001hi I'm Sharon Houck a 424 Cardinal Lane and I have something to say about something else but I just wanted to address that uh issue and I had heard it was a survey on safety and safety in the school as far as like bullying but the first question was what gender were you and they gave you for your choices and someone I know in the Middle School spoke up and said oh there's only boys and girls and he was sent to the office okay that's not really what I was going to talk about I want to address the issue of school safety in light of the latest school shootings I have questions to ask but I just wanted to make some comments I know you can't make comments about what I'm talking about this would
002be a major concern this should be a major concern of all parents and school officials there have been 377 school shootings since Columbine in 2022 there's 34 four students and adults died while more than 43 000 children were exposed to gunfire in school just in 2023 there have been 14 school shootings I have a question about how Cheshire is protecting our schools and students because we must be proactive what safety measures are in place at each School are there trained security officers in each School are you working with the police department to keep the school safe I hear there's a security person in the middle school and high school but what about the elementary schools these are soft targets 93 percent of School shooters have planned their tax in advance in four out of five
003cases of the School shooters at least one other person has knowledge of an attacker's plan but has failed to report it meant also so this is an issue that we can address and I'll go on further a little bit about that mental health mental health is the one factor that's an issue with these School shooters what education plans do you have in place to make students and children and teachers aware of signs of individuals with aggressive or mental problems or potential threats and how to react to them Mass violence is caused by many social and psychological factors what is the ratio of students to counselors a psychiatrists and social workers especially in the middle and high schools what are your access controls do you have a method of prevention to gain access to the school
004are all doors secured at all times we know that there was one case there was a case where they wasn't secured and there was a shooter that came in how do you know that these are secure uh secured doors and and everything what about the access for vendors and delivery people another thing she was training in drills are there enough drills in place for each School are all Personnel included including substitutes and visitors aware of the drill procedures I bring up these issues and questions for the peace of mind we all want in light of these horrific school shootings so thank you for attention it's something to start thinking about thank you Sharon uh actually Adam wanted to provide some information to you but if I can ask a favor I I took down as
005many notes as I could I didn't got most of your questions would you mind emailing thank you Anna do you want to give some details yeah I just wanted to comment um a lot of the detail that you're looking for uh our policy committee did an extensive um I guess testimony from our security consultant I think it was December 2021 unfortunately it was after another school shooting where um I had asked the consultant to come in to kind of explain to us our own security procedures and a lot of the um um I guess soft procedures that we take that aren't you know that don't deal with armed Personnel I guess um so that that's over we did over two hours uh with that person so I believe it's uh December 2021 and that's on
006videotape that's on YouTube on the Cheshire Public Schools so you can watch that for additional information of billions of dollars that were addressed to school issues so I don't know whether their grants issued so I don't know whether you're aware of it yes would you mind getting some of that detail Mr Messianic that we do have well thank you for the questions and I I certainly understand the concerns you know I think I know I could speak for everyone here these are important issues that uh not only do we worry about what but we've been aggressively addressing you know many of the things that you asked about are on our checklist and and we would check most of the boxes the one we won't check right now is that we do not have an SRO
007at all our schools we do have one assigned to the high school and the middle school but they do float through the other schools I will also tell you that we have a district-wide school security task force that includes not only administrators and some other key personnel that work for the schools but our fire chief our fire marshal three members of the police force including the two are sros and an additional officer we meet regularly we're Drilling in the schools every school has a drill every single month and the drill is not just a plain fire drill so we we do a lot and we have taken advantage of the school security Grant programs in fact there were four rounds I believe that were previously available we did receive substantial funds in all four rounds
008and we are applying for the fifth round of grant funding which is has a deadline of April 28th so we have plans to apply for that so it I understand and I I can tell you that we're doing everything that we think we should be doing and we'll continue to invest the funds that need to be invested that is a priority for us hope that helps I I think assistant superintendent Marlene Salon I wanted to give some additional information but what I would add is we had a secure open Forum on security four years ago yeah that was really well attended by the public at the Cheshire high school a lot of great ideas came out of their concerns uh since there are a number of things have been done I think we touched upon
009security earlier to school year I'm just wondering you know we could plan this out for this fall but it might be worthwhile to have a may not a form at one of our business meetings uh maybe at the start of school year just to recap some of the safety measures in place and get out the parents because you know we just shootings and valves in general seems to not go away and I don't think we should just be talking about these things when these things happen but for peace of mind for parents there's a lot of work happy eye scenes we don't share a lot of details because we don't want to publicize the perpetrators you know most of our plans but we can certainly cover what's been done today that's reasonable so I have
010it to do to work with the board to get that on one of our meetings uh if not the end of the year we get to start a school year just refresh what we're doing thank you for bringing that up Miss Solano join us yeah I'll just add that I I appreciate all of your public comment about this topic because we are the folks who are in those schools every day and it is equally concerning to us it is as it is for you and your children your children we have a number of additional things in place and I won't go into all of them because this would be a very long meeting but um we have what's called speak up which is a a tip line where parents can email us and we have
