Board of Education 1-18-24

001call please here here thank you please join us in the 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 awesome thank you and by far my favorite part of the night is always nice to have Ella and Andrew back for some reporting please do tell right I hope you are are are all doing well in the new year so far um so I'll begin with sports so winter sports are in a full swing by now um we're halfway through January already which I can't believe um but I mean there's there's a lot going on in our chest High School sports um during the girls basketball wi the other day over Wilbur cross they held

002a um a fifth grade girls travel team to play at halftime which I thought was pretty interesting to do um it's something I've never really seen much in the past so it was cool to have the um the kids come and get the experience of a high school basketball game um hockey on Saturday is holding their 50th anniversary celebration before their game um they're having the alumni com and they're having a whole celebration for it I don't know too much too many details about it yet but I think that's just awesome to have all the alumni back have them talk to the players before their games um and moving on to chesher Unified sports so the chesher unified basketball team recently went to a competition in hamen and the unified basketball team is also planning

003on holding a tournament soon um which I think is awesome for the uh for the kids with intellectual and de developmental disab abilities to have them be a part of something much bigger than themselves and to give them the experience that um most of them dream of so students recently from ches high school went to New Hampshire to meet uh presidential candidates um I actually went on that field trip I thought it was pretty awesome it was kicked off by governor cunu of New Hampshire and uh we got to talk to and meet with Maryann Williamson Dean Phillips Assa Hutchin Assa Hutchinson Trump ad iers and a couple media um Personnel we got to speak to them and take pictures with them afterwards which I thought was pretty cool um and finally during Winterfest that

004took place in mid December it I it was ran and organized by U Mrs dorbo and Mr Swanson at ches both both teachers at chesher high school it raised $2,610 for the Ryan T Le foundation and it was an awesome experience for the teams clubs and other organizations that our school school to run and be a part of so moving on to some other things directly in our school right now we are in the middle of midterms so it is a bit of a stressful environment at testure high school but our teachers are obviously all being very accommodating and providing us with lots of great resources during this stressful time the link crew ran by one of our assistant principles Mrs pels hosted Coco and cram in the library for freshmen to come in and

005get experience studying with um older students so that was helpful for them speaking of freshmen we have this Wednesday the 24th curriculum night for incoming freshman kids at DOD to come and kind of get a feel of the student life and social atmosphere at chesher high school by meeting with people from all different clubs and some sports teams so that is a really great opportunity for them to kind of wrap their minds around what we be going on for them for the next four years there's also an assembly where administrators can talk to them a little bit about what they can expect and like course section All That Jazz but I'm sure many of them are more excited for learning about the clubs and everything um we have a lot of things going on for

006our performing art students right now the cast of Mean Girls has begun rehearsals I'm playing Katie so very excited um our show is on March 21st 22nd and 23rd so we've got a while but we are getting there uh this weekend Coral students band students and Orchestra students are participating in the cmea Southern Regional Music Festival so I know I mentioned the auditions a while back but we have about 20 students going to perform so that is a really awesome accomplishment for our Music Department speaking of that we have our chure Public Schools day of chorus next week on Friday where Elementary School students and middle school students are coming to the high school to watch the toucher High School chorus perform and then also get to perform some songs Al together to encourage participation

007in the music programs um moving on to kind of some post High School planning notes our peer health class just finished teaching post High School planning lessons to the junior Health classes so they went into every Junior health class and talked a little bit about what options look like after high school including College the military any kinds of Trades and they helped the students kind of know of some resources to talk to depending on which route they were planning on taking After High School and kind of being able to explore through the guidance Department um we had mentioned the food drive a little while back and I want to let you all know that the neighborhood food drive raised over 6,000 pounds of food which beat last year so really big accomplishment for NHS and

008the Pure Health class speaking of the food pantry and everything we also have the supermarket challenge coming up towards the end of February which will be another awesome opportunity for toucher High School to kind of come together for the community so that's a good one kind of wrapping up our best buddies Club right now is in the middle midle of the planning of the second annual inclusion catian which is kind of a prom Style dance at Chester High School to Foster inclusion and kind of create an environment for students with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities to kind of come together celebrate have a fun night and stuff like that it's very successful last year so we're of course hoping for that again this year and as it will be February somehow in a few

009weeks our po Club at the high school people of color is um currently prepping a kind of display to go in the library of all kinds of famous people in history who have made contributions that are people of color to go up and be on display for students to see so those are some things awesome thank you for such a rich and robust report any comments or questions from members of the board I can just elaborate a little bit on the 50th anniversary of the hockey program uh they are holding a gap gathering for alumni and guests at 5:30 at Eli's and hamen uh they're playing against North Haven at 7:30 in the Hampton rink so all certainly alumni are encouraged to come out and enjoy the festivities great no comments or questions well thank

010you so much as always you're welcome to stay throughout the whole but I know midterms is a bummer so you have to study for it thank you so much thanks Andrew thanks ell you okay next up we have some presentations um School partnership Awards so Dr herrian is going to present the award for Dad Middle School yeah that's better hi everyone good evening I have the distinct um Delight to announce Jill southernland as the well-deserving recipient of the school partnership award for Dodd Middle School Jill's remarkable commitment and Relentless dedication to organizing fundraising events have not only enriched the school's culture but have also provided invaluable support for student scholarships for field trips one noteworthy achievement is Jill's expert management of both spring and fall fundraisers allowing students and their families to raise funds that

011can be directly applied to their eighth grade Washington DC trip in the spring while this trip offers our students a fantastic experience it has also become a significant financial burden for many of our families so these fundraising initiatives have made it possible for some families to afford the trip who might otherwise have faced difficulties in covering the costs Jill's unwavering enthusiasm and tireless efforts have undeniably left a positive and lasting impact on our school we take great pride in recognizing her for her exceptional contributions please come up [Applause] Jill yeah you want to shake hands I'll just get a copy of that social [Applause] Med the next partnership Mr E will present for cheser high school all right it's my honor to uh to recognize uh a good friend to the schools good friends to

012everybody in in Chester Pete the bishop nothing brings people together like good food Chester High School holds various meetings and events throughout the year and in the midst of the hard work and deep learning nothing puts bigger Smiles on everyone's faces than having lunch from Pops Pizza expertly prepared by Pete to Bishop Pete is always a person who says yes when faced with a daunting event even changes the last minute Pete always replies with no problem this is not just a statement this is Pete's business model good food prepared with love transforms the energy and atmosphere of a meeting or event every year CHS hosts Three leadership conferences for elementary middle and high school students these events bring over 500 students to CHS and attendees include at least 150 adults every year Pete brings the

013event to life as students gather from different schools in towns they come together in a community over the lunch table Pete's culinary genius and and his ability to tailor and menu for his audience he is feeding as a result our students feel special and like he really knows them it should come to no surprise that Pete is a proud chesher RAM and was a member of the CHS basketball coaching staff for many years he not only gives back to his community but he's a pillar of our community and an inspiration to our students Pete just care Pete just cares and in every action he takes as a confirmation of his character he is as humble as he is skilled there is no better example of the power of food to bring people together with purpose

