Board of Education 8-11-22

001here to the here of the united states of america and to the republic for stance on the issue under god indivisible welcome back it's a good warm up meeting to the start of the school year meeting uh no audience i'm not surprised i'm playing uh asked to make a motion then discuss um move that the cheshire board of education approves the consent calendar as presented seeing as there is no discussion the motion is that cheshire board education approves the consent calendar as presented all those in favor please raise your hands asian animus thank you everyone up next report to the standing committee starting with finance mr thank you mr chair um i guess i'll uh hand the report over to mr massiana thank you good evening everyone welcome back the finance report will be brief

002today we did start the new fiscal year the board's budget um is 80 million 664 thousand 420 dollars the finance report that's included in the board package shows that we've expended or encumbered about 19 of that budget so far the encumbrances are not done for the fiscal year yet that will take us until about september to have all the largest encumbrances that we do for payroll and transportation um so at this time the only points that i'd like to share with the board are we don't have any overwhelming concerns about our budget however everyone is aware that covert 19 is still an issue and so we are prepared that if we do have to expend funds for things like ppe or safety or or intraday cleaning which none of that is planned at this point

003we do have esser funds that can help defray those costs and we all hope that that doesn't happen this year that we start off with a much more normal and hopefully covered light year and then the second concern is just the impact of inflation that we know fuel prices are going to be up which impacts everything from a utility cost to the fuel that we provide for buses and then heating oil and propane and natural gas when the winter comes so to mitigate you know any of those costs being having a very high negative impact to our budget what we've done is we've imposed a 40 expenditure cap on all non-payroll expenditures usually we start the fiscal year at 50 but we decided to go a little bit more conservative so we'll keep it at

00440 probably through october until we have a better sense of what's happening that's the finance report i'll i'll quickly review the medical benefits and then that's okay we'll take some questions so i did provide the medical benefits update this is through june 30th we do not have the july 31st claims report yet but very quickly what the june 30th which was the end of the fiscal year shows is that we had claims during the month of june about of 1.2 million dollars just shy of that you know for the year our total claims were 12 million 831 406 certainly higher than than budgeted and higher than expected as the board knows in this new fiscal year budget we did increase the expected claims budget to a million dollars a month because of our experience the

005last two years which is a good thing as of the end of june our medical benefits reserve stood at 1.335 million dollars so that gives us just under one and a half months worth of claims reserved so that's finance and medical benefits i'll open it up to questions if there are any which it looks like mr white has one thanks adam yeah this is intended as a fairly simple question you'd mention covid if there is anything that happens you've got esser funds that are available so what i've read you know i'm hoping this thing is behind us but what i've read is this pandemic probably has another two years in front of us so the question is simply are you or the superintendent having ongoing conversations with chess forgot with the nurse the doctor who've

006been sort of the public health team do those continue yeah the short answer there is yes okay i'll definitely address that in my my superintendent's report on the kobit stuff okay great thank you i think so unfortunately if you did i'm on overload right now i'm not sure thank you i will add that we do have ppe and test kits in inventory so we're not starting the year with zero and would have to buy in response we are certainly ready to start the year with masks and anything that we need as we have in the past two years we're just hoping that we don't need to use as much i uh don't have any questions any other questions um yeah go ahead vin what do we do with um the dash that we have do

007we store the dust shields and so forth that we purchased are they which what was the dashios that we initially had at the beginning are they going to be repurposable if it happens to come to that the answer is yes and we we still do have some up and it they're not required at this point but we you know we will keep them in inventory and keep them stored and if we need them we'll bring them out what the long-term you know nature of those will be i haven't really thought about it but we rarely throw anything out until it needs to be thrown out in the district so um i apologize mr gripper there was one more item on finance which was school lunch that we could talk about when you're ready uh go

008ahead yeah because actually that was that was sort of formulating in my brain as you were speaking so so when we last met in june the board did approve an increase in school meal prices but deferred that increase to october first the reason that we needed to increase prices was simply because uh price food and labor you know has increased and and we don't see that easing at any point soon there are still food shortages and uh increased prices that we'll be dealing with as we start the school year the good news is that the state did finally determine what they would do and how they would allocate the 30 million dollars that i explained that the state had set aside in its budget they just had not announced to the schools and the food

009service staff how that would be allocated so the state allocated the 30 million across school districts in connecticut cheshire will be receiving 687 000 of that 30 million dollars the requirement for that money is that it has to be used to provide free meals breakfast and lunch to all students the 687 000 will likely get us through november so we're anticipating that free meals will be provided for all students through november so that's a second piece of good news the state also may at its discretion if there is additional availability within that 30 million dollars we may get an additional allocation but it won't be less than the 687 000. so the thing that's a little bit difficult and we will be communicating this with parents in the next couple of days the communications ready

010we're just just verifying that everything is set and our website works properly um how do you communicate that meals will be free for a certain period of time we'll explain it in the communication and we will keep parents posted that if we can extend that date we will so that is kind of the update there there are a couple of other things that i would like to mention and and this again will be going out to parents the um it because of of the way the programs ran last year we did not have to run every student meal through the program that we use to check students out that is no longer allowable so even though the meals are free students will have to provide their id and they will be processed because that's how

011we have to submit to the usda for reimbursement the other change and i believe i mentioned that in june but i think it's important to mention that when we have early dismissal at the middle school in high school we must provide student lunches we didn't do that in the past but that is required now we also cannot do a grab-and-go meal so we cannot hand students a meal that they could take on the bus and take home with them so everything needs to be served in school and that's true elementary through high school so those are a couple of the important announcements that we have again parents will be receiving notice and then updates as we know more and as we know when we will run out of the funding when the funding runs out

012we will be charging whatever the set meal prices are at this point i'm recommending we do not change what the board already approved in october but if that does change we can revisit it in september so that is the update on school lunch thanks adam yeah just to get clarity on it from what i recall we were talking about uh having the price continue until like october 1st and then jump up so skip any price jump other than zero to 100 possibly november correct okay okay and then let's say december 1st we have exhausted the 687 000 and we need to charge parents and again this is parents who are not eligible for free and reduced meals because that continues yeah if we need to charge we will give parents notice and they will pay

013the higher food prices that were approved by the board at the end of last fiscal year sure is that yeah yeah that's i think i understand that and i just you mentioned the high school they cannot do a grab and go they have to have lunch does that mean some of the high school kids are going to be having lunch at 9am or 9 30. it's going to mean that we do need to squeeze those those lunch waves into the day on early dismissal days so i don't know exactly what time but that is something that will be announced to the students at the high school yes okay was there a reason for that the we were advised by the um by the state the you know department of the department that runs school nutrition

014services that we should have been doing that all along and most districts were not doing that on early dismissal days middle and high school did not have lunch waves but there was a clarification made and the determination was that we must be providing those meals even on early dismissal days and this might be for jeff to add that in does that have any like real impact on the minimum number of hours of uh teaching in a school year uh the much bigger issue this year is the change in state law that requires teachers to have a 30-minute uninterrupted lunch so it goes from 25 to 30 minutes correct yeah um the few you know early dismissal days or whatever that's not going to really make a significant change so we were able to shift things

015within our schedules to accommodate that uh 30-minute lunch block across the district and you're talking about the 25 versus the 30 right okay all right thank you so uh so i just wanted to reiterate um my thoughts on the providing free lunch for the whole year coming up i know that that's not what we voted on i'm wondering if since now we are getting some state funding up that should take us up through november can we revisit this discussion when would be an appropriate time to do that um well i think vin could talk about the financial implications i mean give you ballpark idea uh that would have a substantial impact on our operating budget unless we were to ask the town for more money or something like that um that would that would be