011gotten emails from parents it's Anonymous we're able to follow up on tips or about concerns that either a child expresses or an adult expresses or a Community member expresses and I think that's really important when you talk about prevention and how people do hear about some of these things before something happens so we put that into place about a year ago when you talk about Mental Health this year we implemented mental Teen Mental Health first aid for all of our sophomores and over the summer our teachers were trained in that and also at our last curriculum committee meeting we heard from the school counselor and the principal at the middle school about a program called signs of suicide where they're not just talking about the signs of suicide but rather about all of the things
012that Encompass mental health because kids oftentimes talk to their friends before they tell an adult and their the training is about contacting an adult to get some help all of our doors are kept secured and locked under Mr Maciano's leadership we've got biometric readers on all of the buildings so it really is a very secure campus and when we have visitors come into the building like a vendor that needs to be pre-set up and pre-screened and even at that we're scanning driver's license to check for any type of it's like a mini background check I'm probably batching that a little bit but driver's licenses are scanned so I think it's important you to know that every member of our staff has been trained both physically in person in um in those types of different lockdown
013drills and how to be proactive and they also receive video Based training so that is across all of our buildings and we do have plans in place that have existed for at least a decade to make sure that our substitutes know what the plan is should something happen so that's just to elaborate on a few thank you and uh I also want to add uh Anna reminding me that I believe at the next policy committee meeting which is going to be Tuesday May 9th at 6 30. I think the committee will be discussing the topic of survey questions to see if the policy is needed to work on that so um I don't know if it's been the agenda's out yet but the meeting is going to be May 9th at 6 30 just for
014reference would anyone else like to address the board no Miss Bates okay no I said what anybody else like the address to board by this day there's a policy community meeting May 9th where they might be talking about survey questions absolutely bad mental health is not good I agree thank you that being said if there's no other members of the public thank you for being here we always look forward to hear everything and again the more we here the more we can help so thank you please stay tuned on these topics uh up up next we have reports our standing committees starting with curriculum uh Miss ham thank you uh we met this past Monday at um on March 13 2023. um we heard a number of items pretty good oh God yes no we
015approved those March 13th minutes because we met on April 17th yes okay anyway um first up was a discussion of a new um platform to uh handle Student Success plans we are going to move from Naviance the old standby to something new called School links uh the uh Michelle um katuchi went through all of the um features of School links and they're almost too numerous to mention just rest assured that it is a far superior project product and um much more user friendly much more comprehensive and much less expensive um we also went on to discuss um Marlene solano's request for twenty two thousand dollars in um in a peck Jones Grant to replace uh Tex and decoder decodable texts and books in the kindergarten and first grade libraries and we will have a motion
016on that once we're done with the report um let's see we also discussed the school Business Partnership uh and that group met on April 6th and was a collection of local businesses faculty um and it they generally came to the conclusion that they want to share Collective information efforts and individual stories from school and local businesses with the parents of both the middle and high school students on College and Career Pathways just to see if we can encourage more students to take on to not be afraid of pursuing careers before College if that's where they want to go in assuring parents that it is a perfectly adequate path to take um Miss Lano then kind of gave us a great overview of the March 17 professional learning day and um just kind of debriefed us
017on some of the more successful sessions next we had an update from Mr Hanlon on the grades six seven and eight math resource and at this stage I can say stay tuned because it's coming soon we ought to be able to have the text uh it should be proposed to the board at the May 8th meeting we covered a couple of out-of-state field trips one being the robotics team to Houston Texas what you heard about tonight and another next year at this about this time um the chorus will be going to Virginia Beach and um that pretty much covered it we adjourned and went home so we do have a motion um so if it's okay I'd like to read it okay um recommendation that the Cheshire Board of Education approves the use of Peck
018Jones funds in the amount of twenty two thousand dollars to enhance the availability of quality reading materials in the classroom libraries for students in grades kindergarten and grade one second is there a second and seconds any discussions yeah uh what's a decodable book or decodable materials don't forget how it's for two sure as a result of the reading waiver that we had worked on this year and partially we knew this was coming we want to make sure that there's books that have some phonics in them and that they have multi-syllabic words that kids can pull apart and read and practice so it's both because of the waiver and because we have a lot of books that went home during the pandemic that either came back really worn which Ann commented on that we love to
019see worn books but also that some of them didn't come back and it's really time to replace them so the idea is that with this piece of Grant funds we would we would get the kindergarten and grade one libraries in really good shape and then we would be able to focus on second and third fantastic so the motion on the table is at the Cheshire Board of Education approves the use of Peck Jones funds in the amount of twenty two thousand dollars to enhance the availability of quality reading materials in the classroom libraries for students in grades kindergarten and grade one all in favor thank you that ends my report any questions for Faith or hand on curriculum awesome thank you up next is finance committee Mr gripple thank you Mr chair um I have
020uh as always will defer to Mr maciano for the report thank you Mr grippo good evening ladies and gentlemen uh the board members do have the finance report as of March 31st we have nine months of the budget year completed we have either expended or encumbered 92 percent of our 80 million six hundred sixty four thousand four hundred twenty dollar budget and as we wind down the last three months of the year we meet every two weeks you know with the with an internal team including the superintendent Miss Solano Miss Carrie and several members of my staff just to make sure that we are ready to close the books and balance our books which we will do and also make sure that we wind down the grants and we've expended what we need to expend
