. So, I had a teammate that played baseball at Amity and then next thing you know, they knew that teammate and then next thing you know, they were Every time they saw me throughout the day it was like, "Oh, what's up, Connor?" And I think I'm not the only student that got that experience of like meeting someone new. But I also think, you know, having actually having all the excellent leaders that showed up. It wasn't just a day to meet new people, but it was also a day that I think a lot of students really learned a lot about leadership and how to be stronger leaders. Thank you. And again, I'm
014sorry. I was on the agenda and then things just happened. >> But if I could add to Connor's point though, at lunch all the kids are mixed together with students from other districts um and leaders sit at those tables and facilitate conversations. So, you know, I know at my table we were talking about going to prom, and one young man was asking about, you know, fashion advice on the prom. Uh and >> Asking you for fashion? Uh believe it or not, and others. [laughter] It's It's kind of So, that one hurt. But, um anyway, I No, no, no. There was [laughter] dialogue and about everything, you know, we the kids just had a lot of fun talking with each other, getting to know one another at the table, and it really representative of the student
015presentation from earlier. Um it was a great community building event, but learning, too. Uh a lot of learning building built into the leadership day. So, great event. It is the origin Was it just us hosting, or we rotate in in the subsequent years with another school? >> this is um very much a product of Pure Health, and it's something that we do every year. Um this actually was our 15th anniversary. Uh it's all done Well, it's Pure Health that does it, but we get a lot of help from the Ryan T. Lee Foundation, uh and especially from from Coach Lee. So. >> Got you. Awesome. Well, next year Well, you're not going to be here next year, but put me on the the list, please. And thank you for the invite. Um any other board
016members with questions, comments? Awesome. Well, we have one more meeting with you, but good luck with final exams, and we'll see you June 4th again. Thank you. Awesome. The next item I'm really excited for this next item because we have a celebrity in the house. Um a local celebrity, but it's actually he's national now, so I'm like fan girling, for sure. >> [laughter] >> Um so, Dr. Stolen, will you do the honors of introducing our celebrity? Sure. Um, each year the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education uh, offers districts and Boards of Education the opportunity to submit uh, for recognition. There are a variety of awards. Uh, the uh, CABE group goes through those uh, nominations and identifies districts that they felt are worthy of recognition. So, indeed our celebrity CABE representative tonight is Leonard
017Lockhart who has been involved with CABE for as long as I can remember. And um, we want to congratulate you on being named the National School Board Association President uh, this spring. Uh, >> [applause] >> Now, Mr. Lockhart's long been known for his uh, fierce advocacy of public schools and uh, Boards of Education uh, on the state level and I'm sure that um, has clearly resonated with your peers across the country and we're really proud to have you representing us at the national level and even more so to have you here this evening. So, welcome Mr. Lockhart. Very humbling. Thank you very much, Superintendent Stolen. Um, it's good to be home. Um, I just want people before I present in the state of Connecticut to understand that we have issues within our state and we
018embrace them. But when you go to other people's gardens and look to see what they have to deal with and how they deal with it and then you come back to Connecticut, we're we're quite fortunate, which is humbling and scary at the same time. So, we got to make sure we keep all all Americans, all children, all Board of Ed Association members in prayer, and all taxing communities because everyone is under stress and strain to try to do the right thing. So, thank you for everything that you do. So, I'm humbled to present this award to you. This was one of my final acts coming out as president of CAPE back in November. And I'm here as the immediate past president of CAPE to recognize the efforts of the Cheshire Public Schools and to present
019you with an award. In order to receive a Bonnie B. Carney Award of excellence for educational communications, all entries must meet the following criteria. First is the general criteria which includes the clarity of the message, image, and consistency. Second the specific guidelines of readability, editing, graphics, type, format, presentation, design, and equally important, the value of the expenditure. I'm happy to present to Cheshire Public Schools with the award for excellence for educational communication and under the heading of special project um you have recently with your high school principal recruitment. And with that, it was an email sent out to all of the 092 certified administrators throughout the state and they were encouraged to apply and to serve your school district as the principal of your high school. And you had 51 high school candidates that applied
020for that and you were able to provide solid documentation and effectiveness of that particular program. CAPE has been honoring school districts with the Award of Excellence for Educational Communication since 1975. In 2016, the award was renamed after the long-time CAPE staff member Bonnie B. Carney after her her in recognition of her 47 years of dedication to education focused on communications within the state of Connecticut. With this award, CABE's goal is to identify and honor the hard-working people in school districts for their continued effort to communicate with their constituents on a consistent basis. On behalf of our president, Meg Scudder, and our executive director, Patrice McCarthy, we congratulate you. May I approach? Um please. >> [applause] >> You guys are going to have to come in front for a picture now. We'll make sure you are
021the chair. We'll make You can give it to the chair. All right. But we'll do a photo. We'll make you do a picture. Can I keep that paper when I leave? >> [laughter] >> Did you mean that? The original application that has the blue ribbon on it that you can frame as well. Who is this guy? Where would you like to stand? Come on, you're the star of the show. You can stand right here. You are the chair. You are Wait, can we put the principal that we did higher? Yes. In the picture. >> [laughter] >> We like this guy in the room and watch him get a picture. It's really effective. I I left that part off the application. >> [laughter] >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Great. One, two, three. Awesome. Thank you, Evelyn.
022Actually, I Just came over right here. Yep. Hey, I'm also on the committee with the commission on the Yes. Don't want to show my daughter. side. state elected Yeah, we'll do that. Thanks again. Appreciate it. Great to see you. Thank you again, Leonard. Our next item would be our audience section. If anybody would like to go to the microphone and speak. Hearing none, we move to our consent calendar. Um I believe there is a call for motion for grants resolution. Is that correct? Okay. I will entertain that motion. Miss Collina. Move that the Cheshire Board of Education approve the consent calendar as presented. Is there a second? Dr. Harrigan. All those in favor of the motion that is on the floor. One, two, three. Unanimous. Thank you. We move to committee reports. First up, curriculum.
023Miss Collina. We are reporting tonight on two curriculum meetings. One held on April 20th and one on May 18th. Um I'll quickly uh go through them. >> [snorts] >> We had um informational items on our April 20th Board of Education Curriculum Committee that included the Crosby uh the Cheshire High School DECA National Conference um in Atlanta, Georgia that several of our students attended. Um this was April 25th to 29th and Principal Hanlon shared um the uh the event about the event, the regional competitions. And um that Let's see, there was a student will partner with a delegation from another school for lodging and cost-sharing purposes. The second um informational item was the DOD grade 8 Washington, D.C. trip that is happening right now, May 20th to the 22nd. It's an opportunity for 8th graders to
024visit Washington, Gettysburg, um several museums, and um a visit uh Washington, D.C. There're 277 students that are on that trip right now. Um we also had from um Kristen Castellano, Ryan Murphy, and Azra Redzic a report on our K-12 multilingual learners um program. And um the presentation highlighted current enrollment numbers um and emphasized that uh student focus groups were conducted to elicit direct feedback um and future goals of the ML program uh were um given to us. The second report was um K-12 social studies. And again, an overview of the social studies program uh was given to the council. The process was used to establish the next 5-year goals. Uh the team emphasized that student focus groups were conducted to elicit direct feedback um to help outline the future goals. And the last um was
025the assistant superintendent's update, which I will let Marlene report on. Thank you. So, at that point in time, I had shared that the team from our district was attending the science of reading masterclass session. The final session was actually held today where the team presented and they did an excellent job. Um we also I had also highlighted then that um we had held early entry to kindergarten screenings on April 24th. Was also mentioning the town-wide art show. Um we had also regarding um department update, surveys had been distributed to all kindergarten and first grade paraeducators to facilitate informed decision-making regarding adequate building support across who is transitioning to new schools. That actually was done and we hosted a lovely tour today of Barnum School for all those folks who would be transitioning and it was
026a joy to see everyone's faces as they walked around the buildings. Um we also conducted an evaluation of instructional supplies over the last 5 years to determine what we needed to box up as far as classroom libraries, science um materials, and manipulatives since we are moving 200 students out of Highland along with teachers to make sure that there's an equitable distribution of our existing instructional supplies across all of the buildings for next year. Um we were talking at that point about the Smarter Balanced assessment testing which began and is now just about concluded. The testing is concluded except for a couple of straggler students who have to take the makeups. That is our April report. You pull up the next one. I only have this. Do you want me to run through it? No, it's
027okay. Okay. Um Um our [clears throat] next meeting um we spent a good deal of time on textbook review and the um Cheshire High School staff presented textbook OSX. It's physics for high school and in accordance with board policy the that textbook will be made available for public viewing in the Cheshire Public Library, the Cheshire High School Library and the Office of Curriculum and Instruction at 29 Main Street from Thursday, May 21st through Thursday, June 4th and slated for approval and adoption at the Board of Ed meeting on Thursday, June 4th, 2026. I'll turn it over to you for your report on that meeting. >> Sure, I just wanted the board to know and we'll certainly talk about this after the two-week review period, but the textbook is actually an online book through OpenStax. And
028so, we talked a little bit about how would we get public comments on an online textbook. So, our practice is that this is the the textbook that is up for review is posted at the public library, at the library at Cheshire High School, and at at the curriculum office. So, for those of you who are wondering, it looks like this. There's a QR code where this can be accessed, and then next to all of these, there is a form that folks can fill out and make their comments. We'll also be communicating that out to families so that they have access as well and can provide any feedback that's necessary. Marlene, is there are there specific questions in that review notice that are being asked or is it just to look at the the book itself?
029>> It's open. >> Okay, got it. Open. We also talked about um an out-of-state overnight field trip for first robotics championship that was held in Houston, Texas, where the team finished 68th out of 75 teams and there were 597 teams there from across the world. Lastly, we had a presentation from the business department. Leslie Pear was present to share with us the summary of the Cheshire Curriculum Council 5-year review on all of the business courses and the business program offered at the high school in grades 9 through 12. My superin- My assistant superintendent's report simply talked about um some work that we are doing focusing on AI. We led We, meaning Azra and I, led a um activity for our district instructional leadership team, which is made up of teacher leaders from across the district.