016that would be okay by me but asking the town or yeah including it in our operating budget i i feel very strongly that you know this this is an issue of feeding our children and it's directly related to student learning because we all know students don't learn when they're hungry and i've just been hearing a lot about the stigmas attached to some kids getting reduced some kids getting free some paying full price and how that is visualized in the cafeterias in schools at the time um you know i i just would like to keep the discussion going about how we could possibly just provide free lunches out of our operating budget um i know it's not a popular decision to make but i believe we can do it if there is a will and um

017you know if we could see exactly how much that's going to impact our operating budget you know i think i would hope that it would be worth us taking another look at that so that's all i'm asking i guess i would add uh you know respond with two points one is in addition to the board's budget or asking the council the food service department does have a reserve and we we had discussed that you know back in june so we could certainly have a discussion in september if you want me to present you know what that would look like if we were to provide full free meals and funded that what the monthly cost would be and and how far the reserves would take us um and then as far as free and reduced i

018just want to make a point that when a student is online there's no way for any other student to know who's free or who's reduced students just you know show their id or enter their pin and even if the student is not on free or reduced and they have no balance in their lunch account that meal is processed so no one knows and no one should know that doesn't mean there isn't stigma associated for other reasons how somebody finds out but it's certainly not something that we uh really go out of our way to make sure that that doesn't happen and food service staff as they're bringing a student out they don't even know that's really great to know really really clear thank you for that information it's an important thing for us several years

019ago too that i remember some concerns that if students had stunning balances they weren't being served all that got nipped in the butt too so i'm glad it's uh i'm not surprised we're doing you know the best we can on that so thank you i know i was gonna say uh i think the way we did the motion in june is we're going to revisit this uh probably the end of september when you have a good when you just have at least a month under their belt the free meals with a balanced stain you start to project out and see if there's gonna be a gap or not so you're happy to revisit this you know once you get some data okay november would be great is that what you suggested september we could start

020talking about it at the september board meeting but curiously how uh how this takes off helping the school and it's being taken advantage of how far does funds stretch us let's thank you so much finn sorry and um i i just realized i'm like i'm not getting power school announcements i just realized my kids are no longer in school it's strange it's a strange feeling do feel left out i mean trust me there's plenty of board of ed emails but um uh is there gonna be announcement going on to parents about the upcoming increase just so they could plan ahead and be you know be i don't want people getting surprised i know we talked about in june it wasn't really reporting the papers anywhere um i don't think you'll realize the funding ran out

021last year and now we have the extra money but you know i would say communicate as you guys see fit so that at least you know to spend a camp people not surprised by it um and then you know plan accordingly yes and and the the communication actually i was reviewing it this morning with erica biagetti you know even though it's make very clear that school lunch will be free we still do have the meal prices there so parents you know will be aware what the prices are when they're no longer free to those non-free produce students first of all i i'm glad we made the decision that we made in june to delay this been knowing that the state was going to get us some money and hopefully extend this um i do i

022don't mind revisiting the conversation so if we do come back in september or november could you just give us a few hypotheticals um so that we can at least try to see understandably the cost is going to come from somewhere else we're going to give up something else so that this could be you know a possibility for our kids so thank you yeah one of those hypotheticals that sam's talking about could be and this sort of goes along also with uh tony's um discussion on not surprising uh the parents and i know that the prices will be listed in all but it seems to me that there's less surprise if that turnover takes place after the the holiday break so if that could be one of the scenarios if the reserve could last us that

023that last month before the holidays i'd like i wouldn't mind seeing that actually thank you vin don't mention it um so for me uh so that you said it was about 650 000 687 so is that going to help us um at the very least spread out the costs that we would have incurred throughout the other uh seven months so that potentially would not cost us as much like would it would we be able to spread that out in a way where the the per meal cost might be able to be lowered further without any additional cost to us is that a possibility that that is not that's a great question and that's when i first heard about the 687 000 i was trying to formulate what's the best can we get a full year

024out of it but the guidance is very clear you must use it to provide free lunch for students you can't offset some of the cost to some of the students it's there just to provide free meals for as long as we possibly can so does that mean so then there's a potential loss of revenue to us because we're not charging for those several months so it could be actually you would not be able to defray costs we because we may not have been collecting as much as we would have been even with the reimbursement is that that i'm not following uh yeah maybe i'm not following it either um so we so we let's say for example we would charge five dollars for a lunch or whatever it is right um starting in october right

025but right now we have so from september through no through the end of november we have to supply free lunch to all for a free meal to all right breakfast and lunch right correct that's what the six hundred eighty thirty seven thousand dollars for that let's assume it ends november 30 through whenever it will last to not necessarily the end of november right potentially so would because we've accepted that money would we have generated more money if we were to if we were to supply those meals at a cost to the children i guess is what i'm saying so like what it would the greater profit right without the right we yeah does it hurt our um yeah um no i think not necessarily the bottom line but just the the cost of operations does

026it cover yeah right operation right better yeah i should have prepared that a little more it's complicated i'd have to look at that my senses will probably do a little bit better with the reimbursement model the way it works good than if we were charging meals because there is some additional reimbursement per meal as part of this right now and the other thing that as you were talking one other possibility we could look at is if we can't afford to make free meals available through our budget preserve however we do it you know maybe there is a reduced price we can charge to help defray the cost increase that's another way we can analyze it so we'll we'll run a couple of different scenarios and present it um in september if that works um and

027uh lastly for me um this is kind of going back to the uh the budget report um just off the top of your head because i didn't ask you to prepare this ahead of time were there any coveted costs and because i know i had asked that i had asked a question at our last finance meeting or well sort of were there any covet costs uh such as cleanings porters any of the dividers that sam had mentioned were did any of that come out of our budget that was not reimbursed by the federal government already yeah it doesn't look like we qualify for any of the female no no and we charged most of the purchases to esser funds okay not all but certainly the bulk of of what we had was charged to esser

028okay so all right so like the the porters and stuff that was not an additional expense to us even though they i'm sure they charge us more for it that difference was made up by the ester funds yeah okay all right thank you you're welcome um any for tim okay so yeah i'm not i may have missed this but just to be clear you were talking about free lunches before going out till say november and then i just heard adam mention free breakfast as well is that right so the mandate is to do both of them yes for okay thank you and again that's for a full breakfast full lunch meal breakfast consists of milk you know cereal you know bro lunch has to include protein milk fruit vegetables so it's a full reimbursable meal

029someone buying anything a la carte whether it's water or a snack that is not free it has to be a usda reimbursable meal which is good it's it's a full breakfast and a full lunch vin what happens if i could picture my kid right now if she has to stay and eat at school she's not going to get the food so that there's a meal that's not used so what happens to that or is that just going to be deducted from if it's not if it's if someone doesn't take a meal then it extends how much money we have available we're not being penalized because we didn't force the kids to take it right correct can it can i riff on that uh our do we expect to have more kids taking free meals if

030they're being offered as free well that's a that's a great question and the answer is yes but even at the height of the period of time last year when it was should have been pretty well established that meals are free we did not have a 100 participation rate in the free meal program and i forget what it was it's somewhere in the range so yes when the meals are free it has been higher but not what i i think the average person would guess well if it's free everyone is taking meals and that is not the case some students do you know bring their own they have breakfast at home bring their own lunch not everybody eats even though it's free so but we we always try to encourage the participation rate in our meal

031program you know certainly when it's free but as well as when it is being paid you're welcome as usual the finance report always becomes a little more interesting with questions um but that my piece was uh looks like we're all questioned out for now so uh i conclude the finance uh report thank you mr mr grill but it has been a couple months so i'm sure pumped up with questions it's uh it's allowed uh up next is personnel do you have one item uh tim and norvin you guys wanna yeah there was no personnel meeting but i see this on the agenda so it's with jeff and ben okay i i will be glad to take it so the um before the board is uh a motion that's that's been suggested uh which is to

