Board of Education 9-15-22

001good evening everyone uh i'm vice chairman adam grippo filling in for chairman uh prayer jamie this evening uh miss uh jacinsky uh please call the roll here here mr genie ms rosenberg here thank you um paul please stand for pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay our first order of business would like to uh call up uh principal gab to introduce our new representatives thank you i am so delighted to introduce our representatives uh the student representatives are selected each year to represent cheshire high school at board of education meetings the students are selected based on their level of involvement at the high school in student activities or sport

002and on the basis of academic excellence the student report is presented to the board at its business meeting the second meeting of the month and includes information on academic extracurricular and social activities taking place at cheshire high school monica gailey and michael dejoseph cheshire high school student representatives to the board of education are here with us their first meeting and i'm very happy to just tell you a little bit more about them michael j joseph is a well-rounded and amazing young man michael describes himself as faithful kind hardworking outgoing and adventurous he is a dedicated student who puts a great deal of time and effort into all that he does he's the current captain of the cross country team and a varsity member of the indoor track team he volunteers his time with cheshire lights

003of hope special olympics and through his church and local food pantry michael truly likes to get involved in his high school and community he's a solid role model and a perfect choice to represent chester high school as a board of education representative monica gailey sets herself apart from the rest she is kind friendly studious outgoing intrinsically motivated in a self-proclaimed bookworm monica's level of maturity and commitment to her education is unmatched she loves to learn to say monica enjoys getting involved is an understatement monica's had the lead in cheshire high school theater productions she's an officer of the mock trial club and she devotes countless hours of volunteer work within her school and community she's truly the total package monica will do cheshire high school proud as the board of education representative [Applause] welcome to

004the board of education and we hope to see you at many wonderful and productive meetings here this year uh do you have an initial report or anything yes we do thank you oh yeah all right so um thank you so much for having us here um so to start off uh last week the fall sports began last week with every single varsity team winning their first contest which um yeah it's pretty pretty awesome um the girls cross country coach rob shaffer earned his 300th win during the first meet of the year which was last week and many student athletes volunteered their time at the cheshire marketplace that happened last week um the student senate held their annual pep rally last friday afternoon prior to the first home football game so they had it we had

005it the day before the the first football game to kind of kick off the school spirit and kick off the um the football season um cheshire fall sports captains participated in the league captains council held in new haven and along with that came a guest speaker and the captains also discussed the qualities of being a good leader for the team as well as in the school and just all around in general the student senate will be working we'll be hosting a recycling program for all plastic bottles from football games so basically what this project is is that every football game around 800 cans of soda and water bottles and and things like that are sold and so we're trying to collect all those cans to get the five cents for them to go towards the

006student senate and and other things like that um so yes we really think that that could be a big a big success at the football games just because so many cans are sold there and also very good for the environment and additionally all clubs in general at the school are getting back into the swing of things getting back into the into the new year and just getting the ball rolling yeah so as michael mentioned um all clubs are starting up again the school year as we're now like three weeks into school and we um cheshire high school is going to have a club fair during lunch on the 29th of september near the end of the month to um just to like spread information about each club each club can sign up for a table

007and then they can give out their flyers their classroom codes the students can sign up because at cheshire high school we really want everyone to be involved and also um the the fall performance the it's called lost girl and they started having their first rehearsals last week and this week and they're getting that show up on its feet and i think that's all for this month so far thank you um are there any questions um i just wanna it's not really a question so full disclosure michael's my neighbor grew up across the street from me um and he actually interviewed me for a scholarship that he was going for for college you had to interview somebody who was a member of like the political right so and i remember so he called me it was

008a saturday morning i went over to his house and he is about a year and a half ago at this point he asked me like very pointed questions and at that point you know i kept telling him like it's so important just to be involved in your community know what's going on around you so i really it's really glad i'm really happy to see that you took this role on and that you're here and i know you're going to do a great job so proud of you as i always have been but continue to be so good luck welcome you guys um you it's good to see two new faces and we're going to watch you grow over the year could you just tell us really briefly some of your plans what your what where

009you wanna where you're heading and um what you wanna study and so we can follow you and pepper you with questions um so i want to be a doctor i've known that for a while specifically pediatrician so i'm applying to a lot of schools like in the northeast area and i don't know where i'm headed yet but that's my main goal [Music] that's good um so i hope to go to springfield college and study physical therapy there and hopefully if everything works out i hope to also run cross country and track while at springfield college so yeah those are kind of my plans after high school [Music] so you mentioned sports and statistics so i'm curious do you happen to know the last time that cheshire high started off every varsity sport winning his first

010you do oh fantastic it looked like monica might know i don't um mr trufone even said himself he doesn't even remember when the last time that every single fall sport won like won their game in a week so it's been a very long time which is um it's pretty room so then i'm gonna follow that up with mr trifone was not the athletic director when i was in high school oh okay but rob schaefer was coaching cross country okay so you might know it's been like it's 30 i think this is his 34th season i was going to say 35. i was there i was there for the four years when it changed from ron mcgreevey to to rob shaver the cross country so oh okay anyway yeah he's been doing it in a while

011yeah so congratulations to him too absolutely yeah it's awesome that he got to celebrate that any other questions great well uh welcome and we uh look forward to seeing you the rest of the year thank you thank you thank you and um i guess uh you can now kindly be dismissed or you can hang around and hear the rest of the exciting things that we do here so have a great evening be nice to have an audience it'd be great to have an audience um speaking of audience uh we're now at the audience portion of our agenda so uh if there's anyone uh in the uh out in the public would like to speak uh please come up to the podium and introduce yourself okay no one's here this evening um well maybe next time

012uh we'll uh we'll move on to our uh reports of standing committees uh and we'll go to the uh curriculum report um mrs hamm thanks mr grippo okay so we met on monday um and you have before you emotion well we do have before us emotion um that we'll have to have to act on let me just give you a quick overview if i could um we did under new business discuss um the flexibilities for implementing the connecticut guidelines for educator evaluation for the 2022-23 school year this is actually a um extension of a of our guidelines that have been in place for how many years this is our third year um i really i had thought that the the overview would be included with the notes um and maybe we could send them out

013to board members the packet that we got i meant the um total packet from the state department yeah and the supporting materials just so you all can read them um but generally um the the committee was favorable the flight um as ms solano explained the flexibilities include the option to conduct conduct more frequent informal observations as opposed to less frequent and formal observations and um you know they uh tend to be more organic less structured not they're certainly structured but less rigid in um in how teachers are evaluated in several different um phases so um it it seemed to make sense to continue with this and so the board or the committee um moved to move this to you all the board of education for approval um uh and we'll i'll come back to the

014um we'll come back to the motion at the end of the the minutes um for info informational items we simply we discussed um the curriculum and instruction uh summer updates and 120 teachers participated in professional development focused on embedding social emotional learning into academics provided by and many of the sessions were provided by the author and consultant mike anderson he's nationally recognized overall cps had over 200 teachers involved in developing and honing their craft and improving the curriculum during the summer months and then another highlight was the professional development planned and implemented by teachers related to high quality instruction which jeff had talked about in the um in the first meeting of the year so we also went on and reviewed the smarter balanced assessment results again i'm going to refer you to the meeting