030We're in the middle of crafting an AI literacy outline for students and for teachers that we are hopeful to launch next year. We also, Dr. Solon and I, also ran the same activity for the Cheshire Strategic Planning Committee, which is made up of a variety of teachers that serve a 2-year term on Strategic Planning. Um I told you earlier about the tour of Barnum today, which was for our paras, our LSTs, nurses, secretaries, library media specialists, et cetera, who um now know where they are going next year. Also wanted to make you aware that Azra Redzic has been extremely busy the past couple of weeks starting curriculum writing with Rams, coaches, et cetera, um division leaders prior to the end of the year. We had to restructure some things differently this year due to um
031funding for the curriculum writing institute. The a drawback of this process is that this is being done by the coaches and we have much less teacher representation. So, we're looking at a way to make sure that teachers are in the loop to give us feedback both now and through the summer, but in a in a different way. Um we've also been having some math pathways discussions. As you know, there's been some significant changes that we've made based on data, based on student input, based on teacher input in our math programming in so far as we have accelerated the sixth grade students who were entering seventh grade last year that we had um pre-algebra for all. This is our first year with algebra for all. Students have done exceptionally well. We wanted to talk with our
032teachers at the middle school and at the high school. We finished meeting with middle school teachers this week getting their feedback. So, much like you saw the um focus groups to elevate student voice, we've been replicating that with teachers with individual interviews. We will also begin those with the high school and we'll replicate those next year since this will have an impact on the high school. This will be the first time that the high school has been welcoming in kids who are on accelerated track meaning that they've all been accelerated. So, we have a really wonderful crop of students taking geometry next year. So, exciting and um we'll certainly be reporting out on that um at our curriculum committee meeting likely in the fall. That's our report. Questions from board members? Comments? Mr. Kolar. Uh
033Uh, thank you. I have a couple of questions on the textbook. Is it better for now or for the June 4th meeting when we adopt? I don't I I could do either or you can email me them in advance and we can be ready to talk about it then. >> is an entirely online textbook? It is. It's an online textbook. Um, Julie Barker, who is the department chair, has shared that over the past couple of years, she and Budhan Katuwal, who is the other physics teacher, have really been evaluating a multitude of books. Some of those books are geared more for freshmen. So, there are some schools that teach freshmen at a a a different level than you would seniors taking an advanced level of physics. So, the books haven't quite landed where they would
034like. So, Julie came across this earlier in the year. There's an evaluation process that they go through where they evaluate it based on a number of standards, including readability, including ease. The correct The textbook is a resource. It's not our curriculum. So, when Julie looked at this book, this OpenStax um, online version, what she found was that it lined up nicely with our curriculum, making it both ease for our teachers and also the access to the platform has a lot of bells and whistles that make it a good read for students. And she said something the other night that I think is worth repeating. This is not a PDF of a book online. This is a platform where students can go in and kind of click around and see different examples. In some cases, they
035can see a video and there's also text in there along with some sample problems, etc. So, Julie and Budhan certainly felt that this was valuable. Um, it also happens to be a free online resource and you can order books, and we discussed at length that curriculum that we would be looking at any students who had an IEP that necessitated them having a book, that we would look at any students who had a 504 plan perhaps for a visual issue that needed the book, and if a student wanted a hard copy of the book, which is unlikely, but for students who do, we would certainly have these books available to them in advance of the start of the semester. I had about five follow-up questions, and you answered them all in that one answer, so [laughter]
036thank you for that. Um and just for my sort of qualitative understanding, if it if we were like back in the days of an actual paper textbook, what would the cost of something like this be for updating a physics textbook? I mean >> another way, how much are we Yeah. >> saving by using a resource like this? Yeah, they could run $60, $70 per book. Yeah. That's like ballpark. That's yeah, that's a low end of it. It's very optimistic. Yeah. Thank you. And then not to mention that the different versions that come out every couple years that we have to The nice thing about this OpenStax is how often it is it's sort of in constant um there's constant eyes on it, so revision is a lot easier than as Sam pointed out, if you
037buy the book and they make a change, so you now you're on edition five, and you've purchased 300 edition threes. Yeah. Any other questions, comments, Mr. Strough? Um yes, I'm on the curriculum committee, and I just wanted to compliment, commend um you know, Ms. Castellano, Mr. Murphy, and Ms. Redzik on just you you can't tell from the minutes, but how deep and how how much they go into the curriculum and what it entails, and just kind of all the support for the multilingual learners from, you know, just kind of all the success plans and the monitoring to the language lines. Like, I learned so much. So, I Anybody who's interested, watch the video. There's so much in there. Again, you can't tell from the minutes, but it was really helpful and I'm very impressed by
038all the supports there. Same for Ms. Grillo, Ms. Giuliano, Mr. Galvin, Ms. Reznik on on the social studies, just kind of how rich the dialogue, the curriculum, kind of taking today's topics from today and and and pulling all things together. It's It's so impressive. So, I just wanted to share that. You can't quite tell it from the minutes. So, I just want to say thank you for that. And I'm impressed. >> Thank you. These teams work incredibly hard. It's a multi-year process and it requires a lot of wrangling. So, your comment is really a very much appreciated. Any other? I just have a couple questions. >> Morley. That's it for curriculum. It since you brought it up, first off, like today's final session, what was your takeaway? What was the team's takeaway? Was it practical,
039if you ask me, for us moving forward, you know? Yeah, so there was an incredible incredible amount of information given at all six sessions of the science of reading master class. It was valuable in that we got to hear from nationally known presenters. Um it was a little bit for some maybe like drinking from a fire hose, the amount of information that they gave. And then we were partnered with other districts like Danbury and Darien to sort of debrief some of this. I think the really nice takeaway was that they have um a set of modules that we will have access to that now Ezra and I could use to bring professional learning to either teachers or more than likely administrators to bring people make people more knowledgeable about this. I think that the exercises
040that they had really aligned very much with our C C C cycle and what we evaluate, but it was certainly um we went there because we wanted to grow and we want to get better and we are a part of a continuous improvement cycle. And I think when you look at those when you look at those three things, it hit all the marks. Awesome. Thank you. And I know you mentioned the the staff toward Barnum um and this might not be the time to ask, but I did have a few public parents asking about if we even have time between the move for students to visit ahead of first day. Yeah, so um I'll I'll hit on that in my report about where we are with school organization. Great. Thank you. If that's it for
041curriculum, we'll move. Thank you both. >> That's it. Okay. Thank you. Uh next committee would be finance, Dr. Harrigan. Yes, thank you. Um >> [clears throat] >> we have a few moving parts to the financial report tonight. So, we'll start with um the report included in your packet is the financial report for the 2025-26 Board of Education budget reflecting expenditures and encumbrances through April 30th. Um I'm going to let Ms. Emily Taylor uh talk more about that and especially uh since Kim is now here. Um I assume you'll also go through the financial highlights that we have in front of us. That's great. Um good evening, everyone. Uh so, through April 30th, we had spent 87,000 87,569,573 dollars, which is 94.0% of our budget, which is a slight increase from last month where we had
042spent 92.3% um as a reminder our total budget is 93 million 124,314 dollars. In the narrative report you can see the accounts and I did this last month as well. The most The accounts with the most significant differences between budget and actual expenditures. These are the same as last month. They are the tuitions and the outplacements, the textbooks and software, the transportation and the capital equipment. These don't all carry the same weight. Obviously the budget for tuition and outplacements is a lot at 2.8 million is a lot larger than the textbooks and software budget at 300,000. But what you can see in this table is the budget appropriation, our projected year-end balance, and then last year's projected year-end balance. So there's some pretty big swings in these line items. I wouldn't say at this point
043in the year that they were unpredictable, but you can see pretty big upticks in tuition and outplacements and transportation. So tuition and outplacements with our projected year-end balance of 400,000 dollars, transportation at 600,000 dollars, and capital equipment at 194,000 dollars. And so the question is when we have these projected year-end balances, how are we balancing our budget? And so if you look at the first table on the first page of the budget narrative where you can see the On the right hand side is the variance. And so our projected year-end balance for our certified salaries and our operations and maintenance lines are carrying the negative or the deficits in the outplacements and the support services is where the transportation lives. So at this point in the year we, you know, still have some strong controls
044in place. I'll talk about some more specific parts of this the budget and expenditures, but some things that we've put in place is, you know, we have increased the expenditure cap, which has been held at 60% all year, even though we're, you know, less than a month away from the end of school. We have raised that to 70%. Um, you know, this is I would say that our schools have done a really great job with 60%, but that's very hard to be this far in the year at a 60% expenditure cap. So, we're at 70%. It's um it's not really going to get higher than that, and that is one control we've put in place. We are also asking that all um purchases are submitted by May 29th, so we have a really clear picture
045where we are. That's earlier than in prior years, because our school year is ending earlier. So, we want to make sure that everything is is um purchased, and we have a good uh picture where we are financially. Um so, that's the more general part of the finance report and narrative. Um but, some specific financial highlights, and I'm sorry, I'm going to kind of be jumping around this report, cuz I just threw everything in here, but in the agenda, there's some parts that are uh not in order, so we'll be coming back to this at certain parts of the evening. Um but, some financial highlights, I just wanted to share an update on school meal pricing. Last year this time, we did actually increase our school meal pricing. Um we approved the Board of Ed approved
046meal price increases meal price increases, got it. Um for this year, for a 25 cent increase for elementary, middle school, and high school breakfast, and a 50 cent increase for elementary, middle, and high school lunch meals. We are not increasing the prices for next year. As you know, there was some there was legislation for free breakfast for all, as well as um no payments for reduced price meals for students. That's not a that reduced price is not a very large part of our population, but it's just something that's going into effect for next year. Um and another piece of the school I would say this isn't school meal pricing, but is related to our school uh school nutrition program, is we met with the town sustainability committee last night to talk about our composting. You
047know, we have composting happening at Chapman, at Doolittle, and at Dodd. Um and so next year we are just thinking of ways that we can potentially sustain or increase the amount of composting that we're doing. We've had some challenges this year just with who is willing to accept all components of our composting program, including trays that are compostable but have to be driven to Massachusetts because Blue Earth in Southington doesn't accept them. Um and so Erica, our director of food service, has been really thoughtful about ways to increase uh composting, but at the very least we'd like to just sustain our program. We currently have about $16,000 remaining in um an appropriate inappropriate funds from the town to do so. So, she's been very uh thoughtful in in the way that she's been running the
048program and engaging our students, um and hopeful that we can continue that. Um if you weren't aware of this, there was a lot of uh potential legislation about required composting in schools if you had 26 tons of food waste a school year, and if you lived 20 miles within a facility, that legislation then was kind of pulled back, and so there is no um requirement at this point, but it is probably coming down down the road. So, moving on from school meals, uh just giving an update on price locks. So, we um we usually have fixed pricing for most of our energy commodities, our fuel um being one of the big ones, our electrical supply rates, but with current market conditions, we haven't been able to lock anything for next year. Our electricity lock is
049through October of this year, so we still have some time, but really it's it's better to lock sooner than later. We're going to hold out a a bit longer. We're talking to our energy brokers about the market and we're hopeful we can lock by June 30th, but things really just haven't improved in the past few months. And so, um we're working with the town, we're working with our energy brokers, but I just wanted to give you that update cuz I think around this time this year it's it's usually more locked in and it's it's not at this moment. Um for facilities, we are going to talk about facilities a few times this evening. Um but what I'm going to talk about right now is we finally have all the snow removal costs for this school
050year in all the invoices are in at a $360,490, which is significantly above the $170,000 that was budgeted. Uh we had a really challenging year with snow as did everyone. Um and we had 20 snow removal events in fiscal year 2027. We've increased the budget by $16,500 um to $186,500. Um so, hopefully our snow season is not as difficult as it was this year. What you'll see reflected in the capital budget a little later this evening is a request for some snow equipment to you know, kind of ease what our our own team can provide during the winter. Uh and then the other thing that I'll talk about with facilities um that have helps offset um some of our facilities costs is the drip grant, which is uh funding that we were actually, you know,
051just we just actually got those funds. It's $189,968 that the school school district can use for non-capital repairs and improvements. It's a pretty broad category. Um you know, we've we're looking at our expenses and where we want to spend that this year, but that will help offset some of the um expenditures with with snow removal, which was significantly higher than expected. Um capital expenditures plan we'll talk a little bit later with the planning committee. Um the audit report we will talk about a little bit later in the agenda and the same with the cleaning contract vendor and the medical benefits. So, that is all I have for the finance that part of the finance report. Thank you, Emily. Are there any questions for Emily on what she did report on? Just call out. Go ahead.
052You know, I do. Um, just just mechanically I it makes sense on some of the controls in place for supplies and things like that holding back and releasing throughout the year seeing what the budget is going through, but um, there were two that stuck out to me. This is more knowledge than anything. Student activities only at 65% $232,000 and a month to go or 3 weeks to go as well as the pension and retirement coming in at 65% and both of those are flagged as projected end of year zero balance. So, how does that work over the next 6 weeks of the budget? The the student activities is actually like all of the stipends for um, sports division leaders. So, that will that just hasn't been paid out yet. So, it has we don't encumber
053that in advance. So, that will be completely spent down. There's no savings in that line. Um, it's all allocated just not encumbered yet. So, it's a little bit misleading that it's student activities, but it really is stipends for for teachers and staff. Um, and for the pension that will also be completely spent out. I I need to look and see when we you know, we make the the deposit or the encumbrance there, but there's just no no anticipated savings in that. We have you know, an actual actuary who dictates how much money we're putting into those accounts. So, there's not you know, an anticipated um, savings there. And then uh, and it's fine to punt this if we talk about this in other facilities, but um, it's mentioning the grant for $190,000 for non-capital repairs.
054Can you give us an idea of like what those might be or what are on your list for that grant? >> Yeah, what I what I'll say about this and I can send more about the drip grant. There is a lot of ambiguity with this grant that a lot of business managers are trying to get more clarity on. There's a state the school state finance project has released some information. This is ultimately an OPM grant and they've you know when we've asked them questions about the spending and making sure that we're spending on appropriate uses it's been go talk to your auditor. Talk to your auditor. Everyone's kind of getting the same response. We don't have to spend it by June 30th of this year. It's a non-lapsing allocation, but what I will say is
055we have looked at like qualifying expenses this year and we have like over $750,000 of things that would qualify for this account based on the very basic details we have. What me and the director of finance Heather are planning on doing is once we get closer to encumbering everything and in the middle of June is looking and seeing like how little of this grant we can we can allocate for this year and still you know hit our our budget targets. We can't use it for snow removal. That's unfortunately, but there are plenty of other expenses we've had or like unanticipated projects or leaks or pipe bursts that have happened that we can allocate for this. We can even use it for things like door repairs which um seems small when it's a $5,000 repair, but
056we're looking at you know if you're fixing four, five, six doors that that adds up, but we'd have to look at all those individual expenses. And then my my last question on the cleaning contract vendor, I know this has been a moving target ever since we had to go there. I did not bring my 4-in binder with me. Can you remind me what the January estimate would have been for the cleaning contract compared to the 1.1 this is coming in at? Yeah, so what we budgeted was a $1,030,000. Right. So, but we've adjusted that in this this adjusted budget. So, we're about if we're looking at where the the recommendation is for the cleaning vendor, we're about $15,000 short of the actual contract, which is way more palatable than being at, you know, almost $100,000
057off. >> Yeah, that's what I was like I remember at one point we were like peaking way above that and and we've come Yeah, and I'm I'm line with our expectations. >> Yeah, and we'll talk about that and I'll share like we I think that they did a really good job sharpening their pencil and providing a best and final offer. And so we'll we'll walk through all of that, but you know, I'm I'm feeling a lot better about where that is at $15,000. And you know now that you've increased the snow removal budget, we're going to have a mild winter next year, right? I would love [laughter] that. Thank you. Mr. White. Thank you. How often do we get the How often do you know how often the actuary updates our uh the pension guidance
058that we follow? Is it annual or bi- every 2 years? I know that the town does an annual like pension report, so I'll I'll need to look into it. I I just don't have it pulled up, but Okay. I can look that up. And basically what we do is they come up with their guidance, generally we go along with it. Pension retirement board, whoever they provide the guidance, council adopts it, we go along with it. Yes. And then we fund accordingly, which could typically go up, but it could go down, it could go in any direction I suppose, depending on the market and how whether it's up or down. Yeah. Uh and what I will say is like our pension is not uh fully funded. I'm not sure at what percentage it is, and I'm
059talking about like town um you know, cuz most of our our staff is on TRB. Um so our you know, we're talking about like non-certified staff that would be part of the town pension system. TRB being state teachers pension, just so people yeah. Okay. Yes. Um so for people that are on our pension that are not certified, not on the teachers pension system, um, it's not a fully funded plan. So, you know, like us choosing to dip into that as a as a source is not something we can do. We stick to the actual investment. Sure. And then, you mentioned the the price locks and we I touched on it just a couple hours ago downstairs. So, I don't know if you have an answer for it, but if the performance contract is moving forward
060including any of the solar that First of all, do you happen to know, like at least in like is our goal to hit 100% of our electric needs with the solar that we get or most of it? And I'm not looking for any guarantees. I'm just looking for a general Jeff, okay? Yeah, in terms of that the buildings, uh, the new buildings, it would be the goal would be to produce in excess of our needs. >> Okay. Um, and be able to sell back to the grid. But, um, I mean, a lot of things have to fall into place. Um, we're working really aggressively to meet the 5% threshold necessary for federal uh, grant money by July 4th. We have to have 5% of the project um, moving by July 4th. So, we should hit
061that pretty comfortably. But, it's really some of the the energy performance contract stuff with the state that's we're kind of holding. Yeah, no, I can talk about that later. later in my report. And so, just curious if if everything In a perfect world >> Yes. >> I don't even if we, um, But, my question being, do we have a a general idea of when we could energize, meaning we go live and Yeah, I know and I think >> buying the energy anymore. We're just producing it and selling it. >> Yeah, in a perfect world that would be this school year. Um, Sometime during the school year. >> Yeah. Uh, next school year, the upcoming school school year. That's 25, not the current school year 5 6, but next year. Okay. Okay, fingers crossed. Amen. Thank
062you. Emily, really quick, um do you have a status on like the unpaid meal balances? Uh I do. Okay. It's um $24,000. >> 24k? Yes. Yes, $24,000. What we did this week though, um you know, actually Dr. Solan sent a letter to families with balances over $500. Those went in the mail today. Um just as kind of another like wet signature, just to to compel families. We had uh Kiki making calls last week. We've upped the amount of communication families are getting about their meal balances. Um but yeah, it's $24,000, so it's it's higher. Not as high as some other communities, but it's it's high. And the payments typically go through the MySchoolBucks app, yes, or can they physically send a check? >> They can They can pay at the the register. Okay. All right.