032approve the new collective bargaining agreement with the formerly known as instructional assistants now known as the power educator and lunchroom and playground aid union and i'm going to give some quick background i did provide in the board's package a summary we had a contract that ran through june 30th of 22 with the para educators so we started negotiations and this is just a summary of negotiations we started negotiating with the union back in february of 2022 we held eight negotiating sessions with the group through june 30th which was the final meeting when we were able to reach a tentative agreement the power educators are represented by csca seiu their um lead negotiator is frank pizarro so he works for csea and on the union negotiating team were two of our employees lori del cora mary

033and kish and on the board side i represented as the negotiating lead and along with me was angela latch our director of human resources services and robin anne carey director of pupil personnel because most of the para educators obviously are providing special education services just at a high level between both parties there were 40 different proposals some were overlapping such as wages and benefits and of the 40 we were able to negotiate down to 26 proposals that ultimately were um negotiated successfully to tentative agreement and of the 40 nine were rejected by the opposing party and and five were withdrawn so i always like to put a little bit perspective on how we got to what we actually agreed to kind of the scope of the negotiations and how many items that we settled but

034the negotiation sessions although you know we certainly had some differences of opinion as we worked through it everybody was very professional and cordial and we negotiated with the same group three years ago and and reached a successful agreement which is always better than trying to mediate or arbitrate as far as the proposed successor agreement the summary is as follows they we agreed on a three-year term so that would take effect assuming the board approves it as proposed from july 1st that just passed through june 30th of 2025 we um wages were a big issue as it always is however the the additional point that i want to make is that the para educators were well below the 14 and 15 dollar minimum wage so we did have to negotiate to make sure that we were

035able to meet the minimum wage minimum wage went to 14 per hour effective july 1 and it increases again june 30th of 23 to 15 per hour so one of the parameters as we were negotiating wages is we needed to meet the minimum wage requirement and certainly any new employee um we wouldn't want to bring a new employee in and have an existing employee being paid at a lower wage than the new employee so as we negotiated those were the things that we took into consideration so the the little grid that i have if you're able to look at the summary there are four different employees that are in this group lunchroom and playground aids of which there are 44 employees our para educators which are the largest group 134 and hall monitors the para

036educators are providing special education services the next group of 41 are aba dti para educators they provide for the needs of students who have more severe needs they are specially trained hence the aba dti certification they are paid a higher wage and then we have four employees that they've been here for well over 20 years we put them in what we call a red circle group because we cap their wage increases there's again there's only four employees there so the impact is not huge the the wages in order to get to the 15 per hour minimum by june what we agreed to is a wage increase as of july 1 and then a second wage increase as of january 1 2023 so all the employees in this unit will receive two wage increases in this

037fiscal year and then the following july 1 and then july 1 of 2024 just very quickly the the lunchroom playground aids their wage increases would be three and a half percent in june and excuse me july three and a half percent in january and then the following july two and a half percent followed by two and a half percent power educators three point seven five percent july one three and a half percent january one and then the following july three percent and then in the last year of the contract it would be 2.875 so you'll see that the wage increases are higher in euro one and then decrease over the following two years the aba dti their first year um the july 1 wage increase is 2.75 then two and a half percent followed by

038two and a half percent two and a half percent again these that power educator group is well above the minimum wage already so those wages did not have to meet a minimum wage standard and the red circle group two and a quarter percent uh the first two raises that followed by two percent and two percent so if you turn to the next page i've really summarized this so that it kind of from a financial point of view in 2223 which is the fiscal year that we're in the weighted average increase for this body is 4.8 percent again that enables us to make sure we meet the minimum wage and the total cost of that to the board's budget is 187 sixty five dollars and then in twenty three twenty four the second year of the

039contract the average wage increase is two point seven two percent and that's a hundred thirteen thousand dollar increase to the budget and then the last year of the contract it drops to two point five five percent to a hundred nine thousand two twenty seven i i supplied a grid that just validates that the new employee start rate will be lower than any existing employee pay the second component of the bargaining agreement that we're proposing is for medical benefits for employees who work 30 hours or more most of the employees are in the hsa plan already they can do a buy up to the ppo or hmo none of that's changed the deductibles for the hsa four thousand and the board's contribution towards the employee hsa deductible is seven hundred fifty dollars and fifteen hundred dollars

040which is lower than all our other union groups and that's because the this particular group they generally work less than 35 hours so they are paying more for their benefits and they're not quite as rich there's really the the key piece about medical benefits is in the next two bullets the hsa plan cost to the employee is currently 22 it will drop to 21 percent effective in 2223 and then stays at 20 percent for the next two years what we negotiated though is a wellness incentive in order to qualify for the incentive which would give the employee a one percent further reduction in the first year of the contract and then a two year two percent reduction in the following years employees have to do three things they have to prevent at least one preventative

041care screening generally this is with their doctor could be ob gyn or they can go for a mammogram or a colon cancer screening so first component is they have to have one preventative care screening the second component is they have to have a biometric screening so blood work blood pressure height weight that's the second component and then the third component is they have to complete a health risk assessment at mycigna.com which they could either do on the website or they can complete that using the my cigna app so that was certainly something that we thought was important the um certainly the bargaining unit liked it they like the idea that they can get a reduction they they like the idea that we're working to improve their health and wellness you know we would hope that

042all employees do these three things anyway but the reality is they don't so we do hope that this encourages the right behavior certainly good for the employees and their health and well-being and their families but it also could help us with our claims right we know that early prevention costs less because you can treat you know an illness more quickly before it becomes a larger problem cigna would administer this program so really there's not any additional burden on the district staff to to manage this cigna keeps track of employees who meet this criteria and the way it works is the employee needs to meet the criteria before the start of the new plan year if they do they get the additional reduction they do have to do this every year so if they want to

043keep getting the discount they have to keep completing those three components um really the the last financial component that i wanted to mention is that we're changing the longevity payments so employees that are here 10 or more years you know this is an incentive that's been in place to try and encourage employees to stay so at 10 years of service the annual payment will be 300 now it was employees at 15 years of service instead of 250 will receive 400 and then employees that are 20 years of service instead of receiving 300 they'll receive 500 um certainly something that we negotiated and and we agreed to um and then there was also a modification to the retirement severance payment that's already been in the contract the way the current payment worked is if an employee

044had 20 or more years of service we would pay them when they retire 15 of their unused sick days they can accumulate up to 180 to be used if they have a long-term illness so we were already paying out 15 days we modified it that now at 15 years of service upon retirement we'll pay 15 days but at 20 years of service we'll pay up to 20 unused days again days have to be unused and accrued and last thing i already mentioned that when we will no longer refer to instructional assistants they will be paraeducators which is in line with the education industry we've actually not been in line with the industry there's no financial ramification to that and they also ask that rather than refer to our lunchroom playground aides as teaching assistants they

045um recommended and we agreed to just call those employees lunchroom and play grenades so the recommendation um because this was uh i believe this is a a good and a fair agreement for both parties the recommendation you know is to vote to approve this the union has already voted and approved this so they're good to go if the board approves it then these changes would take effect retroactive to july one although the reality is these employees have not started work yet so there is no retroactive pay component of the recommendation so i'll stop there and i'll answer any questions so i'm thinking from the lens of the other contracts like the teacher and the administrators um and what's happening now as far as in trying to obtain qualified good candidates are there flexibility in say

046somebody who's who's got years of service that wants to come to cheshire with the qualifications could we pay them at the higher end no not under not with this bargaining agreement however what i i would say one of the things that we do and it's a little bit different than not all districts but many districts we do have a career path you know which is to go from a power educator to an aba dti it's a much it pays a lot more and actually the wages just to make it clear a paraeducator starting salary is 14 um excuse me will be let's use july january 1 of 23 15.38 starting pay for an aba dti power educator is 23.97 so someone has that many years of service what we would and if they don't have