015there's a lot of information there that is um probably a little bit uh more than um we can cover in this meeting there's a lot of analysis cross analysis and and it really was a fascinating discussion um clearly there are some areas where uh this mr hanlon and others are going to look at um in ways of um just trying to dissect what's what what number what the data show and um and as always as we do in cheshire seek for ways to improve um what we do and then we also dove into the sat results from last year um we did see an improvement over the previous year again um um dr gatt is looking into um into the numbers and and specifically with regard to the math but it well actually um evidence-based

016reading and writing as well and just looking for ways to improve scores and performance so again if i could just uh recommend that you guys go back if you haven't yet looked yeah just watch this section in particular of the of the meeting and then for the fun stuff uh we discussed um dr gad just shared information about a trip to walt disney world and universal studios and no they're not going to be rioting rides the whole time they are actually going into specific um almost like schools or classes um on some interesting things like the imaginarium and um what are some of the other well it's part of their history right looking at some of what the imagineers are doing and looking also at the history over time of how disney has impacted and

017influenced and what was happening at those points in history right right and it's talking to someone actually about the whole transportation system down there and maybe that would be another area for for someone who might be interested in urban transportation but anyway there that's for another day so anyway um that is that was um the essence of the meeting so um i do we do have a motion before us and that is um we move that the cheshire board of education adopt the flexibilities to fundamental plus you fundament uh flexibility to the fundamental requirements of the connecticut guidelines for educator evaluator 2017 for the 2022-23 school year do i have a second is there a second second andrew second any discussion i just had um two questions uh just remind me again are you in

018the seed model for the evaluation and then um i know tony would probably appreciate the correction on miss piragini motion on the second page and my last comment is really if the disney trip is structured the same way it was last year it's an amazing experience my daughter went to it being that it was 50th anniversary i think the students will benefit from this highly benefit from this and i think they tweaked the itinerary a little bit but overall the experience is phenomenal yeah thank you faith just curious when is the disney trip fall spring it's uh february 16 through the 22nd the kids 22nd of 2023 it um comes just before the um the break president's day weekend yeah and they will miss two days of school but it's educational it's worth it it

019is very educational and uh career oriented so i can't see why we would not that we have to approve it but i mean it's it we should be endorsing and supporting them oh wait yeah there we go i i i do have one question so how many years have you been doing at the disney trip or this may be more of a broad question in general like trips that ultimately lead to students ever sort of going down that path either in college or uh just working in general like going to work for disney or something like that do you generally speaking do you have you gotten feedback from students who have taken those field trips and then sort of gone down that path um you know i'm reflecting back on my time as principal there

020too um i i think you know maybe not always directly that you went to a disney trip and now you're working for them or you went to europe and now you're working there but i think part of our role is to broaden horizons and inspire and these trips certainly do that and you may not be working at disney but that experience may have you may inspire you to be doing something in a field requiring you know imagination or creativity and that's probably more the norm then i went on the trip now i'm going to work there sure no no i understand that completely and i appreciate that i did i had the opportunity to go to europe when i was in high school and uh it definitely had an impact on me later in life

021working abroad and stuff like that so yeah and it would it started with that high school trip thank you this is the second year of this particular trip okay so nobody's nobody's left to go to work at disney but uh but i appreciate what you're saying about film and anything in general just stuff like that yeah thank you okay so is there any more any more discussion on the motion on the floor um yeah i did have a question um so um in regards to this uh guidelines for evaluation teacher evaluation are these um acceptable pertaining to our existing contracts yes okay so was this was this pre-negotiated or is this how does this work so back in 2019-2020 the connecticut state department of education offered these flexibilities to districts and we have a committee

022made up of approximately 20 teachers administrators support special ed support teachers every walk of cheshire public schools certified staff and they had agreed to those previously so you may remember that it was brought to curriculum committee and then approved here back in 1920. we brought the same information forward to you all in 2122 at that point in time the connecticut state department of education was convening a committee to look at revising the seed evaluation program we thought they might come out with it at the the spring last year but that did not happen so then they had offered for us for all districts to be able to use these flexibilities again this year so we definitely think it's um it's a good idea to do so it as faith pointed out it provides us a

023great deal of flexibility and authentic um authentic feedback and evaluation sort of loop but it does meet all of the contract parameters that's good to hear we'd have to we wouldn't want to run into any problems there um all right is there any other discussion on the motion okay um read it again yeah go ahead please okay the motion is uh moved that the cheshire board of education adopt the flexibilities to the fundamental requirements of the connecticut guidelines for educator evaluator 2017 for the 2022-23 school year um all in favor it is uh unanimous of those present fantastic that concludes my report thank you um now to me for the finance report and uh as always i happily uh hand it over to mr maciana i'll happily take it over for you mr gripper thank

024you good evening everyone the board members do have the finance report as of august 31st i will um just highlight a couple of things it's only the second month of the fiscal year and so not all the encumbrances for payroll and our transportation accounts have been entered yet but by september they will be so we'll have a better read on the budget there is no um specific variance concern that we have at this point in time but i did know in this month's report because i think it's important to let you know that our electricity supply rate which we've had locked in since 2018 is just under 8 cents per kilowatt and we've been working with a consultant since january to try and find a new contract to renew and the market just has not

025been favorable so when that supply rate runs out in december if we don't have another locked price we will find another option and the option always to go back to eversource is there so although we are not um giving up on trying to find a rate that's better than the market rates right now we've seen rates as high as 16 cents per kilowatt hour but we can get a rate somewhere around 12 to 14 cents that is a rate that's subject to change as opposed to the lock rate that we had since 2018. so the important point um besides the fact that we're working to try and find a good solution and i don't think we would lock in for a very long period of time we would just try and lock in for an

026intermediate period of time you know a year or two at the most but the variance that we would expect after that rate lock expires if we see an increase of about 50 percent over the existing rate would cause a hundred thousand dollar variance to the budget just to give you some context you know certainly something that we would be able to offset by reducing our expenditures in other areas so it's not going to blow up the budget but we never like to see you know variances that large and the impact of inflation you know we know it's going to be there this year we're expecting it and the way that we manage to make sure that we're going to meet our budget is i the board members know that we put a expenditure cap on

027non-payroll expenditures so that's at 40 of the approved budget now we're going to leave that in place probably through december just to be on the safe side and then we'll continue to assess it as the year goes on and that's the end of the remarks if there are questions i will certainly be glad to take them um vin i i have a question um on the uh the second paragraph or the second bullet point about um covet expenditures you you break out the remaining grant balances and then you kind of talk about a potential seem like a fiscal cliff am i looking at that incorrectly or uh it says mitigate potential negative impact of concerns noted above oh no that wasn't sure what that meant that meant if we if covet spikes again and we

