001here. Sam Rosenberg here. Awesome. Great. And Jeff. All right. Gonna show our beautiful American flag and do the pledge of allegiance. Let's get this going. All right. All right. 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. All right. Uh before I jump into our two topics for tonight, I have the audience listed in the agenda. I am not aware of any comments or questions that came through the email. Jeff, are you aware of any? Okay. No. Okay. Uh so we have two things to talk about tonight. Uh we're going to start talking about some school start and end time proposals for postmodernization. So, starting in school year 26 and 27, I'm going
002to share a presentation with you. Uh, so I'll be screen sharing, but I'm also going to put this in the chat if you prefer to have this on your own computer. It's just a PDF. So, let's make sure that goes through this. All right. Are you all able to see my screen? should be okay. Yes. Great. Perfect. All right. So, this should take up probably the bulk of our meeting. I know that at the end we have just a little bit of an update on the energy performance contract, but that should be pretty quick. So, uh we are looking to mostly get your input on the school times for when we open up Barnum and New Norton and decommission Chapman in Darcy. So, there's a lot of information in this kind of presentation, so please
003stop, interject at any point. The idea here is we want to present some proposals for you all. Um, and I know Jeff, you originally had a timeline of wanting to get some community and parental input for this summer. I don't know if that's still the timeline you're wanting to work with, but the I is that still Yeah. So, um I think you know first of all I just want to preface this by saying that um I want to thank Emily and uh the team transportation doing a lot of work to take a look at what the impact of moving and opening these two buildings will be on our school system. First of all, you know, the the bus times that we have now really don't work uh for a lot of reasons over the years.
004the traffic on route 10. Um, you know, we probably actually Luther, our transportation coordinator, asked, you know, previously to try and change the times for next year and I, you know, I just didn't want to do that to our community when we were in the midst of knowing that we have to build these buildings much further apart and um, what is that going to do? We're going to have to change times in consecutive years and that was a lot to swallow. Um, so we've spent a lot of time reviewing these start times is what might be possible. Um, I think you both know, you both been on the board a long time. Ann Harrian has frequently been a proponent of following the science around school start times for high schoolers. Um, which is pretty strong
005about the fact that 7:30 start time does a lot of damage to the body. Um, we're sensitive to that. Um, and you know there are a lot of variables that go into making these decisions and I think that's one of them. What we are just initiating tonight is here are some different options to look at. Here are some of the the costs of these options. Um, you know, obviously our transportation has a cost regardless of what we do. Um but having a shift does have a little bit of a cost um associated with it. Uh even if we just kept the same proposal, the same time schedule because we need in conservative figures more buses to facilitate kids around town just because of walking distances and stuff. Now none of this will be totally resolved
006until we know what the um redistricting study says and we're still going through that. Uh so we won't really know the the fiscal impact until that's resolved. But um I think this gives us a real sense and if we can nail down the start times for the schools then we can start to think about staffing and what you know because teachers may want to think about going to another building but if that time doesn't drive with my lifestyle then maybe I won't and um it impacts families and our staffing and so we want to try and get this resolved ASAP. At the same time, we want to be able to provide the community ample time to review and provide feedback. So, tonight is just a kickoff. It is just the, you know, the point of
007here's the information. And we intentionally have multiple proposals out there so that nobody is saying, well, here's what the board is doing next year. Even if we put it out as a proposal, if there's only one that's going to be, you know, misinterpreted. So there are a lump number of proposals here in Emily's presentation. Um and that's kind of the background for it. Uh so kind of jumping into this the current state of affairs and where we are right now. Cheshure has a three- tier busing system uh where Cheshire High School is going first and then we have some of the elementary schools in Dodd and then a third tier with Highland and Norton. Uh, and sharing this just because a lot of it's a lot of school districts do a two to three tier
008model. Um, and we do this for a number of reasons. There are some financial constraints. Uh, and you can see here on the left is kind of where all of our schools are laid out currently. And on the right is our districting map, which Jeff shared, you know, that that's going to um change as we open new schools. And we have a plan for getting three proposals in the fall for potential redistricting plans. So you can see the bus times. Another thing is, you know, we're cutting it kind of close with running CHS dismissal and then the second tier uh 35 minutes later. Um so just some of the current challenges we're experiencing with bus times, especially if you're looking at the redistricting map and we have route 10 kind of cutting across diagonally. So
009but this is where we are right now with our our buses. Um and then here's just some of the projections for the uh new enrollment. uh with Barnum in play. You can see Barnham's pretty close to where Darcy was, so it's not changing much of the map, but we still have Route 10 cutting across all of our schools. Uh and just where we project that enrollment is going to be at each school with changing obviously notable changes are Highland, which is going to go down, um and then having Barnum. So leveling out the elementary schools a bit more, which will in turn change just how bus routes work because we aren't so heavily loaded at one of our elementary schools. So uh in addition to the schools you see here, we're also transporting to St.