021against the grants because grants either expire in one or two years depending on the grant so we're in good shape as we um you know close the books on March so we will continue to update the board as we go through the next couple of months and are starting to put together lists of final you know year-end expenditures as board knows we hold back expenditures just to make sure that we can budget the budget so that we can balance the budget and then in the last couple of months of the year we do make commitments to purchase equipment supplies Furniture do maintenance works so we'll be in the midst of preparing that over the next couple of months and I can do the medical benefits report now if you'd like and then we can come
022back for questions that's fine okay board members also have the medical benefits update as of March 31. claims for the month although they did increase in March they went up to 979 000 267 which is up from the prior month of about 770 000 however that is that 000 is in line with the million dollars per month of expected claims in the month of March if you look at the report in the top section where we show the additions added for the year I highlighted two areas one is stop loss reimbursements which increased 169 000 in March so year to date we've received 403 882 and stop-loss reimbursements and those are for claims that exceed the 175 000 threshold and then right below that prescription rebates we received from Cigna uh increased by a hundred
023thirty eight thousand dollars in March so year to date we've received 432 000 245 in rebates these are all part of what we consider when we do prepare the budget but the good news this evening is that through March we actually increased the medical benefits trust fund balance by 281 00080 so now as of March 31st it sits at one million 616087 that's 1.62 months worth of claims we were expecting based on the budget to end the year where we started in the medical benefits Reserve fund about 1.3 million so we're running a little bit ahead of that hopefully that continues to hold over the remaining three months of the plan year so it's good news and and we just hope that that Trend continues I do expect claims to go up a little bit
024as we get into April May June but hopefully they stay within that one million dollar per month um expected claim budget so that's medical benefits and finance thanks um I do have uh one question on the utilities that the constellation and eversource so I read today or yesterday that eversource thinks it can find savings and it can things that can reduce rates um are does that mean we are we what if they come in lower are we just gonna it's a gamble we're playing or I mean is there any I guess we can change at any point or what's what right now we are locked through November okay of 2023 so the first few months of the new budget year we are locked for a supply based on these rates that um are shown in
025the narrative okay after that if the eversource rate is better we can switch I will tell you based on experience we usually do better by bidding it out and finding another supplier whether it's constellation or some other supplier that's out there okay so unlike the regular customer they private citizen customer we are not able to do the switch arounds well not every month because we did lock okay try and keep a lower rate and you know we're in through November at a at about a nine Cent per kilowatt hour rate which is much better than eversource's commercial rate right now so I I doubt that even if ever Source drops their rate they're going to get us in at nine cents so relative to where the market is today you know we're in pretty good
026shape now that we've got these locks in place you know we got through the last three months where we were on a variable rate and we didn't do badly okay and on the medical benefit fits this is just an observation I went back to see where we were March a year ago and I know you know this but we were at one million 291 a thousand seventy eight dollars so I'll take 979 000 any day um could you just you just mentioned something about the stop loss reimbursement um said something about five hundred thousand dollars could you refresh my memory on what that is we can only get no no no no we were relying on five hundred thousand dollars in total stop loss reimbursement for the year when we prepared this year's budget and
027we're at four hundred three thousand eight eighty two so if if it does go up to five hundred thousand it just improves the trust fund balance and again it's a double-edged sword when we have a lot of stop-loss reimbursements that means on the other side we may pay higher premiums but this year even on the stop loss basis this even if we hit 500 000 in claims you know we've paid between the town and Board of Ed well over a million dollars for the that insurance coverage so we're running pretty good on the stop loss as well okay thank you you're welcome Sam go ahead then uh just I I don't remember if we caught this but this is glaring at me on the itemized substitute intern line the percentage at 161.9 do we have
028some leaves of absences that we're covering It's a combination of not just leaves but um also um pers professional development coverage that we provide we use substitutes and then you know the other thing that I will say is even though it's not in the same section some of the substitute costs that are reflected in the certified salaries are actually to cover some of the instructional assistant or the para educator costs so you know that is something that you know it that internally you know Marlene and and Jeff and others you know do look at and do work to manage to try and keep that number as low you know as we possibly can and you know we we don't have Subs that we don't need you know you need the sub coverage whether it's to
029do PD or to cover absences or to cover leaves well that's my follow-up question do we have a substantial absence problem here from teachers I don't know what that explains here that's why but thank you I don't know that we have a substantial absence problem I think for part of the year we still had folks who you had coveted you were out that was certainly much more limited we do have some additional FMLA this year and we also have a shortage of interns which sure they cost but when you don't have an intern who can be there day in and day out to provide sub coverage than your billing for Subs so that you can get them to come in so it's when we've looked at it and we've delved into sort of you know
030delved in a little bit more into that data It's a combination of all of those things and we do just you know just add we do um a quarterly report of attendance and distribute it to all the administrators and you know we do a review review it to make sure that you know if someone's absences are excessive you know we we address it um Finn um this used to this I guess luckily isn't a very popular subject anymore but it used to be and that's out placement costs and I just happen to notice that we're at 92 percent um does that mean we think we have Roy we have another year where we have a handle on out placement costs because sometimes that can be a surprising uh I'm very happy that our app placement