028have to expend money for health or safety which right now we are not expending any funds for that we would use this grant to cover that and what that the effect of that would be is that we would have less to spend for learning loss through the period of 2024. so that's a backstop if we need it for health and safety it's not to say there's a fiscal cliff at all okay so you're saying that if covid remains status quo right um then the the remaining balances that you're showing here would be used for learning loss and you wouldn't be potentially you wouldn't be giving them back uh you would be using them for other qualifying expenses marlene vows that she will not give any of that money back but right you know just to

029but it would be for expenses that are um health and safety for reoccurring expenses i guess right so it wouldn't be we're not using this to supplement uh something other than the additional i guess uh like the training you said that you were you know you're doing or um or the health and safety expenditures but and if like if this money went away it would just it wouldn't impact our normal you know budget yeah we wouldn't have to cut anything tomorrow right okay this money ran out this money we really focused on as you said supplanting our professional development experiences right or not some planting excuse me supplementing our professional development experiences and um has been kind of alluded to marlene is definitely all over that gotcha the point i was trying to make is

030that we wouldn't use our operating budget as a backstop if we had a spike but then we had to put up tents and do the intraday cleaning that we had to do the last two years we would use the esser funds so i just wanted to you know give the board a sense that if that happens we still have another place to go outside of the operating budget okay great um uh andrew go ahead how long do we have to spend that money well the there's two pockets the or two we have until september of 2023 and i reported here we had a 63 000 remaining balance there uh it's down a little bit lower now we we did an update last earlier this week it's about half of that so that's good till september

031of 23 but we will exhaust that before the year is out and then the rpes are funding which the grant was 898 000. we have 775 000 and and that's still intact um that's good through september of 2024 but we will be spending some of that 777 or 775 000 down this year but maybe half as my is the estimate so we'll have a cushion for case yes something happens okay thank you thank you adam uh so about the energy prices you were talking about before i was just calculating it um using the numbers you said so it was eight cents for the supply not for the delivery just supply okay so are we buying about two and a half million kilowatt hours per year give or take um maybe a little bit less than

032that okay yes is it does that have we also generate i think a million or a million a half kilowatt hours over at the over the park over the next the dog park at the landfill is that offsetting this is that banked into that two and a half million or that's above and above and beyond yeah this is just our budget for electricity and we do not get any benefit from that oh we don't that contract no oh all the 10 buildings it all goes to town buildings everything everything yeah that's not that's not factored into any of the schools operating budget because that wasn't the way it was that wasn't the way it was set up like 10 years ago when it happened i don't think but that's okay i'll yeah i'll look at

033that thank you okay supply i mean our supply is coming right now strictly from constellation energy that's who the price lock is with so when that expires we need to replace that you know with eversource or whatever other supplier there are some um you know market variable based pricing outside of eversource that we're looking at but it's getting expensive i was like i think it's like i think for a house it's it's probably around 25 cents per kilowatt hour delivered right now using the eversource standard rate which is lower than any of the competitive suppliers right now yeah it's it's crazy it is well we hope it gets better yeah thank you you're welcome so vin that was so this is just um supply what is going on with delivery delivery act costs actually have

034dropped a little bit but roughly half of our cost is supply and half is delivery okay um all right so big bugaboo mine because we did not do anything with instructional expenses in our budget this year um they held it zero and now where can you give me uh an oh just explain to me what a 40 cap on non payroll expenditures will do particularly in the area of instructional expenses and what are we jeopardizing if anything well the 40 cap is doesn't mean that that's where it's going to stay for the full year we certainly hope not right so the purpose of the cap is just to make sure if something really goes above budget that we have a sufficient cushion um and what it really forces us to do whether you know our

035ultimate expenditure is 70 or 80 or 90 is it forces a prioritization of what we need to do so i'm looking at marlene because you know we certainly try and balance and make sure that we're not depriving students of the things that they need in the classroom whether it's instructional supplies or textbooks or other materials that they need to run the schools you know does it have an impact yes but we try and and minimize that to the extent we can and if there are positive variances in other categories that are non-educationally related um you know we would certainly make sure if there's a priority on the educational instructional expense side we would you know send the money and use it in those categories so that's the best answer i could give you uh right

036now miss ham we um let's hope that the year you know runs better than you know we think it might at this point in time hey um okay you'd go for it no i'll i'll just add that in these days since we started school my first question to every teacher is do you have everything you need what do you need is there anything we can get you do you have enough resources and people say i'm good so if they don't they know they're calling kevin they're calling me they're calling a principal and they're letting us know if there's something they need but we're not oh yeah we did um we've been doing some reading and in a book it's um about thinking thinking classrooms and it's particularly focused in mathematics but there was research that

037indicated that when you're using an erasable surface that groups are more likely to in a quicker amount of time get information down on that erasable surface and they've found that when you take that erasable surface like a white board so kids have small white boards and you put it vertically that it increases both the volume and the amount and lessens the amount of time that those ideas come out something about the fact that it's not permanent and can be erased and so we just purchased a box of these um dry erase sheets for everyone every single teacher every single classroom in grades one through six and the t was something that the teachers asked if they could have when we were having pd our pd day in august and they're great because you could stick

038them up anywhere so kids can work in groups so everyone i think was really excited and happy to receive those it's an example you know in in part the point being that if there's a real instructional priority we're gonna make that happen um and it takes some juggling but there are so many pieces and all the you know the whole budget that you know it means you might take a little away from something here but we it's been said we're prioritizing throughout and certainly don't want a short change uh our priority is always what happens in that instructional core what happens in the classroom so uh and just to be clear when i say prioritize it it really is you know the principals and and marlene that are doing the prioritization if if it's approved

039by them and i see all purchase requisitions i have to approve them all i did see that one for the white board sheets and i said okay because it's not my job to you know as long as people are within the parameters of their budget they you know our staff is really really good about prioritizing and and that's what they need to do and they do it every year and they do it amazingly well so i don't think we're going to hurt students certainly at this point in time i'm not concerned about that you're welcome um can i i guess can i just ask i guess an anecdotal question about instructional expense more about supplies i suppose um as my uh my son is now older right and uh maybe the parents with older students

040could maybe just knock me down from completely wrong but i noticed that the supply list for the schools uh for uh my son's classes this year were a lot more extensive than they were in the past and i just wanted to make sure it was because of his grade level and not because maybe we're passing on some sort of expense to the to the parents this year where all of a sudden the the supply list was a lot more i just was maybe as they get older they're expensive expected to buy more stuff which is fine but i just wanted to make sure we weren't passing along something that we normally would have been buying for the students no that that's not that certainly is not the intention i think what happens as kids get

041older is they want their own type of notebooks they want their own color folders they really want to personalize it so we have some generic you know supplies for them at school but most of them want to go and shop for their own things and color code things and have their own highlighters pencils etc but do we have all of that here at school and can give that to students who want need it absolutely thank you so much for the graphing calculator yesterday no just a regular calculator this year tim go ahead yeah so you mentioned electricity before but more broadly with any of the with anything that we're buying whether it's uh energy oil natural gas food instructional supplies is there anything that we uh can lock into or you've decided to not lock