047their aba dti certification we would help them get it part of the contract has always been and we made it a little bit easier as we will provide the training or they can get certification from outside and we'll review it and accept it so that would be the way we would handle someone that that's coming in that has a lot of experience we would look for them to be part of that group the other piece of the career path which is not exactly a job title change but we have positions for para educators that are less than 30 hours and more than 30 hours so if you're you know start work and you're a 28 hour para educator and an opening comes up for a 32 hour power educator obviously you're working more hours and

048getting paid for that but you also get a higher level of benefits so i understand you know if we if we could do that which you can do with teachers so teachers have steps we don't have steps in this contract we have a starting rate and then we have the wage increases but we we would work on the career path piece of this for somebody who's very experienced just to make it more attractive um and you know a tough one it's it's rough out there right now and i i think we're pretty competitive with these rates as it stands but again the the pool you know we're in my opinion we're just cannibalizing each other in a sense there's certainly some of that happening and you know we and we have had turnover in the

049last couple of years unlike what we've seen previously i do hope this wage improvement helps a bit um and some of the other perks within the agreement help a bit but it's you know we're competing and struggling like a lot of other industries the good news is that you know even though we've had high turnover we've had pretty good success at filling positions and just a on that um no never mind i just thank you vinnie thanks tony um i see that for the first year the raise here is 4.8 in years past i would have blocked at it i i have no problem with it right now just seeing what's happening um yeah i think everybody recognizes that uh with regard to post-retirement benefits you mentioned like a severance payment that's happening but could

050can you confirm that nothing changed in terms of the any benefit plans post retirement benefit plans and could you also say where it is right now like do we have a defined contribution plan a fine benefit plan which would be a contribution being a 401k to find benefit being a a pension what's commonly known as a pension so we eliminated the defined benefit plan the town pension for all our bargaining units in 2015. what we offer to this group instead is a 403 b plan so it's a defined contribution plan the board's responsibility is to contribute five percent of the employee's salary to that plan that's we haven't changed that that's the way it's been the last three contracts if the employee puts one percent of their own contribution towards that 403 b will match

051that one additional percent so the board's maximum contribution is 6 of the employees pay to the 403 b plan that's their retirement benefit the severance you know we call it severance but it's just it's really a payout of unused sick days the one last point you had mentioned that there were you originally started out with 40 proposals and 14 of them got pushed to the side do you expect without getting into any details do you expect any of those 14 to come back in the future no okay now when they're resolved they're they're resolved so okay if you mean in the future and the next bargain in the next contract do you have a reasonable expectation today that it'll come back in three years or are they probably gone now some will come back okay

052okay that's all i was curious about on both sides sure sure okay thank you okay yeah your turn yeah um i'm just wondering is anybody at the state maybe the state department of education um going to be studying the effects of this minimum wage increase i think it would be really interesting to see if there are real uh differences when people are making more of a living wage for for their work that they do and um i wonder if that will have any real effects in the quality of the job that people are performing i'm just wondering i'm not suggesting that we do that kind of research i think it would be really difficult but i do think on a statewide level since this is you know this is a state decision um that honestly

053i think all all schools districts should be looked at to see you know what the effects are uh actually paying people for their for their work just wondering if anyone knows anything about that i'd be really interested um in hearing about it and maybe i'll maybe i'll write a letter to the state department and see if they have plans to uh look into that i i can say this i've not read or or heard of anything specific that's being studied but it's it's a fair question you know to ask i'd be surprised if there's not some kind of false study being that's you know statement in which wage law i'm sure i i trigger out the representatives and see if they're playing it but it'd be nice to i know the focus on education as

054sam mentioned um there it you know there's a shortage of qualified educators and professionals out there so i'll be curious to see how this helps at all before we go on we do have a motion on this so i recommend that we make a motion and dive into a further discussion so does anyone make emotions we've got the background now something real so ann must make the motion please do i move that the cheshire board of education approved the collective bargaining agreement with csea s-e-i-u local two zero zero one slash 760 for the cheshire para educators lunchroom and playground aids hall monitors and study hall monitors for the period from july 1st 2022 through june 30th further that the board of education authorizes the superintendent of schools to sign the contract on its behalf thank

055you man is there a second mr crippled seconds discussion um i just had a quick question uh van i know we had mentioned this during our uh budget uh discussions um waiting for or accounting for the the wage increase to 15 um so is this uh the 2023 2022-23 um impact for this particular contract has this sort of been accounted or in line with what we were expecting um when you put the budget together just slightly higher but not nothing material that would impact our budget negatively so yeah we obviously knew that the minimum wage was going to 15 not only for this group but there are other groups that are in this this category as well so that it was accounted for in the budget thank you welcome any other questions comments on this

056motion okay the motion is the cheshire board education approved the collective bargaining agreement with with csea s-e-i-u local two zero zero one seven sixty four chess repair educators lunch room and playground aids paul monitors and study hall monitors for a period from july first 2022 through june 30th 2025 further that the board of education authorizes superintendent schools to sign the contract on its behalf all those in favor please raise your hands all those opposed or abstaining one abstention motion passes thank you thank you no meetings right i know vincent has an update on some school projects i will i will i have no pictures a few of those during the summer i have no pictures i will just tell you some of the highlights i'll start with technology um just a couple of things to

057say that the one-to-one computing devices all the chromebooks and then the lower grades we do provide ipads they're ready for students upon their return including the students entering dodd seventh grade they get a new chromebook and they keep that through grade 12. so all those are prepped and ready to go for the students i did want to also let the board know that over the summer we did replace some of the old smart boards projector mounted with more of the flat panel smart board models so as of right now the district has 128 of those flat panel boards installed which is roughly a third of the total population we have been funding those you know through the operating budget the computer capital equipment line so that is a good place we feel good about where

058we are we've really replaced a lot of the old failing equipment and we'll continue you know to do that as as we have funds to do so um and then this is something behind the scenes but there were improvements made so that we can monitor the wi-fi productivity and use and troubleshoot wi-fi issues before the users even know it's happening so this is some an upgrade that was important and that we use aruba which is really excellent technology as far as providing wi-fi service it's been very reliable and we want to keep it that way we are also upgrading munis which is our financial and accounting platform both the board and the town uses that it's kind of a big deal again it's it's an internal project and we expect that upgrade to happen on

059october 7th so that's the technology update bus routes are all the regular ed bus routes are ready the final work is being done on a special education bus routes so those will be ready and announced to parents um and and some some parents are already advised we're in good shape with bus drivers for next year so we expect to start the year smoothly we're a little tight with the sports charters because those runs occur some occur at the same time that we're completing our elementary school runs so we don't have quite enough drivers to cover all the sports charters but we have a you know very talented transportation department so they've already been you know working with vendors outside of daco to make sure that we provide the sports charters and i know that steve

060truffone our athletic director has been trying to work with other school districts to have some later start times for some of the athletic events which would allow those bus drivers returning from the elementary runs to cover the sports charters small detail but it's kind of a big deal so we're on top of that as far as maintenance projects i just want to mention a couple some are visible some not so visible but we um have been working on improving the east gym floor so if you go into the east gym you're going to see it it looks great we had to replace part of the floor but it's being repainted as we speak and it'll be refinished it's going to look sharp it'll look like a new floor even though it's it's not new so