031costs really the last three years have been within budget and this year looks quite solid that 92 percent you know does consider what we expect to pay for the remainder of the year so right now no surprise is again this is part of our bi-weekly you know internal budget discussions you know miss miss Robin and Carey does update us on expectations so there are in there are fluctuations in and out but right now we're looking certainly good for the rest of this year and next year we've budgeted in line with this year so right now it's early but it looks good for next year as well thank you you're welcome brother uh any other questions for finance okay um I will conclude the finance report thank you Mr maciano thank you Adam uh up next
032is planning Mr McAuley sure all right good evening everyone uh we had a virtual planning committee meeting on Monday of this week um where we had energia come and do a presentation to the committee um now we're looking at obviously there's a lot of capital expenditures coming down the pike in The Five-Year Plan so we're trying to identify some potential alternative methods of financing those um so we had the meeting previous to this which I wasn't at the last Board of Education meeting to report on we had Johnson Controls come and talk to the group um and then this meeting we had energia come out who met with us um so what energy it is is they are a owner's representative for energy performance contracts kind of like what we did about 10 years ago
033here to identify some um projects within the school district for Energy savings um and then could get a little bit more into that if anybody has any questions on that but I think everyone's pretty well aware of what was done during that period um so energia would come come in they would take a look at all of our school buildings and come up with potential plans and cost savings that could be identified at no cost to the district so we're pretty interested in seeing what that proposal looks like so I believe next steps are they're going to be putting together a proposal what that looks like and then coming in actually doing an assessment of our school buildings and identifying projects and where they can or can't help us in a capital expenditures to go
034the way of energy performance contract versus straight bonding to do some of the work that needs to be done in the schools then you want to add anything not only that the goal here is just like the First Energy performance contract if we can find enough projects where the Energy savings pays to finance the project it would not have to be you know bonded and funded through the more traditional Capital means the first project we did we did in the schools about eight million dollars worth of infrastructure projects which we would not have done that quickly it was done in a one one and a half year span of time so we're hoping that you know if if they do the do this review that they will find that savings and it'll give us an
035opportunity to get some of these projects done more quickly and that was the that was the pretty much the basis of the meeting we didn't cover any other um items on the agenda that evening I don't know if um Tim were Sam of anything to add um yeah I don't think you touched on it just in terms of if we engage with energia you know depending on what the cost would be um we might normally go out to an RFP request proposals from people but this is set up a little bit differently um first of all correct me if I'm wrong we can engage with them they'll do a preliminary review at no cost if we decide to take it further beyond the owner's rep helping us and actually engage a contractor for a project
036uh then energy it would get paid and that cost would be baked into the performance contract um nonetheless I think it's still appropriate to for everybody to know it's not like we're steering something to this company that we know the town the schools do have a relationship with energy but one of the things that's helpful to us from my perspective just knowing that we're getting a uh not only a good service which I'm confident they would give that good service because we worked with them before but also a fair price if we got to that point energy is engaged with CCM the Connecticut conference and municipalities which is basically a Consortium a Statewide Consortium it's not 169 towns but it's more than 160 the towns maybe 165 the last I looked I mean I I
037think it's most of the towns in the state of Connecticut and basically they did all this they they went through the process my understanding is they went through the process of looking at different vendors they found the one that they thought was most appropriate for you know towns across the state and then through CCM where we would be working with energia effectively I mean We're working directly with energy but the way the uh the way the we came to work with them was funneled through this CCM process this vetting process so this sounds very similar to I can't remember the name of the company right we're over the course of 20 years we're paying they're they're getting paid back essentially the savings from the work so a summer situation same that that's the goal would
038be to do the same thing accomplish that same Financial goal and get the infrastructure improvements that we need and if energya does do the review and the numbers don't work then we won't go forward um unless there's a financial structure that enables us to look at it differently like maybe we put some Capital into the project but the Energy savings offset would be better than us just going out and bonding it I think it's great I just want to thank the plan committee for and miss messiana and the team for thing outside the box because a lot of Capital Improvements just a couple notables so so question uh Andrew a few meetings back you were very concerned about the amount of capital or bonding for school projects and I asked you know when the next
039phase of modernization did the planning committee talk about that at all okay two meetings ago we did um but this was a sole single purpose meeting so that is still on the agenda and again just there's a that the energy savings there's a number of things that I think we need to gear up for the coming school year so I appreciate the team working on this for for Tim I couldn't help but I was going to bring it up there in superintendent's update but uh for Tim's edification the Appropriations Committee believed that passive did going on the budget this week and I'm staying in Hartford however there's one piece in there that caught my attention and I didn't see the whole thing yet but uh they've uh proposed 10 million dollars each fiscal year 24