010Bridget's where we have five buses, Lyman Hall two buses, Wilcox three buses, and the Sound School one bus. So there's a lot that's happening with our transportation. Um, and some of the projections you're going to see see, which I will share again, is, you know, we're trying to make an apples to apples comparison, but it's a little difficult because of all of the kind of alternative um routing we're doing with different schools and special education and um large buses, small buses, but we uh we'll do our best to try to make that comparison for you. And just some other things before I kind of roll through some of these uh these projections that or uh sorry proposals we're going to share with you is just some assumptions made throughout the projections is for the all
011the financials you're going to see was we just did a flat assumption of $48 per bus per day. That's a type one bus. So the largest bus you're going to see. We obviously run a fleet with different size buses. Uh but that can be variable depending on the needs of the specific school. So this is just kind of one way to level set. Currently we're running like 36 buses in our tiers at a maximum. So we're running a lot of buses across Cheshure in the morning and the afternoon. Another thing with these proposals is Cheshure High School start time will not be any earlier. So you will not see that in any of the proposals. It's 7:30 or later for all of them. Um we're also trying to expand the time between those tiers. So,
012in any of the proposals you see, instead of having 35 to 45 minutes, it's 45 minutes or above. And the idea there is that alleviates some of the um issues with buses being late to second or third tier schools. And this the another assumption the school day is going to remain the same. So, it's 6.5 hours now. And that is what we are uh showing for school year 26 and 27. Some things that we're not sure of and are hard to incorporate into any uh proposal is the number of buses. We obviously don't have the redistricting map, so it's hard to say how many buses are actually going to be at any school at a given time. Luther really looked at, you know, the bus capacities that we have, where schools are located, and has
013incorporated that into some of the proposals you'll see. Um, but it's really, this is very highly volatile because it depends on what our redistricting looks like. Barnum is obviously in a different location than Chapman, not as close to Route 10, not as many sidewalks in that neighborhood. So, the amount of buses that are needed will really depend on that redistricting map. Um, and another thing that we made an assumption uh or just sharing with you more is the need for AM and PM care. Anytime we're switching the length or the the start or end of the school day is going to change a parent's need for either before or after care. Currently 8% of our elementary sk care uh elementary grade students are enrolled in the YMC afterare which take place on our campuses. That's
014339 kids. So a fair number are needing are having that need right now. And it really depends on their school start time if they're participating in AM PM or potentially both. Um, and then another assumption that was made with the proposals is just the number of students that are riding the bus, which we estimated about 60 to 70% of students at any given elementary school would be riding the bus. That's a little bit lower for high school because we don't have as many as many high schoolers riding the buses. Um, so that's just some things you'll see incorporated throughout these proposals. I am not going to go through this entire comparative data set, but it's something that you can chew on potentially after this meeting. This is just some of the other DURB or schools
015or schools that are in the area. Obviously, you see Southernington, you see some other Durgby schools and some of their um student enrollment, the number of schools. And what you'll see here is how many tiers. Um you cannot see my arrow right now, but the number of tiers in their busing system and basically their AM start times and their PM start times. We've had a lot of conversations about later high school start times. This is where we are with DURB B right now. Um, some things of note just with the some of the comparisons just to highlight so you don't have to read through this entire chart right now. Is that it's actually really hard to do an apples to apples comparison of transportation expenses. So you shouldn't read this and say, "Oh, this is
016the the exact same same situation for all these schools." For instance, Southernington, it appears that they spend less money per pupil. We don't have a universal chart of accounts. So, you know, I'm going through a budget book to try to figure out um all of their line items, but you know, Southernington in this instance also has uh a longer distance between like the mileage requirement for students. Um they don't have to transport for sports like hockey. So, it's really hard to make that comparison, but I would say if you're looking at this, some of the most comparable schools, at least demographically and size-wise, are going to be Guilford, Avon, and Simsbury. and we're kind of in the middle of the road when we look at per pupil spend for those districts. Um, overall our transportation
017increase from this fiscal year to next fiscal year is 6.4%. So that matters quite a bit when we're going from about $4.4 million to 4.6. And that's all of our transportation accounts. So I've just talked a whole bunch. I don't know if anyone has a any questions or comments up to this point before we launch into the proposals themselves. Right. Proposed times. What are we requesting the start times? And when you say start time, it's more school start time, not the first pickup time basically. Correct. Correct. And I would say for pickup times, um, try trying to keep them under an hour from the school start time. But everything you're going to see here is the start and end of the actual school day. Bus drop off is usually five minutes before the start of
018the school day. So, what time is is it 8:30 for elementary? uh for our for our second tier schools right now. Um it is we have Dodd 805 and then let me just double check for Highland and I mean Chapman Chapman and Norton start also at 8:05 and do that is 806 Highland and Norton start at 850 for currently currently currently. So, you're going to see some proposals and that those will change. So, we did a couple different things. So, each of these proposals, I'll kind of walk through what the main changes are, but there's no consistent start time for elementary schools throughout this proposal set. It's a little bit different for any I just want to repeat what I think. It's Chap Chapman Dittle Dodd are 805 Norton Highland. Oh, sorry. Yes. Sorry. Norton
019Highland Darcy are 850. Right. Kylin, Norton, and Darcy. Yes, third team. Yeah, I'm in the thick of it. So, you're in the Thank you, Tim. I appreciate it. You're right. Y Thank you. All right. Uh so, I'll jump jump into kind of our first proposal. Um and just highlight some of the This is a busy slide. Um but I'm going to kind of highlight the the big changes here. So this is this is showing what would happen if in 2627 we had the same school setup. So all of the same schools on this left hand table where it says current. So this is not going to be our reality because we're decommissioning some schools and we're opening new schools. But this is just to provide the most baseline comparison point. Um so if and this
020is our DATCO type one bus cost only. This is not all of our transportation lines, which next year is going to be $4.6 million. This is just our Dco if we're running just our base buses. So on the left you have current um what the projection would be for 2627 where we're paying $48 a day for those big buses. Um the yearly cost for just that bus contract, that base contract would be about $2.6 million. That's a cons, you know, that's that's all things remaining the same. That's not going to be our reality in 2627. Um, but what we've tried here is proposal A, which is as close as you can get to our current reality. Meaning, um, where you have Chapman, you're putting in Barnum, right? So, why it's not an apples to apples
021comparison, obviously there's going to be a lot more kids at Barnum. Um, so it's not exactly the same because the student makeup is going to be different, but if you tried to move this over as close as possible, you're we're still going to have a cost over that baseline over that 2.6 million um of about $360,000. So, if we tried to keep almost the same setup and apply it to our new school configuration, we're going to be spending $360,000 over the baseline. And the reason for that is because the elementary schools are leveling out in terms of their population, we're having to run buses uh in a different way. And the way that buses work is we pay a set fee per day for those type one buses. So the $48 and we get five