014and then partnership with Pete to Bishop Pete we thank you for many years you've supported cheser high school and many more years to come congratulations and thank [Applause] you thanks a excellent more I'll add too that uh Pete you know he's done so many amazing things not just at chesher high school but I know Highland had a pizza making party there and if you've lived in chesher for more than five minutes I know you've been to to Pete's Place and um enjoyed Pops Pizza but maybe my favorite part of the whole presentation is when uh Mr eki referenced Pete as a culinary genius and he turned to his wife and see I like I told you so you know I am a genius so he is a genius thanks so much [Applause] Pete awesome thank

015you clap it up for those two again please thank you for your [Applause] contributions um the next item Dr Solen can you introduce our presenters Julie Barker and students sure it it is definitely my honor to uh continue continue this uh Pride um proudful prideful uh start to our our meeting tonight we've had uh people that have made different contributions that support us in ways uh that are immeasurable outside the classroom and very much appreciated and now we have the opportunity to shift to more academic Pursuits and uh I have the honor to welcome our CHS department chair Julie Barker this evening who will share with you uh some incredible work that our students at Cheshire high school did uh with students from literally halfway around the world uh it was a logistical and significant

016academic challenge but our students really showed themselves so incredibly well I had the uh benefit of joining one of the virtual meetings that they had to see the work that our students and and the students from South Korea were doing and it was really pretty astonishing so I'll ask if the board could indulge us for a few minutes in the audience if we could move down to the audience so uh you can see their presentation thank you St little suspense why while the lights come up here good evening everyone and thank you so much for letting us have this opportunity to speak to you about this wonderful program uh that some of the students participated in this year um it's called the global collaborative research and education program so I'll be going into that a

017little bit and in a minute I'll have the students introduce themselves um this program is coordinated through Aces International here in the United States and the Korean foundation for advancement of Science and creativity are kofac um the program goals are to cultivate research skills through a collaborative approach and I think that's something that makes this program special is the focus on collaboration and CHS is part of the first group to participate in this collaboration this is the very first year there were 20 teams um in each country and so that's 40 in total and they work together on this new project uh the CHS and South Korean teams collaborated on common research topics the teams met virtually to share their findings to discuss and give and receive feedback on how to move forward in the

018research Pro progress um couple of the highlights each team met twice through Google meet uh with their South Korean partner team students shared their research feedback was given uh from the students student to student and from the teachers in South Korea and myself and each group had a South Korean scientist who acted as a moderator for the meeting and each team developed an independent research plan and then conducted and planned experiments so I'm going to go ahead and at this point let the students introduce themselves um and these are some pictures from our meeting hi I'm Yulan du um I'm a junior at CHS my name is Daniel anos you guys can stand up too oh yeah my name is Daniel Anala I'm a junior at CH High School my name is rishikonda I'm a

019junior at cheser high school my name is Briana maroo and I'm Junior at cheser high school um my name is Johanna bahuda and I'm a junior at chesher high school and my name is James boy and I'm also a junior at CHS so we have a lot of good Juniors here tonight and these are just a few of the students that participated in the program um a couple of highlights we had were some connections to the community as well uh one of the teams that's represented here tonight met with Mr Cronin who's part of the waste pollution department and he actually came and spoke with them and gave them some information for their experiment and actually gave them some water samples to use in their experiment um I provided some collaboration and I managed the

020liaison with the South Korean teams and I also provided feedback to the students and helped them as they were trying to design their experiments and then each team produced a research poster that was displayed virtually and it was also displayed at the South Korean National Science Festival um in December so we have um I have images here of each of the posters and we'll make the slides available to you with the links to the posters um and each team created their own research poster so at this point I'd like to allow the students to talk a little bit about their experience uh so we'll pass the microphone around you guys can stand back up we'll have our first team uh that did a study on the electrolytic treatment of Wastewater and the utilization of byproduct

021gas using Platinum Group cathode now physics is my area this was a little bit of a stretch for me but very interesting what they found out and the experiment they designed so tell us a little bit about your your experiences in general as we went through the experiment we found it was a big exercise in kind of adapting cuz we would we would do background research and we would think okay this is kind of interesting I wonder where we can take this and we would try and say okay can we design an experiment around this and then we would discover oh that's really expensive or oh that's actually toxic so we would have to so we would have to go with something else and we and even towards and even towards the end of it

022when we have when we had a good experiment experimental setup and we had a time and a place and we started setting it up there were situations like the hood that we were using was actually much smaller than we expecting so we had to fit in ring stands and wires at odd angles and hang ring stands on gas pumps and that was uh that was one of the more difficult aspects of it that I was not expecting another instance of adaption as well I think is with our cathode as well so our our experiment was intended to have a Platinum Group cathode in this case Platinum our reason why we wanted to use that is because in catalic converters Platinum can be used to break down hydrocarbons and larger molecules and smaller ones like CO2

023NO2 and just oxygen at last minute however we found that it's very difficult to acquire such a cathode so we had almost at last minute to make changes to switch from Platinum to Nickel instead and we found that nickel is a very good conductor so it's appropriate for this kind of experiment even while nickel was a good conductor in it of itself with the electrolysis the solution of waste water that we used provided so much resistance that we could only manage to get what was it 0.1 amps through the entire solution I think it was when we intended to get like 0. five I think it was yeah so even with this lack of success however there's still a lot of information we gain from this as was analyzing data with Mr Cronin he commented

024that simply adding say salt could improve the conductivity of the water in turn resulting in much better results overcoming the resistance UL mentioned Ulan Ulan mentioned oh dear so as you can see some of the groups really were able to delve a lot into their experimental process and design and develop their experiments um through this process and really have an authentic true science experiment um and the discussions with the South Korean teams that they had in our virtual meetings were very rich and each group had approached it from a slightly different standpoint so uh I'll pass it on to our next group we have one member here from the next group and so um you can talk about oh two members from this group sorry there you go and then the rest of you sit

025sorry we blocking your your view okay so here's your post so tell them a little bit about your program this was a very big stretch for us because this class was mostly physics based and our project took a lot of work we had to learn a lot of things like CAD designing we had to look into a lot of programming stuff and this was a very big stretch because most of our group did not take physics in their entire high school and most of them were Juniors freshman sophomores they did not get a chance to take physics yet and we had to learn a lot of stuff and we had to use a lot of resources and she was a very big help for us thanks Miss Barker and talking about our project we did

026not get into a lot of simulations we did not look into results a lot but we learned a lot about about elliptical cylinders Magnus force and how it works it's also very great to talk to new people across the world and I've been very interested in Korean people Korean culture and it was a very great approach to talk to them and know more about their culture so as rashika had mentioned we really didn't explore any kind of physics subjects so we had to start from the very beginning unlike some of the South Korean students that are attending a science um school so um in different uh so from the South Korean students uh our project was a little bit different because we chose to just adjust the models a little bit we explored with different

027models and dimples that kind of affect the Magnus force and overall it just was a long process to kind of get into it we did not have enough time but we eventually got the models done we really relied a lot on the other students too South Korean students to help us a lot they really did help us a lot so the professor and um overall it was just a really great experience to just in general just speak to different people I guess and like like kind of explore the amount of knowledge in the world that everybody has so I really found working with this team that they had a lot of collaboration with the South Korean team where they actually could take the work the South Korean students who had actually started these projects much