061very visible project we made some improvements to the dodd boiler rooms they're dramatic but you probably won't see those so um the one you will see is the new high school scoreboard it's been replaced if you haven't seen it it's hard to miss when you go down to the field it's it's bigger um it's not it's not hooked up yet but it won't blow down in a windstorm anytime soon the the mounts are just incredible so we're happy about that one we um do expect to have it online right at the same time as the first game of the season it's just the electrical that needs to be connected the dodd roof replacement we had this scheduled for the summer it was a major project not only did we complete the project on schedule but

062we also were able to add another 3 000 square feet of of roof over the library that we're happy we were able to get done within the budget the highland cafeteria that floor is in the process of being replaced was much needed and there's a logo being added we will get that project done right for the start of school so that one's a little tight but we'll be okay um and then the last major project that is visible is the doolittle parking lot and driveway uh is being repaved this week you know it'll be striped it's it'll look really really good and we made some improvements so that we can fit additional cars in that too little parking lot the cleaning across the school district is just about done highland because we had summer school

063just ended last week that is in the process of being cleaned so there are no show stoppers we will open school on time as i sit here and report out so that is always good news and that is the summer project update i have so far and don't bring up the m word the what word mine's quick so can we expect photos for the opening of school meetings great that's all i need okay okay vin this might not connect but um and i didn't read everything thoroughly but since the governor just gave us some money for the um emergency yeah so remember we discussed about the generator does this help in some way with well the money is specifically for this building to set an emergency operation center but it doesn't affect the schools because

064i know we had plans to especially at highland in the in the high school it's well i'm just trying to remember i believe we did get um funding approved for generator at highland as part of the capital budget i'll double check that um and then we did ask for funding so that we could power the back of the high school if that fails because we needed to make some switch upgrades so um so that doesn't connect to no not to that block of mine not in any way no just trying to see if we can say no that was purposely requested and allocated to have it done here it's a good ask though um just a quick question sorry out of practice um so 3 000 square feet additional to the dodd roof is that

065because they not only got it done uh on schedule but under budget so you had the money to do the extra thing so going forward how does this help with the re-roofing project how far along are we and um is this going to save us money on that project well it the dodd-roof sections that were leaking are now repaired and we had done everything we could to maintain the roof and kept replacing the seams so now it's essentially a brand new roof with 20-year warranty so the fact that we were able to get an additional 3 000 square feet done under this this allocation was about 450 000 and it was because the contractor did find some savings as they they tore up the old roof there were things that they didn't need to do

066that was anticipated so right now i i want to say that about 60 of the dodd roof has been replaced certainly all the concerning leaking areas are now not leaking and we've had some significant rain the last you know 10 days so it's been kind of tested so um will it save us money as we go forward you know to the extent we did 3 000 square feet now that we won't have to do at a later date that probably is going to cost more because of inflation it does save us you know from any inflation cost but we're in good shape you know after this summer project that died now okay thanks you're welcome um i missed anne's question before what was your question because i just want to make sure i didn't i

067just wanted to make sure we were going to have photos of all of these great things that have happened in our schools for the opening of school all right that definitely was not my question okay thank you um so i won't use the m word that you were alluding to so i'll just ask has a walk-through been done of our facilities to ensure the quality of services and such yes yeah and that's that's ongoing thanks tony yeah i apologize if i missed this did you say that the generator at highland i believe that was approved as part of the capital budget request yeah that's what i recall for year one so i was thinking it would be happening this summer no well so year one would be next summer i know the capital budget shifted

068a couple in the past year okay yeah so next summer would be it yes okay thank you i will just confirm that because as i sit here it's it's a little bit foggy but i will confirm that that in fact was approved yeah i'm assuming that i mean if you have if you have the ability you can move stuff around i mean well fast track stuff slow walk stuff depending on the particular circumstances yeah we can't change what the money was allocated for but you know we can sure try and change timing yeah yeah that's what i mean yeah but that has to be engineered you know so sure it's it'll take us till next summer to get that done i think you know what i'm concerned with that's what i wanted to make sure

069thank you thank you any other questions on planning report from mr massiana what's the m word don't say it can you can you just cancel it's m-o-l-d we want school opening on time for all schools we all do we all do so we do i mean we have fans running where we don't have air conditioning and you know making sure that we try and keep the place well ventilated you know the the fact that the humidity is down now it's helpful let's hope it stays down but it is summer and we'll keep checking i just want to say jeff s is so conditioned we thought it was modernization thank you fate we're going to move on to policy committee mr grippo uh thank you mr chair um although we have not met in a while

070our last meeting uh a lot had occurred um i'm gonna do i'm gonna do a high level summary uh if you wish to learn more about the details this was recorded and is on youtube and the six pages of minutes are also on file um so uh but basically so this occurred when was this june 14th um we had our presentation from cla about the i guess the audit that was done of our student activity accounts um there were let's see six findings um mostly um uh i guess kind of that had to do with um the policy which was of course one of the main drivers for the audit in the first place um that it had not been updated since 96 there were some training and reporting issues with some of the systems

071that we were using um and that a new system was coming online that mr maciana had uh mentioned um and that there would be more adequate training for staff um efficiencies some inefficiencies yes many efficiencies would be resolved um let me see here um the schools that were examined during the audit were dodd middle school highland elementary school and cheshire high school those because those had the largest activity accounts the management's response um was that um they had already begun a review of the activity uh the activity school activity fund policy um they gave they showed us a draft of that policy where um i believe let's see miss figueroa is that her name vin did an excellent job at least uh upon an initial review of really trimming down the really massive policy that

072we had to i think it was only two or three pages um because we you know it was really quite large and wielding and she kind of really uh pared it down for us so that'll be uh something that we will be reviewing i think at our next policy meeting or in the near future um and that um uh van and miss figueroa who is also part of training right yes is going to be uh training staff on the new accounting system uh so that all the findings in reporting can be um fixed in a nutshell um this uh the actual conversation uh probably took about 45 minutes or so so um if you'd like to see it again it's on youtube um we did a uh an initial reading of the food service charging

073policy um miss uh is it spaghetti but a presentation on the uh policy and uh we did an initial uh reading of that or at least what an initial overview i don't think we advanced it for a reading um we also uh did a uh let's try and see here which policy did we do okay all right um we also did an overview of the school activity fund policy and monies in school buildings policy we did move forward to a first rating yes the first reading of 3542.43 which was the food services charging policy um we moved uh to a second reading uh policies uh 1140 61 41.51 61 41.52 and 6172 for a second reading and those are regarding distribution of materials to students instruction advanced courses programs eligibility criteria for enrollment um instruction

074challenging curriculum uh challenging curriculum policy criteria for identification of eligible grade 8 and 9 students and instruction gifted and talent gifted and talented students program i believe all of these were statutory changes and our meeting concluded at 8 15. are there any questions again details on the audit and our discussion are on youtube and the uh the minutes are on file mr guerpo can i have one thing i i just wanted to give an update as far as the training which we said that we would do prior to the start of the school year we did we completed student activity fund training this was for all the bookkeepers and all the administrators so we did the first two sessions the first one was just a student activity fund overview review of the policy and and

075more importantly the regulation that i know that the policy committee will review and take up um and then that was held on august 4th august 10th earlier this week we did a second training and these trainings are mandatory on my school bucks which is the online payment method that's used as part of the training that we did one of the comments and was that the forms needed to be standardized that are used across the district for disbursement requests and other things those have been standardized so we built into the training the use of those forms so of the items that were highlighted and recommended for change we've completed all the items that we committed to complete the only item that's left is to finalize the change in policy regulation which i don't believe the policy

076needs any change it's just the regulation that we're still making some tweaks to um so that's one thing that's that's not done and the second item that still remains is training on epees which is the student activity accounting system so that training is in development we will roll that out right after the new school year begins so we are on track to comply with this and again i want to reiterate that you know as part of the review there were no financial concerns that were identified this is more related to policy and procedure and how we administer the funds and you know one of the deficiencies was that staff felt that they needed more training so we've completed the training and the good thing about what we did is we have it added to vector

