001one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all because early morning everyone uh we have no members of the audience so we're going to do a right before to stay in the community starting with finance um uh thank you mr chair i will um gladly hand over the report to mr masiana members everyone else the included import members package are a couple of reports and what i would like to do even though it's the second item to start with medical benefits report which is on the bottom of the stack because it'll lead into a final entry for this year's closing of the books so this is the medical benefits update as of may 31st and if you just scan down towards the bottom of the months you see that in the month of
002may our claims were 777 thousand 151 which is good it's you know it's below the 900 000 per month that was expected and i know the board members have been looking at this closely this year um and as a result of relatively low may claims and an additional reimbursement on stop loss our net fund balance went up 143 in the month of may which brings the medical benefits reserve balance as we make 31 to a million 410 797 and so that gives us about 1.57 months worth of claims reserved um assuming 900 000 per month of claims so that's our kind of ending point as of may 31st for medical benefits again lower claims month uh which was was good to see and additional stock loss reimbursement helped increase the fund balance this year so
003i'll stop there if there are any questions on medical benefits before we go to the finance portion then i would like to take a look at there's a fiscal year-end report and memo and i'd like to just take a few moments to walk through it board members and you see at the bottom of the page just quickly if you look the fiscal year and transfers which we'll get to you'll see that the remaining balance is zero in our budget this year so we did we did balance out the year and i'd like to spend a couple of minutes on the following couple of pages to talk about uh the year just kind of at a high level and what i'd like to start with is before we get to finance overall you know this year
004was a year that was marked by cobit you know as as we know and i know you know for me the year kind of is a bit of a blur that we started off kind of rough which we didn't expect was covered it got better and then it got a little bit worse towards the end however the important thing is that we were open the entire school year our students you know greatly benefited from that um on the finance side there were really two things that i think are noteworthy in the budget this year one was the cost of colbit and number two is you know the rapid rise in inflation typically energy prices which did have some impact on the budget in fact if you look at the chart in the middle of that
005second page has the red on it what i wanted to do here is get the board members a sense of you know what what were the impacts from code and inflation to our budget and these are approximates you know there are some estimates but i think it gives you directionally a sense of you know what were the offsetting costs and um items that were under budget due to coping 19 and inflation so you see the first two we had surpluses in our instructional assistant and teaching assistant salaries of 355 000 and maintenance salaries of 135 000. that comes from a couple of things one is unfilled positions we had someone filled positions the entire year and number two is we did have quite a bit of turnover and when an employee leaves because you don't
006fill the position right away you have a salary pickup and so you know the staffing issues that we faced helped give us surplus and those accounts where we offset those were you know additional costs for energy you'll see and this is scattered electricity diesel and gas for transportation heating oil natural gas and propane you know hotels all told those were almost 300 000 worth of additional expense above what was budgeted and then related to staffing we did have increased cost of teacher substitutes some do not cover but a lot of it due to this was a year that was marked by you know quite a few long-term um future absences for illness maternity so when teachers go on leave and we do bring in substitutes to cover for that so that you know was a
007negative variance of 227 000. so if you look at the positives you know against the the negatives you know the net negative budget impact of covet and inflation was about 218 000 which we were able to manage within our budget by not spending in other categories which board members know that you know to manage our budget what we do is we put expenditure caps you know throughout the year on our non-payroll line and controllable line items so that's the impact of you know coping 19 and inflation the next section talks about the eso grants and if you look at page three there's a chart and i'll run through this quickly those first two grants that we received were sr1 and the coronavirus delete fund and know those two grants one estimate one was 99 000.