040and 25 for matching funds for Federal grant for purchase release of zero Mission electric buses and charging infrastructure so we'll see if that actually comes through tuition alcatine them in the governor but just like bring it up thank you unfortunately it won't go that far that one's still on the list it's Just One Last point I don't know if this was mentioned but energia was formerly known as ECG yes and they were the owner's rep they were they are the owner's rep for our current yeah correct current Esco performance contract yeah any other questions thank you thank you Nexus policy thank you Mr chair um I just I saw a mistake here in the minutes I don't know if we just need to correct it at our next policy meeting or um but uh basically
041it said it was held virtually and it was not it was uh we're in person at the humiston boardroom um and I guess we can we can fix that at the next meeting um uh nonetheless um we uh held our meeting on uh let's see March 30th um our meeting opened with public comment um in the meeting um uh Luther Miller our transportation coordinator attended um we listened to testimony uh from a few parents who were talking about there um I guess experience in uh having their having a having their children added to a bus route and um how that went along and uh and the the parents and uh Mr Miller sort of had a back and forth and Mr maciano added um to that and the the policy members had a discussion about
042um the uh the the distance from an elementary school and what's counted towards bus routes and and the impact of of changing those distances and and what that would mean to our budget and and uh how many buses additional buses that may take and also about looking at Future considerations as our elementary school population expands what that means and um and also the addition of sidewalks which is a sort of a uh what what sort of the word I'm thinking of is tangential tangential um uh issue but Mr Miller was very passionate about that and talking about future implications of that um so anyhow we concluded by uh you know listening to their testimony and that we would examine policy 3541 which sort of um impacts those the distances uh to and from school and
043uh I think Mr massion and Mr Miller we're going to do some impact studies for us to to let us know what that would mean if we decided to change anything um moving along we had two policies for discussion uh which no action was taken or was it one policy for discussion one policy for discussion which was um 51 uh 17 School attendance areas um I think this is more informational um Dr Sullen explained the process where a family can apply for a waiver so that their child can attend a school in a different part of town from where they live and that um they uh he may be coming upon some challenges specifically for Highland School and um and noted that he was going to be as as always uh be assessing those on
044a case-by-case basis um but he just he expressed the difficulty in allowing additional children to attend Highland schools specifically that were outside of the district um reviews uh policies that were reviewed for first reading were four two two teachers aides paraprofessionals um this is a new policy driven by Title One um if a person is a title one paraprofessional they will have to meet certain credentialing requirements which are Personnel already meet um so this is just a a statutory update essentially um as is a 6159.1 um there's an addition for this is an instructional Arrangements teachers AIDS edition of the language the board shall require all teachers aides paraprofessionals with instructional duties that are newly uh that are newly hired in a title one school program that have a secondary school diploma or it's recognized
045equivalent to have one completed at least two years of study at an institution of Higher Learning to obtain an associate's or higher degree or three met a rigorous standard of quality through a formal state or local academic assessment it also states that the district will not hire title one parent professionals who not meet these standards exceptions to these requirements may be made with regard to paraprofessionals who act as translators or who coordinate pyramid involvement activities we did come across also some conflicts within this policy um so it'll depend on on what we do at our next meeting because there are some references to paraprofessionals and teachers aides where I think a teacher's a may not necessarily have to meet the certain level of a paraprofessional so we need to be able to break that out
046and it wasn't entirely clear in our policy so we're gonna have to just I think those updates are going to be made for next meeting um let's see next for first reading was policy 6172.3 educational instruction under parental Direction homeschooling um Dr Solon said he's recommending that we revise our current policy to state that home school students cannot attend school classes on part-time basis and are not allowed to participate in after-school activities Dr Solon said we do not allow either and for clarity purposes the quality the policy should follow our practice and we thought myself and Mr White who was in attendance found that agreeable and we moved those two policies for for a first reading and are available on our website for review um for a second reading we moved um uh 6140 curriculum
047and uh 6145 basic instruction uh these are both statutory updates um and we had some clarification um and revision for uh references to Asian American Pacific Islander and African-American uh and black black studies Puerto Rican and Latino studies and some clarifications as to how those classes and requirements would affect our uh curriculum going forward um and I believe it was that uh African-American Latino studies is is considered one course because they were given a uh what is it a curriculum right a standard curriculum from uh State Department of Education uh and let's see Pacific Islander and I think it was maybe just Pacific Islander uh and Native American Studies have been left separate and there are no there is no curriculum at this time uh so there's no real we're not really sure if those
048are going to be combined probably not or offered as a half year or a full year courses on their own uh that will that is yet to be determined and so we moved those two policies forward for a second reading and then we adjourned and that is there any questions for policy at this time Mr White yeah not a question just a comment that we had discussed just a reminder for high school students we have a policy on international travel so I just wanted to have that added to a policy agenda to extend to staff yeah I think for our next meeting we'll have a lot of interesting topics to discuss thank you Adam been great summary um there are no understanding committees to report so we'll move on to approval of minutes the board
049does have in our packets meeting minutes from quite a few meetings um uh business meeting held February 16th Middle School school case held March 16th business meeting held March 16th and a special meeting that was held on April 10th if someone would like to make a motion we can Adam is there a second I'm sorry motion move that the Cheshire Board of Education approves the minutes from the meetings held on February 16 2023 March 16 2023 April 10th 2023. right 16. 16 there was two and a 16th but I think that the 16th covers both yeah it's very second uh face seconds any changes to the minutes from any of the four meetings I don't have any seeing as there are none uh the motion is the Cheshire board education approves the minutes from the