077training which is our online training platform so any new employee that's hired into a bookkeeping or administrator role can be assigned those videos to watch and be trained so i i did want to add that as an update to what you just covered thank you thank you mr masiana that is a um a great addendum to the report appreciate that um and it is good to know that there was no actual um financial problems found it was just all in basically training or perhaps uh double reporting or something like that that was found you know regular accounting type errors and that the system is being improved and that obviously uh the training is being much improved so that's that's great to hear it's yeah again so the the background for this was back in 2019

078i believe it was 2019. it's part of the positive revisions so that one policy was back in 96 is one of the things when i do and you know we talked about hey why not just review the process is because the policy is that oh old there's got to be some inefficiencies somewhere so this would have been done soon or had not been for covet because i know that's what was upon that year 2020. so i appreciate the time for the patients that the team put into this um so hopefully it makes the folks involved with this their jobs a little easier more efficient um but i think i know this is never a fun thing to do with so much going on but thank you any questions yeah no thank you adam for this

079um i do think it was important to have a review of what is it the what's the what's the total asset balance like a million and a half dollars just to make sure things are happening correctly so thank you related to this i just wanted i i just wanted a refresher i don't know if somebody could give me a quick recap on uh coaching uh coaching permits we did a review on that if i recall correctly where does that stand just to ensure that everybody is properly permitted there's a protocol where in advance of every season chs the athletic department reviews it with dr gad and then sends that to vin and myself uh like i said in advance of every season okay and that's something that was not happening three years ago right okay

080thank you yep excellent any other questions from the board members on the policy update seeing as they are on then we're going to move onwards and upwards or downwards this agenda uh we have no understanding committees uh up next is approval of minutes uh we do have our minutes in our pockets hopefully i had a chance to review them but something like they make a motion and then we can uh have a discussion so adam you have a motion for us move that the board of education approved the minutes for meetings held on june 9th and june 30th 2022 faith seconds any discussions changes and it's see as there are none uh the motion is that move at the board education approve the minutes from the meetings on june 9th and june 30th 2022 all

081those in favor it is unanimous thank you madam chair amanda secretary do we have any correspondence i have received no correspondence thank you ah much anticipated superintendent support you can move to the edge of your seats now folks the school modernization update uh this summer our team has been working really diligently uh carol marlene been our administrators to make sure that we are doing everything we can to educate our community about an incredibly important decision that will as a community be making on november 8th more than likely that date has not been established yet but the town council is slated to take that up on august 23rd everything has been put in place and i would just take the opportunity to remind the community that unanimously endorsed by the board by the town council after

082many years of review and um as i've said you know before to find 16 politicians public servants from the most conservative to the most liberal who can all agree on one path in 2022 is is almost it's really a testament to the amount of work that's been done um to the diligence that's been done by both groups and parties and they firmly believe that this is the best path forward for our community at this time i do want to make one correction and it's a it's a significant correction on information that i've shared previously around the change in reimbursement rate um i had previously indicated that the shift in our reimbursement rate from 36 to 50 percent was the equivalent of a 20 million dollar savings what i failed to calculate in that is the

083interest on said 20 million and um i was corrected today by sean kimball and jim jascott that the actual savings is 28 million dollars to the cheshire taxpayers again only increasing the urgency uh doing to pass this project now and so that um in the next couple of weeks uh as of the 23rd assuming the town council establishes a referendum date of november 8th that will begin a period where we are no longer uh permitted to advocate as a body or use you know public funds to advocate board members may still independently on their own not as a representative of the board or whatever not using board funds board materials may still endorse this that you're protected but we can't endorse things publicly at that point um and so we're um getting ready to transition

084and and doing our best to educate the entire community about what is this plan and we'll be sending out information to every household in the end of august early september not advocacy materials just what is this plan because we think it's really important that everybody educates themselves and then gets out and votes regardless of you know where they stand on the project this is a big deal for our community and we're sending something out to every home our attorney uh jeff danafrio has already reviewed the mailer um and given his blessing that is not an advocacy material and we're safe to mail it to everybody um so that's where things stand with respect to school modernization uh on the not so exciting we have a covid19 update i will admit that i was giving a

085presentation on school modernization um one at 4 15 and one at 5 15 this afternoon and i i did not have the opportunity yet to review the cdc's guidance which was released about that same time i was presenting um and i don't believe that it will necessarily influence our current position but i have reviewed with nancy stanton um with our uh physician dr o'connor with maura esposito what our protocols will be for the fall in barring any significant uh direction that would have been put out by the cdc today again i don't think so um all of our protocols will be similar to what they were last spring you know masks won't be required um you know if somebody's covered positive they'll need to stay home the same way if if you have the flu

086you have to stay home um and be able to return on on day six with a negative test um day eight with no test uh it at this time but again you know i have to review the cdc guides with those that team um but i imagine it's gonna probably stay the same way it was in the spring which seemed to work pretty well for us that's all i have at the moment and i'm certainly happy to take questions on either topic or anything else um my my questions are with regard to covid and um so and they're i guess they're more suggestions their requests um when i so i reviewed what the state is saying and so now it is they have um transferred authority or responsibility for covert policy to boards of directors

087as i read it i mean boards of education it's no longer being done at the state level so if we are going to it's now going to be a board by board by board policy the reality is it's kind of been that way for some time where once they in the spring got out of the the business of putting out directives it has been more independent uh amongst districts okay and they've issued recommendations and guidance they have not uh in continuing that you know trend not uh released requirements and so we've reviewed those recommendations uh evaluated where we were with our our health team and you know where we stand as a community with the where the positivity is and all that and we feel pretty confident to move forward in this path so um

088as as you're going forward i think um there's a great story in the wall street journal today and i'm happy to send it to anyone who wants to read if you haven't read it but why about the um transmissibility of this latest variant and um so i guess my question is we're finding now that most infections tend to happen among vaccinated um people uh we which is and that's what the dph data is showing so um are we what is our what is our policy now on testing t staff all staff in the district so my my first take is given that the majority of the population is vaccinated the likelihood is that transmission would occur amongst vaccinated people the vaccination never guaranteed that you wouldn't become positive it just mitigated the impact of the

089illness our policy as it relates to our staff is the same as it relates to our students and that if you are symptomatic you should test if you're positive you need to stay home okay okay so we don't test we're not doing weekly tests or anymore not for students or staff okay and then when you this is my ask is that when you would you is it possible to look at your advisory council or your advisory panel and perhaps add um someone who could as they're making medical recommendations be able to weigh in on the academic up implications of say we get a you know a huge burst of positive case there of cases you know before we go to masks or something very dramatic would you consider adding additional representatives who could bring in

090um non-medical but clearly important um perspectives such as academic impact emotional yeah i think you know as a um education professional with a master's degree in counseling and psychological i'm not trying to i kind of play that role i i'm not trying to suggest no i mean you've got to walk you've got to walk a line and i get it and um but just you know just there's some backup there as well i you know it's just another voice and i i can certainly talk to you know vin marlene nancy about you know any other uh individuals not i'm not suggesting those people but any other individual nancy is already part of that team as our nursing coordinator any other individuals who may uh supplement that faith to be honest my goal is that we

091don't even have to worry about that right now i think you and i are lips to god's ears right yeah so um but certainly you know i can explore other other uh voices in that process thank you sure absolutely adam thank you um in regards to modernization um i think you touched upon it but i don't know if it was like a firm date when does blackout begin for us so that would kick off on august 24th or i guess is the the the legal definition is when the last condition is met to engage in the referendum so that would technically be i'm assuming august 23rd when the council votes to put that item and other referendum items on the ballot for november so that evening okay um so up until then like um i