028early than us students um they started these projects back in March and our students didn't get the topics until September so we were working on this really compressed time frame because it was the first year um so the students really had a chance to take information from the South Korean group and where the South Korean group had made physical models this group did some some modeling using CAD to design the different shapes um so they had a really interesting experience with that than thank you um our next group was this group we didn't have anyone who could be here this evening um but this was one of the two groups that had information about oyster shells um so researching oyster shells a little bit differently uh in the two different presentations here so I'll move

029on to the next one and we have our Our member here that's going to talk about the experiment with the study of absorption of heavy metals and looking at antibiotic resistance in waste shellfish so hi um for our group we mostly started off with researching um we decided on specific uh the heavy metal such as we used Arsenic and for antibacteria we decided on eoli um we started with researching just two parts of the question and how arenic affects clams themselves and then we delved into how they absorb antibacteria because of the limited time restraint we weren't able to get clams or you know we can't really work with arsenic or eoli in the school so this was all just um research based um when we did meet with the South Korea team we did

030find that they had um in their school they were able to use the Arsenic and the clams together and we did um use some of their findings to support ours and um mostly what you see is data in research and we composed our own experiment that we would do with the time and um that would help us more with what we found out so again this group saw that the input from the South Korean team was really good and also seeing that we're starting the process in September um instead of starting in the spring with the South Korean teams that really proposing the experiment is the point that they got to but we still had chance to do that uh real science and also make the connections with the other the other school and talk

031about the different uh experiments so a couple of things moving forward with this that we'd like to try to do is in this next year the student team teams in the US we're going to form them in March and April with the goal of having our research topics before they leave for the summer uh we'd like to communicate with both ases and kofac so that the CHS students can have some input into the topics because that was one of the things we talked about is we really kind of got assigned topics and matched up with the teams um but really finding and generating topics that were of interest to the students and that could make those connections so we hope the earlier communication will provide that we hope to make some connections between this program

032and some other research opportunities our students have at chesher high school um like the plant Mars program and also we have a new science research class that we have at the high school that we're hoping to make some connections with as well and then moving forward our students are very interested in participating in the opportunity to travel to South Korea in December of 2024 for the Korean national festival the festival is organized by the ministry of Science in Korea and it's hosted by kofac and it's really an international platform where they're exchanging ideas bringing together gifted students and Educators from Korea from the United States and also from other countries um it emphasizes showcasing the research that the students have done and also connecting teachers and looking at sharing exemplary teaching and learning processes the

033travel is organized by Aces International as well I got some feedback from mzo who is one of the coordinators at ases uh about this year's trip this was the very first year and uh this was a quote from her they had a group of 11 students and two science teachers who were from New Town High School uh visited with the paired high school so they actually had an opportunity to go and visit with the schools that they had done the research with um and see the school and meet the students in person uh they went to the National Museum an aquarium and had lots of good Korean cuisine they took K-pop and cooking classes uh so according to her it was truly an immersive experience and all 14 participating countries at the festival brought unique

034perspectives uh other people that were involved were the US Embassy there were National scientists leading South Korean companies and University of missions representatives were present so it was really an all-encompassing event so I got a few pictures from her they have the group there um on the street that was the group that went and on the right hand side you can see some people intently looking at some posters and one of the teachers from from New Town High School also spoke at the event here we have some close-up pictures of the posters that these the people were intently looking at and those are the posters from our students at chesher high school that were displayed and presented at this this convention in South Korea so really been a great opportunity for our students this year

035with this very first year of uh the global research program um starting it a little late in September and working through and collaborating virtually this year and we're looking ahead to this next year and starting up a little sooner getting our teams organized getting connected with our South Korean counterparts and doing the research and going to hopefully going to South Korea this year with a few students so thank you very much do you guys have any questions yes TV can hear just curious are any of the students you're all juniors are you thinking about uh post high school and being involved in hard science like this in any capacity all of you nodding yes that's great that's fantastic thank you so we did have quite a few juniors in the group um and we also

036had some sophomores and a couple freshmen as well so we hope to again build that that next year these hopefully many of these Juniors will want to do it again uh and we'll keep building the process any other questions yes um um uh you kept mentioning that uh the the shorten time frame that in which you had to do the projects I don't know if you mentioned uh engaging the springtime is that something you're looking to do so have amount of time for next yes so because this was the first year of the program really information didn't come out about participating in it until over the summer and so the students started up with it right at the beginning of the school year I put out you know were interested in some students being inv

037involved who's interested I got a great response from the students um and we put together the teams and they got their research topics towards the end of September the South Korean teams had already been put together uh the previous spring this year we're looking to put our teams together starting this March and April would be the time frame um so having gone through a program once you always learn a lot and Aces and kofac have really worked through that to kind of shift that time frame to start with the US students uh at the same time as the South Korean students hi um my question is about do they get do the students get academic credit for this is it part of a course or is it all um extracurricular this year is all extracurricular

038so our students are doing this because they love science they want the experience uh they're excited to do science um we are looking into the possibility of connecting this with the science research course which would then allow our students with all the work that they've done to to receive that academic credit make that connection so that's something that we're looking forward to for next year we also are looking forward to next year um we received a grant from the chesher Education Foundation for some funds which would allow us to purchase some equipment for the experiments because that's something else we noticed that was a difference with the South Korean teams they were all from science-based high schools and they either had elaborate Labs at their Science High School or they were right next to a

039university where they could use the university Labs so we're looking to make more connections with Community Partners for that and starting up in March and April will give us a chance to do that and then having the funds from the chesher Education Foundation will also allow us to do that that's great thank you for that answer and I I think it's really important to give I mean these are the kind of things academic credit on your resume going forward is all of the students will also receive a certificate from South Korea from their government um as to show their participation in this program as well so that's something they'll be receiving hopefully in the next month or so thank you so much uh Miss Parker and you know it was earlier today Vin was going

040on for like a half hour about diamond versus platinum cathodes and I couldn't understand so I appreciate you guys explaining it I know what you did was incredible um you know when a lot of us adults in the room listen to what you're sharing and it's it's beyond comprehension for us but to see what you guys did and uh the time and energy you poured into it uh it it was so fulfilling that's why I said you know I was very proud of our Community Partners tonight and the things that they do but they support opportunities like this for for you and thank you all for committing your time to it and representing our community and our school system so well in the process so congratulations and thanks again guys great [Applause] job I think

041we're all set thank you guys great J yeah okay thanks how hard would it be for them to get CR this was just like put together this year um and it was like okay so we are roll awesome thank you Dr Solen personally you know I my science heart is just like exploding and learned that VIN is uh yeah V can you like give us some definitions and so forth humble I if there's time after the meeting I we'll have to extend the meeting a little bit um next item on the agenda would be audience comments if anybody wishes to speak it does not look like it so we're moving on to committee reports and first with be curriculum Mrs cullinan thank you um good evening the curriculum committee meeting took place on January 8th

042it was called to order at o'clock and um I'm going to share um this report with our assistant superintendent under um new business for at the meeting we discussed an outof country field trip request for tresure high school to go to France um in April of 25 there's was no motion on the trip taken because there are still some additional questions and some questions around the exact date pending um the calendar under informational items um I'm just going to give the titles and then Marlene will go into more detail um she talked to us about a committee convening to look into reading inventory Career and Technical parent inventory that was given out exploration of stem education I think we had a good description of some of it tonight um the science department professional development and