050meetings out of February 16 2023 March 16 2023 and April 10th 2023. uh all those in favor please raise your hands it is humanist unanimous the motion passes thank you correspondence I believe we do have correspondence so miss uh Dr Harrigan any correspondence to reading to the record I have a couple of emails that were sent to the board um the first one is from Miss callow she writes that the news out of Nashville is certainly alarming referring to school shootings uh the decision to place sros at all of our schools is not something that we would do instantly without a direct threat I know the police presence at our schools is something we evaluate regularly and we discussed that a little bit earlier in this meeting and will certainly be part of the conversation
051oh I'm sorry I'm reading the response I'm sorry um the the um correspondence from Ms callow is Will is a question will Cheshire Public Schools consider putting an SRO officer at the elementary schools going forward with what just happened yesterday in Nashville this should be done short and sweet thank you um the second piece of Correspondence is to the board hello board and it's from Mr tumati was there any requests brought from parents or students from town of Cheshire in recent past to move the Cheshire public school schedules to start later after one hour or so considering the pros and cons also was there any decision made earlier I'm sorry either to park that request under further review kindly share any information meeting minutes Etc related to this if that is available with the board
052otherwise I would like to understand what it requires to place this request to the board for further discussion to be considered please advise thank you so that will be there will be um a response to that email I believe that just came in today that will be forthcoming and uh yeah I think there was never any official action but it was three four years ago there was a five years 2018 right where that then board did some research I think it was a Greenwich studying it but uh to make a request you simply contact the board like you did I think Dr song will be responding and um some for the board consider I always say is they alluded earlier as still it's April but may is almost here hopefully the year will wind down
053in positive fashion and we're going to be gearing up for next school year so I'm thinking this is probably one of the topics we might want to have for a board retreat this summer is we plan for uh next year's priorities but that being said thank you for contacting us I'm done uh that time was yeah thank you yeah I was curious in doing that I have a few different concerns but one of them I'm curious about do are we still going to be doing daily light savings time does anybody know that because that literally is one of the things that just perplexes me like I understand there could be a benefit here but that's like a wrench in the works on an annual basis I'm just curious because I know the Congress has talked
054about getting rid of it does anyone happen to know I not yet okay got it I I actually did a little research on that after this last daylight savings time okay um the state is looking at doing something and the the federal government is also looking at doing something but nothing it's been I don't think anything's come out of committee yeah okay no I was curious every year it's like why are we doing this but yeah I mean that's one of the things that holds me back because it would just mess with the the um our circadian rhythms anyway uh but I don't even understand why we still use that thing other than like golf is my understanding they like for some reason I thought this was the last year but I guess not so
055thank you you go off then important no but this is I read an article a few years ago when they changed it because it was the daylight savings times was every six months we would change and then it became like eight months and four months and I was reading an article about it and it said that it was amazing what happened in the U.S Congress because there was at that moment in time no one was interested in this except for the Golf Association and everybody said wow we could do something bipartisan and win for incumbents at least and so it passed so they changed it from the six six to like eight four or whatever it is and the only interested party was the golfing Association I don't know if that's true but that's what
056the article said if it's not it's a great great story uh thank you Tim and you know on that note uh we now had the most much anticipated superintendence report being given by Miss Solano this evening well thank you so some exciting things to report about the school building project today we had the kickoff meeting for the architectural Core group The architectural Core group is made up of superintendent of schools myself Vin maciano Robin Carey our PPS director and then the principals directly involved in those schools so Kim dessert Kelly Grillo and Diana Burns along with a teacher representative from each of those buildings in addition to Rich clivette so our first meeting was today and we actually have meetings scheduled every two weeks from now until December 26th of next year well this year
057but next school year so that that committee will be working on really looking at visioning and taking another look at the Ed specs looking at Safety and Security Site improvements systems and and lighting interior design refinements of the concepts and a room by room assessment just to get us you know stage by stage through this so it was a very productive meeting today and along with that there is also going to be two committees or two think tanks one for the new North End School and one for the new Norton and that committee will be made up of parents and teachers students we're looking at getting some fifth graders involved in some of the conversation para Educators secretaries nurses Etc and that a group will meet three times the first meetings will be it at
058the end of May and the first week in June so you all got an email today asking to be invited to sit on one of those committees you can decide we need two members of the board for the North End and two members for Norton our first meeting will be to really look and talk about initial design for both buildings and especially looking at the site and we'll discuss they'll discuss with us overall design strategies and talk about sustainable strategies Etc looking how to bring nature into the design and then the second work workshop will be in late September early October followed up with a third meeting in mid-november early December so it's pretty exciting that we're finally at the point to be talking about the specifics with teachers and with people who will be
059in those buildings so that's some I think exciting news that's my report I have a quote okay I didn't want anybody off uh thank you uh I meant to bring it up on their planning but since Vincent's here uh I I guess there's been some dangerous School Bus passing happening around town lately uh long story short folks are wondering um well we know it's not the answer to the whole problem but any possibility but more of the traffic armed cameras out there reached out to Luther about some possible extension arms right there's some concern and I think folks acknowledge that uh the cameras won't solve it but it might help more out there to report if they can capture license plates any any insights I I have I do have just a couple of pieces
