Board of Education 9-7-23

001good evening everyone Mr Gripper here miss ham here miss Harrigan Mr Martelli here Mr peragini here Ms Rosenberg here Mr White Mr chairman you do have a quorum thank you Vincent I ask that we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance allegiance to the flag of the Republic okay well good evening and welcome everyone to this chilly summer evening at least the time at least in the town council chambers uh we have a lot to cover tonight but before we get into it I'll ask if there are any members of the audience that wish to address the Board of Education seeing as there are none we're going to move to a presentations we actually have um Mr gossenberg who's the chair of our next Generation School building committee as well as Architects from techdon and we're

002gonna get an update on the new North End and Norton schools and I think see a little bit of design too so how do you guys want to proceed you want to come at the table and use the microphone or I think you're set up 15 second intro and then please do Richard yeah you can use that or the one at the podium but everyone works the Next Generation School business committee our school building committee rather has been uh working over the last several months a number of meetings hired the staff that we needed and have been working on the design um we have a working group of Staff members and we also have committee members who have been looking at this we've finished the first of three development phases this is called schematic design

003it's fairly detailed but it still has a long way to go before everything is finished the schematic design for the North End School was finished uh about a month or so ago the committee then sent that information out to estimators looked at the um approximate costs of the building and worked and brought the cost and the design into you know uh so that they were the same the Norton school we have just gotten the estimations and we have an upcoming meeting to take a look at that but we wanted you to have a look at what we've designed so far so we've got some pictures for you today and a sense of a little bit of the process that we've gone through and from that I'll took a ticket over to Justin and Jeff from

004tecton and Rich and Laurel who's here also from arcadis and Ong Richard thank you we're actually uh welcome the Board of Ed move down to the audience because I'm good how are you Jeff it's ramble busy doing here thank you good evening Mr chair members of the board Justin Hopkins I'm an associate principal and project manager at techton Architects and again Jeff wazinski principal in charge of the project so we have I believe I make this joke every time but we have a brief two-hour uh presentation for you tonight now uh we want to go over uh summary and schedule a bit about where we are where we've been some of our visioning those of you who can recall our presentation from a couple months ago we we delved a little bit more in detail

005of our visioning process but we want to just give a brief overview as kind of a station point for the schematic design we'll then get into the North End and Norton schematic design and also talk about our current steps with our interior design and design development and then we'll wrap up with our Roadshow of upcoming events within the community so just as a reminder our two projects North End School in Norton Elementary School um by and large the same program the same student population K to six the only distinction is the North End Elementary School has our Early Childhood Program that is uh basically uh brought over from Darcy so that distinction accounts for the inquiries and enrollment of students at the North End as well as building area and overall total project cost as

006Rich had mentioned where we are in the design phase schedule we're at the end of schematic design uh beginning of design development so in schematic design we are primarily trying to get put the guardrails on the project understand the size of the building what it generally looks like making sure that we have the appropriate program and their necessary adjacencies in other words their proximity to one another we will then be getting into design development which is more a say let's say a room by room analysis or really a development of the criteria that goes on in each of the spaces uh once we conclude that uh phase we'll go through another round of cost estimation we'll have another report back uh to this board uh and then start a construction documentation process um where it's

007really heads down development of the details making sure that we're detailing everything uh in a tight set of documents so that we can have some assurances during bidding that we're getting accurate numbers and limiting the amount of potential changes during construction so this is a long-winded way of describing that we're kind of in the first finishing the first phase of a process that is going to take us to next summer when we will have our construction documents complete and go through the state approval process for bidding in Fall of 2024. so as a reminder of some of our visioning and themes from our Think Tank sessions within the community um developing a sense of context and culture we've rallied around a concept of the North End being a farm and field concept and Norton being

008woods and trails so as we went through our Think Tank sessions this was really a partnership with uh the folks that were part of that uh Representative members of the district the administration and the town as well as some of the students that was the most exciting part of these uh these Think Tank sessions so some precedent imagery uh some Community images that went into our North End inspiration uh to arrive at the farm and field concept whoops and as a part of the think tank process we do this at every meeting that we show this slide I just want to repeat what our Think Tank mission statement was for the North End we're doing this for every child in the future of the Cheshire community so that they can feel connection and sense of

009belonging to their school community and ultimately be drawn in and love learning similar process for Norton picking up on the woods and trails concept and our Norton Think Tank mission statement we're doing this for everyone who's here and everyone who's coming next so that they can grow as a Learner in a space that is fun and safe for mind and body and ultimately feel like they belong our safe supported and welcome a lot of correlation between the two mission statements it was it was uh it was really great to see that so North End uh schematic design we'll start with the site plan uh we have um as most of you know this is a green field uh we have Jarvis uh to the left of the screen and Marion to to the top uh

010the site slopes uh from from the top of the page to the bottom so we're really trying to accommodate the topographical changes uh within the space little blow up of the site plan you'll see the North End School in Gray that's the building footprint we have uh parent pick up and drop off I'm realizing that you can't see my cursor as I've been highlighting these things so we'll go to the diagram so the area going from top to bottom area one we've situated the building so that we have this open courtyard it's not enclosed so we have the ability to have access from the outside into the courtyard one of the things in this organization of the building footprint is it allows us to open up the perimeter of the building to allow more natural

011light to come into the building the areas indicated in number two are our Recreation fields we have two that we're showing on the site as well as some blacktop play our areas indicated in three are our protected play areas the one distinction is the areas in seven are our early childhood protected play areas Aryan 5 is our parent pickup and drop-off Loop our area indicated in six is our main entry the one distinction that I'll I'll say the the item the area on number five to the left that's our parent pickup and drop-off Loop the area five to the right is our bus pick up and drop-off Loop so we're separating and this will be a consistent theme between the two schools we're separating parent pick up and drop off bus pick up and drop

012off locating the drop-off locations near the proximate entry point to the building so that we can have some some visibility some Access Control some administrative control over students that are being dropped off by parents and by bus the areas indicating eight are how we are towards the bottom of the screen or how we're dealing with storm water this is not going to be a subsurface detention system we're going to use gravity uh within the site uh to handle storm water runoff and we've brought this up in some of our working group meetings this is not going to be a standing water Pond it we have well-draining soil at the site wetlands are further to the bottom of the site so really this is is bio retention and is really there to handle the significant overflow

013rain events area 9 underneath our Recreation field will be where we locate our geothermal well field that will help support our Heating and Cooling in the building and this is an effort to have this building be no carbon fuels fuel sources for the building area 10 is the concept of locating some nature trails really picking up on some of the benefits of the existing Darcy outdoor play Outdoor Learning areas Area 11 is a parking lot off of Jarvis for our early childhood area and the area to the right uh indicated number six that is our early childhood entry so we're really trying to separate those two functions of the building understanding that the kids that are in our early childhood programs have different pickup and drop-off times oftentimes have parents that are coming at different

014hours of the day to be able to facilitate that and separate it from the rest of the the administration of the parking and area 12 is where we have our loading and receiving this is off of the bus pickup and drop-off loop it's located uh where we have our kitchen and servery and cafeteria and ultimately where our head end physical plant is within the building yeah so from a floor plan diagram this is the the last time we were here we showed you some concepts of this but really the idea that we're separating some of the public facing or more public areas of the building in a Main Street Corridor uh near the front of the building separating our learning communities from that Main Street so that we can have better compartmentalization of those areas

015and also facilitate the building to be available for nights and weekends or after school use so you'll see the main level to the left upper level to the right both schools are two stories with the largest building footprint being at grade so the concept there is in our elementary system our Upper Elementary classes or upper elementary learning communities would be located on the second floor with our lower elementary on the main floor level so an overall floor plan we won't quiz you on all the locations at the end of this presentation but you will see the areas we have our early childhood main entry to the left of uh the floor plan are are as we mentioned our main street are our public areas including Media Center Gym cafeteria some of our core specials art

016music all off of our our public court or Administration and nurses Suite in green located near the main entry with eyes on the prize of the students coming in from drop off location in further diagram form you'll see our main circulation axes within the within the floor plan highlighted in blue we are leveraging the ends of our corridors to facilitate areas for breakout within the learning communities but also visibility uh for views to Nature and outdoor access so really clear a pretty uh circulation scheme with Clarity for the students and and the teachers that are going to be here we as we had mentioned regarding the open courtyard uh the areas in yellow are where we can allow natural light into the building so the goal is for every curriculum space to have an exterior