063Thank you. Just curious, how much is the average lunch, the average meal? I'm just trying to figure out how many meals Yeah, how many meals it is to get to $24,000. >> Yeah, not not the cost, but you got to work to accrue $500 in debt. Yeah, I That's a probably about like half the year's, like getting a meal for 90 days, half the school year. It's about like I think $950 to get a lunch every day for the entire school year if you were budgeting. Um that was something we were going over when we we did the increases, like what is the annual cost if you were to get lunch every day. So, yeah, about half the year. Tim. Thank you. Yes, so staying on this topic, I I definitely there are there are
064people who need the help. Absolutely. But as I recall our conversation from recent years is we don't know if all these people need the help with it, but there has been no enforcement mechanism. And it seems to me that an enforcement mechanism to pay if you're able to would be good, and if you can't, then you'd have to sort of demonstrate it in some way. I think you have to do the same thing when you're getting like tax credits in town hall here. Um do you Have you ever heard of anybody introducing any legislation to allow for some sort of enforcement mechanism for people who It's going in the other direction, actually. There is they're not really able to enforce it. Um the current legislative session explored um free breakfast for all and eliminating the
065cost for reduced price lunches. Um and the governor hasn't signed anything into law yet. Like I um we're we're waiting for everything to be signed until it's official. I'm not counting any chickens, but they're moving in that direction, which I think is great, but um yeah, in terms [clears throat] of uh enforcement for those who accrue debt, uh there's really nothing. And there was no there was no legislative discussion, either. Uh in that direction. No. >> [clears throat] >> Um And is there state funding associated with the free breakfast or Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the the the Like 100% at least at this point. >> would cover the anything that they're making free. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right, thank you. So that should help us next year in a way. Um one would hope. Yeah. You
066know, I we're not but we're not um the money that's getting accrued is by people who don't receive free or reduced lunch already. [clears throat] And uh it's generally not on breakfast charges. So it shouldn't really help our debt. I can see Leonard like being contained back there in his seat. Like he wants to jump in on the conversation, but that's where we are. And I don't be I don't want to be punitive in a sense. There has to be a better approach or a friendly approach cuz there are you know food insecurities and so forth. >> Right. And we, you know, in our communications are certainly clear about that. That if there's a rationale, communicate with us. Um and we'll work to find some form of assistance. Uh maybe stop nagging you about it.
067Uh connect with social services, stuff like that, but uh you there's no engagement. Uh I can't tell if you uh have the money and decide not to pay or just uh or you can't pay. So, we need people to engage with us. Yeah. Thank you. Dr. Herget. Yeah, I'm going to change the topic to the um composting projects. How is that shown on our budget? It's not right now. So, it's been fully funded by the NEF funds, so the NIP fund and the allocation from um the town council Well, the sustainability committee and the town council. >> So, was that supposed to take us through 2 years? No. Um It was >> is taking us through 2 years. >> I don't know. We have to you know, we just had this conversation um with the
068sustainability committee last night. Their push was for us to um find funding within our own budget to um I I think we are calculating that next year based on the changes that Erica Beaudette has recommended. It's It's going to run us about $22 to $23,000 um to maintain to do it at all the elementary schools in Dodd, not at CHS. Um Um, have about 16,000 of that. Um, I think the sustainability committee has been reticent to to um, deplete the NIP funds. There are some other town uses that they're interested in in using for that. Um, so I think we just have to think about our what are we going to do with either $16,000 or if we can come up with the $6,000 additionally to do it at all of the elementary schools. And
069then, um, you know, we've developed a program that we would like to move into the future >> Mhm. into future years, but we're sort of being cut off. Yeah, I think the the instead of cut off, I think it's um, we should have a conversation in our budget next year about including it in our operating budget if it's a priority for us to continue. Right. Thank you. That's what it I was wondering if that's where we were going with that. Uh, thank you very much. If there are no more questions for Emily. Uh, I have one. Sorry. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Um, you you took my composting question, so I'm glad. Thank you for that. Um, and just a quick question on ath athletic fields at the schools are maintained by us in our
070budget. Does that fall under the maintenance / repair building line or where where does that Yes, but I would say that um, you'll see it show up in the the capital budget tonight. Like larger projects are are capital that's usually over $110,000. Um, we have a deal with the town about some of the um, the fields and infield maintenance, but um, like grass cutting, all of that is is managed in that line item. I would say that if we have that equipment, then it shows up as our groundskeepers' salaries or overtime. That that type of maintenance cuz it's managed in house. Okay. And we expect I mean it says right now year end projected balance, so there you expect there would be some money left over. Yes. Hey. Yeah, which is yeah, which is offsetting
071other lines. We've been >> very calculated with our maintenance spending and and the reason for that is it was also the budget was really cut and so it's it's very much like do we have to do this? Is this life safety risk? Like can it be deferred was was this year? Um so we do have some um positive projections, but unfortunately that's also offsetting some of those bigger spends. All right. Well, you know, we're we're working together to figure out where is the town / school collaboration on the on the field. So more to come, but thank you for clarifying. Anything else for Emily at this moment? She's coming back into play soon. Several times. Yes. Um I'd like to go on. We've been experiencing a very interesting budget season and uh we had a
072meeting on May 12th, a finance meeting to talk about um how we will >> [clears throat] >> work our budget and we should be uh we'll be looking at uh making a motion and taking a vote on that tonight after we discuss it. So um with that, I'm going to let Dr. Solon talk to us about what we went through um at that finance meeting and Sure. Thank you. Um so to Dr. Hergen's point, we laughed, we cried. It's been a long budget season since January. Uh a lot of time spent, lot of I again I have to go back to thank the members of our community who took time to come out uh with us, with the town council and regardless of the perspective that they shared, it was really meaningful uh that they
073came out. I mean, obviously uh we're aware that many uh folks stepped forward to support the Board of Education budget and as a result I think that's going to uh save us from some pretty ugly reductions and allow us to continue to do the work that we do um in our schools at a at a at a level that the community and our our staff expects. That being said, I mean we did reduce in our budget process uh 73 individual line items uh to the tune of $1.2 million. Uh there was um a lot of pencil sharpening as the euphemism goes through the process and um bless you. So ultimately as you know the town council made a $300,000 reduction to our budget um and throughout the winter and into the early spring here uh
074things evolve. Um we talked earlier about the cleaning contract cost higher than anticipated. God bless you. We've had some savings on an insurance line and so we spent 2 hours on May 21st really walking through a number of um recommended edits that we're making to the budget for adoption for July 1st. Um and I want to just quickly hit on some of the highlights in our budget uh the one of the the question I've received the most is will this allow us to add the half team at Dodd and it will. Uh the class sizes there uh were quite steep in eighth grade and this is a welcome adjustment. It allows us to add um elementary teaching staff that we needed to maintain class sizes including uh 0.5 ML position to address our growing um
075multi-language learning population and some specials half-time specials people and we're working really diligently to see how we can evaluate the number of sections we have look at our enrollments what can we do to is there any way to to support pushing any of that to half-time or full-time with grant money because when we are hiring half-time it's a very competitive market for specials teachers and it's really difficult to hire people at half-time at a lower rate you know you might get somebody who's a retiree who says I will come in at half-time but that is half of a hundred thousand dollars at half-time is we just may as well hire a full-time person who's out of school at that rate so we again went through a number of line items be happy to rehash anything
076that that you want here but the net of these adjustments is a three hundred thousand dollar reduction in keeping with the reduction from the town between the budget that the board recommended and the budget that the town council ultimately adopted there's a three hundred thousand dollar reduction in these adjustments but again happy to answer any questions you have that maybe were uh you know accumulating from the May 21st meeting And can I just add thank you to Ms. Jazenski cuz capturing everything that we went over in that meeting in the minutes was really helpful to read over so thank you Dr. Stone can you just kind of highlight the >> yep things that are going to be made possible. Sure. Um, you know, really uh the the things that we're adding in this budget are
077um all staffing related. Those 77 or excuse me, 73 reductions were uh a lot of the things that are not staffing related. Um and except for um support staff. In this budget, we are um reducing multiple non-certified positions either uh in total or reducing from 12-month to 10-month positions uh in order to make sure that we're staffing our certified positions to maintain the ratios that are our targets. Um But uh um most lines are flat line reduced. Um like I said, it's just the some of the adjustments we've had since January are the um increase to the cleaning contract. Um the uh reallocation of Title I money. Uh we were evaluating our our Title I budget and uh unfortunately we're only able to um supplement our budget and not supplant and we had been supplementing
078in this um iteration, so we we had to reallocate to our operating budget. Uh which does free up some money for us to be able to do other things, which is is the good news, I guess. Um we also have talked about you know the bittersweet news that Kim Dessert is retiring. We're certainly happy for her, but um as we consolidate from three schools into two, um we worked very closely, our administrative team, to identify what our needs were and how we could best meet those needs with the redistribution of our students across the district. And so we're reducing elementary principal position to an assistant principal position, keeping the um the FTE the same, full-time equivalent of our admins the same, but also reducing a position at Cheshire High School uh to reallocate that to
079an early childhood specialist that we'll probably talk about in personnel. Thank you. True. Yeah. Um I'm going to put forth the motion, and then if there's more discussion, we can have it at that point. So I um will move that the Cheshire Board of Education approves an operating budget for the fiscal year 2026-27 of 99,849,080 as appropriated by the Town Council, representing a reduction of 300,000 from the Board of Ed. This recommended budget. Do I have a second for that? >> it. Anne Marie. Is there more discussion before we take a vote on that? Kolar. Um not all of my colleagues were able to make it to the Town Council meeting for one of their budget workshops. Um I just want to sort of lay out my evolution on this. I mean, I think well,
080obviously everybody knows here I voted no on the the January budget. And then went to the town council meeting in Man, when was that? It's all blurring together. April. Yeah, and spoke in support of it as we as the information evolved as stuff came back on the new schools as actuals came in and we had 3 more months of data. Um I did then after the town council passed their budget, was able to sit with Dr. Solon and Marlene and Emily and go line by line by line on things that I had brought up or or had questions on from the original budget. Um and once again convinced myself that I'm I'm pretty pretty confident on on what it is that we're doing and and why we're doing it. I think if anything, we identified
081uh some of the uh line items that showed crazy increases or decreases were more of like a spring cleaning here that that we're going to have to go through over the next year or two as we transition into schools and you know, we're looking at um three schools being combined into two expense accounts and so those expense accounts look higher in in that regard and so year over years even next year going to look somewhat crazy in some of the line items. So, you know, I I do support fully our budget. The one item I would like to just address a little bit is I'm not personally, I'm not quite sold on the kindergarten teacher line item here that you know, that's listed in our notes here as the RAM early childhood. Um the reason
082being because you know, 3 months ago, 2 months ago before um Kim announced her retirement, we had her and you know, uh Mrs. Burns at at Barnum. And that changed and I'm not quite sure, you know, I think there were are things that we could do with the assistant principal having specialized skill sets for early childhood. I'm sure you guys discussed all these things and and I don't claim to be an expert in what those exact needs are, but the way I frame it in my mind is, you know, that's a $103,000 line item here and Marlene, I've told you this before, I was so moved with your supplies presentation during the budget workshops for the board that I think what could we do with $100,000 on, you know, supplies? Um or what could we
083do with, you know, Jeff, you mentioned the other HLA and going from a half music to a full music and fulfilling those. Not Nonetheless, I am not a member of the United States Congress, so I'm not going to withhold my support over one line item and I will, you know, still support this budget, um but, you know, I'm putting that out there as, you know, I I personally think that maybe we could go a year without that role and understand what the needs are after the new school rules rolls out rather than um sort of a not speculation, that's too critical of a word, but you know what I mean. It's a theoretical how is this going to play out with an AP and and early early childhood, but I'll absolutely be supporting this budget.