042into a rate for the upcoming year for whatever reason i mean are we hedging our bets on that i just see these numbers keep going up these are inflation so i just figured i would ask about that yeah we i mean the big commodities oil heating oil diesel fuel gas we look at those you know i have cnbc running in my office and i'm constantly looking you know at what's the price of a barrel of oil the market has not been favorable to lock in any of those commodities right now so those were running pretty much whatever the market price is we're going to pay if i can lock in if you know i mean i think oil was trading around 84 a barrel today so it did come down you know almost 10 bucks

043over the last you know 10 days but the futures prices are just not that good yet so we're going to keep looking we constantly shop i know that um you know it costs a copy paper as an example which we do buy a lot of every year you know that's been used to be 25 a case went to over 40 dollars a case but yesterday um heather santi who's our operations supervisor you know we have an amazon rep now who um said that we can get copy paper for about 30 per case with this you know new preferred account that we're eligible for so those types of things are just kind of in the ordinary course of what we try and do so if we can take advantage of you know savings like that we

044always do it sure okay all right yeah i i don't mean to second guess john oil prices i have no idea it's all kind of where it's going but we try and manage the budget you know within what we have and then you know we do try and save dollars where we can yeah okay thank you any other questions okay we'll move on to our our next uh most favorite report would be medical benefits yeah so i got a call just before we came to this meeting from dr solon because i issued the august 31st report so ms jaczanski did include it in the linked agenda but every the board members have a cup okay so i'm going to look at the august report because that gives us july and august and there's a couple

045of things that i do want to draw your attention to one is that you know our claims for july were 1.1 million and our claims for august were 1.4 million however the august claim does include an extra week um we have a million dollars per month was the expected claim amount that's what's budgeted that's what we have available if you look the first two months of the year we're averaging about 1.278 million so it's higher than than expected and higher than budget however that august does include an extra week and even if you know we were to subtract that we're still running at about 1.1 million in claims per month kind of the good news in this in that if you look at the net change in our beginning uh reserve balance we started the

046year 1.335 million you know based on the first two months of claims but also considering the adjustments that were made our reserve balance only dropped by ninety one thousand two seventy five so we're at one point two four million dollars as the current reserve balance at a million dollars of claims expected per month that's 1.2 4 months of expected claims so it is early in the year the claims are a bit higher than expected but as the year progresses you know we'll continue to watch this i'm not particularly um concerned about the trend yet we'll have to keep watching it and we'll see how the how the year goes but the good news is that we did increase the budget to a million dollars a month we needed to do that glad we did so

047our reserve balances is healthy enough that we should be able to sustain the year and the goal if the board members remember is we budgeted enough to cover expected claims and we didn't expect to grow our reserve balance so as long as our claims average a million dollars per month including the stop-loss reimbursements we'll end the year about where we started that's the update um so i just wanted to maybe refresh my memory i've definitely have forgotten how is july a net positive if you look up at the additions on in the section above we had contributions of 2 million five thousand so those contributions come from our operating budget no stop loss reimbursements yet prescription rebates received with two thousand three hundred thirty dollars but that four hundred fifty eight thousand oh eighty 085

048those are adjustments when you look at this report you what goes on in the background is there is accounting that takes place there's accruals and offsets so that 458 000 was carried in from last year as an adjustment so that's why we our fund balance went up three hundred twenty thousand dollars in july that's a nice adjustment it is but it's not magic and it isn't um rebates or claims it was just money that was you know the expense last year that needed to be returned to this fiscal year or this claims year so you know there's there's um more coming as we go through the year if claims are high on an individual basis we'll see that stop-loss reimbursement which we expect it to be about five hundred thousand dollars for the year so

049that'll help buoy the balance so so what do you mean by it was charged last year but given back to us this year what is we were overcharged or what no it was it's it's all the internal accounting that happens in the town it has nothing to do with cigna oh as to the back and forth they they accrue they expense and then a crew forward so it's it's accounting that takes place and i couldn't give you the details donna from the town's finance department is the one that's responsible for those entries but we have to align you know the claims you know with the year in which they occurred so there are accruals that do take place within the accounting for so it's like things that occurred but we're paid oh gotcha thank you

050tim thank you adam thanks man is there anything going on this year with in terms of cigna and wellness for employees anything different this year that hasn't happened in past years um the only thing that's different and we talked about it when the instructional assistant contract was approved that there is a wellness incentive that now is offered to that group that if they complete three key components which is um they have to go for biometric screening they have to have at least one well visit you know with the doctor and they complete the cigna's online health assessment report they get a reduction in their co-share that they pay to purchase their insurance so you know from a long-term perspective the goal of that is to increase the early detection improve health and wellness so we

051hope that there'll be a resulting improvement in claims we probably could never measure it but it is the right thing to do and it's the smart thing to do you know beyond that there are a number of health and wellness measures that cigna does on their own you know directly to you know our employees and then we have a whole health and wellness initiative that um i you know i can present at one of the future board meetings we rolled it out uh at convocation this year to all our employees uh it's called the road map to wellness you know that runs for this whole program year and it includes everything from you know having a consultation with the health coach that cigna provides as part of our deal to participating in our walking and

052other challenges that we do throughout the year thank you you're welcome um so i understand how we went um you know how we came out positive in in july bottom line though is that for two months now in as i recall when we were talking about this don't they they have to meet their deductibles is the logic as i recall was they have to meet their deductibles early so our our rates should have been we're going to see our lowest claims now no because the hsa plan year runs january to december so deductibles reset july excuse me they reset january okay okay so we're really we're coming off the summer months but we're still running hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims over our reserve and that is what concerns me you know we can

053find rebates and we can have and i'm not going to call them gimmicks they're not gimmicks but they're gifts and those gifts may not continue to appear and i look at that um now we're down to 1.24 and and i have mentioned this to jeff the last meeting my concern is that this is really systemic and and a wellness program isn't going to fix it and i don't understand when we are not going when we will start going to the providers and i mean the hospitals and perhaps even the hospitals in particular asking for cost data because something's going on here and we can't get a handle on it and i i don't know how to stop it and and sorry i guess i'm kind of venting but do we know how much a procedure

054costs at a hospital or in an emergency room or or what yale looks like vis-a-vis hartford it's just so frustrating that we get hit every month with this i'm not sure which part of that i can address i mean yeah let's unpack it yeah so the providers i mean there's the pro the rates that are the rates that are paid to a provider for any given procedure whether it's a doctor's visit or surgery those are negotiated in advance in our case by cigna so you know that i guess the answer to your question is yes we know what the rates are you know part of the issue is that our employees and their dependents are getting a lot of medical services and i know that we talked in the past about you know what's been

055happening the last couple of years specifically that's been driving up our claims is these claims that are above the 25 000 threshold you know that don't hit the 175 000 stop loss cap that we cover all those claims and then those that are over 175 we do get stop-loss reimbursement i know it's a frustrating it is frustrating and um i just you know there's nothing like transparency and there have been places where they have actually where um they've gone in and hospitals have revealed their comparative data and wild variations um so which one's right which one's wrong but but i we have we schools collectively and the state government through medicaid have a lot of buying power and i i just wish we would all come together perhaps and maybe we can through our associations