017window of uh the availability of natural light and Views to the outside and as I had mentioned the ability to compartmentalize each one of these learning communities so the upper level so I should stipulate that the learning communities more or less are stacked uh so we have our kindergarten and first grade in one Learning Community sorry pre-kindergarten kindergarten and one Learning Community grades one and two in another and as we get up to the second floor grades three and four and five and six and on the upper level of on our main street is we have um an upper level of the media center as well as an upper elementary our room part of the program programmatic component is we have two art rooms um we have visioned this as part of our working group

018as an early Elementary art uh room on the for the main level Upper Elementary art room on the upper level and we also have our math and reading otpt and some of our uh Services social workers psychologists in a suite on the upper level so similar plan diagram Clarity of circulation views to Nature more or less replicated from the the lower level the one distinction that I will say that on the upper level is we do have a connection point between the Learning Community to the bottom left and the Learning Community to the bottom right so this will more or less be a bridge that connects the two to allow for a more coherent egress path once again natural light and the ability to compartmentalize the learning communities from the rest of the building so

019some of our exterior renderings This Is A View From the parent uh pickup and drop off you're looking at the media center to the right the main entry uh canopy in the middle of the screen in the gymnasium volume to the left the idea that we're we're looking to Target natural materials stone veneer brick at select areas at pedestrian height or human scale height we will have a combination of metal panels and aluminum framed windows in the other areas here's a further view from the parent Loop zooming out a little bit the volume all the way to the left is our cafeteria volume so one of the things in our conversations with the committee of the ngsbc um is these pitched roofs really kind of connote uh the idea of uh the the vernacular of

020a Farm building uh and in many of our value management conversations uh the committee's desire to keep those um to really put a signature on the architecture of this building was important here's a view to the main entry once again Media Center volume is to the right gymnasium volume to the left of the main entry you're kind of looking straight on to the administrative area so when we say the visibility and the the the administrative control you can really get a sense of how that um how the Administration has eyes to the to the pickup and drop-off areas this is looking out on the green uh in between the two parking areas the primarily looking at the gym and the main entrance oh okay um what's the pleasure of the board uh would you like

021me to entertain questions or get through the total presentation first uh we're probably over halfway through the presentation so maybe if we just continue um because perhaps there may be some similar questions on Norton that you may have on the North End so schematic design for Norton here we have uh uh a smaller version of the site plan to the left kind of a blow up version to the right the areas outlined in white uh is the location of the existing Norton school so as you can see from the placement of the the building the concept is Norton is going to remain operational through the academic year that we're building the new building so the the placement on the site will facilitate that that construction process so we're working with Ong the construction manager and

022the OPM arcadis to develop a logistics plan as part of this um to figure out you know we can't tear down Norton School uh until we have the new building ready so there will be a sequence and an issue as we go through design Development and Construction documentation for for um making sure that we have parking and everything available for the start of school more to come on that certainly as we get through the design so uh similar organization of parent pickup and drop off which is to the left did I say that correctly no bus pick up and drop off is to the left parent pickup and drop off is to the right if I toggle back to the the uh overall site plan uh you'll see a long entry uh from the road

023up to these parking areas that is intentional to provide as much of a cue to get as many cars and buses off of the street we understand that there historically there's been many parents that will park over in the church parking lot and allow the students to walk across the street our goal by the time this is done is to put all of that queuing safely on the property so the building situated on the site we have um all of the parking uh to the south of the building we do have an access road uh that that goes out to Sharon Drive we had a meeting last week with some of the department uh the department heads we understand maintaining that for emergency response and emergency access is is very important as well as being

024able to provide that access from Sharon Drive to facilitate construction so the goal is that we're going to be constructing the building behind Norton the entire time so a similar site diagram we have another open courtyard same concept as the north end this is not in enclosed within the overall building perimeter it has an opening and access to the the outdoor space to allow better ease maintenance and a better way to move from inside to outside that's the area in one are areas highlighted in two are our blacktop playing fields Ida area three is also our protected play areas you'll see there's an area two and three at the top of the site plan this has been in response to a request to make sure that we're providing uh play space in a greater proximity

025to the cafeteria which is directly to the south of those areas so we're kind of working through this with the working group in terms of making sure that we're seeing the students Journey throughout the day from cat including from cafeteria to outdoor play areas highlighted in four uh is the concept of an outdoor classroom accessible by a walking path through the woods the goal is to maintain as much of the existing wooded area to the east of the the proposed building as possible and provides some some walking paths uh or a nature trail through there and that's highlighted in area on number nine areas in five as I had mentioned the separate apparent pickup and drop-off area highlighted in number six is our main entry so the similar concept to the North End where we

026have one main entrance to the building flanked by an administrative space that has access and visibility to both parent pickup and drop off and the bus pick up and drop off area seven is a memorial garden there there are some some significant site features existing out here we want to make sure that we honor those and likely relocate them as part of the project so making sure that we we provide a place on site that allows that are areas highlighted in eight are bio retention so we're going to do a combination of storm water management uh both within the parking area that is down the bottom left-hand portion of the site plan but also the the big dashed line that's highlighted as number 11 is the Wetland it's not the Wetland Edge but the Wetland

027buffer uh most of our storm water we're directing back to that area we're going to provide a a we're going to clean up that what is a fairly disorganized Wetland and and allow it to become part of our storm water system are areas highlight in 10 is our loading and receiving area once again that's located near our physical plant as well as our kitchen and server area so similar floor plan diagram to the North End we've separated the learning communities from our Main Street concept so once again a lot of our public facing or what we call public curriculum spaces Core Curriculum gymnasium Media Center music art cafeteria all located in the area highlighted in Orange areas highlighted in blue are our learning communities so main level to the left upper level to the right

028very similar concept to the North End more detailed floor plan so our kindergarten Wing is in the the lower right hand corner of the Learning Community as well as some of our specials otpt our ABA classrooms and some of our resource rooms on the upper right portions are grade one and two Wing that is more or less replicated on the upper level for our Upper Elementary learning communities gym in the middle of the building flagged by the the media center as well as the cafeteria I glossed over this I didn't mention this in the north end but we do have a platform uh that is when I say platform think stage there's a there's a specific code uh reason why we call it a platform and not a stage but it's an elevated stage area

029uh that is double fronting both the gymnasium and the cafeteria uh this is consistent in both uh both floor plans but the concept is that you we can support an all school assembly in the gymnasium uh open a folding partition on that side of the platform close it on the cafeteria side so we can have a larger assembly or a larger presentation a more focused maybe it's a speaker or maybe the gyms being used and there's an after hours presentation or lecturer we can utilize the cafeteria close the gymnasium side of the platform open the cafeteria side so similar floor plan diagram you'll notice some similarities in the clarity of circulation between what we call our main street and the learning communities so very clear on axes main entry as well as access to all

030of our specials off of Main Street and our our learning communities being directly off of that access on views to Nature at the ends of all the corridors and all the major intersections of the building natural light again being able to enter each part of the the building the areas in the media center and the art room were utilizing borrowed light which basically means we have large expanse of Glass on the exterior wall a corridor and then glass going into the curriculum space for art in particular that's actually very nice natural light on North light as well the ability to compartmentalize once again our learning communities from the more public areas of the building upper level floor plan we have grades three and four on the upper right grades five and six on the lower

031right we have the second floor of our media center and Upper Elementary art as well as some of our resource areas off of Main Street so from a diagrammatic stop me if you've heard this one before uh Clarity of circulation views to Nature ability to bring in natural light to the spaces and the ability to compartmentalize in terms of our our renderings I will stipulate that we are as Rich mentioned we are back in front of the building committee next week where we are assuming that we'll have some updates we've received some comments regarding some of the the articulation and material use in these renderings so we want to show it to our building committee first before we we we socialize it so Main Street main entry from The Pedestrian Boulevard parent pickup and drop

032off to the right bus pick up and drop off to the left are learning communities are to the right the building volume to the right our main entry on axes uh to the media center and the administration is Straight Ahead as well as our volume for our cafeteria is to the left looking at the classroom Wing from the parent pickup and drop off so use a brick similar similar materials um brick metal panel aluminum framed windows main entry from The Pedestrian Boulevard so a little bit of where we're headed we at our last working group meeting we discussed a little bit more of the details of the Interior Design talking material finishes types of flooring materials wall materials paint color schemes as well as some branding I want to make sure that we have a