022and three/4er hours of drive time. So we can use it any way we want as long as we've only have our drivers driving the five and three/4er hours of drive time. But uh if we were to try to do our model and apply that when we open Barnum and have New Norton, we are having to have more buses run at any given time. So instead of running the 36 buses that we run per tier now we have to have 41 buses and again that's because the the size of Barnum is growing um and the projection on the number of buses is growing as well. And in this model we're just also extending uh instead of having that less than you know that 35 to 45 minute between the tiers we've extended it to 55 minutes
023per tier. Uh, and this is obviously not a costneutral option because it would cost $360,000 over um what we would expect to pay if we were projecting this out two years with our current situation. Jeff, anything to add? Tried to No, I think you've been uh you've covered it here and this is like um you know, like Emily was saying, this is really what we do now. And if we tried to do the same thing with the new locations of the schools, um it's that max run in the second tier, uh the increase in there. Now again I want to reiterate that these are conservative estimates that we want to over you know uh represent perhaps the cost until we know exactly you know what the redistricting looks like and we can actually run legitimate
024runs and get a better sense but um it looks like the cost will go up to a degree in the transition. So this is So are you so I won't uh is 41 the likely high end of runs in what I think you said was the second tier or is this proposal intended to be the mirror of the current situation or is it coincidentally both? It I'm sorry. Go ahead, Emily. I was going to say it's it's us trying to say this is getting as close as possible to current state, keeping the tiers the same. Um, and so it's not necessarily coincidental. It's just saying, you know, this is as close as we can get. Understanding that the actual student enrollment is really different. They spread very differently. Um, and so the needs in the
025bus tiers are going to be different. Um, there's not really a way to get 35 36 buses um, with our current tier system in the current order of the schools. What we were trying to do here is prioritize the order of the people who are in the current tiers stay in those tiers. Right. So, okay. So, ignoring this, ignoring the schools per se, if this is your pickup time now, we're going to try to make it the same pickup time later. Recognizing that some kids that's not going to work, but for the highest number of kids, you're getting it to stay the same to alleviate the concern of change for the families who already have built-in schedules. Got it. Okay. All right. Thank you. Um, yeah. And I guess the one thing that I'm looking
026for then that comes to mind for me just looking this and by the way, I just want to say I super appreciate this because this is there's a lot here to digest to to assimilate. Anyway, um, yeah, just lowest cost. I'm hoping that you have I hope I'm hoping that's one of your proposals. Yes. I didn't start with the lowest cost. No, no, I totally get it. I completely understand what you're doing here starting with the trying to go apples to apples or yes apples to pomegranates or something but that's probably closer to what we we were doing here. Yeah. So there's it's really hard to make it apples to apples just because of the way the schools are going to be configured. But that's proposal one. So if everything tried to stay the same,
027it's going to be more expensive. So um on to our second kind of proposal set which is a later high school start time. Before I show you the proposals here, um just some data because there's never enough data about later start time and the positive impact it has on student experience. Um you can see here on the the right kind of uh schools and and what their average start time per state is. And you can see Connecticut is the lightest shade of blue there, meaning we have some of the earliest high school start times across the country. Um so that's just a a point. Uh but what I did on the left was there's been a lot of talk of like where what schools have actually adopted this across the state of Connecticut. So I
028took some schools. You can see here I started with Cheshure at the top. You have the DUR right below and the number of hours in the school day. And so you see Brookfield, Greenwich, New Town, and Westport were the schools that have later than 8 pm 800 am start times. There have been other schools that have considered this including Trumbull, West Hartford, Darienne. Um, but there's been no commitment at this point to changing their high school start times. But that's kind of the current outlay. Um, some other schools that you can see for comparison points. Actually, if you go back to this chart, um, you'll be able to see any of the schools that are listed here, their earliest tier one is their high school start time. So, that's just, um, a note. I actually
029have to just double check Glastonberries. Um, but most of the comparative schools are having earlier than 8 a.m. start times. Uh, so I'm going to go to the proposal, but Jeff, I don't know if you want to share anything else about later high school start times before I show the proposal. No, I mean just to get, you know, several years ago where an and I really had, no puns intended, our eyes opened up to the start time issue on sleep for kids. Um there's a a doctor out of Boston Children's Hospital, uh Dr. Judith Owens, who gave a very comprehensive um overview of research on the topic. And I've had I've spoken to other uh doctors. There was a gentleman out of Guilford. Um you know, it's really indisputable the impact it has. It's it's
030obviously um pretty impactful. Um but it's one of many variables that we consider. I think if it was on its face and that was the only variable, every school in Connecticut, every high school in Connecticut or the country would start closer to nine o'clock. Um, but that's not the only variable. Tim brought up cost, athletics and afterchool activities, uh, child care. Um, there are a number of variables that go into this. And so I think we share the information and the possibilities and collect community feedback about feelings on those different variables and we try and make the best decision we can to support our kids and community. So with that, Emily can share Oh, go ahead, Sam. I I was just going to say as much as I, you know, am a proponent of a
031later start time, I just feel like it's going to be a lot more pre-work to educate our community as opposed to kind of ripping the band-aid and saying, "Hey, we're going to start, you know, at this time." Um I I also feel like given those variables some of the research is 50/50 as well too though Jeeoff you know it's I don't know I I think it's a lot um a lot of steps need to be taken to to really lean towards this proposal and I know Emily you're going to show it but it's just a little takes a little more convincing with our community for this to kind of um hopefully move forward, but we'll see. Yeah. Again, I mean, we're sharing and I think it's um relevant to share points of research for people
032to get that information, but ultimately it's one of several options that people will see and be able to weigh in on. Yeah. And I I I appreciate that. And I think um I guess my the followup question is how how are you collecting the feedback then after you know all these proposals are made public I guess. Yes. So why don't we walk through this and then we can talk about that at the end. Yep. Tim u thank you. As far as the delayed start times go, uh yeah, I'm I'm uh in terms of as far as delayed start times go, in terms of the science behind it, having better outcomes for the kids, I'm I'm totally open-minded to this to hearing what the hearing what the arguments are. Um, the the two counterpoints I will
033offer up off the top of my head are number one, we still have what makes no sense to me, daylight savings time. So, as far as that benefit going, it gets messed up like twice a year anyway in November and March. Um, but the other the other point uh or maybe this is two points. So, the sun is moving on a daily basis, right? So it's moving a what's it go from pretty much from like say 4:30 or so to 8:30 maybe nine maybe five hours over the course of several months. So it's moving that'd be call it 300 minutes in a day over the course of call it 150 days like two two minutes per day it's changing anyway. Um and the other thing that goes through my mind is Connecticut what we're saying