056do that but start demanding that they reveal some of this to us because right now we're carrying it and as dr solin pointed out these hospitals just racked up how much 1.48 billion in profit 2021. yeah connecticut hospital 1.48 billion in 2021. so i i just so i there i i've said my peace thank you so so faith i i can appreciate your frustration i know we talked the last time we were just talking about in the parking lot me and you um and i'm not going to be able to articulate this well the details what i guess the numbers that get baked into the rates but my question is jeff irvin have cabe or caps or ccm maybe the state the state would probably be more inherently more political in making anything happen state

057department of education if any of any of those organizations looked at anything like this what faith is talking about because i think she's probably explained this to you in more detail offline yeah i'm not aware of any particular entity that has addressed it in the fashion that faith is is outlining then i don't know if you know casbo or anybody like that has i mean i know that insurance costs are always a topic conversation among superintendents and business officials around connecticut but you know i think what faith is suggesting is a much more substantial evaluation i would imagine headlines like that trigger some people to say you know how do hospitals in connecticut turn a one and a half billion dollar profit in a year like uh that's a pretty substantial number so yeah is

058it is it something you either you'd be willing to just bring up to your your your organizations when you're talking to him i mean it could be worthwhile for him i mean i guess i don't think the two of you are going to have the the the bandwidth through your teams are going to have the bandwidth to do what faith had sort of explained to me well there's there's a couple of things that what a hospital negotiates with cigna or you know anthem for a particular procedure no we don't have any direct control over that but i will tell you a couple of things that you know we we do look at you know we did a review last year to make sure that all the claims that were processed were in fact employees of

059the cheshire public schools so we obtained a report from cigna we went through it you know line by line as a benefit specialist did this and there were no claims that weren't part of you know our employees or their dependents ct prime the board knows we are one of the municipal members of ct prime which provides our stop-loss insurance one of the the initiatives that we have going on right now is a claims audit not just for cheshire but for all the participating members so there's samples that are being pulled of our individual claims at cheshire and a third-party firm has been hired to do a claims review and the purpose of that review is to take the claim that was submitted and paid and validate that it was paid in accordance with the with

060the parameters of our plan so you know and we've done that in the past you know we we've paid a consultant or we've paid a broker to do that um so this is actually ongoing you know it's it's going on right now so we should have the results of that review in a couple of months the the we net won't necessarily get any money back from that claims audit but it will identify you know if there's a trend of cigna or anthem which are the two providers of the ct prime participants if there's any trends within that data that indicate that something isn't being processed correctly you know we'll be able to address that kind of at a broader level but i will report those results when we receive them faith cut me off here

061and i can just shut up at any moment but what i what i thought our discussion was was saying it wasn't so much saying joe smith is a is a participant in the public public schools plan and joe smith can incur costs uh and it wasn't saying well we paid a hundred dollar rate because that's a negotiated rate what i thought you were saying faith to me was some hospitals charge a hundred dollars and some hospitals charge ten dollars and why are some of them charging ten dollars instead of a hundred 100 so it's like what you're what i'm hearing you say wouldn't really get to the point that she's making which i frankly i think is probably too big for the cheshire public schools to take on and that's the only reason that i

062mentioned some of the larger organizations where it might behoove them to do this on behalf of their members if they have the bandwidth and i think like ccm this is very much something that ccm would look at i'm not sure about cave or caps or anything but anyway just mention it and i'm done any other questions for ben to face point i do you know understand your frustration and share i think this has to be elevated to the level of our own legislature and basically the public health committee and the insurance committee somehow too to kind of bring that data forward to all of us so um i'm going to make a phone call but i think each one of us can do the same as well too to see if we can push the

063envelope a little bit because it is frustrating i completely see the numbers it's outrageous you know even on a personal level too and the fact that we make a profit off of you know sick individuals it's just that's all my my comment is okay um i believe that will conclude the uh finance committee report um so moving on mr martell thank you it's always always hard to follow the medical benefits report but i'll um try to do my best so we had a uh rather robust meeting i'd say on back on monday um september the 12th over at the hummiston school with the planning committee adam grippo joined us as well um really kind of planning for the future which is kind of what planning committee does so key items on the agenda where we

064were discussing space needs and not there's not an immediate need we went over the current enrollment based on the projection and then where we are as of today at the beginning of the school year essentially to look at hiring a design professional in order to assess our various elementary schools for possible editions of trailers if and when they are needed as enrollment trends continue to go upward um i do want to say that from if i think you can say that we're in we're in an okay place right now but we do have to plan for the future these things do take time so getting a planning firm to come in now take a look at our various properties and where we could site trailers based on utilities and connections to sanitary sewer and whatnot

065is an important first step in that plan anything that's pretty much pretty good summarization of that okay yes um i don't have the meeting minutes in front of me so i'm just trying to do my best from from up here um we talked about the rfq it was an rfq issue to look at our various school fields um district-wide um community i think understands that bartlett park will be going under major renovation being beginning in the spring so we're gonna lose a softball and baseball field there so where we as a district can help out with space needs on the town side so all of our as as you would say kiddos have a place to play um so unfortunately the rfq was issued and wasn't really favorable in the responses that we received we

066only received one that really wasn't going to be what we were looking for so vin has been tasked to come back with us with some further refinement of that hopefully being able to get some additional numbers um along with that so the goal is to figure out where best we can help out with space needs um with our at our facilities um our then we went into looking at transportation the deco transportation contract expires in june 30th of 2024. um so looking at future with bus transportation services about bidding that contract or not buying that contract now that's all going to work um there is the bus facility over on sandbank sandbank road standby sandbag thanks um so there's gonna be a conveyance of that property from the state to the town of cheshire um

067so that's gonna be about 3.8 acre about a four acre site um so we talked a lot about that and then also there's a federal mandate coming in where buses need to be converted to electric buses by 2034 i believe 2040 or 20 by 2040 the bus fleet has to be zero emission which means electric right now by 2035 we need to be operating alternative fuel buses which could be it could include propane and electric as examples so there is a long-term requirement that we go to zero emissions and so you know planning for that was the goal of the discussion yeah and it's we're lucky in the sense that we have this we have the acreage in order to be able to accommodate this whether we need charging stations or if we need above-ground

068tanks for storage of alternate fuel sources from there we agreed to have a representative from daco come to our next meeting to discuss alternate fuel buses and what their thoughts are on that because it's going to take time to replace the fleet and so we need to start looking at that because that's going to be coming sooner rather than later as buses have a 10-year life i learned at that meeting i think that was pretty much it we we we did talk a little bit about solar installation at the schools we're looking to get some numbers back on that to see if we are it makes more sense between the cost the actual installation and the power generation i think that pretty much summarizes if anybody else wants to add anything from that meeting any