033consistent neutral color palette across both the schools making sure that we're we're used utilizing accent colors that can go towards the distinction of some of our learning communities in a consistent accent color using neutral and natural finishes complemented by playful playful theme and you can see some precedent examples to the lower right of this and our next steps as part of the working group is starting to get into a little bit more of the personalization of the graphics within the learning communities understanding that for the most part outside of pre-K and K we have learning communities of grades one and two three and four and five and six whoops so as part of our working group just kind of going through uh some of the concepts for our circulation corridors areas that we can start

034to engage students in the spaces in between their curriculum classes uh supporting some breakout or peer-to-peer learning as well as providing some curriculum opportunities along along the way looking at specifically for the Early Childhood classrooms borrowing some of what works best at Darcy now in the modular box configuration and some of the the Specialty Lighting that supports what goes on in the school as well as providing a nice uh even space kindergarten through grade six classrooms again you'll see the neutral palette curated by accent colors as well as making sure that when we get into our room by room analysis we'll be talking about things like you know where's the tackable surfaces where are the white boards where the magnetic boards where are the the interactive displays and exactly what types of quantities and requirements

035we have in say a typical classroom so Media Center uh looking to activate some of these spaces uh with accent lighting areas of carpet tile Acoustics are always important so we'll be discussing strategies for providing um even comfortable acoustic level in some of these larger spaces making sure that we're also supporting the way finding in a way that's consistent with our learning communities as well and the image to the bottom right of the screen this concept of a learning stair an area that students can can you can put a class uh with a with a speaker at the bottom of the area as shown in the image but this is also just a fun place for kids to hang out and maybe read a book together or do some small group learning or peer-to-peer learning

036hopefully not getting into too much trouble along the way but uh gymnasium so we we actually have two types of gymnasium floors that that are identified in the Ed Speck we're kind of working in the working group to understand um Port floor versus wood floor but making sure that we're providing the flexibility for dividing the gymnasium in half as well as all of the gymnasium equipment Etc cafeteria resilient tile working in some of our neutrals in our accent colors putting bring in some some natural wood colors uh in wood veneer and again making sure that acoustically we're making uh the we're making sure the space performs and then some of our specialized education uh this these are these are really important when we get into the room by room under making sure that we understand

037uh what equipment is in there what the needs of the students are to conventionally we usually see these to be a more neutral color palette so we may just Target some areas where we provide some accent colors okay as I had mentioned we have a number of community events that are coming up starting with this Saturday will be in a booth along next to the district at the Fall Festival the superintendent has promised me that the best hot dogs in in the state are available on Saturday so we'll we'll see uh we then in a all right uh so in addition to some of the open houses where we'll be providing some boards to be displayed uh we do have two Community meetings at the end of this month September 26th for the North End

038and September 27th for Norton uh we will then have a more informal um uh Coffee Talk uh for Norton on October 3rd and for North End on October 4th that's more of a just uh we'll give a brief presentation and then just be around for people to to approach ask questions uh Etc and then mid-october we have a virtual presentation as well as a question and answer period um October 16th for Norton October 17th for the North End and as always the project emails superintendent's email address I'm sure that's uh that's public now it's public anyway but uh and then our project website at this time yeah so as uh Rich had mentioned uh we've gone through uh the the North End cost estimate um as we as you may have heard there have been

039some um some cost escalation in the market um and this community is not unique this region is not unique uh our initial schematic design cost estimates came in above our budgets um we have went through a value management process with the ngsbc uh to bring us to within uh where where we want to be for budget and the goal for all of these budget considerations and value management considerations especially at this stage is to make sure that we're not compromising curriculum space all right the last thing the the last thing that we want to do is impact the the spaces that the students are going to be in so our first round of North End value management were were more about constructability materiality um things that you don't necessarily if I didn't tell you this

040you wouldn't know um so we were able to get that North End Within our budget or within our acceptable range of the budget for Norton we're have a similar budget overage and we are working our way through that value management process with the same goals and the same criteria and we anticipate next week at the ngsbc meeting to finalize those value management recommendations is there anything you want to I think a great example is something like terrazzo floor super expensive heavy duty floor built into the initial design substantial savings to go with a contemporary high-performing file form something like that uh large huge glass window can be dramatically more cost effective by inserting framing so the top the glass pieces are smaller still has a great look great performance just substantially more cost effective so

041we went through that process with the group for the North End a little trickier at Norton because you also face the escalation on the demo of the building uh so you know for us is Justin said maintaining the instructional space the experience for the kids in the community is a real priority uh after that I think our group has placed a bit of a premium to the extent that we can on being climate friendly for you know not just for the planet but for the sustainable energy uh future costs piece of it so you know we're really working hard to ensure that those components remain in the project and the designs um and so we're really trying to meticulously as a group go through every component of the project with the guidance of tacton and

042arcadis and Ong and uh really try and hone in on where can we make this the best possible experience for our kids it's the greatest value making sure we stay within a budget I would point out also in the Norton site we have added two ABA rooms to the plan the school district made a very strong case that we had a need for more program space for Aba programs for students and so that is an add-on but one that we felt was an essential one that the committee is has endorsed that because I think I mean if people are going to talk grab the microphone I'm thinking for people at home is it televised yeah I tried to project a little bit but if you wanna yeah we'll know because Richard started talking around sub

043questions I I have one quick question what's ABA mean Rob if you want a problem it's okay I just wanted to know what it was applied Behavior Analysis yeah yeah some of them are non-verbal um they may be behaviorals that behaviors that are involved and they need a very specialized instruction and um and environment it's a growing population yeah can going off of that are all those students directed to Norton um what will what uh the hope is is that all the students at the South End of the district who need a program like that will be directed to Norton and those that are at more of the North or the central uh area of town will be um directed to Highland s where they have them still currently classrooms at Island there are classes

044currently at Highland there are three of them and at this point um they're very full and uh there's something like 27 to 29 students in there and so we have one classroom at Norton right now we started moving in that process and then the hope is to add the second classroom one once the new school opens and we have the room yes oh thanks um thanks for the presentation a couple questions um geothermal in Norton do you I didn't see anything there are you going to um do that and then also I noticed this kind of displayed floor plan and for lack of a better description descriptor for it um is that just an aesthetic or is it spacing um just curious why it's not more not more orthogonal right yeah okay so I'll start

045uh our basis of design and in the current cost estimate has geothermal heating and cooling for both buildings we were able to to go through a value management process where we were able to maintain that in North the North End we have a slightly different uh discussion to have at Norton where we as one of the value management options that the ngsbc will be entertaining is whether to go to a different mechanical system or the same the same end mechanical system but the fuel source to be slightly different so and as far as the um the The Kinks in the floor plan we typically do this in order to allow areas of the building to be more open for natural light but also provide some opportunities for breakout spaces within the corridors if you think

046of likely the school you and I went to school in uh basically one long linear Corridor with classrooms on either side if we simply if we simply take the opportunity to make that perhaps a little wider at the end we may be able to put in an interactive display board down at the end of the corridor and support a small group activity down there so it's a it's a way that we try to introduce some flexibility into the curriculum to kind of support more more potential modalities of of teaching and instruction whether it's peer-to-peer small group or or singular student learning so yeah right I actually have three and then I'm going to leave this to the committee because I'm sure they're going to tackle this with you my first reaction to the windows was

047whoa especially in the library because light is not good for books so I'm glad that the superintendent said that there should be or is probably some flexibility in decreasing the size of those windows or some shade um my other question was actually similar to Ian about the ABA I mean are we assuming that in future years that we is there any convertibility should you need more space for Aba in other schools and then my third is um fields are they Turf are we aiming for grass fields here I'll going backwards order if that's okay natural turf fields not Synthetic Turf these are not 90 99 of the time these are going to be fields for recess and gymnasium and not necessarily competitive Fields so natural Turf for those areas I already forgot your second question