043the day of course we also had a very thorough um summary of special education programs in chesher by Robin an Keri um and she talked about IEP development social emotional learning assisting students to develop executive functioning skills and aligning program pramming to transition um regulations I'm going to turn it over to marleene sure thank you um I was I had shared at the meeting that um we are currently examining a replacement for a reading Universal screener because the one that we are currently using is is being sunsetted so we need to find another one uh the committee consists of the principle of each school also will consist of our reading specialists at each of the levels so we've begun looking at that we started looking at one called star and next week we'll be looking

044at nwaa map um we we'll be hearing more about that through curriculum committee when we determine what our our choice is um the CCC is had um which is our five-year review process currently going through that are the career in technical education departments and our science department and I was sharing that a parent survey had gone out the day that we met to ask parents about their children's experience with Career and Technical education courses that information will be folded into a presentation to the curriculum Council um made up of teachers and then it will eventually come to the curriculum committee in an executive summary we also undergone our plans for our March 14th PD in which we have a lot of all of our core areas English math social studies and science will'll be working

045on vertical articulation of the standards across grades 5 through 12 and then as you heard from our student reps today um they are deep in the planning of a day of chorus during covid our music program really took a hit with all of the restrictions wasn't just ours but across the Connecticut across the country and um our we have a number of new music teachers and they're working really hard to engage the kids and really um increase the numbers of students who are involved in our music programming and lastly you heard a little bit um from Dr Sol's budget presentation the other night about our exploration of stem education and us doing some research and really looking at how we could increase students exposure to science technology engineering and math but through things like robotics

046or particularly Agricultural Science so that's something that um I know you'll be hearing about in the days to come and Robin and KY will also be doing a presentation through the budget process we'll hear a little bit more about the um the special education program in general but what she presented on was exactly the executive summary from the CCC that her Department had spent time evaluating and then presenting on any questions or comments from board members Mr Grio um thank you is the let's see what is it called here I lost the name of it the the reading program that you're looking to ex is that have does that have any relation to our current struggles that's a fairly good question no this is this is separate this was we have a universal screen for

047math that every student takes we also have one for reading and we learned last year almost by accident in one of our meetings with the sales representative that they weren't putting any more money into the particular reading inventory that we use so that really gave us that heads up that we needed to start looking for a new one thank you when we clarify struggles it's not a performance struggle you talking about the right to read act yes that's what I mean yes it be for anybody paying attention out there any other questions from board members I just have a quick question actually um I was going to ask it in the chair's update but given that we are looking at screeners now how does that relate to especially with the kindergarten legislation um that we

048need to have a screener so if you can kind of identify if there's any differences morning absolutely so we have a committee that is made up of our um Elementary supervisor of special Ed one of our elementary um principles jod rhen and our um resident you know um expert in early childhood Kim dessert and I have been meeting almost by week probably almost every week at this point and we've looked at a number of kindergarten screeners um we've looked at some national ones we've looked at some that come from Yale we are looking at one that is utilized currently with kindergarten we are actually next week going to be um we have a student who parents are willing to come in and have us tested out because that child um their birth date lies within

049that that time period so we um we will have one chosen within the next probably six weeks and we will be sending out information shortly about the dates that we will be offering that kindergart early accept um early admission to kindergarten screener that will come at the end of April we were really trying to balance planning and wanting to give the kids the the this assessment as late as possible in the school year because we know so much development happens in those early years so there'll be more to come on that once we solidify that but know that a lot of work has gone into um selecting that assessment we're not taking that LLY thank you thank you any other thoughts comments questions no thank thank you Miss cullinan thank you Marlene next um Finance

050Mrs herrian please I'm going to uh let Mr massian give us an update on our financial status thank you Miss harrian good evening members of the board the um in the package we did include the updated financial report through December 31st so we're six months through the school year and six months through the budget I will say just not much has changed since November the budget U at this point looks quite solid I did report last month that we did see a variance uh go a negative variance in the special education outplaced tuition account and that variance actually improved a bit you know this month just because we enter purchase orders based on estimated expenses and cost for each student and we um were able to lower one of those encumbrances so budget's looking very

051sound at this point and we hope that continues through the rest of this year and I'll just move to the fin report if that's okay and then we could come back if there are questions this evening um in the packet we were able to get in the December 31st medical benefits report when the packet went out we didn't have the report but we just got it late today so I'm reporting as of the December 31st date the um claims for November and December were about $1.2 million for each of those months actually just a bit lower in December expected claims are about $1.1 million per month so so far this fiscal year our claims have been averaging right around $1.2 million the what happens in January and I I know that the board members that

052have been here for years know this but in January the new HSA plan year begins so we tend to see claims drop over the next three months so the reason for that is that employees have to first meet their deductible with the high deductible health plan so I'm anticipating and hopeful always that as we go through the second half of the claim year we should see those claims drop a little bit at least for the first uh three months of the new year and I would expect that our claims should come in at about the $1.1 million average per month so that's good news this month in December I will point out that our Reserve balance increased because even though claims were $1.2 million so higher than the 1.1 million we received about $200,000 in

053prescription rebates so if you look at the at the top portion of the report where it shows year-to-date additions we have 6.7 million that's the money that the board contributes from its budget but you'll see that prescription rebate line increased to 336,000 for the month so as of December 31st The Reserve balance is $1. 866 million that's about 1.7 months of reserves we'd like to have two so we're close um and to um add a little bit more perspective last year at this time December of 2022 The Reserve balance stood at about $884,000 so we're up a million dollars over uh last year um and overall claims are down about three and a half percent as compared to last year so claims are still high but certainly trending in the right direction and they'll be

054more to come when we uh meet on the budget on Tuesday in the workshop I'll give you some more detail around medical benefits that is the finance report if I may may I probably should have started out by explaining to people that we did have a finance meeting our first budget meeting um scheduled for Tuesday of this week which of course got cancelled due to snow so our first uh budget session will be uh next Tuesday and uh followed by next Thursday correct 7 pm at DOD middle school so we would encourage people to come out and and give us some information from the various perspectives that are out there so thank you and a quick question Vin because I'm I don't remember when does the stoploss come into play stop loss comes um in

055when a individual claim for a person exceeds $175,000 we have some claims that are included in in what's being being reported so far this year that are approaching the $175,000 Mark and I do expect that we will start seeing some reimbursements on the stop loss at the top portion of the report in the next couple of months which is typical as you go through the year the stop loss does start to kick in thank you you're welcome Mr White thank you with to the uh Finance meeting that got cancelled was it cancelled delayed do we have a plan right now to add something or we just going to play by here which is fine with me just curious well we have extra kind of like extra dates built into the back end of the schle

056necessary or whatever okay so you know I'm assuming that we'll bump it but toward the end but we'll see how the next couple of meetings go okay thank you any other questions Mr grippo uh Vin first uh thank you for sharing that we'll be going into further detail on the claims next week because I had a bunch of questions but I'll just save them um secondly uh the financial uh detail report maybe it's just because this is the first time I noticed it but um there were um two variances that I just wanted to ask about which was um firstly was the uh the variance in uh custodia it looks like there's a uh money that was U there was a shortage in the custodian account and then brought was say yeah taken from custodian