069update i will add that um daco uh don davil the president of dako confirmed that he can attend on october 19th at 7 00 pm so i did send a tentative calendar invite so we'll be able to lock that in and i'm working on the rfp which was the agreement to draft an rfp to try and find a design firm to help plan for potential installation of portable classrooms or any other options that might be that we don't can't identify to allow for space highland do little the likely candidates that might exceed their capacity before new schools are built assuming they're approved those are the updates i have since the meeting okay thank you i would just add one quick thing uh update as well on the planning side i just want to thank vin

070for kind of taking the lead with the rfq on the field updates the field management outside of cheshire high school hasn't historically been the purview of the cheshire public schools we don't use athletic fields during the course of our business at the elementary schools for anything but we're working collaboratively with the town and parks and rec and really want to thank public works for you know getting out there today and sean uh kimball and your support and been working collaboratively today the fields are being updated at uh doolittle and that should follow either tomorrow and or monday at highland as well so we're kind of creating a little bit more space there's still fall season where kids are playing and so i'm really appreciative that we have that close-knit relationship to be able to solve

071these problems and and support kids in cheshire even if it's not theirs or our issue we work together and and for the benefit of the kids yeah in the community that concludes my report thank you i'm actually i did have a quick question um actually well i guess for then perhaps um so uh we're gonna have uh datco come and i i guess make a presentation on the i guess the future of bus buses or bus fuel or that sort of thing um is because their contract expires in 2024 should we start should we consider an rf um pq no i don't know no not our fp our rfi um for uh to see what other companies are what other solutions there might be or is is it is that something like that to premature

072at this point there's so much information that's available out there i you know my thought was if we start with um dac kevin de vivo who's the vice president um his dad don de vivo is president he has a lot of experience a lot of information to share about their experience with propane initial experience with electric vehicles incentives so i think that's a good information source for us today actually i was on a it was a google meet with several several people propane the um and i know that you know that tim knows paul wessel from the greater new haven collation of cities i think it is clean cities green cities to talk about what the alternatives are and this the specific highlight today was propane fueled buses and the experience there you know certainly

073moving from diesel to propane you know from a cost point of view probably would be advantageous right now if we could do it certainly a cleaner burning fuel but you know my thought was if we meet with uh daco and then the next group that we can meet with as part of the planning committee would be this coalition that i had a google meet with at least everybody on the planning committee can start getting a little bit more information about what the options are and then we could determine from there do we want to bring others in or do we want to you know issue an rfp or rfi but there is no lack of information i think you know kind of my understanding you know based on on you know some of the due

074diligence due diligence i've been doing is that you know propane fueled vehicles they're used regularly across the state of connecticut and across the country they've become reliable their maintenance is easy the cost you know versus diesel or gas well established electric vehicles a little bit more futuristic you know the incentives are not quite there although i i think they will be you know the updating the electrical grid will take some time so you know i think the move to ev is going to take longer but propane is available now so that might be an intermediate move a lot of information that we need to digest before we can make any decisions but you know as we said you know we're about two years ahead of the contract expiration with dacco which i think will give

075us sufficient time to look at what the options are before we have to go to bid thank you tim uh just adding to what andrew had said just to um i'm not sure if you said it exactly this way but with the state law being 2035 for our alternative fuels and 20 40 for electric or whatever no no fossil fuels no fossil fuel involvement just keep in mind the 2035 deadline if you assume and we have about a 10-year turnover that means we if we if we do this if we build this right into our standard rotation of vehicles that means we're starting this in probably 2025 2026 something like that so it's really not that far off for us to begin this transition and that would start with the contract that presumably will start

076july 1st 2024 less than two years from now um so that's a state law that is driving us in part and one other side note i was recently reading an article about a study that was done that said uh there is it's it's pretty conclusive that 2.5 particulate matter the 2.5 is the size in particular matter comes out of fossil fuels i think like oil and diesel i'm pretty sure is what it comes from particular particulate matter has a clear increase in likelihood of leading to cancer in people just from the air that we breathe so if you smoke cigarettes it gets right into your lungs but any of this stuff when you're in uh when you're in areas with you know high pollution you're right on route 10 you're going to be getting this

077stuff you're going to be breathing it and it's not that everybody gets cancer from it but it increases it clearly increases the likelihood of it the particulate matter and i'm pretty sure that propane doesn't have that i don't think i don't think natural gas ch4 or propane ch3 have particulate matter in them it's the other ones um if that's correct then i think even just moving over to the propane with propane would be a great step although i would like to just get over to say solar build the solar arrays lock in those prices and be done with the inflation so anyway just another reason why i would like to get away from the diesel buses as soon as possible thank you how many buses come out of service every year i i don't know

078that there's a set number um you know generally when they hit that 10-year mark they're replaced by that goal that's okay and so it's not at our cost but they did provide 18 new buses over the last two years you know in our fleet so you know the fleet our fleet is kind of new compared to how it used to be all diesel on the large type one bus is a type two or mix uh mostly gas powered as opposed to diesel so we would have to um say we start changing over to alternative fuels to meet the 2035 let's say we started next year to meet the 2035 deadline and then say by 2030 we would probably be having to look at electric buses to hit the 20 40. instead i mean just for

079planning purposes i think that there's a transition period that you know we have the luxury of taking advantage of and planning for but there's a lot of considerations you know as andrew mentioned we've got we've got point eight six acres of additional land at the bus depot that could be developed well let's plan for what we're going to put on it you know we first looked at it as needing additional parking and a better driveway but if we know we're moving to propane well we have to allow for a propane tank if we know we're moving to electric vehicles we need to provide for electric charging stations so you know i think we're at a good place right now that we're planning for the future but a lot a lot to be considered i think

080was the outcome of the discussion andrew as you said before you had concluded your report [Laughter] from what i can tell is no other standing committees uh policy had to postpone their meeting so they will be meeting i believe in a few weeks um so we will move on to the approval of minutes um [Music] is there there's an emotion on our agenda would anyone like to make that motion mr martelly moved to the board of education approved the minutes from meetings held on august 11th august 17th and september 1st 2022 is there a second mr rosenberg thank you uh there any uh changes or amendments to the minutes seeing none all in favor okay unanimous and all right thank you uh correspondence okay since our um secretary is uh oh thank you uh we

081received uh one correspondence i guess i'm uh i'm doing the duty of all officers this evening [Laughter] uh we received our correspondence from our old friend mr john bester um and he writes and um uh to the members of the board of education welcome back to the new school year i know you have much to deal with as the year gets underway and i appreciate the efforts you all put into this undertaking i watched the youtube video of monday's curriculum committee meeting and was particularly concerned about reported student weaknesses in the um as i have stumbled across reading out loud weaknesses in the acquisition of reading skills i want to remind you that i continue to have great grave concerns relative to digital literacy versus traditional reading of hard copy materials it's not just student