048ABA classrooms they're sized according to the general classroom size and I believe Robin we also want to have toilets in those rooms so that they would be able to support that early Elementary in classroom toilet so future proofing the flexibility of the spaces there they are classroom sized yes and first question was was a comment about the windows as the husband of a library director I can tell you that we will uh make sure that we do not burn the books uh within the media center that's the husband of a library director that was the worst phrase I could I could have used so um I just had a quick comment um I wanted to thank rich and your committee um especially for the fabulous Outreach because I received those two mailers those two flyers

049and I thought they were really well done and very inviting of the community to come in and and help us out with as we move along so thanks for including that and please take that back to your committee uh uh I forgot I was gonna say no it's okay I was I want to thank Rich to us um I just lost it again I'm getting too old uh oh I'm sorry regarding the uh the uh the cost lessons for construction you're working through the value management so uh so as far as the physical layout structure does anything you present tonight gonna change that regard or you're not quite there yet I think you're looking more you talk about geothermal and some other things I got the sense that it's not so much related to changing

050the the layout structure to building reducing classes right because of the so so we're not going to see much of a change really in what you presented from a schematic point of view it's more of materials and other things I hope that's the case right uh and I would say you know I think Treasures has some really good projects over the years uh I've only been here about 24 years so even before my time there's been some good projects but sometimes we tend to take shortcuts here we are at schools you know years later so yeah please um build these in a way that they're flexible so in the future if we need to add on or reconfigure we can actually do that we're not boxed into things and but based on my scene tonight

051in in past iterations it looks like the team's got that nailed down so so again thank you I do want to thank rich and the building committee for all their work I I remember when we interviewed the candidates we had so many people interested and they've been awesome so far so this is great looking forward to the next step so thank you rich thank your team and let me know we appreciate all the work any other questions if I turn over uh Ian well here we go I already have my own microphone thanks always prepared Tim stall it from the somewhere um let's see where to begin um so I think in our last presentation I had asked this question about the fuel sources for the schools and you had mentioned that any kind of

052uh geothermal or solar was off the table and now it's in a diagram for the North End is that and because you had said that it was not priced in in the in the uh cost estimate that we had had a few I guess three months ago so if that's still the case is that just a proposed site for geothermal Wells um or is that something that has the cost has come down or become more reasonable where not just running a gas line for you know gas furnaces would do the trick so um I'm trying to remember that that discussion the last time that we were here the geothermal Fields uh have have been in the basis of design for these schools the overall project budget has a a um a modifier on top of

053the construction cost for environmental or energy efficient enhancements we have selected the geothermal well field as part of that um anything you want to add to that yeah go ahead the um the original budget that was developed by Colliers that went out to a referendum did not specifically delineate uh GL thermal system um that's a multi-million dollar add-on but we have said right from the beginning to the Architects if we can afford it we really would like to do as much as we can the original budget included I believe it was one million dollars per school for Energy Efficiency uh the geothermal system will cost substantially more than that we designed uh both buildings so that they could accommodate a geothermal system uh when we got the pricing back the estimates back for the North

054End School we found we were able to go through and make other changes and reductions and keep the thermo geothermal system for those of you who don't know geothermal system allows the building to be fully electric uh you're not running any gas or propane or anything like that you are picking up well I'm not going to run into it but it's it's an all-electric building the Norton school project at this time still includes a geothermal system we have not yet gone in and looked uh closely at the overage and what kind of reductions have to be made as Dr Solon noted we don't have as much flexibility in making cuts at Norton as we did at the North End School so whether the geothermal system will be able to be kept at that building is

055to be determined yeah thank you um so secondly is the the exterior field so basically anything that's a rectangle I think you'd cut you had asked already Sam but any any rectangular field on the exterior of the buildings are grass fields um I don't see anything for baseball or kickball there is that because they just look to be assumed to be soccer fields or something like that is that a spec that you need to hold to or or because I know both um you know Chapman and Norton currently well Norton not so much that has something that looks like a baseball field but um uh is is that something you just can paint the lines or something and then you have a baseball field or how does how does that work there foreign yeah I

056would say we have those discussions ahead of us uh right now we have we have considerable area that we've designated as recreational play um whether or not we choose one of the fields uh to have a baseball diamond or at least that type of infrastructure um base paths Etc I think that's part of the next round of development so if you recall I can't recall if we had origin conceptual site plans in less detail that we showed tonight the last time we were here I don't believe we had um Fields identified on either Norton or the north end and it's something that we heard loud and clear when we came to this body as well as the council so yeah I bring it up because I remember the like the very preliminary designs I know

057there was a baseball diamond in the top left corner upper left right there yeah right um and so that that brings me to the last thing now um I've mentioned many times I I attended Norton school my son just graduated from Norton school Tim went to Norton school um and so I noticed that the fields you can have one field I guess that would sort of represent what the field is now for the the lower grades it's sort of way up front um and then you have this field off to the side which I guess is an attempt to preserve more of the forest maybe or not because it because right now like you had mentioned the cafeteria when when lunch is finished the kids go right out to the playgrounds either front or back

058brought it from the cafeteria it looks like this time you would have kids going for lunch and then they would have to march across the school to get to that side field over there and so I just was wondering if those positions are final or how how does that how would the the flow be planning to work there so it's something they're either one it's something that we have heard in our working groups we've tried to address by putting some of the place structures uh closer to the cafeteria I think um we have discussed with our landscape architect and civil engineer to try and get some green play area aside from the formal structures uh closer to the cafeteria we've also heard during our working groups that there is a distinction between recess and and

059maybe PE play PE classes outside so I uh I I think we have some some massaging to do with those areas frankly yeah thank you no problem and you know I'm just I'm going to throw this out there why not flip the design at Norton it almost makes sense to have it go the other way but I don't know is it because you wanted you're trying to get those Woodland views there because if not you're facing a neighborhood the other way I guess it's a little bit of that a little bit of where we have our main utilities that are coming to the building closer to the areas that we know that there are the high utility draws or where our physical plants going to be as and where our parking is ETC um so

060we typically want to have our our public and our staff parking close to those more public areas of the building um but yeah that that's at least the reason we think it's a strong reason uh maybe there's a little bit more development in terms of the location of the play areas in relation to the exterior but okay I think that's all I have I like the North End a lot I'll just say that thanks yeah so I I know when we uh voted for uh the the options the very preliminary plan so all kinds of fields at the North End and that was back a couple years ago where a lot of folks thought hey let's suppose many Community fields we can I know Adam mentioned the baseball but I think there's also balance right

061because we couldn't put so many Recreation spaces before they're not covered by the grant right by uh reimbursement so um I always say is continue to have the path there guys are going I think you're doing a great job in the future if if we can't put fields in now as long as things are configured and there's utilities roughed in that we do in the future that's a huge Plus for Treasure because uh we like to have that kind of luxury to expand if we can have a question yeah thank you Johnny with regard to Norton uh the wetlands does that include the wetlands in the north west Corner does that include tree cutting there it looked like there were a couple of spots for trees in your schematic yeah um based on our preliminary

062analysis in the civil engineers analysis um and the wetlands biologist there are currently invasive species that are in those Wetlands so we do have a responsibility to clean that out it's a wetland that is more or less a disorganized storm water retention area for the site already so as part of our formalization of the storm water management system we will be cutting and replanting in that area yes and re regrading so I'm just curious they're gonna be like lawn with trees no it'll be more uh Woods yeah it'll be uh more uh Native species of of wetland species yeah okay thank you I got a couple here um the access road uh is that going to be gated yes um well that's that's the so that's an open question right now tentatively what are you

063thinking in terms of gating it presumably a gate at Sharon Drive so and then something up near Norton so the I um if you don't mind I'll toggle back so um we've had it's part of ongoing discussions that we're having with the district and the way that um the way that bus pick up and drop off currently operates we know at minimum uh this needs to be an emergency access uh and under that scenario we would either be gated or removable bollards uh at at the area by the loading dock and then the area up by Sharon Drive under that scenario we'll still maintain a pedestrian access so kids families that are walking to school will be able to access it but from a day-to-day operation it would the concept is that for an emergency

064access road it will be for emergency vehicles now we say that to say it provides a future opportunity if bus routing shows that um you know having all of our buses come go down on the street as um as they currently do provides um longer longer bus times higher traffic in that area we have the ability to potentially use that as as a secondary way to relieve that congestion that hasn't been vetted yet but it it's it's out there um but as it's currently constituted the assumption is that it would be an emergency area yeah I think the one caveat I want to make there that you know the idea that old buses could potentially be routed out there we anticipate basically eight total buses in the building so it's not like the Macy's Parade