092said someone sent it to me so i saw it figured i just asked like the uh the chamber of commerce sent out like a like a paid promotion i guess it looked like yeah with a letter from you on board of education letterhead yep it's so you can do we can do that now because we're not in the blackout but if we go to blackout once we go to august 24th that sort of thing would be improper entirely accurate yep okay and so like that i could pay after you know we could use district money after that date to send information that's non advocacy related right so that package that you mentioned yeah that is something that the uh that uh the board of education will be paying for right as an informational packet that

093is non-pro that is non-promotional just informative correct and is that being mailed to everyone or something how's that it is it's being mailed to everybody um and then it's it goes as far as our website so you know we've maintained a school modernization website for multiple years now that has to be the term i've been using is scrubbed to reduce to remove any advocacy related materials so you know this my stance on the on the videos you see is pretty clearly advocating for this project as you know the the community has advocated for it the uh that has to be removed before you know or as of august 23rd so though anything that we put together anything on our website that all has to be just informational and so that informational packet that will have

094been or had probably has been or will be reviewed before it goes out by our legal yeah so the attorney has already reviewed the mailer that will go home and has said that um the state election enforcement commission would give that the blessing that material is fine things like you know you've probably noticed signs in front of our our schools or or in front of hummuston says please support new schools that was paid for with public funds those have to come down on the 23rd and they will so after the 23rd we can't spend public money on advocacy but only education and so uh that's for you know argument purposes let's say something slipped through that was promotional in nature would that expose the board and any of anyone on the administration to to fines

095or anything like that according to the law i think that's a good question for attorney dinofrio um you know i think well our goal i mean i i have is it a my own personal mission to avoid avoid being fined um and i think for you guys too it's probably even a bigger mission for me to make sure you don't get fined and so um we tend to run these things through attorney d'onofrio through jeff and that's why you know ben and i met with him yesterday and you know we'll continue to make sure that anything we send out or use to educate the community is indeed just that education and not advocacy and um so just putting my political hat on for a second so aft so on august 24th he said those signs

096are going to be coming down at the school at that point the the the rules for advocacy size on town property school property would then probably re-engage in a normal election setting where like norma you can't put anything there unless it's on election day or yeah we can't promote candidates or ballot items or anything like that once that last condition is set for the referendum um you you know you're not permitted to put him on uh a candidate sign out there either you know per attorney dinofrio let me say i have his just be like private property yeah election cycle um he had said it uh in sharing with us um that we we shouldn't be putting out a political candidate sign um the the town is prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in a

097political king campaign of a candidate for elective office obviously this isn't for a candidate this is for a referendum item the state education and excuse me state election enforcement commission um prohibits us from putting out signs again once that last condition is set so we are following the law and the election you know uh commission guidance and um but we are at the same time trying to advocate well we can oh sorry just one last question so if um i wanted to put a vote for school modernization sign on my property am i allowed to do that as a as a person as long as you didn't pay for it with town of cheshire money yes okay all right great thank you sure i i was just going to ask that because where are we

098with the pack because they're the ones that really need to fuel this beyond the 23rd yeah the pac there is a pack that has formed uh it's called support cps uh the website is on the brink of going live uh that was my next question matt cole hour is um approached me you know he's interested he's the chair of that uh that pack and mike federico um you may know is is the treasurer um and they have worked to they've filed the the paperwork already they they have a website mostly built and are linking in the bank account you know soon any day now thanks tony um so i i support the school modernization sure strongly at the same time i really don't like the idea of spending public funds on those signs or really

099on any of this stuff right now i think it's a matter of educating people yeah that's my personal view um but i wanted i just wanted to understand this a little bit better with regard to the lawn signs we could put advocacy signs candidate advocacy signs are prohibited right now if i wanted to go put tim white for board of education you we can't have a specific candidate that's prohibited but you can advocate for government spending so i'm just wondering what is the contr what is the controlling authority do you know what the controlling authority is on that i think that seek state education or state election enforcement committee so they prohibit candidate signs but then anything else sort of above and beyond it if you want to put up a little league sign that

100that means nothing to to seek is is that a way to put it just to try to understand that i'm sorry can you give me the example again means nothing to seek but yeah yeah or pop warner football whatever it might be i mean could they put out signs on the school property yeah but it just doesn't fall under the purview of seek people do that sometimes and we remove them you know if uh we have a protocol where if people want to put out signs or if the people want to um distribute information to our families they send it to carol we approve it um there's a board policy around that and we distribute the information that way okay so i guess then what i'm hearing you say is it's board policy that allows

101those signs to be there the please support new school signs i don't know that its board policy speaks to that issue uh to be honest with you maybe it's the absence of that policy maybe yeah okay it might be a better way of framing it if there are specific questions tim that you know you have and you want to share them with me i mean maybe vinnie is better because i'll be away for a little bit but not prison just vacation um i'm not going away that bad um if you want to share them with ben you know jeff could probably give you some clarification okay thank you sure um even better i would suggest uh because this is new territory for all of us we need an upcoming policy committee meeting have a discussion

102on science i think that'd be an excellent idea and then look up that signage so just keep going okay so changing topics um with regard to the covid illness policy of sending kids home last spring so what march 1st forward you had mentioned that it worked well so this is just simply an observation for you to have in mind as you're thinking about the big picture and how to make things work so my daughter got it she was home for a week uh but she ended up getting tested for other reasons um so she comes home and she just wanted to play which i'm simply pointing out it's not your responsibility i don't mean to say that you know i hate that that happens but you know asymptomatic asymptomatic individuals can still spread the virus

103yeah no and i understand it completely but if we end up in a situation where we have lots of kids who are asymptomatic and going home i mean this ends up having a big impact on the community it's just something to no doubt have in mind as a parent i totally appreciate that yeah yeah um and then especially given that it's you know it's not a day you know several days five years i think i think it was a week because weekends or whatever might help but it's you're not talking about just coming home today for your child yes uh onerous um and then the last thing i just wanted to point out was that i know you had explored electric buses electric school buses i just wanted to say thank you for doing that

104sure i was caught off guard by the cost associated with it because that had been presented differently in the webinar that vin and i attended but anyway it doesn't sound like it'll happen at this moment in time i do think the technology is going to keep pushing forward costs will continue to fall um so my hope is that in the not so distant future we can do it but i completely understand the cost associated with that also with the focus on school modernization being a huge lift so thank you for i would appreciate your insistence uh often around this topic because it first of all for people who don't know connecticut law is directing all municipalities to have zero emission school busing by 2040 unless you're in a particular some districts have to do it

105by 2030. and so it's good that it's in the back of our mind it's also valuable in the sense that as we hopefully are designing new buildings to be aware of contemporary technology in direction of technology because if we want to be mindful of that if we're constructing new facilities that's also thanks and one last point on it just that the public understands where i'm coming from on this uh when i was 16 years old i came down with asthma i was diagnosed with asthma it's really from it's not a genetic thing it's from environmental uh factors and a lot of it is the emissions from our power generation from exhaust pipes i think anybody could probably you know you see these exhaust pipes pumping out of the diesel school buses and you know it's

106not good um but for me and for many others it leads directly to asthma there's a real public health impact and when you can't breathe it's really scary and uh so i just want to do my interest with this that's my first and foremost interest which is um you know improving the health for our kids because that can be a really scary thing when you can't when you feel like you're when you are wheezing and you feel like you can't get a good breath of air tim if i put you on the spot i think you also took a ride on one of the aces electric buses oh yes i did so there are some other positive things you know do you mind sharing i don't want to oh yeah no no sure sure yeah