060of information that I would like to share because I did get an update from Luther Miller our transportation coordinator I understand that was a very egregious pass that happened um you know down on the south end of town where a car passed a couple of other cars in addition to blowing past the school bus you know when it was stopped with the stop arm extended so I don't know how we prevent that unfortunately that was not one of the buses that has one of those cameras that would capture the bus pass and no one was able to capture the license although it was a dark gray sedan that had a sticker on it apparently that said Catch Me If You Can so if anybody's aware of this vehicle certainly report it to the police because
061that would help beyond that the you know the number we have three buses that are used around town that have that do have the cameras that will capture a bus pass and that's out of a fleet of about 35 school buses and what we would typically do if there's an area where we have repeat passes that bus will be rotated to go onto that route so that we could catch the offender beyond that bus drivers do have a procedure that if they see somebody pass the bus and they could capture a description of the vehicle and the plate that you know is reported and it is sent to the state in the past this it had to go through the Cheshire PD then to the state and then they would issue a warning however the
062state has changed that and now those reports go directly to the state and it's my understanding from Luther that the state issues a ticket they're not just sending a warning anymore so hopefully that'll help um the last thing that I wanted to report is that we the Cheshire School District we purchased just recently and this was before this this recent bus pass issue Mr Miller did reach out to Liz Linehan to find out if we can get some funding but you know we that wasn't going to happen quick enough so we did agree to install a an extended stop arm on one bus it's actually going to be in service probably next week and it has to be inspected by the state before it can be put on the road so that's really what you
063know would would delay it but it is scheduled for next week and so rather than the typical stop sign coming out which is about two and a half feet from the bus this extends it to six feet so there'll be a two footer and a six footer so it actually would Traverse the opposite side of traffic and the goal here would be to prevent further prevent people from just passing because it's literally going to be something blocking you know that lane of traffic these were approved only recently in Connecticut to be used so you know that it is on order and it is expected to be in service you know if we can install these on all our buses you know it might help I think part of you know the reality is people you
064know need to be very observant you know again this pass was really egregious I don't know how we would you know stop something like that but we um you know we're trying to take as many proactive measures as we can yeah I I know this is not a easy problem to solve let alone Public Schools problem but uh folks also uh asked uh do we have the air buses have dash cameras on a no right because I um pointing out yeah no someone asked if that was a possibility as well but I don't know I don't know if I can ask but you know typically anything around a school bus is going to be regulated by the state I know we can't even get the GPS navigation yet unless it's passed so there is there
065is a plan to allow bus drivers to have GPS but it has to be you know basically a verbal GPS can't it's not something that you could just pull from your car but that is you know part of the plan to make routes a little bit more consistent so as far as can we get additional um buses with you know with those cameras to enforce the law and ticket people we can ask you know the way that that system works right now is that it doesn't cost us anything the revenue that's generated from the tickets that are issued pays the company that installs and monitors you know there's literally somebody monitoring you know those those cameras not here in Cheshire but remotely to report those passes so they can be ticketed through our police department
066so I will I will speak to um Neil Drive the treasure police um the Cheshire the Cheshire police chief as well as Kevin who is the traffic officer in town just to make sure they're aware it's perception has been driving has been pretty aggressive in general around Chester but now yeah and I know there was another incident that kept occurring on Peck Lane um and we believe that that has been curtailed they did catch the person any other questions for superintendently support uh Tim then Adam thanks Tony then when you talk about the buses if I understood you correctly you're gonna say this is a bus so it's driving down the road and you're saying it has an arm that'll extend out across the opposite lane yeah I actually have a picture I'll pass it
067down and how many buses have that right now there's just going to be one as a pilot so do we have buses that extend directly out an arm they all have an arm but it's not six feet I'm not talking about this I'm not talking about the stop sign I'm talking about an arm that extends out in front of the bus oh yeah but that yes there is a is that some I mean that's probably like six feet long I see it probably every morning with Devin and Maddie getting on the bus I'm just wondering if that thing if at some point to be able to just take that and just get it to rotate is it but I I'm thinking it might be only mechanically allowed to go out to here now but it
068could just tweak it and it goes out all the way yeah that's on the opposite side of the bus though I I don't know I mean I okay anybody could look at that yeah but this is this is newly allowed in Connecticut this okay you know stop arm neck oh I got it oh this is a lot bigger than yeah no I was just talking about something that's probably like two inches tall this is yeah much larger yeah thank you uh Marlene I I heard two magic words in your in your report Ed specks um that you're going to be meeting on and that was a uh a topic of discussion at uh budget meetings both for us and as well as with the Town Council as far as classroom capacity um for the new
069schools and adding headspace and all that kind of stuff um so I'm not sure I was going this except to mention that the Ed specs that we have I'm guessing are specifically to maintain you know 18.9 that it actually you know the physical capacity might be more like 25 or something like that or is it depending on how the grant is written like how what are we allowed to do there yeah so the Ed specs are not based on our classroom sizes those are if I'm not mistaken Mr massiana step by the set by the state for everyone they're not to maintain our particular student classroom ratio they're set for everyone so they'll actually probably end up being a little larger I would think like because like if a like a classroom in Hartford they