034right here is that we have a 7:30 start time. 7:30 for Cheshire Indiana. Uh Gary, Indiana on the western side of Indiana, but still in the eastern time zone, Eastern Standard is I believe their sunrise and sunset are about 45 or 50 minutes behind us. and and and so the point that I'm making is that the the the information that I've seen before and I hadn't heard about what Sam had said about um some of some studies being inconclusive which for me adds to the discussion a bit. Um I haven't seen it with I haven't seen it where it's uh location specific. it speaks broadly and I that doesn't I don't mean to say that it's uh irrelevant. I just am curious to know what it really means for Cheshure when we have close to
035a 1 hour time difference with another time the the other side of our time zone and to that extent Cheshire is probably starting later in the daylight time. Forget about clock time, daylight time. We're probably actually starting later than Indiana does. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. And again, I'm not saying I'm not saying no to it by any means. I'm just adding that I think that that's uh for me that's relevant. Um if that is part of the reason that you're doing it, so it's better start times for the kids. Uh but aside from that, I totally get the idea that this is a complete this is this is a lot to deal with. And so if the start times if it's appropriate to have start times change, I I'm open to that as
036well. Um because there's so much going on here. And you're already talking about like adding what 15% in runs going from 36 to 41. So a lot of this is going to be changing anyway. It needs to change, right? And I think that's the point I want people to really walk away with is that um you know, we're not just doing this because hey, you know what would be a fun project? Um changing all of our school start times. Um yeah, we've got enough fun projects. So the the issue is that you know given the geographic locations of the buildings and the we have to do something different with our busing anyway. Um and so yeah that's why we're doing this. Um and that the the busing is going to be impacted and school start
037times might be impacted to a degree. Um, so I'll jump to the the proposal for later high school start times. Uh, beyond the late high school start, you'll notice that this proposal is similar in the sense that it follows the three- tier model of where we are currently in the first proposal. Uh, Tim about cost implications, you'll see that this is actually a cost savings propos uh proposal uh to the tune of $73,000. Here you can see if we pushed Cheshire High School start time to 8:15, that would mean getting out at 2:45 p.m. Uh we would need to do some shifting of the tiers. So you can see in this specific proposal, Dittle and Barnum are put in tier one. Um and Dodd and Highland are in tier three, which pushes their dismissal to
038340. Um and I I'll say that this is the most costneutral of the proposals that we're going to go through tonight. So, just that you can kind of like temper your expectations in terms of we just saw like three over 300,000 um increase and this is this one is less $70,000. Uh and the reason for that is you can see the max runs per tier is 35 which is actually less buses than we're running now. Um but some of the the you know the tradeoffs or potential challenges here uh are go along with like sports. Um you know running later high school start times means that our kids are getting out later and that can present some challenges with sports and our our league. Um just because we don't have a ton of schools that
039have later later uh end times for high school. The ones we were talking about are mostly in in Fairfield County. Um, and putting Dodd in a third tier with a 340 dismissal is pretty challenging in terms of having an athletic program um there. But there is a cost-saving measure here. Uh, developmental appropriateness for our high schoolers and then having some of the elementary schools start a bit earlier when kids are up earlier when they're smaller. Um, you know, are some of the benefits of this specific model. So yeah, I would just add, you know, with respect to the athletics at the uh high school level, it's not so much of an impact on the varsity athletic program, more so on um subvarsity sports that maybe don't have the same lighting um opportunities that the varsity
040programs have. uh at the um but you know again stuff that we could work through the schedule with the the bigger impediment is Emily was saying is it the with the athletics at the middle school if we're getting out at 3:40 that's about an hour after most of our peers get out and so you know by the time we get on the bus and get there nobody's going to want to play us an hour and a half two hours after their school day ended. So, you know, um that would be a more dramatic impact there where we might have to do more of an inter mural athletic program to accommodate that which, you know, many people wouldn't be bothered by, but some people would be bothered by. Um the other thing is the $73,000 savings
041there is rather conservative. Um like the other numbers are conservative. And if indeed we did not have a middle school um intercolastic athletic program and had an inter mural program, the savings would be increased by probably another $100,000 on top of that. So, um just again points of consideration, points of information. I frankly I'm not advocating for any of these. Um, I mean, if you if you ask me to make a recommendation, I I could make a recommendation, but that all these are options on the table, I think, for people to talk about and ultimately we'll make a decision. Tim, yeah, thank you. Um, do we have uh any inter mural sports at DOD right now? Intercolastic, we have more intercolastic sports. Um, limited inter mural activities. Yeah, because the one thing I'm the So,
042as as everybody here knows, I think everybody here knows um my kids are approaching Dodd. Um then I'm starting to have more conversations with parents at DOD and the um I'm just wondering it the feedback that I've gotten a little bit is kind of like eighth graders get to participate in intercolastic sports at DOD and seventh graders don't. at least for some of the smaller sports. And true that to that extent um uh is there a is there a benefit to the seventh graders um with more of an inner mural focus rather than inner scholastic focus? I I just I and I put this out kind of rhetorically. It's what go you know what's going through my mind. I'm not sure. I I'm I'm confident that there would be people who would be upset. And
043we also have So my kids are not really involved in sports, not organized sports. I also feel like there's a lot of these travel and United Leagues. Does that only go up through sixth grade? No. Or that continues like into high school like some kids who get into potentially professional sports like Brian Leech or Brad Osmus. Um. Right. And so I wonder I wonder how if we if I wonder how big of a how big of an impact it would be if we move to if we move to more of an inter mural and less of an intercolastic focus for I mean that's a really good question and it's a fair question worth asking whether or not we were changing start times you know I mean the the point you made about on smaller sports
044teams um that are uh roster limited like let's say basketball. Um yeah, I mean the the team often will have a eighth grade game and like a seventh grade game. So there are some like a JV middle school sort of game where they play maybe a quarter. Um but the the um the roster the competitive roster is predominantly eighth graders which does make some sense. It's a competitive team um that kids try out for and they generally the older kids um have that advantage and are more likely to play on the team. Um, and then most of the seventh graders, and by the way, all of those eighth graders who also make those teams play in community leagues or travel leagues. Um, so there's a lot of that that happens. And, you know, I think