057and then brought into maintenance if that's if I'm seeing that correctly yeah you'll see that that's adjusted in next month's report okay so we had one employee that was um basically being paid from the custodian account instead of the maintenance account like an error it's just it they just just flip so they offset we're not going to be over budget in either of those account categories right yeah yeah I noticed it was a yeah Ned zero but I was just wondering yeah why that occurred um and secondly was the uh Pupil Transportation I was just wondering if that had to do with the 32 new students that showed up in the last month or if that was some other reason you're talking well the Pupil Transportation line we're um or I'm sorry maybe Transportation Supply

058yeah it's transportation suppli is the cost of fuel it's it's really not related to additional students and you know I I generally don't worry about that account we have locked in our fuel prices for this year and we sometimes over enumber that account and you'll see that we offset it against the puple transportation line which has a balance of 152,000 guys wasn't sure if we had to add another bus route or something no that hasn't happened okay and that you would see show up actually in the Pupil Transportation line not fuel supply because okay the cost of a run you know is in the neighborhood of 70,000 for the year but we have not added additional bus runs great thank you you're welcome any other questions yes fin I am also looking forward to it

059and kind of channeling my um inner Faith about medical benefits so we're ready thank you I'm excited for Tuesday night to present that wear those gloves sir please um next committee Mr Aki planning um we met on uh January 9th we did it virtually um Mr maiana presented information about uh temporary classrooms at uh Highland School and the reasons behind it the uh increasing enrollment um we talked extensively about the the planning and the uh site work that needs to be done at Highland School to prepare for that um possibly a source of of the of the classroom where we're going to get it um in addition to that uh presented the capital budget I don't know we get into that now or do we do you want to talk about that sure okay so

060what we did with the capital budget um is just introduced to the planning committee members at a very high level what uh the framework is for this year's capital budget which is a Five-Year Plan the total and it's not finalized yet that we presented was 53.2550 Million over five years we reviewed what the planning committee members in detail each of the categories went through the specifics the planning committee you know does want us to make some adjustments to move some items you know to further years and and possibly some items you know in to a a newer year within The Five-Year Plan so we will be discussing that and have to meet as a planning committee um more during the month of of January to finalize that plan we will talk about it a bit

061at the meeting scheduled for the 25th so um it's early in the process awesome thank you Mr REI any questions from board members thank you uh calendar committee so it looks like we're Mr jinsky as gu as Boe chair I'm going to explain the formation of the calendar committee and and announced that uh Dr carrian will be the liaison the Boe leison and that the meeting has been set for Thursday February 1st at 6:30 pm in the central office boardroom do any other board members wish to report on any committees any other standing committees Mr White yeah I just want to Circle back to planning committee for one second just with regard to the capital budget You' mentioned $50 million as a starting point um I think at least for me and I imagine all

062board members here one of the things that is a concern is uh pairing that budget with school modernization because there's a lot of things that just in my opinion don't really make sense right now we can't ignore maintenance but we have to still keep modernization as part of the discussion so there's no I don't I don't expect to spend $50 million on our current schools without having that being incorporated into a modernization plan and and this this capital budget is not really that's not part of school modernization yet it's it's a maintenance budget rather than a modernization budget thank you for bringing that up um and I don't think Vin and I could agree with you more in the sense that um we are incredibly conscious of the collective cost of school modernization and maintenance

063and that um you know I think one of the slides in my last budget presentation really illustrates you know the how that's kind of broken out the operating budget capital budget and school modernization um but really those the the capital and and school modernization go hand inand uh outside of our operating budget and the um school modernization budget is outside of our operating budget but it's part of the overall cost of the community so for about a 10-year buildup to the school modernization approval there was a tremendous history of deferral of like it's like uh the wol is is coming he's coming he's coming you know and he just never came and um so ultimately these things were put off for a significant period of time and so I know Vin and I are really

064trying to examine this with his team to look at what are the essential things so like the dod boiler the fire panel things that were essential uh health and safety items are the Marquee priorities you know I know for me and many in our community air conditioning uh an update to HVAC at doitt is a real priority because when our new buildings come online I'll be the only Elementary School without air conditioning um and I think that you know that's that's really an important issue for people that live in that Community uh and understandably so so yeah we're definitely evaluating all that stuff and trying to really prioritize the essentials only um and then I also want to reiterate a point from the budget meeting about thankfully you know unlike 10 years ago we are

065in a period right now where there's substantial boom in the community and uh an increased tax base will hopefully you know serve to offset a lot of the cost of the things that were deferred and a lot of the updates that are really necessary so I I know you know Sean Kimble Our Town manager will talk more about that when we get deeper into the budget season but uh I know the projections are very positive in terms of Revenue in the community Vin is there anything else you want to just to put a little context around the 53 million is the total over five years it's consistent with where we were last year the when the capital budget is reviewed and ultimately approved even though A Five-Year Plan is approved only year one is funded

066and so that always becomes the critical issue for the planning committee and then the board and then the Town Council so last year year just as an example it was roughly a $50 million 5year plan about 3.8 million was approved in year one that was actually appropriated and I think you know Mr Po Mike's Point is a good one because as you look into future years what do you do with buildings that you know you want to have a plan for like the middle school but we don't have a plan so you need to include include the things that need to be done until you have a plan like replacing the boilers at the front of DOD Middle School is one of the items that was approved last year so it's going to be an

067ongoing discussion and dilemma until we have that phase two plan which is also on the planning committee's agenda yeah and I know that if if Tony were here he'd be screaming we need to start you know phase to and so I'll gently push that forward but um I think now with a new Council and we're settled here U moving that forward will be a real priority in that collaboration we'll look forward to that again to come up with something that makes sense for our town uh educationally and economically any other comments Mr White no great I just want to go back for a point of clarification on the calendar committee so that those watching at home it's in accordance with policy 6111 the school calendar calendar shall be drawn up by a committee composed of

068the superintendent of schools or his designate the chairman of the board of education a member of the Board of Education chosen by the chairman and a teacher may be chosen by the president of the Education Association of chesher an administrator who may be chosen by the president of the chesher administrative personnel and a parent who may be chosen by the president of the townwide PTA Council so I think we have all parties checked off in the committee thank you Carol okay next item is the approval of minutes um from January meetings held in December 7th 2023 and January 11th if board members just want to take a quick read and then I do need a motion to approve those minutes Mr White I think the motion is do you have it no I thought it

069did sorry right Mr gripple am I do point a order I assume I have the motion yeah I've got you you can read it may I I'll make a motion okay so Mr W motion to approve minutes yeah moved at the treasure Board of Education approves the minutes for meetings held on December 7th 2023 and January 11th 2024 is there a second to the motion Mr AI any additions or Corrections identified nope all right we're going to call for a vote to approve as presented all in favor it is unanimous motion has been approved thank you next item Mr secretary Mr gripple are there any correspondences for us to listen to while you read them I receive no correspondence oh well thank you item number seven Dr Solen all yours sir thank you very much