084Can I ask for some clarification? Um So, Dr. Solan, we we did have though a part-time uh assistants Not Not assistant superintendent, that would be Marlene. Uh assistant principal designated to the Barnum school. So, it's not So, having a full-time assistant principal is not the total addition because we did I don't know what percentage of >> Yeah, so we we currently have an assistant principal split between two buildings and Kim dedicated full-time to Darcy. What this adjustment does is place a full-time assistant principal at Barnum with the increase in student enrollment and a full-time assistant principal at Norton. Um the administrative team at Darcy or excuse me, at Barnum would work in concert with a full-time dedicated teacher who's supporting the um special needs of the early childhood program that's in that building. Um is
085the adjustment. And and um you know, as Matt mentioned, we looked at a variety of different strategies to do that. Frankly, we didn't love um the situation with Kim there uh cuz she would have to oversee more than the early childhood as it was. Um there's no uh magic bullet in any of the scenarios that we were looking through, but as we evaluated uh our options in this case, we really felt like this um intervention provided the best uh support for all students in that building, all staff and families in that building at a way that was cost-effective. I mean, it Alternatively, you know, would it have been good to hire an assistant principal and um a full-time administrator dedicated to the uh building. Um yeah, I think that's one solution, but uh knowing the
086reductions that we made and knowing the um the needs and we thought that we could craft um resources to support it on budget. That that was our strategy. If I could just Tim's going to You can go. Okay. If I can just add to it and maybe Tim this is something you're going to add. Tim and I were at the meeting and there was a lot of discussion and pushback on this position. Um we understood with the resignation or the retirement that was a position that opened up that we had assumed was going over there as a full-time principal. Um since that was not going to happen, we had to look at the [clears throat] needs of the entire building, the needs of the entire district around should in fact every um district elementary school
087have a full-time AP. So when we looked at that, we were able to do that by moving cuz we had a .4 and a .6. So we ended up keeping that person full-time at Norton, right? Yes. And taking that .2 whatever and saying that we would have a full-time AP, but then we were looking at who should that AP be. Because we know a whole section of that school is devoted to early childhood, right? I mean you're talking birth to three, we're talking multiple multiple fragile kids coming in. So there did need to be um there does need to be expertise in that area for someone to run PPTs, um to look at kids' needs, to make sure IEPs, and to coach teachers um in that program. So then do we get a AP that
088has a special ed certification who could kind of be in charge of that? But then what about the other half of the school? You know, what is their responsibility? We looked at Amato pre-K to two and then three, four, and five by the other principal. So, Matt, just to kind of quell your your We've been, you know, looking at this. And um I mean it I think it's something, as Dr. Solomon said, that we have to look at at the end of year one and say, "Did we meet everyone's needs?" I mean, the other thing is we're building and opening a brand new school. And we want it to flourish, right? So, we want to make sure we have the right people there kind of steering the ship. Um and there's lots of questions about
089it. It's very unique in that it has that Darcey School there. Um and Darcey is well known throughout the state for the kind of services that it provided to students with disabilities, particularly on the preschool level. So, we need to make sure that that is up and running with the right leadership. And quite honestly, I I question a lot, like what is that, you know? And I and I want to be clear about the staffing itself. We'll have a full-time person at Norton and a full-time assistant principal at Barnum in the proposal here, but who those people are, we haven't identified yet. So, right now we have the assistant principal who split both times. I couldn't commit today that she'll be in either location until we post this position, evaluate the pool, um and look
090at, you know, what's best for for the the schools based on, you know, who we come who comes into that process. You think Tim Tay? >> [clears throat] >> Thank you. Yeah, as I've said before, my my interest is classroom teachers more so than administrators. Uh this particular position that we're talking about is I think straddles the line. Mhm. Is officially in the teachers union, not the administrator union. Mhm. Um but I were one of the things that struck me in the discussion is um we're going to uh particularly with this cohort of students, the a high proportion of special needs students. Um what we can do, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what we can do, the goal with this particular RAM uh is to optimize the chances for kids who uh work
091their way out of special ed and just go right back into general ed. And with the theory being that there'd be a cost savings or cost avoidance in the future. Is Is that fair to put it that way? That there's >> I I think I think that's certainly a consideration. >> Okay, yeah, I'm not saying the only thing, but I'm saying >> there students enter special education pipeline. Um I would say primarily in one or two places. Um through the birth to three uh identification for uh students that might have more significant needs. Those students uh leave the state birth to three program, which we happen to be a contractor for, enter the public school space. In Cheshire, that's been in Darcy uh in the three-year-old classrooms and um you know, we have some transitional
092programs and and pre-K. Um and then they matriculate on generally um to a specialized program within the Cheshire public Schools. So, um many of our students who exit birth to three might enter the program at Highland uh as a kindergartner or the program at at Norton as a kindergartner. Um so, a fair number of students are identified through that path. Uh and then there are a fair number of students who are identified later in childhood um because they have different needs. So, um I think it is important to have somebody there uh with students that have more significant needs, uh a teacher who can coach other teachers, who can work closely with uh who knows a specialist in early childhood education and special education, who can work closely with the administrative team, um including our
093our PPS staff and general ed staff in the building, um who all I mean many of those students in that program won't go to Brown. This is reality. Um they'll go to other buildings as soon as they they leave that program, but uh we want them to have the best care and support possible, which does reduce improves their outcomes, reduces potential future costs as well. And gives them a better program. Thank you. Yeah, I'll I'll be supporting this tonight, and I appreciate everything that you and your staff have done with the budget. >> I would like to add to what Tim just said about thanking you for um going through the process because um this is exactly what we need to do. We have to um be creative in how we're going to do more
094with less, and that's what we asked you to do, and this is what you came up with, but you didn't come up with it this as one scenario. You you know, you worked out I don't know, four or five different ways that we could go and and chose one that works and we will evaluate it after uh attempting it next year and go from there. So, I am I'm supporting this motion, but um I wanted to reiterate Tim's thank you to the staff for really going doing the hard work and being creative in the way that we're thinking about staffing. Yeah, I probably echo the same thing, Dr. Solon. Um you know, overall this has to be data-driven as to Matt's point, but it also has to be needs-driven as well and I do appreciate
095you being very innovative about the feasibility of what we have to deal with currently, but I I'm kind of tired of doing more with less, Anne. So, um to that point, I do hope that we can put this as I guess early budget discussions for next year um because there were several asks um and we didn't get those asks due to this reduction um and one of them is and I'm sure Ms. FitzGerald will state is the STEM coordinator, which we know there's a need in the secondary for um and hopefully the data shows that potentially there might be a need to add a administrator position back into the early childhood program. So, just want to note that, you know, moving forward. Um but yeah, I appreciate it. I think we kind of dug through
096I think for us it's incumbent upon us to kind of we did just win an award for communication. Um so, I'm hoping the talent pool opens up and um we we have quality candidates to choose from. So. But I will be supporting this as well, too. Madam Ms. Ms. Trow. Yes, I'm just going to go on record for again in the future, uh, we'll be strongly advocating for that STEM coordinator. I I talk to parents, uh, all the time who fully agree that that is something that is really needed. Um, so just going on record for that. I also have a question on, um, You know, we're going to continue to monitor everything and hope that, you know, we have the the winter, I think it was Matt was suggesting. And stuff like that. Right,
097and and no money will be coming back from the ECS to replenish? So, uh, no. You know, it wasn't budgeted that way, but, you know, the town has a different flexibility to retain a rainy day fund than than we do. We could carry over, um, up to 2% of our budget, but we we just don't have the money this year to to even come close to that. So, um, you know, we'll we'll monitor it closely. You guys will get, you know, the monthly medical benefits updates like we do and um, that is definitely something we'll be paying close attention to next year. Thank you. Mhm. I just want to add that from the really from the very beginning as we were looking at this and knowing that we needed to, um, really shave back that
098original budget, I think there was a lot of unanimous voices that we we wanted to concentrate first on getting the the classroom teachers to where they need where we felt the responsibility needed to be. Um, so I feel that we've we've really stuck with that idea and I'm I'm happy that we still have those DOD teachers going in. It allows um the middle school to be able to do their scheduling changes that they had um brought to curriculum to us and you know, I I think there's some good things about this budget. It's not a it's not all doom and gloom. We did a we did a good job. So, I'm happy to support it. Uh so, with that, if there are no more questions, let's call the vote. Sure. Um it was moved that
099the Cheshire Board of Education approves an operating budget for the fiscal year 2026-27 of 99 million 849,080 dollars as appropriated by the Town Council, representing a reduction of 300,000 from the Board of Education's recommended budget. And it was seconded by So, all those in favor? It's unanimous. Thank you very much. And thanks everyone for all the hard work and really drilling down in and looking at what was going on with the budget this year. Yeah. So, we're still under finance. Wow. Um Miss Taylor, can you um go over the medical benefits report? Briefly. Yes, I can be so, so brief because it's great news. >> [laughter] >> So, um I will say that our expenditures for April for medical benefits, we had one 1,507,333 dollars in claims, um, which was up from last month, but
100overall our, um, claims reserve right now is at 2.17, uh, months in reserve, which is significantly up from last year we were at 1.7 in April of 2025. We do have less in claims than, um, last month where we had 2.31 months in claims, uh, claim reserves, but we also had our lowest month of claims in March 2026. So, um, we're still in a really good position at 2.17. Um, and I'm just looking here because I'm toggling between these two tabs. Um, the claims totaled there was a 22% decrease in claims, um, from in March 2025 to 2026. Um, there was also a sizable increase to our stop-loss reimbursement compared to the prior month. So, we got we have 362,000 in stop-loss reimbursements and that's up from 292,000 in stop-loss. Um, and you know, this
101is the part of the year where we start seeing more of those, um, claims come in through June 30th. Um, so we're in a strong position with our medical benefits fund. Um, we did have a good month of claims and I will stop there. Any questions for Ms. Taylor? >> [cough] >> Then you may go on to the audit report. Great. Um, so the audit report, this is pretty quick, um, but we, the town council audit committee met on April 21st and accepted the fiscal year 2024-2025 annual comprehensive financial report or audit. Um, we had a clean audit. Um, the auditor opinion was that the town of Cheshire, Connecticut complied in all material respects with the compliance requirements. So, you know, the record The only recommendation we had from the auditors was to have several
102We have our processes documented, but they wanted them consolidated into one place in the form of an accounting procedures manual. That's something that they recommended the prior year. There's been a lot of transitions with both the town and the Board of Ed's finance and HR teams. And so, you know, it is something we're looking into, but we're also looking to get some You know, we've onboarded a lot of people recently. So, we're we're, you know, trying to get those processes in one place. But, the bottom line is that we had a great audit. We use CLA. We've used them for a number of years, and the Town Council Audit Committee also appointed CLA as the auditor for the fiscal year 2025-26 budget for the cost of $89,250, which is a $4,250 increase from the prior
103year. And, you know, there's not a ton of auditor firms, but that's a very reasonable price for the work that they're doing for the town. That's the audit report. Any questions for Ms. Taylor on the audit? Mr. White. Thank you. Is So, I'm looking at a sheet here, and it basically has one recommendation from the auditor. Yes. About the accounting procedures manual. Did they have any other recommendations that relate to the school board? Nope. >> Or to the schools? >> Wow. Yeah, it was a really It was a really good audit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. Let's move on to um Assistant Superintendent Solano, who will uh report on the grant activity for the the 2024-25 school year. Happy to do that. Um I I all have a copy of the grants report
104in front of you. So, I will briefly review those item by item to let you know that the Title I Improving Basic Skills Grant in the past has been used um for LSTs, para support, for things like supporting intervention. Um we're moving into uh adding additional support over at Doolittle. And that will be in the form of a coach who has a background in both reading, and also we want are looking primarily to also make sure that that person has a background in TESOL. We're going to be looking for some um high-dosage tutoring after school as well to support students who need that support. Um Title II is also wrapped up in that and defraying some of the cost of that tutoring. The Title III Grant for English Language Learners this year has been used
105to purchase some multi-age reading kits. It's also helped to defray the cost of um ML consultant in the way of Pat Castle, who used to be our reading consultant and retired. She has been on board to help us through that process and through the MLCCC process this year. The Title III Immigrant Grant is used to defray the cost of some supplies, as well as um summer school that we offer for some of our youngest multilingual learners. The Title IV Grant is used to defray the cost of curriculum writing and some consultation around um an audit that we are doing of curriculum. The Carl Perkins Career and Tech Ed Grant, that is primarily utilized at the high school. It defrays the cost of field trips for our students, club stipends for our teachers, equipment as well