070may actually have like 25 or 30 kids sometimes or because I'm thinking like even like Norton school back when I was in elementary school we might have 25 or 30 kids in a second grade you know and so those classrooms were I don't know if they're built to hold that many kids but certainly and I don't know if walls had been moved over the years to to decrease the size to fit additional classrooms inside Norton but I was just sort of thinking along those lines like do the classroom sizes remain relatively the same size over the years it's just a matter of how many deaths you're putting and all the extra you know educational spaces if it's all the same square footage or if it's actually gotten larger over the years I don't have an
071answer for what the what the sizes were when we did the Ed specs we did look at our current sizes per room to see if there was much difference and I know for example for our gym obviously you know I'm thinking about the Chapman gym that was significantly different but I couldn't say off the top of my head the classroom spacing for the specifications in the 50s versus versus now right and I think that's just more like and I'm sure you'll be well aware of it it's like when you go through it just keep that in mind yeah that's all yeah we'll do it I can add just a little as well to add more students in classroom than your schools or just to make sure I would say or just make sure we're not
072there was a there was a question by a town counselor where they were concerned that we were building our schools for a certain size but that our population was growing currently even a little faster than we had projected and they were concerned while the school's even going to be big enough by the time and we talked about South Windsor and all that kind of stuff so that's kind of where my head was leading with Mr Messianic add his comment but no that this the specs are set not tailored to Cheshire for the I'll make a general statement that generally speaking the class sizes in the new elementary schools will be larger on average than what we were you know building in the 50s or the 60s or then and then Highland has decent sized Elementary
073rooms you can add more students into the classrooms I think the decision of how many students per class is really more of a question of you know what's the teacher's capacity how big do we want the number of students in each class to be and just round numbers the average Elementary classroom that is included in the ad spec is around 900 square feet maybe just a little bit under that certain spaces like some of the special education spaces they'll be a thousand square feet and then other spaces where we might have you know some lab type work those will be 1200 square feet but it's I would separate those two thoughts as to do you want to have more students per class and what is the what does that do to educational aspect of what
074we provide here in Cheshire that's great I be nice if the growth could slow down a little bit so we get the schools going I joke yes so I have a comment for Mr macciana and then one for Miss Solano Mr maciano I just want to assure you that I will be taking down license plate numbers when I'm out on the road and I see somebody Zoom past two cars and a school bus and just provided get someplace faster yeah um maybe that will deter people who are listening tonight um and for um Miss Solano I volunteer to be on one of those committees so put me on whichever one you you need me on thank you put me in coach uh yes Samantha um I just want are the three 15 times standing Marlene
075as far as meeting and then also is there some flexibility I appreciate the fact that you're including the board members but I do have a day job so yeah I don't want to deter you from coming if you have to come a little late we'd rather have you than not have you at all and then more so in the in-person versus a possibility of virtual okay those meetings oh I forgot are those in person or those the first one I saw was yeah the think tank for the board members that will be in person those three meetings okay all right thank you Justin thanks sorry uh yeah with regard to the the speeding going around school buses and just reminded me when she was talking about taking down license plates um this was just a
076couple months ago I was driving South on Route 10 and somebody pulled out in the lane pulled around me I didn't pay that close attention to it because I figured he was just gonna be a jerk and then pull right back like he didn't he continued traveling south in the northbound lane with people flying over the side so probably a couple hundred yards out in front of me so I'm probably right around uh just just south of Ives corner and you have a nice Clear View there probably around a veterinary hospital or something um for a few hundred yards anyway my wife and my wife grabbed the phone and call keep in mind that police have a non-911 number in retrospect I wish we had just called the 9-1-1 number because as we got further
077down there were accidents um from this person just flying down so I encourage people to consider just calling the police if you see one of these situations because they may be able to pick them up for the down the road someplace if it's quick thank you Tim yeah it's uh it's it's extremely concerning uh seen as there are no other questions thank you Miss Solano and thank you Vincent um I I mean you there's no business on a new business don't don't have much enough data I know uh today came held a webinar new one to talk about what came out Appropriations or finance committee vote in the budget I I'll send a link to the record webinar I again I'm not really sure I don't think the education bill was uh the new bill
078is funded but we'll see what the what comes out of that I'm sure soon and I'm sure by the end of uh middle of May we'll get a better idea as I understand that there's now some negotiations between the governor and and the cold shares those committees so we'll see who comes out of it um other than that no updates from for me uh so Ann signed up for the committee we need one more board member if you're interested please encourage you to contact Marlene uh as uh this is a great start to the project being able to Vision Envision what the school's going to look like so thank you for volunteering uh that being said I will read up the read out the new uh the upcoming meetings uh not all of them at
079least for for the next couple weeks so uh Thursday May 4th 7 30 p.m is our High School showcase at Cheshire high school Monday May 8th is curriculum committee meeting at 7 pm that will be in the humiston boardroom Tuesday May 9th at 6 30 p.m as policy committee uh to be determined whether it's in person or uh the uh Zoom uh Thursday May 18th at 7 30 we have a regular board at business meeting at 7 30 p.m and we have a couple meetings in in June uh when is graduation this year [Music] June 14th quickly approaching so Sandra's birthday very special day anyway uh there is no other new business uh that being said I'll ask for a motion to adjourn uh Adam is there a second Tim all those in favor please
080raise your hands it is unanimous thank you to meaning is adjourned