070um I want to just kind of jump in on the NextGen School building committee uh report the update that we have from our last series of meetings and then some of the goings on with other committees in the town the Inland Wetlands committee uh recently approved the plan for the Northend school and they have completed the first hearing for Norton uh their second hearing for Norton is scheduled in February so that's moving along well uh the department of administrative Services is required to have a meeting with us to review the Draft plans uh and that is scheduled for March 20th for Norton and March 6th for the Northend school so uh our representatives and our our owner representative and Architects tekon and arcadis uh OMG the builders and uh Mr masana myself m Mr Gusenberg

071uh will be participating in that meeting and uh hope that that goes smoothly uh the planning and zoning committee uh they did have uh some initial concerns about the Northend grading uh at the entrance but it looks like we're back on track there uh with a a Max grade under 10% on that um building I know on that entryway uh coming off of Maran so looks like everything is moving along pretty well um the next meeting isn't next week I think it's is it next week V I think it's next week yeah it's hard to track when we have our budget meetings but um next Thursday at 7 o'clock downstairs in room 207 um right to read update uh Mr grippo kind of mentioned this earlier uh and think most people are aware at this

072point uh the legislation passed and required uh districts to either um identify that they have met the science of reading curriculum for grades K through three uh by purchasing one of a handful of programs or demonstrating that their curriculum otherwise meets the science of reading uh we submitted a waiver because we had not purchased the programs indicated our waiver uh like many uh districts across Connecticut was rejected and um after some correspondence back and forth uh we have we're we're on the precipice of having a meeting with the state department of Ed about this issue and I look forward to discussing that with them and vigorously stating our case there um open Choice uh we annually take a look at our open Choice seats at this time of year uh just to kind of give

073you an overview uh we have 44 students right now K through 12 uh who attend our schools from New Haven through the open Choice program uh they added tremendous value to our community uh and I I think they enjoy attending our schools uh you'd have to to get up at the ungodly hour particularly our high school kids get up at to get on a bus from New Haven to come here and so we're uh particularly proud of their contributions um unfortunately you know in our school system as we've talked a little bit about with climbing enrollment uh it's been our preference to try and introduce open Choice students in the Elementary grades uh so that they can um be fully committed and participants through out their K12 experience here in our community uh unfortunately with

074the incredible enrollment we were talking about through the planning committee's report 893 kids at Highland we don't have a lot of opportunity to accommodate new students um so what we're seeing as years go by is a shrinking Elementary enrollment but we have used the opportunity to uh add students to our high school classes uh where there is a little bit more room for that so next year just to give you at the end of conclusion of this year we'll have one open Choice student who will graduate from Treasure High School um followed by nine Juniors that we have so we had some students we have 10 uh freshmen so next year what uh we'd like to try and do is add um Four Freshmen to the incoming class there are currently four eighth graders so

075we would add four additional freshman seats that does not mean that Four Freshman will enroll but we will make those seats available and then we have room for uh two second grade seats at Norton and unfortunately that's it I mean that will ultimately bring our enrollment from 44 to 49 so it kind of remains balanced but you what you're seeing is this real shift away from Elementary seats to high school seats go ahead uh Marlene I just wanted to I just wanted to point out that um we had two students presenting tonight from the open Choice program and a third who was involved in the science this year so talk about digging in and being a part of the communities say really appreciate their their contributions because it is I mean it's hard for a

076student who lives 8 minutes away from Treasure High to get there at 7:30 in the morning these guys really make a commitment so uh kudos to them uh and so we'll submit that information to Aces and certainly I'll update you they hold the Lottery and they'll see uh if those seats will be filled or or they won't be um and finally one last thing uh and it's sobering to have this conversation today uh when the Department of Justice released a report on Uvaldi today and literally as I sit here my son at UCF is texting me about an armed Intruder on campus and uh thank God he's not on campus but it's it's chilling um and it happens all too often in educational settings but in um all settings in our society be it grocery

077stores uh movie theaters public life unfortunately um the ability to read a situation and respond effectively has become an American life skill and uh we several years ago shifted away uh at the rec recommendation of many professional organizations and our security consultant and our local police department away from a lockdown protocol that just had students huddling in Corners away from the door to a a decisions based uh protocol where as the acronym is Alice alert lock down and form counter and evacuate not in any sort of particular order and basically it's read the situation and get away from danger um rather if if you are aware that God forbid there's an incident on the other side of a building you're in don't just hide in the corner get out of the building and um so

078this is something that we've trained our staff in over the last several years Co put a big monkey wrench in it just as we were about to roll out to students and then as new you know postco as new people join we're trying to train everybody back up again we're at that place and we've initiated a uh information that we're going to share with our high school kids we've started that process parents are an integral part of that process we we will be sharing all information with them so thus far we've shared that we need feedback of for from students on this and we've sent letters to two groups of parents I meet with uh it was mentioned tonight how I meet with a group of high school students uh on about a monthly basis

079and we shared the program with them and got their feedback and then we have our peer Health Educators who I know you guys are generally familiar with uh Dan Lee's class at chesher high school shared got their feedback so they've given us great feedback to be able to then share it with the the students at chesher high school first um and then developmentally making sure that it's appropriate for younger grade levels when we share that out um so you know it's important that we move in that direction um I'm I'm glad it's something that I would want my own kids to know um and I want our kids to know um because unfortunately like I said it's it's become more of a necessity uh than a luxury today unfortunately on that sobering note I conclude

080my my report any questions Mr White and then Mr gripple thank you on that topic yaldi correct me if what I get wrong here but just as we're offering this up as a reminder to people there was a study done over the last 50 years you mentioned schools and grocery stores but there is a difference in that schools over the last 50 or 60 years every school shooting 100% has been an Insider and I believe it's 100% of those have said something to someone and they didn't believe it not that what happens in the grocery stores is right by any means but the school shootings every single time there has been an opportunity to intervene in some way before it happened right um right to read thank you uh do you know if there is

081any legislation being introduced this year sure I'll I'll tackle the first item really quick um and indeed uh I I I can't commit to 100% but I think that's I will know it's very close if it's not um and you know unfortunately the data changes almost daily but um I want our families and and everybody in the Community to know if you do hear something how critical it is to report it um and not just put it off you know we'd much rather investigate something and and spend hours tracking down something that's not accurate than not tracking down something that is accurate and um you can do that through making you know calling our schools or making an anonymous report through our speakup um program that's available on our website with respect to to the

082right to read uh legislative uh when the legislative session kicks off I'm fairly certain that um we will and when I say we I mean the superintendent group um Connecticut Association of Board of Ed Connecticut Education Association and American Federation of teachers will be providing some language for legislators to to consider um you know that's not going to happen for um about another month or so so we'll um we are you know certainly preparing for that in the hopes that legislator legislature will will be responsive and I will say I've met with you know dozens legislature legislators over the last six weeks all of whom think that there's room for compromise and and a way to close the gap here thank you you just mentioned oh thank you you just mentioned the teachers unions are

083they behind it supporting options yes it's not just a all right fine I'll do this okay that's interesting that's new information it's yeah it's pretty much unanimous in terms of the um various groups supporting uh taking another look at this and how it's implemented nobody zero nobody questions the or Spirit of the law yeah in the sense that we want all students to be able to be uh readers by the end of third grade literacy is critically important third grade you start to shift from learning to read to reading to learn and so that's why it's such a critical age and you know we work tirelessly to try and ensure that is every one of our students can do that uh we're not 100% success successful yet I haven't met any school district or system