065is going out the back every day at most you know it could be two yeah three but um I just don't want people to become alarmed that oh they're going to buses out the back and it's going to be overwhelming that's not part of the initial plan anyway but you know I think it's fair as Justin said to to not you know cast anything in stone at this relatively early juncture yeah I I understand I appreciate that completely and really where I was coming from is uh the kids walking around on the road basically yeah and Sam asked a good question too like at a fire drill you know can people exit out that way yes there's there's space there for fire egress and they could even uh go down that path towards Sharon there's

066actually a good distance there uh before you get to the road yeah but generally we're not going to be traffic will be accessing the building from that direction right now yeah yeah okay that was that was my question thank you my concern um you mentioned a platform between the kitchen and the gym I can talk I mean the platform if is is a space Oh go ahead I'm just curious is that somewhat soundproof because all I'm imagining is the Norton like curtain and if you've got you know men's adult basketball playing on one side and somebody trying to do this presentation on the other and I'm not asking for something expensive or anything like that but pointing that out in advance like sure Justin's language we want the rooms to be able to perform yeah

067right I'm learning but the um the platform you know quasi-stage sort of space that can be used to uh and sealed off basically on either side to permit uh engagement on either side that doesn't interfere on either side or opened to provide access from both sides like a theater in the round sort of thing if you will but we we do intend on being able to you know designate spaces that that can perform on either side of that thank you if I can just add to that um the technical answer is that we're we are required to maintain STC sound transmission coefficient values within our curriculum spaces so we have folding partitions that have higher elevated STC ratings uh in the 60s for these areas and that includes additional gasketing in between the panels as

068well as below at the top track in the bottom so you're saying it's relatively soundproofed because she's just read a bunch of jerking out unfortunately okay yeah I'm not asking for Perfection yes but that's the idea okay thank you it just to Circle back because I didn't I actually didn't hear all of it I was playing around with these microphones the EIC the idea now is to actually not have it all at Chapman and kind of have it split between Chapman and Norton it very generally is all I'm wondering as we were talking about um is that different type of EIC yes EIC is early intervention Center okay uh which is always been part of the plan and will be at the North End okay um uh the ABA program right now is exclu well

069up until this year was exclusively at Highland okay and we moved some of that program onto the south end of town uh and you know the idea being when we open the new building we'll retain ABA programming on the south end of town closer to students that live in that area and when we redistrict and drop the enrollment from 900-ish at Highland to 700 ish it kind of helps the proportions for special education services if it was exclusively at Highland and you dropped the population to 700 uh it becomes disproportionate to a greater degree so moving some of the ABA services to the Norton makes sense on a lot of levels okay thank you the energy system that you're using you mentioned a modifier to me that invokes an image of this is in addition

070to the building and it's optional that suggests to me that you're building you're playing right now for Norton is to have the Legacy Energy Systems in there whatever it is presumably oil because we don't have gas there right now is that fair to say what I just said so um I think you're covering two different issues I'll try and Tackle them the modifier that I mentioned was in the overall project budget which as uh the NG SPC chair said indicated correctly this was a energy efficient fund that was part of the overall project budget whether or not that is photovoltaics improved insulation values other energy efficient measures I believe the committee and certainly the design team took that as an opportunity for energy enhancement in the buildings we had a presentation at the ngsbc regarding

071different Building Systems and ones that could be both fossil fuel driven or renewably driven and geothermal with heat pumps and chill beam system uh is the the chill beam system was a system that would be consistent whether or not it's fossil fuel driven or renewably driven from geothermal so the options that we're looking at as alternates to the geothermal system for Norton include trying to maintain The Building Systems the end Building Systems and other in other words the chill beam system as much as possible and whether or not you may want to backfill me on this um go ahead so the fuel source will likely be electric so that you can eventually if you use PV it can be you know Carbon free or we may have to introduce a small um gas-fired boiler because

072of the air-to-air exchange heat pumps work well up to a certain degree a certain temperature and when it gets really cold they don't perform as well so that would only be as like a backup in case and that would likely be um propane fired with a small tank either buried on site so our goal and mission is to optimize the the mechanical systems for the to maximize Energy Efficiency and ideally set you up if we can't do it within the project you know first at the construction set you up so that if you do go with a PPA or a photovoltaics in the future you can be carbon free so first swing at it is all electric with geothermal second is a small backup with propane and we haven't really explored all our ones because

073there's a lot of options within those those two areas that we really can look at from a value perspective so I just want to be clear on this I mean I understand that air source heat pumps a lot of them don't do well down below 20 degrees 10 degrees you want to be careful about the bottom but I I hadn't when I've talked to people about Geo that they haven't ever mentioned that because it's kind of like you're just living in your basement and that's where I'm at a little bit of a loss there so and Norton if we can't afford the Geo system okay then it would be the air-to-air heat pumps which would mean all electric and there would be no Geo so when it does get cold we would want a backup

074system of some kind of boiler to to support that so that's that's the plan anyway at this point or at least the strategies so is the standard heating baked into the cost without the modifier oh yeah yep okay that's the part I'm not getting here just speaking just hypothetically if you took that out what's the cost of that instead of the Geo and also the numbers I got from just I'm just yeah I'm not asking you to hold to this by any means yeah but Rich had said a few minutes ago that the number for Geo is more than a million maybe a few million dollars it is yep when I talk to people they said the Geo Wells were probably 700 000. this is pre-inflation no they're they're uh I think in excess of

075two do I have that right Laurel two million for the the Geo field it set itself yep yep okay so we're looking at a combination of maybe a hybrid where we use a little bit more electric to to drive down uh the number of Wells so we're there's there's going to be about seven or eight options um next week on the table to look at to to get us back to budget but not give up everything um okay so I uh I think two last points which is uh solar you're not are you incorporating that in your budget right now no the buildings will be PV ready so the electrical systems will be prepared for it because from my perspective it doesn't make any sense to incorporate that and it can be the way taxes

076work and everything else it just doesn't make sense um sorry I didn't jot down the second question uh oh and um grant funding the IRA has there been a review to look for anything there so that's um in the conversation part of your discussion yeah it's definitely part of the conversation and um um I think we're we're figuring out it out as well as the government is which is the way that they plan to fund these and assess these so um we are familiar with all of the the latest Grant strategies and we're working with the district to monitor those to see if they're they're worth pursuing so yeah yeah and we we also have met um with eversource and those grants are already well underway we've already signed our um mou the district has

077so there's definitely those grants are available to us and we're I think we're in pursuing step path to um which is is the second most aggressive as far as Energy Efficiency so thank you yeah well I think I think there's I said one last question uh because I uh I've been working I've been doing this on my my my current job um will these schools be required to or will they have any EV parking spaces so we're required to have um at minimum EV ready spaces I don't I'm not sure that we've gotten into exactly um what ratio uh there would be we typically in all of our schools currently provide conduit at minimum to Future spaces this project is before the requirement for publicly funded projects to have 20 percent EV charging stations in

078parking lots we're not compelled to meet that requirement so really it's a matter of the the challenge with that particular requirement is when we talk to districts is how do we how do we set up a a system to to allow people to charge it but have kind of a charging mechanism not electrically charging but funding mechanism to fund it so I think those conversations are ahead of us in terms of where and how how many uh there would be in each of the school parking areas thank you so I guess this wraps up into my question would be um and I'm putting my teacher hat on storage space because that's a hot commodity in classrooms so what are we doing about closets and so forth um which would that be the next conversation like

079what are the phase of discussions here geez I don't know I've never heard that concern uh in schools uh so yes um there there are where we're in the process of going from the Ed Speck which is a concept of how much storage there is to an actual making sure is that we're going through a room room by room we're having instructional storage we're having facility storage we're having custodial storage you know the what we don't want to have happen is have one big storage area and then everybody fight over it so there's storage that are that is baked into classrooms proper for everyday storage or teacher storage and student storage then there's the kind of whole building storage that we'll be going through on a room by room the green area yeah so so