045you could make a great argument for involving more kids, playing more inter mural athletics after school, and not having the intercolastic component. Um, I think you could make a great argument for having an intercolastic component in middle school. It's just as a community, what do we want to do? Yeah, I'm going to make I'm going to make another point that just came to mind for me for the uh moving toward the inner mural and away from intercolastic or I shouldn't say that. What I should say is more availability for sports which I'm associating with inter mural and less availability. Fair. I would say generally speaking, yeah, there we do have sports like cross country that are in essence like no cut sports. Yeah, I did cross country make reductions for safety, but everybody participates for
046the most part. Yeah. No, I mean that was my experience running cross country. Everybody got to participate. It was uh Yeah, I I enjoyed it. Um but the anxious generation goes through my mind. Um because you and I have had that conversation, Jeff, about um after school activities uh and kids who come home and they jump on their devices um and the parents don't necessarily want that, but they don't really know what the alternative is. I mean, by the time that by the time the kids get to fifth or sixth grade, I think a lot of them don't even really want to go to the Y after care anyway, but they will. There's still something to do. There can be still some, you know, activity for them. If you don't have uh if you don't
047have kids who live next door to you, um you're not going to necessarily have somebody for them to just chat with or hang out with, play, do whatever at whatever age. Um, yeah, I think I I mean I I would want to hear more about it, but I'll just put myself out there saying the idea of uh when we're talking about the busing, the potential of changing athletics, the design of the athletic program. I'm open to it. I'm not advocating for it by any means right now, but I think that there could be some merit to it. Um it could be potentially more upside than downside. Yeah, I I think you know it's easy to say um the reduction of inter school intercolastic athletics at DOD is the worst thing that could ever happen. I
048I think um you know there are pros and cons to pretty much anything that we're talking about here. Um and it depends from where you sit, right? Like and so that's why it's important to engage the community and have some conversations about these things and get feedback. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally appreciate that. I do. Um yeah, I'm just again like the changing start times. All I'm saying is I'm open-minded to it. Yeah. And thank you for starting the discussion. Sure. Um, so I'm going to go into our next we have three proposals left, but I these are all proposals with a two-tier bus system. So again, we're the three tier system. Um, but I'm going to show you three would say the cost implication on all of these is heavier than what you've seen
049in the previous two proposals. Uh but in this first proposal, what is happening in proposal C is that we are aligning all of the elementary schools to an earlier start time so that their start times are the same and then having a later high school start time. So all elementary schools start at the same time and DD and the high school start at the same time. The cost of running a model like this where we're reducing the number of tiers and aligning school schedules based on the the age range of the child um is $950,000 above the baseline cost. Uh that is because in tier 2, which is the Treasure High School and Dodd tier, you'd be having to run 49 buses, which is 13 buses over what we're currently running in our max tier.
050So that is really why there's such a cost increase to doing this. But um you know the tears condense, people have the same school time, job shifts a little bit later. Um this is the most cost ineffective of the proposals that I'm going to lay out tonight. The two the two next two-tier models are more cost effective, but this is what this would look like um if we tried to align age ranges. Yes, Tim. Yeah, thank you. Um uh so I I understand and St. Bridges although to understand those I'm looking at three and five buses with no times on them. Is that just they're sort of outlier? So you're just putting them to the side. Yeah, I'm putting them to the side because they are they are a little bit later. There's like a
051little bit of flexibility there. Not a ton. Um but they don't start as early as this this early tier. Um but we do have to consider them in the overall proposal. So, all right. And so, Will Wyman Hall is similar to Will Cox in that it's a it's got a technical or an agricultural school there or so we send a good number of kids over there and provide the busing. Correct. Okay. And those are I'm just taking are those the small buses or the the 70 they're not 72 seat buses, are they? Like I would just be surprised if that was the case. No, I don't think they're 72 seat buses. And I would say for the purpose of this, we just kind of flatlined with all the big buses, but yeah. No. Okay. All
052right. Thank you. Uh other questions about this one? You're going to see it's the other ones are two-tier, but the cost is a little bit little bit less. Um and here you can see this is this is has a later high school start time of the the 8:15. Um the next proposal is the more costefficient two-tier. So if we tried to the f if the focus is not aligning age bands together and we say how can we do this the most cost-effective way running two tiers with an earlier high school start time then this is the configuration. So what you can see is that CHS would start at 7:45 which is 15 minutes later than it currently starts. um you know, you'd have those two tiers, but the elementary schools would be split between two
053tiers, which they are currently. Um but then we'd have the the early run and the later run. Uh and Dodd would shift 30 minutes later than it's currently going. Um this is the most coste effective two-tier model. I have one more to show you. And this is because at at most we're running 46 buses, which is 10 over what we're currently running. And the cost implication here is about $730,000. And what what's the number of years of the contract for this? Five or 10 for the um the bus contract. We are currently I think in year two of a three-year. I'll double check. Um but we have an option to extend. Um so I I'll I'll check back to see what what it is. Where would that go right now? and we have a 3%
054escalation per year. So, let me let me just clarify. If we went from 36 to 49 buses, I'm guessing that if we're going up by, you know, 35 or 40% the number of buses, we have very few contracts associated with that rather than just like a one-year uh contract extension escalation because they got a huge they got a huge capital outlay right there. Yeah, it probably Yeah. And I think that there's some some real considerations in terms of feasibility with asking for this many more buses. Uh there's already kind of a bus driver shortage. And so I think that that's a consideration as well when we're looking at maxing out more buses. Is this something that we can do um with our current conditions. Obviously we want to, you know, work with a vendor that
055we're able to do what we need to do for the schools, but there's a, you know, a driver shortage everywhere. And so, um, we just have to be considerate of what this type of model would do for our contract. And I think it would be, uh, open for consideration and and seeing what what this would do for our contract, but Okay. Okay. So, they but they gave you the number, the $48, and they didn't bother saying you didn't have a discussion about the number of years the contract. It was just continuing. No, it's just like the 3% escalation that's built in already per bus. So, it's that's what we pay. And then, you know, if we're we're running more or less per year based on our needs, they're saying, "Okay, well, this is your per
056bus price." So, that's that's what you're paying. If there's little variability in number of buses per year, we're not we're not set for a number of buses. It's the per bus cost that we're paying. Yeah. Five and three/4er hours of drive time. Thank you. Uh yeah and the la I guess the last thought that's going through my mind right now also is that increasing the number of buses uh that from my perspective um there's seems to me like there's a a likely environmental impact when you're it's like the embedded energy of a car. Do you you know you're you might be able to go get a more efficient car with better mileage but then are you asking people to go dig up those raw materials and build a whole new car for you which is