106as some curriculum writing that will be happening in June. Special education is largely almost entirely for staffing, also little bit of supplies. The IDEA grant for preschool handicapped is used at Darcy. The ARPA school mental health specialist to phrase the cost of a school counselor at Doolittle. The adult education programming at 52, 53,000, that is where we are contracted with Wallingford to run our adult education programming. We have not sought to use any of the money in the Peck Jones account, but I anticipate coming to you all and making a request for that for this coming year. And Smart Start is very easy to understand, that is what pays for our Smart Start program at Darcy, soon to be a Barnum. Are these all state These are state and federal? These are all um federal
107grants. Peck Jones is the town grant. >> Right. Smart Start is within state. Okay. Tim. And how is how do we how did you define this list? Is it grants that come to the the public schools? Yes. Whereas ECS is not here and that could the economics and the the data that they have on each of the individual towns and that's how they make their calculations. Cuz it seems like the mental health specialist, I mean Um that was I believe a certain a finite amount of money you had a a certain chunk in the first year and less in the second year. They were trying to get um school districts to commit to additional mental health people. They were getting us started with it, but then at some point we would have to pick it
108up. It was in response to COVID. Just a quick clarifying question. On the consolidated grants, did you mention Was it just the title one or was that Is it just allocated to Do Little or did you Was it across all schools? No, um it is going to This year was just at Do Little. What happens is you look at um a number of factors. You look at your data. You do a data analysis, but it's also driven in small part by free and reduced lunch. And so this will all change next year with the redistricting. We'll need to again relook at free and reduced lunch prices across all of the schools and also look at data such as test results, where our SRBI is needed most, intervention programming. And so it can change a little
109bit. And was that all of them or just the title one? Just title one and just title one. >> Okay, thank you. Okay, no more questions on the grants. Thank you, Ms. Solano. We we don't vote on Yeah. Uh what's next? Cleaning contract. Let's talk about the cleaning contract. Uh this comes back to Ms. Taylor. Yes. >> And we may be taking a vote on this. Yes. Yes. Um so in your packet you have a memo from me with some history and background and where we landed with the cleaning RFP for next school year and the subsequent school year. So I will not read this verbatim, but I'll go kind of summarize the this memo. Um so, just some history on our cleaning contract. We currently have SMG Corporate Services as our cleaning vendor, and
110they have had our the cleaning contract since July 1st, 2023. Um where it was an invitation to bid process. Um they had replaced the a vendor that had been with us for 10 years, Performance Environmental. Um during that invitation to bid process, the bids really there was a wide variety of bids. Um some up to $2.5 million, lowest bids at around $790,000. Um so, we've been with SMG. Uh they have had really strong responsiveness, consistent service quality, and a collaborative working relationship with us um and our facilities department. And so, we have enjoyed working with them. Um and as you you know, our cleaning budget uh was increased, and this is reflected in the approved what you the approved budget um that we increased it about $860,000 to $1.1 million. Um and that was increased
111over what was it proposed in January, which was $1,030,000. Um this accounted for the approximately 72,000 square feet of new interior space um at Barnum and New Norton Elementary. Another piece of that is that the new schools have a lot more windows and glass cleaning. Um so, along with square footage, there there's that addition. Um but, it was overall a 9.4% increase in interior um serviceable area for our cleaning contractor. So, in January of 2026, we did a request for proposal process. Um and we had a very comprehensive RFP that that put out to bid. Um there were a couple of options, a two-year and three-year agreement with add-ons for cleaning services at the Hammaston location. Um, you know, because part of our budget process, we have um, Vernon Brown who has been the uh,
112building maintainer at Hammaston for a while now. Um, but we actually, you know, we switched all of the building maintainers and pushed them out towards the school this year, meaning that Hammaston would be left with no um, daily building maintainer. So, we needed to have an add-on service to account for that. Uh, and in that process, there was a mandatory walk-through that was held on March 13th of this year. Over 20 vendors attended that event. Um, we the bids were due on March 31st. We got seven bids from seven vendors. Uh, there was a very wide variety in the uh, the proposals that were presented. $860,000 being the lowest to nearly $2 million at the highest. Um, the reason that there were such variances people were proposing very different staffing models, service assumptions, and scope
113interpretations from the RFP. Um, so, on the bottom page of this memorandum, I've put the the seven vendors that provided a response to the proposal. Um, in order uh, from lowest to highest proposal. Uh, you can see that SMG, the incumbent, was right in the middle. So, uh, and what you can see there is the the base two-year price and then the next value is the the additional cost for the Hammaston cleaning. So, uh, our director of facilities, Rich Clavet, did a really extensive review of the RFPs to make sure they they submitted all components as required and that was narrowed down to three finalists who met all criteria of the RFP and and completed all the requirements. That was A&A Maintenance Enterprise, S. J. Services, and SMG, the incumbent. So, obvi- they all submitted
114bids that were significantly higher than what we had budgeted about $1 million. So, we asked for a best and final offer. Um as part of that best and final, we reduced our scope. Um the scope that we had asked for was the same scope that we've had in place at our schools. The scope reductions that we requested to meet our budgetary constraint included reducing the floor waxing from six coats to four coats, eliminating winter cleaning schedules and less build additionally, reducing spot cleaning from daily to weekly, and moving detail cleaning from scheduled frequencies to as-needed service levels. So, the three vendors provided a best and final. Um those varied a little bit, but they were all significantly lower than their initial their initial proposal. Um as part of the best and final, our director of
115facilities did a cost leveling um because if you look at the best and final on its just at the number, um you'd say, "Okay, well, one of these the the the A&A has the lowest bid and SMG has the the highest best and final." But, if you look at the actual staffing that they provided um and the services that they were willing to do, um you can see in this table the cost leveling that SMG actually had the most favorable cost-leveled um proposal. So, a few other things um that we considered along with the price point because that is um a big component of it, but there are other factors to consider. Um you know, we are recommending staying with the incumbent SMG. Um the things that were considered included that SMG's proven performance and
116responsiveness, the fact that they provided an optimal labor model. Uh the other two uh vendors significantly reduced the number of staff that they were willing to provide. Uh SMG when they reduced their to their best and final only reduced one person. So, they went from 39 to 38. Uh A&A reduced it by 37% and S&J reduced it by 18.5. So, the the amount the quality of service and cleaning would be significantly reduced. SMG was the only proposal to offer services to the BOE at no additional cost resulting from efficiencies realized throughout the district. They did that for us in our current contract with them. I'll also just name you know, we're redistricting, we're opening schools. Switching to a new vendor is a humongous project and it would take our director of facilities and our custodial
117manager away for months as they were transitioning teams and that is not an ideal time to do so. So, along with SMG having a really favorable proposal, it's great to not have to transition from a vendor that we are really satisfied with. So, you know, another thing just to know is that all of these vendors have unionized labor. It's the SEIU. So, one piece of this is we did a two-year term because that union contract expires in December 2027. So, it's very hard to provide pricing much much past that. So, with all of that said, I tried to talk as quickly as possible. Well, we are recommending that we stick with SMG and offer them a two-year contract term with the with the addition of the Hamden cleaning cuz again, we have no one that
118will be cleaning during the day or at night. So, we do need some someone there. We have the school and we have the central office. SMG is also is hold the price for two years at $1,125,188 for both 26 27 and 27 28. So, we think that they're going to provide the best best service quality, operational stability, and long-term value for the district. And on the third page of this memo, it has the pricing by location. And so, with that said, I will Yes, so I'm going to put forth the motion and then we can have some discussion if there are still questions. So, I move that the Cheshire Board of Education approves an operating budget for the fiscal year 20 Wait, am I No. I'm reading the wrong one. I move that the Cheshire
119Board of Education approve a 2-year contract with SMG Corporate Services for the period of July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2028 with the yearly contract pricing as follows. Um July 1st, '26 through June 30th, '27 $1,125,188 and July 1st, '27 through June 30th, '28 $1,125,188. Do I have a second? Colehower. Mr. Colehower, thank you. Is there any discussion or more questions for Ms. Taylor? Mr. Colehower. Um the does an RFP do you ask them for the term? Are you RFPing 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, or is that part of later on in the negotiation? Yeah, so what was required what we required in the RFP was you need to provide us the pricing for a 2-year or 3-year contract, and then the option for the Homestanding cleaning. So, all as separate components. And then,
120you know, we look at the pricing and then we enter the contract negotiations. How did they they didn't feel 3 years wasn't It What I will say is it wasn't favorable pricing cuz they couldn't predict it because of the union negotiations that are going to happen, you know, subsequent to December 2027. So, there was no favorable pricing because they basically had to like really jack up the price to to make up for the fact they didn't know what the union labor was going to be. So, just wasn't it did not benefit us at all. And um I'm sure there's a reason for this. I don't know if you would have it handy or not, but you know, if we look at the original request that you have listed here, you know, we did follow-ups with
121A&A, SJ, and SMG. Um HAPI was $400,000 less expensive. I come from government work. I I know that that probably means a shortage of some type of service. Do we have any idea like why why they weren't in the mix and why their services would fall short of our expectations to not go to stage two? Yes. So, I can actually tell you specifically with them, what I will say with anyone who was eliminated in that first round is because they were not compliant with the RFP. With HAPI or HAPI, they did not submit a performance bond. Which was a requirement. Okay. And just for my knowledge, there's a bullet point in here that on the additional or additional considerations, um offer services to the BOE at no additional cost resulting from efficiencies realized throughout the
122district. Can you expand on them? Yeah, so um one thing that we realized through the process cuz we interviewed the last three vendors just to learn more about their submission was um SMG actually was like, "Well, we actually just within our contract within the confines of our contract, Fenway's to actually expand services at I think it was the high school. They realized that they weren't satisfied with the amount of cleaning and they actually added personnel to the high school in our current contract and they did not charge us for that. So, you know, they're still making a profit, but they just wanted to increase the quality of service. So, that's what that fairly ambiguous bullet point meant. Okay, thank you. Any other comments or questions? Mr. White. Thank you. Uh yeah, a process question. A
123second ago you were talking about HAPI, H A P I the vendor, and you said that um they were excluded because they did not submit performance bond. >> Mhm. I'm curious, how does it using that as a proxy for all sorts of things that could be missed in an RFP? How do you normally handle that? If one thing is missed, are they automatically excluded, or do you make a courtesy call and say did you It's just automatically excluded by the rules, the law? Okay. Yeah, just like with the RFP, if you if you miss a component of it, like it's you know, fair practices, like you're you're excluded. And that's a pretty big one to miss. >> No, no, no, and I'm just I I understand completely. I was just curious if how that how
124that happened or how that worked. Okay. >> Yeah, and I'll say some other compliance pieces are like, you know, you have to submit certain bonds. That's not required for all our You know what? I don't know, but I can certainly ask. Just curious. Well, I'll tell you, Mike Frederico runs that thing like a a you know, a naval ship. It's like tidy as going to get. Yeah, right. I was surprised to see them on that. Yeah, I was surprised Mike let them in there. You know what I mean? I'll be honest with >> [laughter] >> Well, now my curiosity is piqued, too, Mark. >> [laughter] >> Heather, did you have something? I mean, I don't know if it's anything that we can consider at this point um or maybe in the future, but I know,
125you know, one of the things I think about is human capital practices. I don't know that we ever consider that when we look across vendors. I think that's something potentially to consider. I mean, I know it's really thin margins and um you know, it's a tough industry, but I do feel like that's something potentially, like if it's a $10,000 cost either way, and there's just one company that does much better or comes across as a much better um human capital practices, I think that's something to potentially consider in the future rather than just like every [snorts] dime. I don't Just a thought and something I want to put out there into the world. Yeah, and and I will say, you know, the the benefit of this being a contract where the employees are unionized is
126like you have access to contracts and they are a bargaining unit, and so um you know, we know that that exists, but I hear what you're saying, yeah, and more generally. Thank you. Anything else? So, there's a motion to approve the 2-year contract with SMG Corporate Services. Um all those in favor? It's unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Herrigan. I think that concludes finance. >> finance report. But you'll be back in a few, so don't go anywhere. Um the next item would be personnel, and I just want to say, you know, Biagio, this is just a measure of your stamina, meeting attendance, so keep going. And I'm going to pass it to Ms. Cullinan for the personnel reports. Okay, the personnel Personnel Committee meeting was held on May 18th. Um Dr. Solon, myself,
127Mr. White, and Board Chair um were present at the meeting. We discussed um possible adoption of early childhood specialist, the administrator staffing in the elementary grades, which we've already discussed tonight, but most importantly, um the main agenda item was a meet and deep agree and discussion with um a proposal to um hire as a supervisor of elementary education, um Beata Salejuski, who's here this evening. I'm going to ask Dr. Solon can give us some information on her. Absolutely. Um First of all, uh Christina Sherwood, our incumbent PPS director, is here in the audience and um she's certainly big shoes to fill in the role of elementary special education supervisor and I want to thank her and Marlene uh and Emily for taking a lot of time to go through the 70 applicants that we had