080um as Jeff correctly pointed out and I neglected to in part of my description of the our learning communities the areas that are highlighting green are teacher planning areas uh where those are really teacher work rooms for those specific teachers within the learning community so when we get into the room by room we'll talk about exactly what needs to be there in for storage as well more paragraphs yeah just one last point to your point Adam with regard to EV charging as I understand it the infrastructure the financing structures for the infrastructure it's not really settled in the world right now and there's a lot of people going after it coming up with different financing structures some of which they may actually install for free that's that's I've heard from people who are planning to

081do that with startup businesses um and they basically would just you know charge the say 20 cents is whatever Source charges they'll tack on a nickel that'll pay for their infrastructure over time so what I hope you keep in mind is the possibility of not just making it EV ready but as EV ready as possible the governor is talking about you know Banning gas cars in Connecticut 10 years from now or whatever it is I have a I have an EV I have a feeling that it will more and more people will get them over time and so we may want to expand the infrastructure and so really just following on what Tony had said about allowing the um allowing us an easier Pathway to changing what we have over time I think could be

082helpful particularly with that with EVS thank you that's a fair comment thank you thanks I think the rest of the questions uh from the board I do want to on behalf of the board do you want to thank Tech time for being here tonight and also the committee and team performance work and uh again Jeff and then it became a surprised and you know we have a our own uh pack route of documentation on the project which is also a town website so I for anybody interested I believe this is available on the Tom website correct the most recent version please uh take a look bring in some comments to Dr Solomon's email address send them often because he likes reading his emails but I want to just but thank you and uh so we're

083gonna turn over to the next Topic in the agenda which is the opening schools presentation which you're all more than welcome to stay um I'm pretty sure I'll be shorter and this was this was great great great length and uh you covered a lot so but you guys did great yeah well it's hard from the dead normally but he's coming along thank you but it is you know having to talk to teachers over and over again that gets chopped um [Music] thank you I think you know um all right everybody uh thanks for your patience during that presentation I know everybody's really here for the opening of schools report um but no uh we will try and go through this quickly and kind of give everybody a sense of enrollment which certainly will have an

084influence on our school's construction but also you know our vision for the district just kind of reaffirming our goals as a school system we've done quite a bit over the summer and to kick things off for us tonight I want to introduce our chief operating officer Vincent massiana thank you thank you Dr sohen board members welcome back I do um have some quick um items I wanted to update you on and overall we had a very very good summer in School District Operations these are just some of the highlights we did hire 65 new employees and process them through roughly half of those were teachers and the rest were other employees you know ranging from Power Educators to lunchroom and playground AIDS and bus drivers and Food Service staff on the benefit side just three

085quick things new programs that are being launched again funded through the Cigna Wellness Styles we received but we have a roadmap to Wellness challenge for all our employees our participation rate generally speaking in health and wellness has been up thriving five is for all our new employees and we have a wellness ambassador program so that there'll be somebody in every single School building and in some cases multiple to help promote health and wellness Transportation all our buses are rolling we are sufficiently staffed by Deco with their drivers so we're in good shape right now on the technology front we handed out the seventh grade Chromebooks you know again to remind the board members we hand them out in seventh grade and the students keep those Chromebooks through 12th grade we did improve some of our

086classrooms replace the older technology with smart flat panels food and nutrition just I'm sorry everyone's aware there is free student breakfast for all students this year funded by the state there is a new Greenhouse that will be used by a culinary arts program as well as a food service program um on the fiscal Services side our 84.9 billion million dollar budget is in place it's being spent we um are being conservative as usual and you'll hear more about that as we go through the year and up Finance report and we've already started our initial preparations for the 24-25 budget it's hard to believe but it feels like we're always you know building a budget or managing through it so on the facility side we got a lot of of uh you know both major and

087minor projects done there were no shouts no Show Stoppers we opened all our buildings on time I knew cleaning contractor that started July 1 did a very respectable and good job overall there were some challenges and so I just have a few pictures here um and I ask can you tell what's wrong with this pipe that was at the humiston building behind the cinder block wall and I will in the interest of time if you look at the left side of the pipe it looks like a pipe into a fitting and if you look at the right side it looks like it's disintegrated because it did and this is a a condensate you know pipe that takes water from our heating system and runs it back into the heating system hummus then is is heated

088by steam so you know this is what happens after I'm assuming that pipe is a hundred years old it was repaired that larger pipe on the right side of the screen that went below the concrete stairs leading down from hummerston so it was a bit of a mess thankfully it was able to be repaired so these are the types of things that happen in the buildings that that we were able to resolve this summer a few highlights um do a little bathroom we did really what is going to be the final round of bathroom Renovations at Doolittle and by the way if you notice the top section of bathrooms the stall partitions are missing the students do not have to use them that way just one of those material delays um yeah it's you know

089not that communal so um it was not a budget cut and Amy is well aware of it and she's waiting patiently the partitions should be in soon um High School window replacement project the top left and top right that's the same section of building left is the old single pane windows replaced on the right with the double pane low e-glass much much nicer aesthetically but also much better for the rooms because the glass that's installed will keep the heat in longer during the winter and keep the room cooler during the summer months the picture on the bottom right is an inside of a classroom really doesn't do it justice but the inside of the classrooms are much nicer as well and on the left bottom there that is the old main on main office entrance

090looks a lot newer now but we did replace that whole section I know that was a pet project of Mr martellia and it seems like Sam Rosenberg as well these are just some other random shots you know that Dodd Middle School all we did was refinish that floor it looks magnificent top right is the new Greenhouse that's been installed um we will have an official kickoff for all the board members and others will be invited to see what's what's happening in the greenhouse bottom left we upgraded all the parking lot lighting at Highland looks really cool if you want to go visit at night and some of the things you won't notice necessarily that driveway is leading towards the main game field at Cheshire high school and all the way on the right is we

091did a bunch of masonry repairs that nobody would ever see but always important to the maintenance of our building um and last thing that I did want to share with the board tonight is that at Highland where Dr Solon will talk a little bit about enrollment we're making room every everywhere we possibly can we are pretty much just about out of space even though we always squeeze something else in but that top two pictures that is the library resource room is what I called it we cut it in two roughly one-third and two-thirds being used for special education purposes we had to do it so it's no longer part of that Library use space the bottom left picture you'll see there's a sign that says storage which is no longer just storage we were able

092to add three cubicles for our learning support tutors again trying to make use of the space that we have and you could see kind of behind Mr Jeffrey there's these kind of sheer curtains so there's still some storage in there and then on the bottom right is actually one of the South hallways at Highland where you'll see that we added cubicles to be used Again by learning support tutors because the space that they were in had to be used for classroom space so we are and have done everything we possibly can at Highland the enrollment did go up a little bit higher than projected so you'll be hearing more about that starting in with the next planning committee and then the new schools we just covered that with tecton and Ong and you know Mr

093Gusenberg so key date there is that August of 2026 will be in those two new buildings we did quite a bit of work over the summer and that concludes my opening of schools remarks thank you so much any questions okay no certified teaching positions um are open at this time those were all filled um okay that's a newer position though for the record and then uh we do have para educator positions that are open across all the district schools that and that has been the position that is not so much only harder to fill but but harder to to keep we've seen quite a bit of turnover there so we still have about 21 or 22 open positions at this time but the recruiting on the teacher side went went very very well this year

094we're obviously happy to report that okay with that I'll turn it over to miss Solano [Applause] okay so I wanted to just highlight for you some of the summer happenings it seems like we are always planning for the opening of school starting in June and I wanted to share that we have 30 new teachers including our teacher in Residence who was training with us last year we have one new administrator in Jody Rhoden who is our principal over at Norton school as well as our three administrative transfers I wanted to just stress that what a rigorous hiring process we put folks through there are multiple rounds there are screening interviews performance tasks we have writing prompts that we ask people to participate in as well as doing demonstration lessons for our students or students that

095we gather together over the summer so we could see teachers teaching in addition to the reference checks we really do not take hiring lightly here it's one of the most important things we could do for our students so I want to thank mostly the building principals who organize this and see this through over the summer even at the point when they get a call in June or July that they now need to hire someone else and everything needs to change around putting this together so thank you to the principals for their hard work I also want to thank Kelly Grillo and Ryan Murphy and Mike Woods there were umpteen transition meetings for those internal Staffing changes both that started in June and continued through the summer as well as these new folks we also have