057what we're doing building whole new school buses. So just in general preference would be to um get more use out of a smaller fleet but I also look at life cycle costs. So I'm not sure about that. I'm just giving a general thought that I I'd probably lean toward environmentally I'd probably be leaning more toward a three tier than a two-tier, but that's just one small piece here. Thank you. Uh the last model that I'll show you for today is a the most costefficient two-tier system with a later high school start time. So the difference here, I just showed you the earlier high school start time. This is just a later high school start time where instead of 7:45, uh, Chesher High School would start at 8:15. Um, again, we're moving from three to two
058tiers and all elementary schools um are in an early tier and have the same school start time. Just I have to edit that that says 7:20, but it should say 7:30. Um, and this is I'm just double checking the this is the middle of the road for the two-tier proposals, right? So about $800,000. So and we're running 47 buses at a max. So that's two um that's sorry, let me make sure I did this right. Yep. One more than the earlier high school's time. It's a little more expensive. Sorry, did you say 800,000 time? I did. Yeah. Oh, I see it now. Okay. Yeah, it's pretty hefty. Yeah. Yeah. And that's due to that 47 buses in that first tier. Yeah. So, um I know I've just went over a lot. The last slide I
059have here is just kind of the proposal summary of all the proposals I've just said and their cost implications. So, you can kind of just see the overall picture. Um, and again, what is driving the cost is the maximum number of buses that we're running in any given tier. It's not the overall number of buses is going to be very similar. 91ish buses if we're being conservative. It's just how we're utilizing them at any given time that's going to impact our our cost. Um, that would be clear that like the current quote baseline is not really an option. Correct. Um that's just like what we're currently paying. Yes. On the current cost for this year. So proposal A and A through E, correct me if I'm wrong, Emily, those have escalation built into them too,
060right? Yes. And so they're all based on the all everything where you see the yearly cost is based on $48 a bus. Yeah. So, so that's the 3% escalation plus any fees associated with adding a run. Again, the added runs are conservative, likely to come down, but I can't guarantee that until um we get the redistricting. But it does give you a sense in terms of the scale of what it would be um in terms of the adjusted cost for the different schedules that we're going to have to run. I thought when we negotiated the bus contract that we kind of built some of these assumptions in. I know obviously it was premature um but thought we had well the percentage increase goes up. Mhm. Um but if the idea that we might need, you
061know, two buses or five more buses or, you know, a bus less is not there's the cost of the buses negotiated in. But and there's no option, Jeff, to reopen the contract with them be prior to I think we went with a fiveyear. Yeah, I think if we were to do that, I mean, we're already getting a really favorable contract. Um, I don't know what the incentive would be and I don't know that we would do a better number. Um, and I am not a bus contract expert in the same way that, you know, I would consider our operations friends, but I know Ben spent a lot of time working with them. Um, they're building in our community. We got a very aggressive offer, right, when we settled this contract. And so this isn't so
062much that the bus company is is sticking it to us or anything like that. I know you're not insinuating that, but this is a reflection of given the geographic locations and what walking distances and the number, you know, of sidewalks. If the town puts more sidewalks in on the north end, that could impact this favorably, which I know that they're, you know, working toward. So, you know, these are estimates, uh, they're conservative estimates. Um, they're just designed to give kind of a scale. Yes, Tim. Yeah, thank you. Um, so you're putting some you put some proposals on the table and you're going to have a bit of a community conversation about this. Yeah. So that's the plan is to um frame out for people that first and foremost and I've already sent an email to
063our community about this to our parent community about this that said you know school locations are changing. The travel time between buildings is changing. traffic in our community has changed over the last however many years. We need to um examine our school start times as part of that. So um I'd like to offer some opportunities certainly you know video overview like this meeting would be one um but presentations and in-person feedback sessions I would prefer to share the video um and then provide in-person and um survey feedback opportunities to better inform form the decision that we're going to have to make to move forward. Um, you know, we don't do a popular vote necessarily. Um, but I think, you know, we need to look at what the feedback is, um, as it relates to these
064different options. Yeah, there's there's way too many moving pieces to make this a popular, right? I I do have I do have a thought on the high school specifically. Um I don't expect this to go anywhere, but I do recall sometime in the past 10 years when the town council um put in a proposal or considered a proposal to put a bridge asked deep for the ability to put in a bridge from the high school back to the rail trail. Do you recall what I'm talking about? Um I do. I mean, I think that there's merit in uh reminding the council about that. Uh I think that that could end up having some benefits to uh transportation for the high school at least as well as for the community at large uh beyond high school
065transportation times. Um so when are you thinking about it? Uh are you thinking I'm before the summer starts? I'm guessing you're not thinking about a lot of this during the summer. Oh, no, no, no. We're thinking a lot about this during the summer. Oh, through the Oh, so you're gonna you're gonna basically you want to do this a number of times because of vacations and stuff. It'll just be a little bit more difficult to get people in. So you're not Yeah, I I think you know like we've done in the past when we've engaged the community, it's not a singular meeting um in a singular entry point um that you know we need to put information out there and provide multiple opportunities for conversation and and feedback. Um and so that will h that would
066happen over the course of an extended period of time. Um and that's why I said, you know, I think we'd be starting close to graduation um promotion. You know, I have uh a rare in-person captive audience um for promotion ceremonies. Not that I'm looking to make it a a pitch on this, but at least to make sure there's broad community awareness. We're going to need a lot of repetition on this to get the word out. Yeah. So, it'll be social media um we'll put out information um in person and uh via social media and then uh excuse me uh via email and in social media and at the promotion ceremonies. but then provide opportunities for you know virtual meetings and inperson meetings to um provide more information and then I think we would probably do
067a survey of the community um and the planning committee would come back together. I think it would make sense for you guys to look at that survey before we put it out. But I would expect that to be near the end of July and we'd leave the window open for, you know, a couple of weeks for people to provide their feedback. Um, and then, you know, we'd have information uh before school starts in August to make decisions once we we get rolling. with with the understanding that this is going to change though, Jeff, based on the um the study though, I don't know that, you know, it it'll change. Um the start times shouldn't change. The prices would probably change. Um again, these are conservative estimates, but the the start times would still be the
068start times. Um, I don't think we're not going to be wildly different in terms of we know the enrollment numbers and round enough numbers to know like who will be attending. I'll circle back with Mike Zuba on that who is running our um enrollment study. Um, we've had some conversation with him on that already, but you know, I'll triple check with him on that. Um, and talk to, you know, we'll get Emily Luther and and Mike in the room and have that conversation again, but because I don't think Luther was in the room for those previous conversations, but we'll, you know, triple check that before we put it out. But I don't think it's going to change. What is your what's your deadline that you're looking at to set this up with the bus company?