084or anything that is but we are desperately trying to be that way oh it's sorry one last comment something i' had mentioned you before uh journalism we just kind of lost our hometown paper in the past month or two if there's any possibility of maybe even high school students Rampage ERS interview US do stories right on the board of ed maybe the Town Council I think it could be an opportunity that if it actually gets mentioned to them they might jump at it maybe maybe even for course credit something could happen in relation to the journalism class of the high school just a thought thank you thank you Mr G and then Mr um I have several or I have comments and questions I don't know Mr recky you just have a qu okay um

085all right um firstly is uh school security um yeah I just recently had that conversation with my son about situational awareness and and uh looking for exits and wherever he is in the building and to run for your life essentially you know um I don't know if that's the official training but you know I told him I said you know rough approximation I was like you know learn for look for those exits and run for your life um but uh on that note if if the training remains similar I know that about this time in 2021 the policy committee did uh I think a two-hour testimony with our our FBI I guess our unofficial FBI consultant so if parents are interested in sort of a highlevel overview of what we do um they can review

086that that's on YouTube uh so they can take a look at that um uh secondly on the uh write the read I'll I'm still uh o openly uh all for uh open rebellion and so if if there is if because as far as I could tell there's not a lot of teeth in far as far as enforcement goes so if there if if there's no enforcement I say we just keep doing what we're doing until we're told otherwise definitely strong interest open Rebellion right um and then um lastly going on the the the slopes going into the North End um just as a uh as a point of reference do we know what the degree of slope is going into Norton school approximately as you know just sort of a point of comparison I remember

087as a walker it was still a little dicey you know in the winter time and that was just I didn't find that be super current current slope you're talking about I I I can't say I could quote I okay we'll say current slope yes yeah I I I wasn't sure if you were talking about the current or planned future slope oh I'm sorry current current SL yes I I can't say I could quote you either so I'm not even really sure why I asked but uh I can tell you it's not close to 10% in terms of the grade I know that um let me email you all there's a uh I think there are a couple of streets in town that are at 10% grade right um that it's like I think about this

088is less than 10% you know my road which is near the North End School which is pretty steep and I know that the parents there for at least for the well for any student when it's slippery they don't even bother walking it they take cars to the bottom of the hill yeah so if you're if we're going to have walkers coming off of Maran um at some point you know if that slope is anywhere near what my road looks like that's too steep yeah you know clear even though that's an approved Road that's less than 10% you know and that I think that's one of the roads actually but um the average uh in the peak slope have to be south of 10% that's a pretty long run and it's one section that reaches 9.

089like 8% the rest of the grade is much more reasonable but um let me try and scare up some other towns just or other uh streets so that you can get a visual you know better sense of what that actually is 10% so sure because I know yeah I know my uh not just speaking for myself I know my neighbors and I know that there were other uh citizens who attended those townwide meetings who were concerned about those things so you know be able to see what well sidewalks I know is a huge thing sidewalks and then of course but having children walking down not just buses approaching the school but having children walking down off of the road like that you know so just want to bring that up thank you uh wait um

090yes I'm done thank you Mr AI can I just add one real quick about the options-based training for Alice when I say options based and it's not there is like I said every staff members been trained coaches lunch AES like you name it building maintainers so there is a lot of adult guidance that is still there um and it's not just a you know the idea of, 1500 people free-for-all um is not healthy and frankly when we talk to our kids that was one of the concerns they had like is it just so it's just on me then to figure out what to do no um and I want to be clear about that for our community and um and it wasn't something you framed that way but I when you mentioned it it made

091me think about the feedback that our kids had which was you know I don't want to be just out on a limb trying to figure this this out of my own um and we reassured them though that everybody had been trained and this part of the the video we're designing for this is to illustrate the broad degree of training that's occurred right and it you know it's based on my own uh ignorance of Alice training which I've never taken yeah my you know based on what you know what they tell us at work basically run hiide fight is right right right and then of course you know when you I'm talking to my 13-year-old trying to get information on them it's it's not very for coming a lot so it's like okay well let's work

092with that without knowing what Alice you know how what Alice training is well we look forward to educating our kids and one of the things that he also said after we gave them the overview of what this was was an enhanced level of comfort like knowing that I have more control over the situation I I kind of feel better about this than I did about what we were doing um which is such a a basic human reaction and it's uh reassuring as a parent and educator to hear kids say yeah this this I feel better about this I feel more confident and I think I know preco you had offered board members to go and attend the training and yeah like I remember a picture of I think Katherine was there or something but and

093I never attended that but if there is something maybe yeah coming up I'd certainly like to yeah we could definitely offer that in the spring for for people yeah great thank you community service so options Bas it's not really option everybody who's employed has yeah there's no option in that it's when something happens you have options rather than to just huddle in a corner and then there's reoccurring refresher training yes yeah on the vector isn't there a vector yeah we have uh online training we've also done a lot of in-person training um on this and it's you know we initially gave the inperson training to our staff and surveyed them the results were overwhelming in the support of doing this because like I said I think it's just a basic human when you when you

094experience it and you know what it's about like yeah how how do you not do this and you feel more control and it reduces anxiety it's a good thing Mr Aki you had a question going back to right to read you said there's uh proposals proposed legislation what is the deadline where do we sit with waiting to fix the problem and being forced to buy a new program sure so that's a great question July 1 is when District should have made some movement toward whatever the remedy is I think part of our problem is um we're not sure exactly what the remedy is where are we deficient um and so in my most recent correspondence to the commissioner I've asked for more detail in that regard um I know Senator Samson actually had sent a

095letter um after our meeting as well and has asked for more detail in that regard um I know some other districts have asked for details from sde and they're treating it like a freedom of information request and it's been incredibly lengthy and I think SD is doing the best they can to get the information back to people but uh it's it's certainly been cumbersome thank you Dr herrian yeah and I would I would just add also um that I attended our area legislative breakfast with Dr Solen also and the right to read well there were two main issues that were discussed the right to read was one of them and there were several legislators there uh representing at that meeting also and to a to a letter I think every single one of them is

096sounded like they're very committed to um getting this legislation out there in this next session so chesher is not the only School District that's sitting here with this and um so I just I I wanted to also reassure Adam that um I'm less convinced that open Rebellion is the way to go after seeing and knowing that Dr Solen has also talked to many other uh legislators besides the ones that we saw at the breakfast um the other um Topic at the legislative uh breakfast was on the uh kindergarten time change uh age change and um what I took from that and what I hope the legislators took from that also and I know that we have community members MERS in our community who are very concerned about this is um maybe not legislation but somehow

097support for early childhood education would take a lot of the burden off of of uh families parents and families who are um it which it would just it really would dissolve a lot of the problems with with having to assess whether children are ready for kindergarten or not if if all of that preparedness was being taken care of in our early childhood programs and um but for the fact that our early childhood programs are so expensive for families um that's sort of what's driving this need to assess whether kids who are not five yet should are ready to uh attend kindergarten so um I think there is there seem seem to be a really good understanding among the legislators who were there and I think they got a strong message that um school districts would