096a number of interns and student teachers and I would say we have upwards of 12 of those and Mr Woods conducted an orientation for all of the interns and student teachers earlier this month then everyone's favorite topic the curriculum writing Institute we held that in June that is just a snapshot of all of the folks who participated this year we could barely get everyone on the Highland stage here are some quick photos of all of the folks who are around the tables working on this we're working on authentic real world tasks that are aligned to our strategic objectives of complex thinking and social emotional learning and you could see just even at these tables you have a special ed teacher from the high school sitting next to an elementary Reading and math specialist sitting next

097to a math teacher so we had lots of great conversation and they got an inordinate amount of work done in the week after school start after school ended we have another picture here of the science satellite training that we did around the ngss we had folks from the Connecticut Science Center take about 2018 teachers through storyboarding of lessons and units which also enabled us to have vertical articulation from elementary to Middle to high school and everyone reported that it was incredibly helpful and that information was shared out in PD and then lastly shout out to both Mary gadd and Kristen pelz who worked with our science department chair on a chemistry lesson so it was great to get deeply involved in that so folks were really embedded in that work um then you know that

098we have a new teacher induction program this is just the kickoff of our orientation for new staff members so on day one Vin Jeff and I took all of our new teachers on a tour of Cheshire we took a bus tour to the new schools to where the new schools I'm sorry to wear the new school properties are and where our existing schools are and showed everyone the lay of the land as well as talk to them about everything that is Cheshire to to welcome them on the second day Scott Conway and Tom Lee walk spend half day with our teachers really getting them all the logins and passwords and Technical exposure that they need to kick off the year and then this year Erica bordnero worked with all of our elementary teachers to get

099them ready with instructional practices to support social emotional learning our Middle School and High School folks spent some time with Mike Anderson who's a consultant that you've heard us speak of before I'll talk more about that in a second and then lastly our building level orientation is run by our principals where our new teachers meet with them get the lay of the land and then in the afternoon our elementary folks spend time with Kevin Hanlon and his team getting people up to speed with our curriculum this is the beginning of the process and then we have follow-up meetings both at the building level at regular intervals and at the district to support our teachers during that August time we offered professional learning opportunities for all of our teachers and they had choices of professional learning

100one was to attend an in-person workshop with Mike Anderson another was to select one of the books that we we've chosen to focus on for an individual reading and the other was a self-paced online course so we're happy to report that people from all walks are all walks all levels all subject areas were present for that and these pictures you can see you know physics teachers working with band teachers working with our new teachers working with elementary teachers and even some of our literacy support teachers were there at that session so I I want to just take this moment in talking about the planning to also recognize all the work that goes in over the summer from our principals to our coaches to our Middle School Division leaders and our department chairs to really plan

101for professional learning on the 25th when people come back that that doesn't happen by accident and it takes a lot of concerted effort to make sure that we have a good and robust professional learning session when teachers come back so what's new for this year teacher evaluation is not new but the platform that we're using is we are going with Vector Solutions temporarily for one year it's a platform that we're familiar with because it's where all of our training videos are housed and we will be using that as the as the platform to house all of the evaluations the reason why we had to switch is because the one that we were using was free from the state and then that that ended that funding dried up so we had to find something in this

102interim year the other thing that's new oh goodness then I thought you changed that whoops I handed it to you I feel like I've been pranked so I will say that the real name of this assessment is the pass and it stands for a pupil attitudinal survey about your attitude towards self and school and this is um you've all heard about it before this year we are implementing it it is to proactively identify and address non-academic barriers to learning um and then our last one is about purposeful play and Kim dessert is spearheading that effort as well um along with me to to Really partner with eastcon and to offer training and coaching to all of our kindergarten teachers well that was interesting thank you any questions about any of that okay thanks like uh

103education wise uh age-wise you know um it ran the gamut but I think you remember us talking about the fact that the elementary team we at the elementary principals and I had gotten together earlier in the year and and we were very happy to be able to get an early jump on hiring this year and at the elementary level we've hired some outstanding new teachers so they're going to need our support but they um just had excellent recommendations from their um their student teaching and their the principals who they worked with so we're very excited some of them were fresh out of school all that way but I think this year more than any other we found candidates that were just exceptional who were brand new thank you Marlene uh it's not the first time

104Mr salamini's had to censor a meeting probably won't be the last but uh anyway um just want to you know kind of go through the opening of schools it was really exciting we kicked off convocation our theme this year was The Wizard of Oz if you haven't seen the video yet it's available on our YouTube channel um I I was duly impressed unfortunately we filmed this well I was doing a speaking engagement in South Korea and had to write the script before I went out of town and the filming was all done while I was away and Marlene killed it is Dorothy and we even had our own Vin man Vin made his acting debut so if you haven't seen it yet you got to check it out it's really funny um but it's also

105meaningful because it gave us the opportunity to talk about uh the Tin Man not having a heart but social emotional learning is a key part of what we do in the Cheshire Public School Systems the uh scarecrow not having a brain but we are grounded in complex thinking and uh the the lion not having courage it gave us the opportunity to talk about self-efficacy and the belief that teachers uh can make a significant difference for the kids that they have in front of them every day and that they do so as much as it was fun it was meaningful I want to thank Mr perigini for coming and addressing our teachers and staff as well as Ann Harrigan for being there we appreciate seeing you guys at conflict convocation and appreciate the support is always

106one of the real Marquee highlights was the celebration of our teacher of the year Catherine zukis a first grade teacher at Norton incredibly deserving teacher and um she really gave an inspirational talk highlighting students from from the past and really touching upon the what the value of a relationship with the teacher and the student is and how that really shapes lives so it was really inspirational Christina view from Doolittle was our para educator of the year we've for the last several years highlighted a para educator for the incredible work that they do really among the young sung Heroes that make a difference for our students and staff so congratulations to Christina so I'm going to go through real quick the enrollment at each School highlighting the projected enrollment when I say projected enrollment nasdec gave

107us projections last spring for what we could anticipate in the 23 4 school year we'll start with Darcy oops going the wrong direction there some quick shots of the opening of school to see little ones it's always so much fun to to see them enter our schools for the start of school experience we projected 35 students ended up with 29 so that was uh percentage-wise one of the larger differences that we had there are still 114 students in our Pre-K programs at Darcy so we are quite busy there a lot of those students with more substantial needs and we do a tremendous job supporting those students and families at Chapman kicking off the school year we had a projected enrollment of 377 and have 370 students enrolled relatively close on a percentage basis there but

108under it do little our annual New Year countdown we had a projection for 546 students and wound up with 531 about 19 students per class I want to say been our our budget was 18-8 was that overall for the district 18. Highland I think if you look close enough Scott will tell you can see people enrolling in the background um so our projection there was for 878 students we had 891 this is a building that as you know and been highlighted in some of the summer Works summer work that we had to really modify the school to accommodate the growth that we've seen um you know I think we really would love to try and get through this without adding Portables uh that's starting to look a little bit more difficult this enrollment is in

109spite of the fact that there's a new building a new construction project off of dickerman soderman way I think it is sort of in drive that we unilaterally moved that neighborhood from Highland before people started to move in to Chapman school so you know as you know there's still plenty of construction and availability in the area so we're we're closely monitoring this as you can imagine it's crazy to think with some of these buildings there are not a lot of years left in these buildings before we we move into new new spaces very exciting so the enrollment here we're up a little bit there as well 421 projected 432 actual with a average of 18.8 Todd the first days of Middle School so about the projection from NASDAQ 640 to 631 a little bit lower

110treasure High so we're actually up one student at Cheshire high school over the projection at 12 14. so our overall enrollments summary the projection at 4225 we're down 12 students as a district I want to remind you that these projections kind of came from a couple of places a few years ago slammed back in 2022 uh they developed these you'll see in the top of the slide they're high projections they had low projections medium and high projections and if you remember last year we were outpacing the high projections uh and so in response to that NASDAQ adjusted their projections as well for this coming year so we have really two sets of projections the old slam ones that were really aggressive uh two years ago and then NASDAQ from last year and when you look