107oh sure thank you yeah uh so the czech public schools has a relationship with aces it's a statewide um educational system and they got their first full electric school bus and not a short bus but the full-length bus i don't know is it type 1 or type 2 event type 1. what's what is it 70 seats or something 77 okay yeah so they got their first electric school bus a year ago they've already gone through some of the learning curve some of the uh the concerns like range anxiety what do you do with what do you do with the bus that has to go to a sporting event that's you know an hour and a half away type of thing and it's already been you know used for the regular school bus routes there's a

108lot of things to learn in how to use them well one other one other big plus i believe this is a big plus for the school bus the electric school bus is that you don't have and then feel free to jump in here with the with the electric bus you don't have the motor running it's a loud motor and what happens with the loud motor is the school bus drivers often have to yell and that turns into kids yelling and it turns into a bit of a i don't maybe a volatile environment i'm not sure exactly the the best word for it but it ends up in a situation where people are yelling it's not ideal because of the engine and when you switch over to the electric motor it's very quiet and so the

109school bus drivers will be likely many school bus drivers will likely be yelling a lot less because the kids will be able to hear them and it just brings down the volume on the bus and i think it's i do expect that something like that could have a positive impact on the behavior on the bus right and that was the bus driver that gave us that tour was had driven that bus so that was one of the comments that we heard from the bus driver and since i have the four for a moment my suggestion is that we add this as part of planning because i did get some more information from datco following i actually got it earlier today but i think we need to put this on the agenda because there's a few

110different things that are happening as as dr sullin said by 2040 we have to be zero emission which presumably means electric by 2035 we have to be either essentially we have to at least be running probably propane buses so we have a deco contract that expires in a couple of years you know if it's worth while having discussions i think the first planning committee we have i would invite dako president and vice president who's his son very well versed on the topic daco also has an electric type one they have six more coming in they'll be using them in middletown you know they are more expensive but it's time to start talking about it because 2040 is a lot of years away as we sit here today but a lot needs to be done between

111now and 2040 if we go electric not not the least of which is the electrical grid in connecticut is going to need to be upgraded as well as each of our facilities electrical capacity has to be upgraded so i think we put it on the agenda and stopped talking about it all right he's been doing this for the last five minutes i just have to ask are these buses climate controlled and do they have any new um uh safety features for seat belts or anything like that for the students no well the seat belt is a separate thing they can be added but they don't at least in the two models and the models we saw yeah you wouldn't know it's an electric bus or a propane bus if you walked on it except when

112the engine is running so it looks exactly the same it's not like some sort of future bus it's just not it looks like a yellow school bus it's not it wasn't even that flat front that some towns have it still had the it still had the nose out front okay so the climate control think about you know what uses power well certainly cooling the bus interestingly and they didn't point this out when we went to aces but at datgo there was actually a motor a diesel-powered motor might have been gas doesn't matter to provide the heat on the bus so it's not exactly a hundred percent zero emission if you're running a motor to provide heat but you have to heat the bus for the students when they're on it so that was a interesting

113little tidbit that you know we we saw on the electric bus that is over at daco sure interesting no but even with that i mean if that's the way they're being designed it it would uh you know they're being designed that way you could maybe even get them just with propane which is going to be cleaner without all the other dirty particulate matter and stuff like that i mean as time progresses i think they'll figure out how to get a bus that'll run the full day including you know a heating element but we know that you know if you're trying to provide heat using battery or electricity that draws a lot of current and so you would run down and you know can't get as much mileage out of the bus yeah just an interesting

114point that i wanted to add yes thanks tony uh yeah and just you had mentioned about inviting it's don devivo from datgo so the beyond that just something to consider eversource and also department of corrections having a conversation with them we have the property the bus depot butts up to their property they've got 10 acres there but even if it's not that if you wanted some extra space for charging um just something to keep in mind how that might work out and if the conversation whoever the stakeholders are in that conversation thank you yes faith go ahead um i think i've asked this in the past has anyone looked into hybrids i know they're made and they're 35 more efficient than just regular old i know you know what hybrid makes a ton of sense

115i asked when we met with that go what about hybrid right because you don't have to worry about the electric bus running out of amperage and you know you get not being able to get kids home but i was told that they're not manufacturing them right now oh um yeah it's that was kind of my reaction so that will that will be kind of on the list of options i thought i just read something about it but yeah yeah i um it's not zero emission it's not zero emissions but my little hybrid out there gets 50 miles to the gallon it's really nice i just say huh any any other comments or questions from for jeff so jeff so a couple of things i i uh i'm sure paul is aware you've been given uh

116presentations pretty much all year i i've heard i've heard it going very well uh very informative i had a couple of folks uh say to me it was a formal scene it seemed more factual than a sales pitch and i i so that's kind of intentional because i don't think we're not i'm sure i speak for all of us we're not trying to sell the public on anything we're just trying to get the right information out there make a decision so the fact that i've heard folks some of the some of the most frivolous penny pinchers i know came away from some of those meetings very impressed didn't feel like they're being sold on and actually heard of facts that was a good uh confidence i appreciate the work you didn't put into that um

117yeah i don't think i have anything else i think you've answered anything else i know andrew's away he's on a vacation this week but i know he's going to reach out to the board for planning committee topics and he comes back so we'll get this on there and for what's worth any electric uh side of things 10 15 years ago wasn't even thinkable but as tim alluded to this stuff keeps along every year every year so um the fact that there is a mandate out there we start planning ahead but it's just just kind of surprised we're actually going to talk about this at this point i've been a possibility um is a huge step so as it becomes more affordable i'm sure it's going to be a huge win so anyway i don't uh

118that that concludes the intense report as far as old business i have none really have known you i have no chair chairperson's updater then uh there's a cabe caps convention conference coming up in november that's the big one i have every fall if you're interested in going please let carol know you're signing us up um but beyond that we have some upcoming meetings uh there is a town council meeting the 23rd i don't see any agenda yet but i do know the school monetization referendum the item will be on that so folks are interested have questions please attend or watch that meeting for the town council uh september 1st we have a board of ed opening a school meeting at 7 30. it's always a great meeting a lot of material presented i'm curious to

119know what the roman numerals look like this year among other things so i'm sure it'll be well attended on monday september 12th we have a curriculum coming meeting at 7 p.m and the central office board room and on tuesday september 13th we have a policy community committee meeting 6 30 3 8 6 30 p.m it will be virtual live streamed and um also august 25th is convocation that's always a i i've been started attending the last couple years it is an incredibly positive uplifting meeting formers can make it highly suggest you attend it's well worth it they do a great job other than that august 30th is the first day of school for all students yes sam so we canceled the dog as 23rd meeting for finance committee did we come with a rescheduled date

120or we don't have a rescheduled date yet i think we'll adam and i will probably square that away when we get back from vacation but um we wanted all of us to be available to attend uh there's also a meeting at six six o'clock that night where they'll the council will be discussing the formulation of a building committee if it were to pass what what sort of process would we undergo to formulate a building committee so we wanted to be able to attend that and allow other people the opportunity to attend that i could add that when we do have our finance committee meeting one of the number one agenda item we'll be talking about trailers just in case um so you know the um project doesn't pass we have to talk about the reality

121of uh accommodating all of our new students somewhere so and the cost of that excellent thank you do i have a motion to adjourn can i ask a question quick question yes i'll please what times con what time does convocation start 8 30 a.m if you uh any of our board members want to attend please just let carol know you're certainly welcome and 8 30 and breakfast 7 30. thank you which i last year erica put out a great spread so it's i mean it's always worth it but we'll also have i mean i know tim's asked about this we have our health coach we'll be there at 7 30 available for staff to get to know them too we have exciting news on that which i can only give up at convocation and uh

122i know ben will have more information on that too in the coming days weeks excellent thank you uh do i have a motion to adjourn tim the second by adam was a quick second uh all those in favor thank you the meeting is adjourned