082ability to accurately decode written passages but more importantly their ability to comprehend meeting develop empathy and glean truth from untruth in my opinion these skills skill deficits have grown into a significant problem confronting our society it is not enough to skim scan and search for knowledge and call it reading i've addressed the board with these concerns before but feel that my concerns have been met with polite indifference and see no effort to pursue the active and growing consideration of research into this controversy with that said i would like to once again refer to the important research on reading which continues to indicate that students comprehend what they read more deeply and efficiently when reading print materials two links were provided in the email which will be in the public record although students may welcome digital

083literacy opportunities some students recognize that they are more efficient readers when reading printed materials however many do not i can only hope that these research findings will be considered in future instructional planning and begin to inform the curriculum committee's decision making as it reviews and adopts future textbooks textbook purchases reflects respectfully um submitted john jackbester and that concludes the uh correspondence section yeah go ahead so my daughter's a sophomore and i know she has a hard copy textbook for all of her classes she has multiple paper books that she's reading i mean is this what is he referring to here first of all um there's no digital textbooks as far as i know all of our textbooks whenever we order them sometimes there is a online platform where kids can enter homework they can watch

084videos there's a component of that for the last few years anytime we've ordered one of these platforms we've always made sure that there's a hard copy book available students are always given the choice of what they want but i i will also say that last year on the curriculum committee we even took it a step further and we had three nights available just for folks to hear what kids are reading in elementary middle school and high school and all of those were about everything that's in hard copy we're not having kids listen to audio books or having them read books in digital print we have everything available in hard copy in our classroom libraries and our school libraries so i would say what your daughter is experiencing is is pretty typical so it's not like

085you know it's a one for one so it's not like everyone's getting a chromebook and then all the textbooks are available there and there's no because i mean i just covered two hardcopy books with a paper bag the other day which was you know it's kind of a disaster but um all right it's just making sure thank you and mr mr bester's points are very well taken and i i do not disagree with the information that he's shared with us over the years i think we are thinking similarly on that thank you if you could um elaborate that on a little a little bit further i think some of his his particular concerns are um with the introduction of chromebooks at such early ages in the elementary level um especially so um [Music] could you

086just speak to that sure prior to the pandemic we did not have chromebooks available for every student in the elementary school we only had chromebook cart with a class set that was used as the teacher deemed appropriate typically that was about learning keyboarding skills to write papers to to write excerpts of things so that that could be shared again since the pandemic every student now has a chromebook they're kept in the classroom at some of the upper grades that students are able to take them home as needed again mostly it's for writing you know not that we require every student to write this way on a device they can also do it it's very important at the younger grades for kids to be able to form their letters and practice it's really about seeing it

087feeling it writing it understanding it there are lots of videos and websites and things like that that are a part of um the experience that that there's information out there that kids can gather so if they're doing something in science they might watch um a video that has to do with an experiment so it's used in that way no longer are you watching the film strip up on you know the screen or the transparency you you have your own personal device to be able to watch some of those things yeah yeah and i'll just add for people watching him my kids are in first and third grade and they have not come home with any uh electronic devices they do come home with books and they're reading out of their books at night well my

088son in first grade it's more of a collaborative effort third graders reading on her own um i haven't i haven't asked them about what they're using in school are they so they they do use them in school i'm just down to first grade do they use the electronics in school or maybe not in first grade i wouldn't think this early in the year they would really be doing that but i'm not saying it a first grade teacher hasn't you know taken them out and shown that shown the kids how how to use them but he knows already he uses it at home so call me a bad dad but um uh yeah and then also we just had open house uh at norton on tuesday night uh which was part of the problem with having

089a policy committee meeting open house for norton was pretty important i had two kids demanding i go and i wanted to um but i got handwritten notes from each room on their desks so yeah absolutely adorable and really cute and i loved it uh but there my first grader in particular is he's learning to write um so anyway just wanted to add that thank you thank you okay i'll move on to the most anticipated uh portion of the evening the superintendent's report i know that you'll find this somewhat deflating but i'm gonna keep this really brief and uh save my energy for the next two yeah you promised me right uh anyway the two items i had were uh school modernization and quick update on kovit as much as i hate to say it but

090uh school modernization uh many residents by now should have received a postcard that we sent in the mail it's an informative piece that was reviewed by our attorney uh because we aren't able to advocate but we have a responsibility to educate and so that um postcard has has gone out if you haven't seen it yet you know look for it in your mailbox uh coming soon to a mailbox near you the other item um you know related to this we uh just issued through the our membership in the chamber uh flyer is pretty much the postcard in a different format that goes out to all the businesses in town so that people can go to our website and see the tax implications they can see more information if they choose again we think it's just

091important to be informed in this very important decision the town will be making on november eighth uh the school modernization component or excuse me the covid component we track we've changed a little bit the uh dashboard that we used to have on the website formerly had the number of cases that were out students that were out that specific day we decided to shift it a little bit to see the number of new cases per day in a specific building for students and or staff so if you go to our new website there under parent information there's a covid link and you can get go to the dashboard there what we've seen is this week a little bit of a pickup at cheshire high school in terms of positivity the numbers are a little higher there

092where we had eight cases over the last weekend and into monday four on tuesday three on wednesday three on thursday uh granted there were about 1400 kids in that building and they're very uh active with each other you know they're they're or with the community it holds so that they're exposed to a lot more people but um still very manageable numbers so that you know brings a smile to my face i mean there are darcy's had no student cases this week chapman dodd had one so it means very small numbers really um staff cases again you know kind of reflective of the student case situation is really pretty low um so as such you know we haven't changed any of our protocols or anything like that when it's been a really positive start to the

093year in that way so that's it in terms of that report because like i said i've got a little bit more excitement in the next two areas you mean the uh next section of the agenda is that you're gonna save it okay gotcha gotcha okay are there any questions uh for the superintendent uh tim cook thanks senator yeah uh so jeff my concern with with regard to kova my concern is the same as it was really two and a half years ago uh just because you get coveted doesn't mean that you're symptomatic have they been serious cases any of them that you're aware of which are aware this year yeah um not my i mean nobody hospitalized um you know if you ask my wife if i get a cold that's a serious case if

094she gets a man but um the other you know generally speaking it's not like people are being hospitalized or anything like that i think one of the challenges i just did an interview today with a news outlet that um you know the chant one of the challenges here is the wild variability in the way that people respond to some of these things and um it's important obviously to do our best to protect everybody um but you know feel real good about the way things are going and the way things are trending and okay thank you sure um okay uh we'll move on to old business um which was uh the affirmation of the strategic plan um at our last business meeting which was a few weeks ago if i recall or was that a couple

095weeks technically yeah i guess that was a business meeting right um we uh we were presented with the strategic plan i'm hoping that we all had to take uh had a chance to take a look at it um i guess so what i'll do is i will um start by just uh we'll we'll get the motion on the floor and we can do a discussion after that uh so i'll move that the cheshire board of education reaffirms the cheshire public schools strategic objectives and goals for 2022-2023 is there a second for that uh faith a second um so now we can have any uh discussion if i could just a couple of quick highlights here at that last meeting we had talked about sharing it with our parent community again that was done um according