098like to see more support for Early Childhood programs so I just wanted to add those two things thank you any other Mr gripple sorry just one quick question uh the p Z meeting for the North End School when is that because I know it's postponed I don't I'm sorry I don't have a date for that um thought it was the 22nd but not sure I have it been I think we could jump online real quick and find it but um I don't have the exact date why you're doing that misso can you just clarify we do have a pretty robust plan especially for that group of 65 students coming in that we voted on and then also you already explained the screening process as well too so if you can just kind of give us

099a little synopsis of the plan that we already approved sure our kindergarten transition plan that we talked about in October is um already we already have our first class filled and this is a program for students who would have been eligible before the law for family who were planning on sending their child to kindergarten and now because of the law are caught off guard and not knowing and not having adequate time to plan so thanks to all of you we now have a kindergarten transition program specifically for those 60 or so students who birthday falls within that time frame from September 2nd to you know January 31st first that program will be held at Darcy school we will be opening a second session it's a net zero cost in the budget because we'll be reallocating

100a teacher likely from kindergarten and a par educator to Darcy for this program students in the Darcy dittle school you know Geographic district will have transportation others will have to provide their own transportation as they would have to for daycare if that's what they would be doing um and what's the other thing the that's a nominal cost um especially when we look at the cost of preschool and daycare at about $5,000 and that was we're not trying to make any money on this we're just trying to break even and make sure that we're trying to meet families Halfway by providing this as an option thank you Dr Zen any update yep uh real quick North End is January 22nd and Norton is February 12th thank you any other questions for Dr senen No awesome um

101next item is old business we don't have any listed and then we move into new business which would be um chairperson's update I actually was going to ask a couple questions um for Dr s and I know there was some confusion speaking of P andz that it was cancelled but communication can you just give a rundown of what the communication chain would be so that there's no somebody showed up and they didn't realize it was cancelled and so forth yeah so with respect to the meeting cancellation previously for Northend um there was a communication issue I think between the Architects and the neglect Ed to notify some of the abing properties which is required of the meeting uh so that's been resolved and there were some communication issues between planning and zoning and our Architects

102and the town and so they had a meeting last week and identified communication Point people because as you guys know there are a lot of people in that are involved between architect subcontractors and uh everybody else and then you factor in the town side so that's been resolved I think communication issues are are all set and we should be moving forward on those dates I just mentioned great and then as far as open choices um just going back to that you said the elementary um interest is decreasing or there is I wouldn't say interest I think there's still interest the issue is that we don't have enough available seats at the Elementary grades um because of the increase of in our enrollment um we don't capacity great so yeah we're at capacity now uh with

103the exception I think we could get away with two students second grade at Norton but um otherwise we're really tight there and that's why we're adding more seats at the high school level got it thank you then I was just gonna you know I'm I'm a little nervous because we are in budget talks now um and I don't want to rely on and thank you Dr senen because you've been really stared about just having meetings and sending out messages and so forth on the right to read um I'm hoping we have a plan B so that we meet timeline and expectations um because I'm just not confident in the system working for us at this moment in time so yeah I I certainly share your anxiety yes um and there are a lot of folks

104working on this thankfully you know we're not alone in this endeavor um For Better or Worse there are a lot of uh communities um that are engaged in this process so we're sharing information and hopefully uh collaborating and hopefully the the legislature and S and all of us can come together work out a solution that's not so incredibly costly I mean I shared the other day it'd be about $650,000 for us to move forward on this um which just makes no sense the those resources could be much better spent to support other students um to meet goal yeah I know I appreciate you outlining um to caps some of the options that and solutions that they can take so um but again yes anxiety would be the word because we are great at planning I

105just hope we have something set aside to ensure that we are ready to go and move forward um the other piece is um speaking of plan the legislation for kindergarten age um changed also embeds purposeful play so is there a plan for that in the upcoming year we already are engaged in training of our kindergarten teachers in purposeful play um that's really been a part of the Darcy model for years and when we transition to full day kindergarten it was still there but we felt like we needed to elevate that a little bit more and put a little more attention on that we have a contract with econ and so we've been working with Amry Davidson there she's comeing she's to date done two days of professional development with our kindergarten team um on um

106sorry purposeful play and there's also coaching embedded in that so we've had two days of professional development two days of coaching with additional days of both to come awesome great thank you and Miss con do we have a um are we in need of a policy to be written to cover that it was legislation at the end of next that's a great question for policy I believe last year and Mr gripple quote me if I'm wrong we did look at the suggested policy right Dr s from cab we'll look into that yeah back I think that's what precipitated the uh adoption of the the the transitional program I so I think we have something we did make some language changes so we'll have to um but if not change it yeah was this was that

107the legislation that started out requiring unsupervised play for kindergarteners unsupervised I don't remember that that's gonna be interesting you do remember you don't remember that one no I didn't make that one up no that was the law I was unsupervised then they said it had wait n undirected unstructured mean unstructured yeah okay is that is that the same one with the 30 when we changed it to 30 minutes it was I don't know if it's attached to the same one or not maybe it's I don't know if that's in the same law I thought it was subsequent to that one but might be the same one interestingly we do have a policy committee being coming up so ex I believe so yes and so I'm GNA just go right into just um checking on those

108meetings right now so yes we do have a policy committee Tuesday January 23rd at 6 pm at DOD Middle School um on Thursday February 1st as mentioned earlier we have the calendar committee at 6:30 humiston boardroom central office um Monday February 12th 7 PM curriculum committee will be meeting at humiston boardroom as well and then Thursday February 15th we have a 7:30 p.m. that is our regular Board of Education business meeting in the town council chambers um we do have that upcoming um meeting as mentioned for the public budget review of administrative um review of accounts which is January 23rd at 7 do middle school as well um I believe that is it for the Chairman's update I actually I do want to make one proposal um I love love love hearing about everything that's

109happening at the high school but um I also would hope that we kind of consider um hearing from the other um schools we have other schools besides the high school and if we can kind of report on some of those I know you know me personally I do need to contact Darcy and see what's going on over there and try to um be involved as much as possible and if my fellow board members can do the same because you know we need to highlight all of our kids not just what's happening at the high school and know the superintendent has other suggestions outside of that just so happens in March we have our Middle School showcase coming up so uh you get a a pretty in-depth look at what we're doing there with respect to

110our complex thinking um but yeah you each board member is a Lea's own to the uh schools if you want to reach out to the principes and I can encourage them to reach out to you thank you could I just add that I reached out and uh had lunch just today with uh principal Kelly grippo at Dodd Middle School for this very purpose I just wanted to um let her know that I'm the liaison and um she invited me to she said we really need to just get you into the school an I feel like um I've saw so much of Dodd when we were going through um all of the planning for a new Middle School back in the day um my early Time On The Board of Ed but I have not been

111into DOD um well except for Budget meetings every year um so I look forward to having a little um view of what's going on at Dodd Middle School but it's really easy to get into the schools so awesome and also any other if you do attend any PTA meetings as part of the schools thank you and with that um I think we're calling for a motion to adjourn into executive session to discuss the superintendent's goals Mr White motion that the meeting be adjourned into executive session to discuss the superintendent's goals to include superintendent Solen with no business to follow thank you is there a second Mr grippo um all in favor of adjourning into executive session I it is unanimously approved um we are going into executive session is like simultaneous we're adjourning and then

112going to okay awesome