111at those projections we were we're close there in you see the NASDAQ projections to the far right where we're kind of spot on to where that was and that those projections uh continue to add students to the district over time eclipsing 5 000 about 10 years from now and I don't think if you drove around the district saw the housing saw the people moving in uh it would be hard to argue that so snapshot of the enrollment opening of schools piece but each year at this time we affirm our strategic address objectives this is something we really worked hard entering last school year to revisit and revamp actually the last couple years we've done a lot of work around this in just in February this year we updated policy to reflect some of that work

112so our mission stays the same in partnership with families in the community we'll prepare all students to meet the challenges of an ever-changing Global Society but providing high quality educational opportunities that Inspire lifelong learning and service to others and so we revised our performance standards uh several years ago to um address really what the needs are is our world evolves these continue to be a lot of research on this over the summer these continue to be contemporary skills that'll be in high demand well into the future even as we continue through this technological Revolution and AI these are the things our kids need to know and be able to do obviously we focus a lot on complex thinking and social emotional learning so this is our theory of action on social emotional learning we had

113this theory of action before it was cool uh and I think you know um we are going to talk a little bit Marlene already mentioned pass but uh we're excited to move into a new space where we're actually assessing how our students are growing in this domain which is really tricky to do a lot of times people assess things that are easy to test that's why you know a lot of the old standardized testing was so poor it was easy to grade easy to test but those aren't the skills that are make people successful today these are the skills so how do we we start to work in those areas and we've certainly done that for the last few years and complex thinking and I think we're kind of we've kept caught up in terms

114of the assessment on the social emotional side but the practices have always been there you know and this year we spent a lot of time as Marlene Illustrated in her presentation about people working on how to embed the development of social emotional skills into the everyday work and so you know you think about what does that mean teaching students how to be effective collaborators before you just put them into a group is an example you know you'll hear people say you know kids these days they don't know how to X Y or Z okay then show them teach them how to do that and so that's what we try and do and develop in our students to support their social emotional skills which ultimately connects into their mental health and well-being and their ability to

115to be successful in school and I don't think there's an accident that you know the more that we've focused on these things the the you know it's tied to growth in our achievement so complex thinking uh as we talked a little bit about you know we want our students to be able to be complex reasoners and have strong inquiry problem solving skills explore ideas generate ideas be creative this is the work of the contemporary student and what does this look like you know in terms of what students are being asked to do in the classroom this reflects high quality instruction so when we do instructional rounds we do our learning walks these are the things that we're looking at what are what what's the work that students are being able to do we're now looking

116for compliance we're not looking for you know um just you know how how engaged kids are but are they doing these things you can be really engaged doing meaningless work but are you doing this work um so the dividends of that effort we've elevated ourselves to the eighth best overall smarter balanced performance in Connecticut for the K-12 districts we had the second best overall performance in durg B Madison was ahead of us they spend 3 900 per student more than we do I don't illustrate that to say other anything other than I think we we have tremendous value in our school system we have the fourth best Statewide Improvement in growth rate so our growth rate is the percentage of students who met their growth Target uh and we improved by 13 this year that

117was one of the goals that um we had as a school system for the year to improve math and uh reading um growth rates and those took a substantial jump I illustrate the fact that you know fourth best amongst the districts that had at least 100 students in each grade there were districts who outperformed us who literally had 27 kids that they were testing kids across sixth grade levels so you know looking at districts that could be close to considered our peer group with 600 and we have more than 1200 students we we did exceptionally well there we ranked 31st or 32nd um on the SAT performance uh 15th in Connecticut for the ngss assessment we've shown really strong growth in science and we have our highest ever rating on niche.com I know you've heard

118me say before that it's not you know psychometrically the the you know best measure of how great a school system is but a lot of people who are looking to move do check that and so you know we've done well there as well so what are we focusing on uh for 2023 for this is not like an ultra comprehensive list I mean Marlene talked about uh play and that was part of our message at convocation as well the purposeful play it all grades all levels adults it's meaningful there's growth that occurs there and a lot of those social emotional skills that are so valuable but we are continuing particularly at the high school level about engaging students that in classes that feature Active Learning and emphasize those you know like seven skills that you saw

119earlier around complex thinking we started to do a more intensive focus on that last year particularly in math and science and it's really exciting to see the transformation just from last year in the fall to the end of the year how the classroom looks different when you go in and the things that kids are doing are different than they used to be it's not so much sit and get but there's so much active dialogue about what they're doing active problem solving it's it's really powerful and I think we're going to continue to see tremendous growth there because it's such fun and engaging and challenging learning and then you know really as I mentioned before um I don't want to repeat it and make a pass of myself but the social emotional learning and growth thing

120is really a big deal Marlene will be beat like a pinata for like the next three months for having that mistake in the slide and so it'll all be in our pleasure so join us in that because she's uh a good egg and and takes it well but uh you know that that should not be for me that's only a fun piece but sure as heck not the takeaway I have from the work that she led this summer uh was insane the curriculum institute again is is something that's so powerful for our staff and I know you heard it before the the value that they the teachers say brings to their work that makes all this incredible stuff happen in throughout the school year that they're focused and they have that time to dedicate one

121of the things I talked about in convocation was ensuring that our teachers have time to step away from everything they're doing in deeply focus on creating powerful learning experiences which is hard to do on the fly if you're trying to do that the night before a lesson you it's not going to happen you get too much going on and so the fact that you know I don't know another District that takes the time for a week over the summer to pull people together and really focus on powerful learning experiences that you guys have seen it's it's really pretty special stuff so that really concludes our opening of schools report and I think just kind of gives an update on the board's goals that we've identified and kind of reaffirmed last year in terms of complex

122thinking and social emotional learning in the you know future direction of the the school system so with that um you know I'll take any thoughts feedback questions uh whatever you'd like okay yes sir yeah what's the criteria for the teacher of the year the parent educator of the year is that like uh who votes so there is a nomination process for that that um we solicit nominations for both of those recognitions uh early winter and people will submit a nomination our administrative team calls through the nominations and um we put candidates before a committee who includes uh usually past winners as well and so you know like Marlene and myself and some of the past winners of those Awards will sit on the teacher of the year and um Robin Ann and Marie Broadway Christina

123somebody will sit with the para Educators and interview those folks and holy cow are those difficult decisions to settle on one person because uh the the cast is always incredibly talented thank you [Music] so we uh before we get into the affirmation of the studio plan I just wanted to thank Dr Sone and his team and all the administrators teachers here tonight for a successful opening through the school year I know it's uh I was there a convocation it's always great to see the excitement in your new faces and everybody being excited to see those smiling faces show up on day one and from my understanding what relatively I don't say uh a cakewalk but I went relatively smoothly a lot of smiling faces so thank you thank you for your work into the summer

124as well and please let your colleagues know that we appreciate all the effort you put into and thank you guys good job well done so we we have um no old business but we have one new business sign which is essentially the affirmation the Strategic plan which we do have in our packets uh it was also attached in our agenda and our email I hope you have a motion in front of us yeah and talking to Carol it doesn't require a formal motion it's just you know this is where we go if there's an objection or something we could take it in policy auditing objections to what was just presented on the studio plan that we talked about since 2019. or any questions let me do it okay um just in going through the report

125I there were areas that um I guess I would like to see more data through the year um coming out of the office out of your office Jeff and that would be um you know things like um can we get kind of an overview of the past data without just regular updates on what you're finding with those absolutely and then also um discipline reports on a more regular basis um just you know just so we have a sense of of how the kids are responding to things sure yeah thank you good points the past data just for everybody's benefit because we we didn't really go into that detail here that's administered twice a year K through 12. so uh you know we'll have that data after we do the initial Administration in the fall I'm

126sure we'll talk about it a curriculum committee and then the discipline day that we could do at the end of every quarter I will admit some delinquency on that last year but uh I will definitely make a point of making sure you get that at the end each quarter thank you thank you seeing as there are other questions I think I'll Mr yeah I just want to comment real quickly um that the uh affirmation uh as uh Dr Solomon had mentioned before was reviewed and approved by the board and policy committee last year so it remains unchanged from then if that's my correct interpretation okay thank you likewise in the past uh survey was reviewed by curriculum uh including some of the questions being asked so we're looking forward to uh seeing the student sentiment

127you know the fates points looking forward to that any other comments questions okay if you have them but we'll uh we'll let people call home tonight so being there's no new business and no open questions I'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn 10 second in by Andrew all those in favor as unanimous thank you the meetings adjourned thank you everyone for staying tonight try