069Datco. Yeah, Dco I mean would need several months notice. I mean certainly if we were shifting from you know 36 runs that we currently have to 49. They would need much more lead time for that. Um given that that's going to cost us, you know, in the neighborhood of nearly a million dollars more, I I don't anticipate us moving in that direction. Um but um you know, I I guess we can we can follow up with Dak on that and ask confirm like what sort of need lead time they would need maybe beyond Luther getting Dco in the room is is valuable. Emily. Yeah, we actually have a meeting with them coming up. So, I'll add add that. Going to ask them if you could uh also ask him for a status update on electric
070buses. We'll do Tim. They already gave they they came I don't know if mentioned it to you, but they came and they gave us a probably a twohour session on it at one point maybe a year or two ago. They know I'm a pain in the butt about it. I'll ask him. Um, all right. I wanted to give a quick update on the energy performance contract. Jeff, do anything else? Yeah, just before we move on. I mean, this is an initial conversation. You know, there'll be I will update the board on this when we have our meeting on June 5th. You know, obviously, we'll talk about it in planning. you know that but we have to have the conversation and so I mean if Emily and I can get some information from Dco Luther Mike
071Zuba before June 5th I think that'd be optimal but you know this is uh an initiation of the conversation that will take you know weeks months to to work through. That's why I wanted to make sure we were kicking it off ASAP. Sam Yeah. I just want to just kind of get a sense of what the timeline would be. I mean, you know, I'd like to at least hear from kind of the primary stakeholders, obviously, one being students um and the teachers and staff and administration if at all prior to them leaving for the summer. Jeeoff, if that can happen. Yeah, that might be possible. um you know verifying with uh with uh Mike Zuba and our transportation people. I think I I wouldn't want to put something out and I know you wouldn't want
072to put anything out that was like absolutely you know can't do X Y or Z. So um this is where we're starting. We'll verify with them if they you know say yeah this is this is spoton accurate. Um, we just want to double check before we put it out. Like if they say this is spot-on accurate, then yeah, I think it's it's doable by the end of the school year to get some feedback. And you've had conversations, I'm assuming, already with the before and after school. I mean, the Y. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were involved in the meetings that we've had, had meeting, you know, had conversations with some different principles, with the athletic director. you know, these are things that we've been kind of working through. So, um, in the in the draw up
073to this point, I guess you could My concern was that there's already currently, you know, assumptions on what the the start times are going to be and I'm not sure how these narratives began, but it's floating out there. Yeah. Yeah, probably. I mean, you know, there's always rumor and conjecture, and I think it's going to be really important. Um, and I think we've done a pretty good job of that in the past of just making sure that there's a a point of information for like the reality of this that's very clear like on our website for example, this is this is the conversation. These are the considerations. These are pros and cons. These are how you give feedback. Um, and you know, I think it'll be really important for us to continue to publicize that
074through any means possible, right? And I'm, you know, I'm not a I'm not against I mean, I I really would appreciate a tangible if you're going to do the survey, some tangible data as opposed to these focus group style. Yeah. You know, Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. Go ahead. No, I mean, you know, we talked about survey data, too. So, but I think it, you know, just the the focus groups, I think, are more opportunities to engage in dialogue, share feedback. um in addition to the the survey. I think that's as I was sharing earlier, I think that's part of the process before we issue a survey. And I think too it's you know we've proposed a couple models here. um they might make sense for you or there might be push back and that might
075be the same for the community and you know there's other we could do a lot more proposals but I think there's a point at which you know just seeing what people are reacting positively positively to versus negatively so it can inform do we actually need a different proposal uh do we need to go down a different path or explore something more thoroughly um that will kind of give us an opportunity to do so so I don't think like these five proposals don't have to be the end all be all but it's just a reaction ction point for people, right? And I feel like the reality too is that we do have a natural deadline because I sometimes believe that, you know, we we don't message it out or like Tim said that repetitive nature. We
076don't have enough time to message it out appropriately, too. it's just, you know, here's what the the community voted on and and then I think there's a subgroup that may not be paying attention. And so I I would like to give us enough time to ensure that every, you know, at least the primary stakeholders understand this is the proposal that we're actually going to go with moving what we're going to end up voting on. And you know, I'll leave that to Jeff basically, but um that's just what I hear and I don't know Tim about you, but it's what I hear in the community is that we just, you know, I didn't receive that email or I wasn't, you know, part of that um message and so forth. So, I'd like to at least give
077us time. Yeah. I don't I don't see the board taking action on it until the fall, but um you know, we need to have time to process this through the summer, you know. Yeah. I mean, as as far as I'm concerned that you are our designate for the board action because if the people are not aware, it's the board gets held responsible for it when the changes happen. So uh yeah as from my perspective those are like inviting the board members to any of those discussions to whatever extent possible. Um I would personally like to attend a couple I mean I'll talk to people as well but one another thing that goes through my mind is the I'm not sure if it's the right word the tenor of the discussion um you know if it's
078a I don't want to do that versus I am going to kill you people if you do this. there's there's a difference um in how widespread something like that might be uh because the the like I said before and as you know there's just a lot of moving pieces here and things are changing it's just how do they change right and I I feel like a lot of times and Jeff you do a great job with communicating it to the you know internal Treasure public schools community but it's this clearly is going to, you know, impact the external. So figuring it out a way to ensure that they're receiving the correct message as well too. So are you talking about when you say external people beyond our parents? Yes. Okay. Because the the first group