128for this position. Um there were a number of interviews that were conducted. Uh there was a talent show um where our candidates had to evaluate testing and and IEPs and uh provide feedback in a small group with Robin and Carrie and Marie Broadway. Uh I think that hiring is probably the most important thing that we do uh and getting the right people on the bus and that's why, you know, I never say that we're lucky to have the administrative team that we do or the teaching team that we do. Uh that group is a product of a lot of hard work uh and so we're looking for people who have a tremendous attitude, uh who are really bright, um >> [clears throat] >> coachable, team players, uh and uh the problem solvers but above all
129else, you know, student-centered. And in the process of interviewing uh Beata Salejewski, um and I put that phonetically in the press release as well. Um Celayeski. She said something that just resonated with me and a lot of people in our group and that was uh that you know, we don't plug students into programs, we design programs around students. And um that certainly resonated with our team among you know, many other things. Uh Miss Celayeski is uh a school psychologist by by training. Um she's nationally certified in that respect, uh licensed professional counselor. Uh she spent the last 6 years in the Excuse me, I guess I should pass out I do have her um Yeah, thank you. Her resume. Um She spent the last 6 years with the Avon Public Schools uh at Pine Grove
130School, an elementary school in Avon uh as a school psychologist, also a PPT chair. Uh she has um served in two other communities, Manchester and Hebron uh for a total of about 13 years in those different roles uh and uh meets the profile that I outlined about having demonstrated tremendous attitude and uh student-centeredness, uh collaboration with colleagues, parents, uh consideration of students and we think that she will fit exceptionally well uh not only from a professional perspective, but a cultural perspective into our school community. Um so it's my pleasure to introduce and put forward Beata Salayeski to the position of elementary special education supervisor. Ann Marie would like that phonetic spelling. >> Phonetic spelling, please. >> Yes. Salayeski. Thank you, Deputy Solan. Okay. I also want to mention that I was one of, I think,
13115 participants um who interviewed her. Um it was quite lengthy, and she did come out on top of the three um people that we did interview. So, I'm very happy tonight to uh put her name. We just need a motion. Yep. That the Cheshire Board of Education appoint Beata What did I do with it? Salayeski. Is that correct? Thank you. As supervisor of elementary special education effective July 1, 2026, to be compensated based upon the collective bargaining agreement between the Cheshire Board of Education and the Cheshire administrative personnel. Any discussion? Matt? I would just like to know what you plan to have your students call you because if we can't pronounce it >> [laughter] >> You don't need to answer that yet. Any other discussion? Um I just want to say I went over the
132uh resume when when Dr. Solan first put it out to us. Um and it's very comprehensive. So, I don't know the qualifications at you know, at this level in the public schools, but my, it was impressive. So, um very happy to vote to bring you on board. Thank you. Okay, any other discussion or questions? Okay, all in favor? Thank you and congratulations. >> Congratulations, Biada. >> [applause] >> You're welcome to come to the mic if you like to make a couple comments prior to us moving to the next item. Good evening. Is it on? Mike's probably just firing it up now. That's okay. Okay, here we go. Um, I'm honored and grateful for the opportunity to serve as Cheshire's next elementary supervisor of special education. I know that I have big shoes to fill um,
133and I look forward to partnering partnering with Ms. Sherwood to maintain the foundation that she's built during her years in the position. I also look forward to collaborating with families and educators as we provide a continuum of supports and services for our students. Thank you again. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Congratulations, Biada. Welcome to the board. Congratulations and thank you for waiting through this whole long day. >> [laughter] >> She's got to stay till the end. >> [applause] >> Thank you. Now Christina can take you out to breakfast. >> [laughter] >> Very nice. Nice. Thank you, Ms. Cullinan. I think that's the only item for personnel. Committee, we're moving to planning. Mr. Rocky. Well, seems like a long time ago we had a meeting. >> [laughter] >> So, uh we're bringing forward tonight, uh the
134uh capital budget plan. Um Ms. Taylor is going to go over some of the details, but I the things I wanted to point out is uh very little going to referendum, I believe. We have one item going to referendum. Potentially. What's that? Potentially. Just the tax Potentially, if the council approves. Um and that is something that uh we've talked about extensively with the the loading dock at the high school, with the parking lot on the side, and not in the opposite order as it was presented last year, you know, in the the uh For those that want to take the tour down there, it's it's kind of a scary sight to see the uh the loading dock held up with scaffolding and uh rebar crumbling uh around the concrete. Um I think that's that's a
135priority. Uh I'm filling time while Ms. Taylor uh organizes her her PowerPoint that she's going to present uh to talk about the specifics of what we're proposing tonight. I'm good. Great job. Perfect timing. >> Yep. All right. Um this is a brief PowerPoint, I promise. Um but if you have not been through the capital budget cycle yet, wanted to make sure to get you up to speed on some of the items. You have a folder in front of you. It has this presentation in it. It also has um our five-year capital plan outlay and our year one asks. So, how our capital plan works is we present a five-year plan. We approve one year at a at a time. So, when you're looking at the five-year plan, what you commit to tonight is not the
136five-year plan, it's just year one of that plan that we would then recommend to the town council for approval. Here we go. All right, just as an update about our school building profiles, so in next school year we have the two new buildings coming online, they will be zero years old. You can see Barnum at about 115,000 square feet and the new Norton at 96,000 square feet. We have our five active buildings, Doolittle, Highland, the Cheshire High School and the Humiston School, and then we're retiring three buildings. So, next year the average age of our buildings will shift from 75 to 53 years old. So. Just a little bit about the history of our capital expenditure approvals. This is small, but what you see is that blue line at the top is the Board of
137Ed requested. There's an orange line, which is after referendum. I didn't have a lot of older data on this, but if you look to the right of this graph, you can see last year where we the town the Board of Ed recommended $5.04 The town council actually approved $3.3 million, but after after referendum two items failed, each valued at $800,000, the turf and the loading dock. So, we were actually realized $1.7 million dollars of capital expenditures. To the right you can see our approvals throughout the years. Our average BOE request since 20, that should say 2013-2014, was about $3 million with the town council approving about $2.2 million. And like I said last year we requested $5.04 million, but ultimately after referendum saw $1.7 million. So, I will go over this more extensively, but for
138year one we have 27 recommended projects across the district. Um I would say the bulk it's a where it's about $5.8 million dollars we're recommending in year one for the capital plan high school and I will go over those projects and then there are some projects at Dodd Middle School, um Cheshire High School the facility services which is called the maintenance garage um and some district-wide projects. Um our five-year outlay outlook outlay outlook by category, we're asking for about $31 million dollars across five years. That is significantly less than what we asked for last year our five-year capital plan in 25-26 was about $62 million dollars. Um the reason that there is such a cut is because of the energy performance contract. There are a lot of projects that are in limbo if they can
139be funded by the EPC or not. We took them out of this capital plan just kind of scooted them off to the side in another tab if they need to come back next year they will um but it also significantly reduces our ask and it allowed us to make more leveled ask across five years. And the five-year outlay by building, what you're going to see here is that our newest building buildings Barnum and Norton very few ask less than 1% um and then Dodd Middle School and Cheshire High School make up the majority of the requests over the five year along with district-wide projects. And Dodd is 68 years old, Cheshire High School 78 years old so older buildings. The last slide that I'm actually going to present on is the maintenance safety net. Um
140we have this uh building maintenance C&R fund with a $233,000 balance. I would say this is for like a catastrophic failure where we really couldn't you we didn't have existing capital money allocated for a project Um and we couldn't fund it through our operating budget. The last time we've utilized this account is 2019. We really don't try to utilize it often but if we had to for instance if for some reason snow plowing if it just completely annihilated our budget and we weren't able to make up for it in another budget line item that would be a use of this fund but we don't anticipate tapping that for this year but there is a balance there. So with that said I'm going to go back to year one cuz like I said that's while you're
141approving the five-year plan really what you're approving is year one of the five-year plan and you have a one-pager in your folder that's portrait orientation that that's all of our year one projects. You also have a larger stapled version that's landscape that's all of the five-year projects but I am going to just walk through some of the key item details for year one. So one thing that I want to say about year one is in the campus column you see any project that's highlighted in yellow means it's a new project. If it's white that means that we've requested it before and it was deferred. So there are six projects out of 27 on here that are new projects. All of the other projects were deferred from prior years and usually it's multiple years of deferrals.
142And then if you look in the proposed plan year one there's any value that's highlighted in green means that it's a single year project that we spend the money in one year and then the entire project is done. An example of this is row five the Doolittle stage renovations the entirety of the ask for that project is $250,000. If you look at the next line there's an electrical distribution project at Highland in the plan year one so 2026-2027 we're requesting $50,000 but you can see that the entire project ask in over the 5-year outlay is $350,000. So, you can just see the the new projects and then single-year projects in year one. Uh in year one, last year we had two projects that go to referendum. They both failed at $800,000, the loading dock and
143the turf. This year we are recommending that there is one project that goes to um referendum and the value for referendum is $500,000 or cumulative total total of $500,000. So, it's not the one-year price, but the whole value of the project once you hit $500,000, it needs to go to referendum. We are recommending that we have the loading dock safety improvements as our referendum project for next year. The price of that has increased to $874,000. We did have design work that was already already allocated uh and completed by Loriot. Um so, we have the design for that. Again, um I would say that with this project, you know, I am happy to give anyone a tour of the loading dock at Cheshire High School. It sees a lot of deliveries for the high school. Um
144it is not a solid concrete loading dock. It actually is like a platform with about 12 ft underneath that's held up by some some framing um and the rebar is crumbling. So, that is the main delivery port for the for the high school. Um and it's small and it's it's not in great shape. There are there are safety concerns. So, that is why it is stated in year one. Um but I will say that the turf was also not did not pass referendum last year, but luckily, um I know Dr. Solan shared this with you all earlier, but Cheshire, um the legislature passed a reimbursement grant for a value of up to um up to $1.5 million of a turf project for Cheshire can be reimbursed 95% of 1.5 million dollars. So what that means,
145um the total cost of the cost of the turf project is about 1.9 million dollars. So what we needed to put in the year one uh ask is actually 475,000 dollars, which is below the referendum value. Although the entire project is 1.9 million dollars because um the majority of that is grant-funded or grant-reimbursed, we don't have to go to referendum for that project because we only need 475,000 dollars. Um that is not part of the grant. So that moved out of the referendum category, meaning only the lot loading dock has stayed in the referendum-required category out of the 27 projects. Um So I you know, there are a bunch of different types of projects on here. Um I don't know if there's anything else, Mark, that you wanted to share. I can share a little
146bit more about the the turf in year one before I open it up. Um we did bring up uh that the um storage buildings at Norton and Barnum may not be on us. The uh >> Yes, that's right. new schools may be taking care of that. Yep, so there are two in the year one projects. If you look at row 30 for Barnum storage building buildings, um 125,000, and then there is one for Norton as well that I believe is line I missed this last uh is row seven, same value 125,000 dollars. That is currently going through the next generation school building committee. They would need to approve that. That's still up in the air, so we put this in as a placeholder, but if they approve that, then we can remove uh 250,000 dollars
147from this ask. But wanted to put it in there cuz there there are storage needs at both of those campuses, especially for equipment for our grounds team. Any other thoughts, questions? Tim? Matt? Yeah, sorry I stepped out for a minute, but I'm curious, did you did you touch upon uh because it's significant dollars, did you touch upon the performance contract and how that interplays? Yeah, I well what I talked about was that that's why there was a decrease from the $62 million from last year to the $31 million to $62 million to $31 [clears throat] million this year. That those projects were were removed. Okay, so I'll just recap then what I think what I said downstairs and coming off, but basically the where it stands right now is generally potentially up to $55 million
148or so in projects. $20 million of which has been locked into contract. Uh that is primarily solar. Mhm. Which will take, you know, probably at least a year to roll out. Uh the other 35 or so million, 30 or 35 million relates to more to energy efficiency and conservation measures. Mhm. That has some hurdles to overcome really in Hartford, I think. Uh if we can overcome those hurdles, it I believe it would go a long way toward some improvements at Doolittle in particular. Mhm. And that's a particular concern for me because I do feel with the we got town-wide support for the two new schools and Island and Doolittle are not getting those they're not getting anything out of all all support that they gave. Uh I am concerned about property values diverging between among
149the four elementary school districts, so I do want to make I do hope that we can make continue school modernization with Highland and with Doolittle, and I think this performance contract is a great opportunity to make some improvements there at Doolittle. We don't know if it's going to happen. It's really we can advocate for it, but it's some of it is based on decisions that are beyond our actual authority. Um but I just wanted to add that because it it rolls right into the capital budget. Thank you. Matt, did you have a comment? I have a few questions. Um and I don't know if this is better suited for you, Jeff, or for you, Emily. Um you know, one thing I've thought about in this budget cycle from the school modernization advocating for the schools