096to our data online there were 214 reviews of that people were encouraged to reach out with questions feedback we received one piece of feedback and it was from emailed me directly and disclosed you know i knew that she's a principal in another district a high school principal and really the strategic plan is great you know thanks for sending this out alignment among all the parts is superb i love the chart of high quality instruction um so appreciated that uh feedback there was you know as we went back and had that you know we had had that conversation at this uh level previously in the last meeting as mr gripple mentioned the one page we did change is the top of page two uh where it had said you know indicators um and i think what

097we we wanted to convey here that those bullet points are really some of our guiding principles for success and that we um we had talked at the last meeting that these would serve as the foundation for annual or you know goals that could even trend over multiple years but this is really the foundational document for the next several years that these are our bread and butter of the cheshire public schools complex thinking social emotional learning our performance standards our vision of the graduate these are reflective of organizationally and as a community because certainly there was a lot of feedback in this process through parents attended every pto meeting in the district across you know from each school anyway with a focus on this specific topic school business partnership our educators our students were involved in

098the process and so that's that really was the formulation of this document um and now you know the next phase would be to bring you goals um upon approval of of this you know kind of core of of our school system so that's what like i said the one minor tweak we made um so is there any uh comment or discussion um andrew i mean i i guess so any plan right or any strategic plan takes time to implement adopt refine see what works see what doesn't work i mean since we adopted this back in 2011 and further refined 2016 i mean you could watch our improvement our district improve and student achievement and you know i just think it's a really good document i love that it's complex thinking and social emotional learning which

099i think are just fundamental parts of life and um i think it's a really great guiding document everything needs to be reviewed and gone through and so i did that i mean i'm not an educator so i don't really you know have that kind of foundational where someone like sam would um but i just think it's a really solid guiding principle for the district and i guess that would be my only comment on it to be honest any other uh i just had a quick um i like the competencies like i said before but we did we go backwards and kind of look at our curriculum and see if some of these items are embedded using this almost as a rubric as we do quick room review and evaluation so um the goals that were

100established in 2011 were really far-flung there were 16. this has made that uh much more feasible and we absolutely evaluate what we do against how does this support the development of complex thinking in the in our students how does this support the development of sel skills and you know i think that there's um amongst our community the idea that these are you know strong goals and good ideas but the research beyond that about what supports successful employees down the road also is is complex thinking and social emotional learning and i think that's why for us in our lives we see these as is really seminal skills that allow people to be much more successful and so that's we we do look at that in our curriculum we look at that in our daily practices and

101try and support ensure actually that these things are happening to support the development of our kids sure um jeff i think at the last meeting you may have mentioned that um if this is a firm this this is going to policy for review no okay um well well i i apologize you're you're correct you know carol and i had looked at this it um it would go to policy to be adopted um this kind of circumvents the the policy process in a way yeah wouldn't it be the other way around but yeah tip with the um the plan with the district plans of goals they typically have gone through the board for straight adoption it would be adopted as policy so we were going to go take this and really highlight where does this go

102into our because the whole document doesn't go in there right um parts of the document would go into the plan so i guess yes and no like the whole thing wouldn't be adopted as policy but it we would have to revise policies specific to our goals okay very good um any further discussion okay um then i'll just read the uh the motion one more time uh that the cheshire board of education reaffirms the cheshire public schools strategic objectives and goals for 2022 2023 all in favor uh it is unanimous okay great great thank you um and let's see for new business uh says uh dr sullin you have some uh new business i do um so chairman paragini who you know regrettably couldn't be here tonight as little under the weather as uh is our

103secretary miss harrigan um we've talked with mr grippo about the connecticut association of boards of education they have a recognition awards program and districts who've fulfilled certain criteria can self-nominate provide supportive documents and cable then make a decision about you fulfilling the board leadership award or even further you know board of distinction award and so um what you have in your packet is a document that vin marlene and myself uh went through checked off i mean you'll see the first item is board has developed district goals for this year you know this would suffice in terms of that yeah we just did it so um there there are numerous boxes checked off what i would ask of the full board in support of our application for this recognition is that you take a look through

104this and if you see anywhere where you feel like maybe uh we missed something in terms of like oh well we actually think we actually did do this but you don't have it marked or maybe we didn't do this any place that is marked however particularly if it says you know provide samples or whatever we have those are already available i could demonstrate that we fulfilled that requirement but if you see anything i would ask you just email myself and carol over the next several days because we want to try and get this completed and to cabe in a timely fashion uh the the deadline for them is october 7th uh for recognition at the connecticut association of boards of education and the connecticut association of public school superintendents have hold a joint conference every

105year in november and the you know assuming that we indeed are selected we would be recognized at that conference in mid-november i do you do yeah i don't have it this is a blank one though are we trying to i mean these have minimums so we're trying to check off every box as much as possible it would be nice but meaning the minimum would uh make us worthy so like level two on the other side we only have one out of minimum of three i guess so we need some work on um level two yeah so the level two on these are for boards of distinction the level one uh would be applicable for a board leadership award it does look like we have quite a few checked off here so that's good news yep

106but yeah i guess we'll take a look at it in the next week or so looks like please um okay um well as i'm only an acting chair this evening i have no chair report and chairman peregini did not supply me with his so we will uh skip over that part um i'll announce some upcoming meetings um september 21st is the finance committee meeting um did we uh settle on a final date for policy yet we don't we're going to hopefully wrangle people together at the end of this okay all right so well tentatively yeah tentatively uh late september for policy um october sixth will be uh board of education open forum meeting uh that's one where uh public can come in and we sit down we break into groups and discuss issues correct all

107right that's always a a great meeting so uh great opportunity for uh for those who did not come to visit us tonight to come visit us uh in october so we even the last year during covid we had a robust and lively meeting so uh come on down we're always willing to discuss issues [Music] october 17th is curriculum committee meeting 7 pm central office boardroom october 22nd okay october 22nd board of education meeting 7 30 p.m and uh potentially a planning committee meeting october 19th at 7 pm and that's we have for right now and of course uh for those parents who um uh may have forgotten that september 26th rosh hashanah schools are closed october 5th yom kippur schools are closed in columbus day october 10th schools are closed so just put that on

108your calendar everyone um luckily my wife reminds me so uh that being said oh oh there's a yes tim sorry if i missed it i was glancing down at this paper that i just got from carol um with regard to the october 6 meeting the open forum is that the one where we don't it's not televised and just parents come and sit down just to be clear on that i don't know if you had mentioned that or not so that's correct yeah so it won't be on youtube because i've forgotten about that part yeah there are no cameras but uh yeah so it's more but just for parents it's more of an informal thing where if you're you know if you're not really keen on being on camera or asking questions in public like that

109there are people around who would hear what you say but it's definitely um not potentially millions of people watching youtube which i doubt that would happen anyway but uh it's a little bit less formal like not to be that precise but that's about our maximum views usually um but thank you for that reminder yeah very important yeah so if you uh do like to come and speak but are a little shy uh october 6th is the meeting you want to be at um okay um i have we we have nothing left on the agenda so uh motion to adjourn was there a motion sam uh tim second all in favor hi all right meetings adjourn thank you