079that will post on social media is really not the group that truly is impacted is all I'm saying. What? But I digress. Yeah. So, we'll try and figure out how to get to that group as well. Uh question Jeff. Yeah. um the union contract that fits into this somehow and you are confident that you would probably be able to build consensus for any changes on that unions sorry however yeah um we've already already had a lot of conversations with different groups about the fact that there will be changes y as a result of this move um in terms of the the times. I think it is really important to get their feedback on this and um you know talk through contractually what sort of impact might might happen there. All right. So you've you've had
080the you've had the conversations with the with the union eboards and you are uh cautiously optimistic that you'll be able to make that stuff work. make the contracts work with this. Yeah, cautiously. Um, you know, more so on the the teacher admin side, but um, you know, I'll I'll, you know, as well we're circling back with our, um, our transportation folks. It probably doesn't hurt to circle back with them. Okay. Thank you. Are you all ready to move on to my energy performance contract update? Great. Perfect. I'll make this one quick because I know we're a little we're a lot of it overtime. Uh but we met with Johnson Controls last week um who received the initial award. Uh again, we're not locked into paying anything at this point because Johnson Controls needs to do
081their comprehensive energy audit. the CA. So that is what we talked to them last week. That is where they'll kind of really thoroughly go through our building beyond the initial walkthroughs that they they did. Um so we talked to them about specific scopes of work along with the town when we met with them last week. They're going to start the audit after kids have left and they have uh more full access to the buildings. Um so there were a bunch of things that were discussed during our meeting last week. Their scope was pretty extensive. Um Tim, I know you're into the fuel cell and the batteries. Um and that was a discussion that we had with them last week about talking about behind the meter um in front of the meter and possible locations for
082a fuel cell versus battery system and just naming some of our concerns with either system. Uh we also spent a significant amount of time on potential solar options um because of the good payback on solar. So essentially the the update is that we need to do this this comprehensive energy audit uh prior to moving forward with any additional work or commitments with Johnson Controls and that's going to take a little bit of time. Uh the one challenge right now is um they're phasing out some of the rebate programs. Uh like the ITC is phasing out the 30% rebate. Uh and so in order to leverage some of the rebate programs that might be uh being phased out, there's kind of a some contractual uh commitments that we have to do within a certain time frame.
083Bin is managing all of those right now, but just letting you know that it makes it a little more time-sensitive than our previous energy performance contract because it didn't feel like there was a time crunch to make be able to maximize the rebates that were available to us. So that's the little bit of the energy performance contract. Tim, I know you're you've spent a little bit more time on this being part of the committee that worked to identify Johnson controls, but I don't know if anyone has any questions about that. Yeah. No, the only my only comment is I'm glad to hear that there's a real serious look at the ITC because um Yeah. So, for people who are watching at home, that's a federal tax credit. And with the budget that's happening right now,
084there's a really good chance it'll disappear in the notsodistant future. And if we could take advantage of it in the meantime, I'd be perfectly willing to um, you know, casting a vote in terms of, you know, a a well a a well-considered proposal. And I do think that, frankly, I think it's something that could happen relatively quickly. And I just want to I just want to put this on your radar. I in my mind I'm not wedded to uh Cheshire borders because the way the the state level incentives work like for virtual net metering I believe that that works on Eversource borders which is 80% of the state and land in certain towns is going to be a lot less expensive than land in Cheshure. Mhm. And I'm not talking about us buying it, but
085if we did a deal with somebody, they might buy the land and we're just buying the electricity like we would from any other supplier. Simple point being that um the tax credits may change a this year and uh we should not be simply limited to Cheshire borders. I think we probably want to expand beyond that and I'm confident that Johnson Controls is all over that. um fully aware of what I'm talking about. So, just to offer that up uh because I think there's I I suspect that there's projects that are probably shovel ready is my guess that we could just uh sign a contract and become the offtaker for the electricity and they put shovels in the ground and be done with it easily within a year. Uh probably less than that. And the timing
086matters in terms of the ITC, the little that I uh understand of what just happened with the House bill in Washington. Um the moments there there's specific moments in time when that tax credit is available. And I suspect that there's projects that are shovel ready that would still be able to meet those time limits as of today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say with that, you know, without going down too much of a rabbit hole, you know, there's the the requirements to access the ITC before it potentially goes away, um, is not too high of a a burden. You know, it's it's like 5% of pro program costs. So, it wouldn't be about getting everything done before the the credit the credit goes away. Yeah, I I think it's I think it's doable, but
087you would ultimately have I suspect you would have to fasttrack that as part of the project. Um, but it would not necessarily be contingent on the facilities audits, the the audit of the facilities. We'd simply need to know that we're going to use 5 million kilowatt hours a year. And we know that because I think the town uses about 6 million kilowatt hours a year. So, you could sign a contract for three or four million and lowball it there. We know we're going to be using that for the next 20 years regardless of efficiency measures or anything like that. So, I'm good. You're good. Sam, any any questions about the EPC? All right. Awesome. Uh, is this the point where I someone makes a motion to adjourn? Uh, yeah, I can make a motion to
088adjurnn, but Jeff, I was wondering if I could hold on to you for a minute afterward. Okay. But Emily and Mike, you can go if that's okay. Sure, we'll do. Okay. So, you've made the motion to Great. Awesome. Thanks all. I hope you have a great evening. In favor? I'm sure Sam's in favor. Yes. All right. Thank you.