150and passing them on the referendum is you're now seeing as the budgets have progressed, you know, the other operational costs that come with those and you know, I think we knew a lot of those coming. How does something like the storage buildings progress to the point where that might end up being a capital improvement that we need to do. I mean, that's $250,000 that uh may or may not be approved. Did we know that going in? And I think that was labeled as code compliance, so is is it related to I mean, is that you just had to bucket it somehow or >> There's three town categories: code compliance, roofing, and renovations. And so, sometimes it's a little easier. >> [laughter] >> I I get that. Um yeah, just do you know the history of
151of the school? >> basically it wasn't part of the initial submission for the state, and so the Next Gen School Building Committee has to evaluate whether or not they would pay for that uh out of the funds allocated for each building. Um there is certainly more than enough money to be able to do so. I don't believe these are reimbursable, but I would have to check that. I don't know if you I don't think that they are. >> think they are. But um nevertheless, the money is available in the money that's already been allocated to be able to cover them. It's just a matter of whether or not the next chance school building committee elects to um spend it here. Um and so Ben and I intend on trying to the conversation's already come up
152once. Um and I I think, you know, knowing that we have to pay for it either way and we have money already allocated, I think it'd be great to do so, but you know, it's not my decision at the end of the day. I'm one of the members on that committee. Okay. Yeah, I in my personal view, yeah, it is I think you alluded to I would advocate for that. I would hate for the first thing we do with those new buildings to say, "Okay, here's another $250,000 of capital that Right. >> we're going to put into these new buildings, especially, you know, we're not necessarily asking them to cut any other things things that were in the plan. If this is coming in under budget, let's put these things into that budget. Um Can
153you talk a little bit more about the alternative option, the sports [snorts] complex renovation, and the $10 million Like I mean >> [laughter] >> Yes. First of all, I think I think that's great news um on the turf. So, am I am I understanding that correctly that that's not going to go to referendum if the board decides to approve this year one, it's something that we're going to do with the capital expense? >> as it's approved through town council, yes. Um and Well, we know they wanted it last year. Yes. And so and that you know, in this the ask is less, right? Cuz it was it was earmarked for 800,000. Um but to answer your question about the $10.1 million alternative. Um so in in your folder is the proposal by SLR. That is
154the design work that you approved Is it March or February of this year? Um to move forward with SLR. They did the original turf and as we know the turf is old, but it has really stood the test of time. It's one of the oldest turf fields in New England at this point. Um and SLR did we worked with them then. Um and so what I will say is this is a initial design um and this is all the components that would fit within that $1.9 million budget. This is like we could make changes to this. This is not like this is what it's going to be. Um but some of the things that we talked about with the planning committee and also the athletic director, John Parasino, um is obviously the turf replacement, the
155track replacement and um also expansion. So currently um we're kind of legacy in with our track because your fencing is supposed to be a meter from your last lane eight. And so we're not. It's very very close to the fence. Um so it would put us in compliance so that we we met the meter mark. It would replace the chain link and it would also um put in some uh safety netting behind the goal post and uh I think it's Is it shot put? There's something >> Yeah, new shot put pit. >> Yes, there you go. Um so that's what the $1.9 million covers. It does not cover bleachers or other um upgrades. When you look at the $10.1 million project and I can send that to you, um it's very comprehensive. It's adding turf
156at the soccer fields. It's it's redo it, making an entire complex. So, bleachers, everything. Does going with the 1.9 million dollar plan, the way that this design is laid out, preclude the future expansion of the rest of the 10 million? Are they mutually exclusive or No, they're not. >> potential Okay. What I will say though is you can also do turf and track separately. Um and they also their replacement timelines are a little bit different. Um but you know, by doing them at they're both well past the the point they should be. So, like replacing them at the same time makes the most sense. Um but like I said, I can't remember if it was like 8 years and 15 years. It would have been like 8 years for a turf, 15 years for a
157track um resurfacing. But like those two make sense to go together, but this doesn't preclude us for from doing further expansions. So, one of the additions that it isn't just the resurfacing of the track, they're actually going to take out the the asphalt underneath and that's because that's well past and then do the do the track on top of it. Yeah, I I think that's great news. Um I'm very happy about that update. Um my last question, uh the Doolittle stage renovations, I I agree with Mr. White on making sure Highland and and Doolittle Doolittle are taken care of in the next couple years of capital projects. This one in particular, do we have um can you provide any more context or information on that stage replacement? Uh right off of that stage is the
158PTA closet, so I've spent a lot of time on that stage. I've had a daughter do two drama clubs on there. I don't think I've ever particularly walked that stage, gone we need to spend a bunch of money in here, but that doesn't mean I'm seeing everything. Yeah, so I look at this cuz we have stage renovation showing up twice, right? For Dodd and Doolittle. Um I think that the Doolittle uh stage is is old, could use some new draperies, lights, re- um re-flooring, um but is not in the same condition as the Dodd stage. The Dodd stage is actually a safety issue where pieces are coming off the floor. It can't It just can't be refinished anymore. I What we haven't done with either of the stage renovations is gotten design work, right? So
159these are like very like kind of just rough order estimates. So do I think that the Doolittle stage needs as much as Dodd probably not, but we just kind of put in 250 for both. If we don't spend 250, then like we release the funds. It has to be used for this purpose only. But the idea here is that it would also be a plan one project, so we're not carrying, you know, we're not bonding the project for years. It just would be taken care of next year. What's the So the the 250,000, I'm curious, what are your contracting rules governing that? And by that I mean something like at what's the dollar threshold where you issue an RFP, either you are required to by law or you simply do? 50. Huh? $50,000. For That
160doesn't apply to design services, but $50,000. Anything above $50,000, we need to go We have to issue an RFP or an IFB. Okay, so it's basically what you're estimating would be $50,000 or more. You'd send out an RFP cuz people would come in and under 50. The one exception of that is if it's on a state contract. Sure. Okay. >> We don't have to do that if we we select someone who's on the state contract. Is any of it Is any of it I'm curious, the two stage renovations, would either of them be Would any piece of it or the entirety of it be on a state contract by chance? It It might be. I don't know that in its entirety if we're doing like sound system and drapes and we had to redo the
161floors, Um, we could look we could look into that. Yeah, no. I guess that the only thing that goes through my mind is just to what I what I heard you say before and these are not your words, but they're mine, but what I was hearing is well, we're having we have 250 there and as long as we come in under budget, then we don't spend the rest of it, but I just wonder does the money get spent because it is there? No. >> okay. Not no. Um, and there are actually things that we have tried to economize, so I'll name one of those that's not relevant to this approval. Um, but you know, we have significant salvage that we can do at Old Norton. Um, for they they have rooftop units that are less
162than 5 years old. We put them in. Um, it would be a shame to lose them. We found an old capital older capital project with rooftop replacements for Dodd. We went through bond council and we're actually going to salvage the parts at Norton and put them over at Dodd. Okay. >> So, that's actually going to save us money. We have way more allocated cuz you that would not usually be the structure is to salvage and install. You'd have to go to a supplier, you'd have to pay for the delivery, but we found a use because we didn't want the Nortons to just go to waste. Um, and in that event, okay, so like then we we are coming under budget. We're not going to spend that on something else. It's also so specific that it
163would be hard to do that. Um, so we we just haven't done that historically. Um, what we find though is that we end up with old projects and we don't have enough money, right? Cuz they could be a couple years old. Yeah, no. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. I did it myself at my house. I had 5-year-old air conditioners. Central air air conditioners. I got heat pumps, so I sold the air conditioners. They were salvageable, basically. Um, and it is unfortunate if that doesn't happen because there is like there's an embedded energy in anything that we have. So from an environmental perspective, it makes sense to salvage stuff. Not just an economic perspective, but an environmental perspective. So Anyway, I appreciate hearing you say all that. So thank you very much. Just a
164question on um the turf. I'm so tired, sorry. The turf >> [laughter] >> field and the track. Um if it moves forward, like what is the timing on that look like? >> Yeah, so you need about 4 months from like pressing the go button to like the like start of install, right? So you know the projects would be approved. I think the town council at the very latest has to be October. They don't shoot for that. They're looking for like an August. So once we get approved, you know, we have a pretty long window. Um we have talked to SLR about is it feasible if we get approved 9 months in advance to do this in summer 2027, and they're like, "Yes, absolutely." Um and then we would very likely contract with them for writing
165the RFP, walking through all of planning and zoning, and helping us administer the process. Okay. That was my question. And then um I don't know if this counts as capital or able to be used purchased through capital, but I know we talked about um Dodd cafeteria tables um being just kind of broken and hazardous at this point. And so, you know could we purchase those? No, that's like a no. >> we did try to put those through the operating budget this year. It was about $40,000. It it got cut. Capital projects are generally like uh a value of $110,000, and it's not meant to be like individual like types of it's like an asset for $110,000. >> Just two points on that that have kind of one um Matt is we're working with uh friend
166he has a uh vendor who does basically specialty fabrication to see if we can um get replacement parts. I just need to make sure from an insurance perspective that that still works. But then, um the other thing is when I think about bonding, you know, I had this conversation with Shawn and it kind of pops a little bit that we're buying something on a bond, usually it's like a 20-year loan uh basically to cover the cost of it. So, for a $100,000 item, you know, do you want to bond that for 20 years and pay the interest on that or not? So, it's I know that they weigh that uh across the street um and just made me think of things a little bit differently. Mhm. Yeah, it's just one of those things that I
167know you know, they need to be fixed or replaced, so hopefully that works out. >> Absolutely, yeah. I got to say [laughter] it's a mess. >> know that. Yep. Yeah, it's a a hot mess. Thank you. Motion? All right, if we have no more discussion, uh make a motion that the Chess Board of Education recommends to the Town Council the approval of the five-year capital expenditure plan and budget for improvements to current buildings in the total amount of $31,817,921 with $5,879,682 funded in year one with annual allocations as follows: 2026-2027, $5,879,682, 2027-2028, $5,895,000, 2028-2029, $7,185,000, 2029-2030, $7,283,239, and 2030-2031, $5,575,000. Seconded. Seconded. Second. Any further discussion? >> [clears throat] >> I'm sorry. Madam Chair. Go on. No other discussion? All those in favor of the motion that's on the floor. Unanimous. Thank you. And I
168believe that concludes planning committee reports. That [clears throat] concludes all of my reports. >> Thank you. And I really dig this infographic. Simple. >> Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Very nice. >> Yeah. Take note for future. They're graphic design specialist over there. >> I can't reveal my secrets, but Canva. >> [clears throat] >> Um next item would be any other standing committees of any board members have to report out. Cave ace. Nada. Actually, did anybody go to Darcy's send-off today? Wasn't that today? Like yesterday. That was my superintendent's report. >> Oh, I apologize. I don't want to steal that from you. >> Okay. Guys are on the edge of their seat waiting for me to Yeah. yammer for Next item then would be um minutes approval of minutes. Please take a quick look um if there
169are any potential revision. I looked them over. Can I make the motion? >> Please do. Move that the Cheshire Board of Education approve the minutes from the business meeting held on April 16th, 2026. Is there a second? Second. Is Colleen in? Are there additions, corrections? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion that is on the floor. Unanimous. Thank you. Uh Madam Chair, can I just I'm going to abstain from that vote cuz I wasn't in attendance. >> for one abstention. Thank you. Um Mr. Secretary, any correspondence that you're aware of which I'm aware right now. I I believe we received an earlier email, but I received it and kind of forwarded my response to you all. So, if you have not taken a chance to read that, you might >> What was that
170about? Was that about technical trades? Yeah, I sorry. I did see that. I apologize about that. Um Yeah, there we received a we received an email from a resident here in town who was advocating for increased um access to training education in relation to trades. I think the general idea is Cheshire High School has a good reputation for kids graduating and going to college, and that is not necessarily the pathway for all kids uh when they graduate high school. And so he was advocating for that. That's actually a it's a it's a topic that's near and dear to me. And I'm curious if the superintendent has any reaction to that letter in particular. Did you see it? Um I I can't say I saw >> Oh, that's fine if you didn't. I saw that there
171was a letter advocating for It was long. CPE [laughter] and I try to prep for this evening's Totally get it. It was it was right before the meeting that I saw it. So, okay. Thank you. But I think to that point, Ms. Alano, if you can kind of expand upon what we currently offer right now, clearly we're working towards enhancing our programming. Yes, we certainly have um an incredible manufacturing dual enrollment program. Where we've used some Perkins money and board money to really beef up the programming there where kids are are learning how to use lathes and um there's a lot going on in there. We've also got a uh theater carpentry class where students are making and building the sets before our theater programs. Um in addition, we have a CAD class. We also
172have a modeling class. I know that they go to the I think it's the Home Build Connecticut Home Builders Association conference or or um forgive me, it's late. I'm you losing my my word retrieval here, but um it's up at the convention center. And they put their models of the homes on display. So, we've got some some hands-on things. Um And I think there's more to come as we talk about CTE and pathways. Um we're going to be surveying the the parents, our students, etc. on what they would like to see. One of the things that's been talked about recently is um a path for aviation. Whether it's aviation mechanics. Um we're we've got a June 24th or 25th, we're doing a field trip for families who would like to go over to Meriden Airport.
173Um there was going to be tours of the facilities. There may even be some flights in small planes. So, we've got some things that we're talking about as well as um we're exploring like a pharmacy tech program. So, lots of pathways on the horizon. There's lots of work to be done. I think we have some good hands on things, but we're always looking to improve. Thank you, Ms. Lana. Tim. Yeah, thank you for all that. Yeah, there are a huge number of options and I don't believe for 1 second that we could possibly offer everything. It's that's not going to happen, but I think it's good to provide more of more more options for more hands-on rather than uh book reading. Um So, thank you for all that. I will say you mentioned aviation and
174that just that struck a chord with me. One of my friends is actually a pilot. He's got I graduated college with him in like 1994, so 32 years ago he graduated. He told me at that time he said he said, "Tim, you got to come to pilot school with me out in New Mexico for 4 years." His college degree at that point meant basically nothing. Um he did the 4 years of training. He's now 30 years into the industry. I Honestly, I think he tells me he works like 4 to 6 days a month. And he probably makes a couple hundred thousand a year. Kind of ridiculous. But, the point is is there are real opportunities out there and one of the things about it is I don't think you actually need a college degree
175um to become a pilot. I'm not sure that it's I don't believe that it's directly related to becoming a pilot. Um And then one thing that I really did strike me about this topic that um that we were written about was something I saw in the Globe in the Boston Globe only in the past week. Which was something that had not crossed my mind. We don't even have enough seats in the state of Connecticut for the number of students who want to go to a technical school. If you want to go be more committed to trades say by 9th grade. And the number that the Globe reported was only 44% of uh of students who apply of of applicants get in. And that really struck me and I felt it was really unfortunate and what
176we can do to help address that in some way, I think that we should. And I realize there's always, you know, budget short constraints and everything like that, but directionally I think it's important for us to offer more to the kids who simply aren't even they try to do something that really would be meaningful to them and they just can't even get their foot in the door. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to say thanks for that um reminder, Ms. Solano, because I I was a little flummoxed by that email because I'm like, we have kind of some really good offerings in that those areas. So, thank you for re- reminding us what those were. Thank you. Just >> I go ahead, Ms. I'm just saying, are we also um am I correct that we
177also have programs for, you know, fire and police? Um I was talking to a student who's Yeah, we have clubs, more or less. Yeah, so at least exposure. Yeah, with the town. Yeah, thank you. I will say one of the positive things about the federal administration is there is a potential given the announcement of support in, you know, the career and technical education pathway. So, I'm looking forward to see how that's going to trickle down to us at the state level and obviously within the district, too. So, more to come. Um with that, I'm going to move on to the long-awaited superintendent's report. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Uh really just want to try and hit some highlights here. I know it's it's been a long day already, but uh school modernization uh this
178is such an exciting time for us. Uh you brought up the Darcy send-off last night. It was great to see a lot of people there, uh including three former principals and our current principal in a picture on our Instagram account. Um tomorrow is the big send-off for both Chapman and uh Norton. Tomorrow morning, uh Marlene and I will be at both the schools really for a more internal community um celebration, but 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at each school there are building walk-through tours, stuff like that to uh celebrate the you know, 76 years at Chapman and the 71 years at Norton school. Uh people are interested in that, uh check out our website for more information, at least our socials. Uh school modernization uh with our new buildings um they're coming along well. I will
179say uh we've been really ahead of schedule almost the entire time. Uh still there with Norton. Unfortunately, Barnum uh we had some electricity issues uh in terms of getting some parts in that have put us a little bit behind the eight ball there. Still coming along okay, but um we didn't have dedicated power until recently, which really slows everything down um for installation. So uh including our elevator, which is a little bit behind as well. Um the target was mid-July. Um Barnum right now is tracking more toward early August, and we're um working together to try and develop a plan to expedite that and pull it back into mid-July. So uh that'll happen at our next Gen School Building Committee meeting. Um new friends day, uh again June 4th, we're transporting all the kids going
180to new places, K through 2s in the morning, 3 through 5 in the afternoon with a rainy on June 5th. So thank you to particularly our PE and administrative teams that are doing a lot of work to put together programming to make a fun day for the kids to connect with new new friends, new teachers, new new friend student friends. The PTOs are already connecting with one another and they're engaging which is is great. Staff moves. This is a a tense time for some folks as they think about not just closing out the year with their current students, but packing everything you want to either take home or move to someplace else. And so boxes, the first slew of boxes have been delivered to teachers to try and start packing things up. It's we're that
181close to the end. And so we're we're working on that and it's it's coming along well. But it's certainly it's like I said, it's kind of a stressful time for some as we work through it. But we're excited about moving into the new schools and Marlene and and Vinnie took some time this afternoon to lead a a staff tour over at Barnum for folks that were moving in and and Marlene came back and talked about how exciting it was to see you know, the the thrill of our staff. You know, any any of that frustration dissolves pretty quickly when you see the building. It's astonishing. So we're really looking forward to it. In terms of when can we gain more access for a broader community tour. That probably won't be until we have a CO,
182certificate of occupancy, excuse me. So that hopefully that'll be like mid-July to late August. We're not really in a place to even plan and publicize that because the date is really floating at this point. We don't want to have to cancel something and that's kind of a bad look. So once we get a firmer date, then we'll probably plan something for the community at that point. Um I passed out uh a notice that'll go out tomorrow to families. Thank you. Uh on transportation. Um we're updating some things next year and um we really wanted to communicate information out around some of those updates. Um and you'll see we we highlighted the bus opt-outs. Uh we really want to try and encourage, I know Matt's talked a lot about this, try and encourage families to opt
183out as early as possible. If they know you're not going to take the bus, uh really helps us design the most efficient routes and um helps the the entire community. Um it'd be stunning if we were able to get enough to opt-outs to reduce a bus, but at the very least it could make the bus routes more efficient and then with the cost of gas, let's do it. So, that'll go out tomorrow. Uh and then a last update on the energy performance contract. I know we talked briefly about it. Uh the energy performance contract in totality is incredibly robust. There are I want to say 17 individual efforts on there uh from solar to um cells, fuel cells at Cheshire High School. There's There's work done at the sanitation plant. It's community-wide effort. Connecticut Green
184Bank could not be more impressed with the work that we're trying to do as a community. That being said, we have hit some snags with the Department of Administrative Services. Um we're incredibly grateful to um you know, Courtney and our legislative team for some notwithstanding legislation that will help in terms of our financing methodology. They're hung up on the financing uh strategy we're using to really leverage every possible grant dollar we can to broaden the work that is done, and um with the grant money, state reimbursement money, we'll be able to do tremendous things, including the air conditioning at Norton, uh which is desperately needed. It'd be the only building that doesn't have it at the elementary grades, uh AC. Excuse me, I'm sorry, Doolittle. Thank you. For the perplexing look, um deserved. But, um
185yeah, so we really want to to square that away at Doolittle. Um I'm my hope is that the governor will sign SB1 into law soon, and we will then return to the DAS, um move looking to move forward. So, that covers a variety of super high-level things. There is so much going on right now, it's insane with hiring and uh everything else we're doing, but uh that's the highlights. Questions, comments first. Coolaroo. Uh don't hate me, colleagues, for asking questions this late, but this one has been burning for me. Um if and when that EPC goes through, and all the eyes are dotted and tees are crossed, are the line items in those projects that you're doing set in stone, specifically for ones that, you know, affect the schools? And >> Um Y- Y- yes.
186Those So, in the energy performance contract, we're quoted by Johnson Controls, who would install the energy items, um with the other com- Energy uh is is involved in this as well. So, we're quoted these things, and there's a timeline for that. And, you know, unfortunately, if we don't get the financing, uh uh the reimbursement rate through the state, we're going to have to drop a number of those projects, which will really diminish the work that we do. Um and those quotes that we had for those projects will no longer be honored. But we're still in the window for the the current quotes. >> All right. The The one that has been like been causing me a little bit of like, does that make sense? Is when I was at the town council meeting and Vinnie
187was briefing them, he's saying, "Well, look, the overall payback period for this project is I think it was 15 years." And one of the items on there was Doolittle windows, which was oh, hey, we can do get these savings, put these Doolittle windows in, and that line item specifically, he said it was a 100-year payback for the energy gain Oh, yeah. >> on Doolittle windows, which I would think I would say, "Then why is that one of them?" >> [laughter] >> Sure. If the payback is not going to be the length of the building for how long that lasts. >> Good question. Each one of the items has a different energy payback window. So, where the windows themselves will only save enough energy consumption, the the delta between how much money we would spend with
188the current windows on energy versus the new windows with energy is not that great. It It would take a 100 years to pay off the windows. Other projects, like solar, will be paid off in relatively days compared to 100 years. So, they look at the totality of the various improvements and shoot for that 15 win 15-year target. So, the totality is that 15 years when you put it all together. That being said, like the windows may not save you a fortune, but they dramatically improve quality of life. They do improve the um envelope of the building. They do allow for the efficiency of HVAC, which we don't have. So, they look at the full project, and that's where these uh specialists like uh Johnson Controls and Energy are coming to place to evaluate all those
189things in totality to put together the best project. Now, the windows, um they may cost 100 years as you know, energy savings without the reimbursement, but with a 50% reimbursement rate, that it's much better off. That's why we're shooting for the state grant money. Any other Tim? Just Just follow on that. The The basic idea is that everything that's in this contract should have some sort of energy component. But it it can be a 100-year payback. The The work on the windows is really more of a mechanical or a uh uh quality of life issue, but because there is an energy component to it, it qualifies. And it's something that we need to do, so although it may not make total sense I get it. When you look at a 100-year 100-year payback, it makes
190no sense to me, but from the From looking at it in totality, I think it makes complete sense because it's a project we basically need to do anyway. And it can be funded. And it can be fun Yeah, so we come up with a funding source, and I just think it's great cuz otherwise, you know, it's go out to referendum for $2 million for windows, and it's like another window More windows, more roofs. It's like, well, we have a big footprint, but if we could just avoid similar to the turf. I just look at I look at the windows as a maintenance item. And if it doesn't need to go to referendum, and I you know, I think most people generally agree, you know, at some point you replace your windows, then let's just do
191it and get it done via this contract. It's a different funding source. Any other questions, comments? Tim. Thank you. [snorts] Um yeah, I wanted to uh circle back for a second on the audit. Is Emily here? She's hiding behind you. Um just curious if this is I I don't recall know is the standard or not, but when I'm reading this, it mentions that they consider the town's internal control over financial reporting, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the town's internal control. So, to me, that's like a big red flag. Not that it's not that we're doing anything wrong, but do we ever do an audit on internal controls? Cuz I look when I look at when I'm looking at this from an auditing perspective, dollars could easily be
192material. But if there's a breakdown in controls, that could also be a material thing. Like if it's just $10 being stolen out of the cafeteria fund. I'm not saying that's happening. I'm just saying if it gets stolen, you know, every day or every hour, ultimately becomes like a big deal. Um so, I'm just wondering do we ever do that? Um is it something and I I also believe the town really controls this, the town side, and we're just sort of like submit some papers and we're not that deeply involved in choosing it. The town council chooses the auditor. Do you are you aware if they ever have a conversation about that, looking at internal controls? Yes, they do. And we have internal controls in place. Um and a lot of that is segregation of duties
193and like having um multiple departments or people look at things like payroll. Um where, you know, you have part of our finance department and you have part of our HR department. Um but it's just that's just one example um cuz it's a huge line item, but there are a lot of internal controls that we have. We wouldn't I hear you. No, I I have no doubt that we have the internal controls in place, but I'm talking about an audit of the internal controls, like an outside objective independent person looking at it and saying, "Yes, these controls make sense." And truthfully, I mean, we've had a team together for like 30 or 40 years basically on a lot of this. And without any malintent on the part of anybody, I do wonder if it just gets
194a little sloppy after a certain point cuz you just Well, I know I'm going to be doing this and you just sort of go through quickly, get the stuff done. So, I'm wondering if the town ever it So, beyond the auditor the this audit you're saying do we have another >> they it changes scope or something like that just to expand the audit. Yeah, um And if they >> think of a like a process in place other than some of the like the cross-departmental and and we do have controls in place, but I I don't know that I'm able to think of what provide you the answer you want and it could just be because I'm a little bit tired, but there are definitely controls in place. We it would be flagged if there there
195were not. Um and in terms of what they said and I I just put my paper away. Um but that's pretty like standard for them to kind of give that disclosure um at the end. It's not meant to be a flag and they actually talked about that in the town audit committee. Um there's a huge financial report. I just provided the management letter is kind of the closeout, but they also have like an 100-page report and I'm happy to share that with you as well. They went over it. They had a PowerPoint. Can share all of those documents with you. Yeah, if you could shoot it over to me just an email, that would be I'd appreciate that cuz I don't remember what it how it works from a long time ago. Um and then
196the last point is I just hope that we get an adventure playground in our schools. And I hope I I would love it if you invited in some some uh little helpers to uh even engage in the demolition cuz >> [laughter] >> that would be the biggest adventure playground they could come up with. Yeah, yeah. I know they can't, but I mean it in all seriousness that I I think it's uh based on the feedback I get directly from the users they generally love it and it's uh you know, at first I actually was wondering if it'd be like a boy-girl breakdown and it's not at all. No. And >> Girls love it, too. I And they they are not happy with the lawyers. They're not happy with the lawyers and all these safety things.
197They're like, I know how to be safe. I can do this. Yeah, I think you know how I feel about it, too, so we're working on it. Thank you. >> Any other comments? Thank you. And that concludes your report? >> It does. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We're moving on to um any old business. Seeing none. Um I don't have much in my report. I do want to wish our entire school community uh safe, relaxing, meaningful Memorial Day weekend. Um I know it's Friday and then tomorrow is the two send-offs as well, so enjoy tomorrow. Um but as we enjoy time with family and friends, um we want to pause to honor and remember the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. So, thank you all to
198those who served. Um I do want to just remind everybody on the upcoming meetings. We have May 25th, Memorial Day, schools and district offices will be closed. Um there is a parade on Sunday. Rain or shine, I believe. Um and then June 1st, we have 7:30 p.m. policy committee. I We have a TBD here. If need be. >> Yeah, I think uh I'll I'll talk to Mark about that real quick. >> Um then we move to June 4th, 7:30 p.m. business meeting at Town Council Chambers. Um June 8th will be curriculum 7:00 at Humiston Board Room. Um I do want to mention that June 9th, we have the promotions and graduations schedules. Chapman, Doolittle, Norton, Highland. Those are all in the morning from 8:30 to 9:30 for Doolittle, 11:45 for Norton, and Highland's at 1:15.
199And then we move to June 10th, um which technically is the last day of school for students, but we also have Dodd their promotion at 8:30, Humiston School at 1:30, and then Cheshire High School at 6:00 p.m. Uh June 11th would be the last day of school for teachers as well. And then we have our fiscal meeting on June 30th at 7:30 a.m. at Humiston Board Room. And we we are potentially scheduling a board retreat >> retreat on the 29th. So But again, I just need feedback from folks if they can make it or not. I've heard from a number >> Yeah, if you can respond to the retreat date of June 29th at 6:30 p.m. Did I have to respond to that? I don't know. Carol, did you send it, Jeff? Or did Carol?
200>> No. Okay. Um with that, I'll take a motion to adjourn unless there's any questions. Sure. So I don't know about with regard to the parade, I don't know if the rules have changed this year, but typically in years past it has there can be a rain date. If it's like a light sprinkle, it has gone on, but if it's a heavier rain, it's probably years past it's been delayed a week. The town would have that information then or at least >> Yeah, the town, yeah. >> Yeah, okay. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions or comments before we adjourn? Awesome. I'll take a motion to adjourn. Mr. White, any second? Mr. Colehower All those in favor of adjournment? Unanimous. Thank you, everybody.