008coronavirus relief was 706 000 those were all fully expended by the end of the last fiscal year so you could see that the remaining balance as of 6 29 which is the fifth column over zero on those two grants this year we primarily use esser2 which on that chart is 439 559 is the grant amount we've expended 376 000 so we're carrying 63 255 into the new fiscal year that grant does continue to be available through september of 2023 and that grant was used primarily to address student learning loss and the board knows that we added additional administrator and coaching support map tutoring at both the middle school and the high school we brought in some consultants to help and last year we did a summer transition program for students so the good news is
009that we still have 63 000 of that available that will carry over into 22-23 and then our fester which is the next grant down we plan to use that in this 22-23 fiscal year and we can also use it in 23 24. that's an 778 grant we've expended 123 553 this year and that was basically to offset the cost of tens rentals in the fall when we applied for that grant we did allocate about 260 000 out of 898 the health and safety so we use some of it but not all of it you know we are trying to preserve these grants you know for the next couple of years to continue to do the um the learning laws and and really ruling out our staff administrative support and training there is talk although nothing
010that i can commit to but there is talk about extending the exploration of those grants which will give us a little bit more time to use those proceeds so we'll continue to manage that accordingly and then the last one i'll just mention that there's our funds that were made available specifically for special education needs of 353 thousand dollars that grant is good through september of 2024 you see that we've expended 20 000 290 this fiscal year but we continue to carry that over so you know that will be utilized just to support special ed uh student needs so that's kind of the high level um of items that i thought were important to mention so as we went down this budget year you know we were able to get uh to a hundred six thousand
011two hundred nine dollars that was you know the remaining balance after we closed out our purchase orders completed purchase orders for purchases that we need to make over the summer and work that needs to be done on the maintenance side over the summer so the 106 209 that was remaining our final entry was to take that and contribute it to the medical benefit of verifying so what's built into the closing entries is that 106 209 as the final entry so with that appendix a on this memo just gives more sense of the items that we will be doing over the summer that funds have been set aside for us on the technology side we will be replacing some of the older small boards with the smart panels like we have here in the board room
012we're doing those you know on an as-needed basis and they will affect all the district schools we have some replacement of older mac desktops that are used at cheshire high school by students teachers still have pcs on their desks because that's what drives the smart boards we can't get away from that yet so there's some replacement dollars that are set aside for there transportation we do have to replace one of our type 2 which are the smaller buses that is part of the port of that fleet it's not that good and then on the maintenance side we're going to do our typical painting inspections of playgrounds kitchen hoods duct cleaning um some fence repairs asphalt repairs line striping and you can see that at each school we are doing you know some specific work you
013know probably the largest project that we have going on this summer is a doolittle where we will be repaving the driveway and parking lots and we'll be ripping everything out and then replacing that that is due we've had some capital money but we had a supplement with operating funds to do that and i'll leave it at that so you know back to page one you know the matter at hand for the board is to make the final fiscal year and transfers so you know they are laid out there there is a motion for the board and there is a report that has been provided that shows how we got to the final year-end transfer recommendations for the board and i really covered the highlights and the memo so leave it over the questions um move
014that the board of education approved line item transfers for the 2021-2022 fiscal year end as follows to end the year in balance fiscal urine transfers um two that'll go fun uh from salaries six hundred nineteen thousand nine dollars ninety four cents instructional expense two hundred five thousand nine hundred twenty dollars thirty cents support services 95 444.68 for a total of 920 374.94 uh moving to employee benefits 50 100 37 and two cents and operations in minute uh in maintenance 869 337.92 for a total of 920 374.94 with a remaining balance of zero dollars because there is a influence discussion questions um okay uh so then you said that eight hundred and six thousand roughly is in the medical reserve ballot the 106 000 that yeah that will be transferred yes it's not reflected correct so
015we're going to look at at the end of the day one million five hundred and sixteen thousand change correctly so we don't have june claims in here so that's the only caveat that i'll make but okay all right after the transfer that goes up to 100 105 000 okay and then um i've raised this before and budget question here at budget time the 205 920 out of instructional expenses um i'm just gonna ask the question we're not cutting because i know we have budgeted nearly zero in instructional expenses this year and it it's just a little bit alarming so if you could yeah we definitely don't want to shortchange that area marlene you want to talk a little bit about you know where we are with respect to our instructional supplies and feel uncomfortable about
016where things stand there before you do that i just want to point out one thing of the 205 121 000 is from our tuition outplaced or special education so we had a surplus there about absolutely we didn't outplace as much as we budgeted so hopefully that helps put a little bit more perspective on really not cutting you know instructional expense purchases but with that i'll let marlene comment yeah we have purchased what we what we need for the coming year we look at our subscriptions we're constantly renegotiating the subscription pricing that we get we have to sort of look at the licenses that we need for things so i feel very comfortable with where we're at we have not um been unable to get something that we had specifically on the list and when you
017look at things like instructional supply things going directly faster we overspent that budget by 31 000. the uh staff training as we know has been a real focus of what we've been doing we overspent that budget by about fifteen thousand dollars so i think you know we've been talked about a good chunk of the money that we were bringing back to that account was for outplacement so i think we all feel really comfortable about where we've saved money within that account and where we've over expended actually to make sure that the needs of our staff and students are being met okay thanks and thanks love the question we love the question yeah okay um well you're not gonna like this okay so there have been comments in the community concerns that have been released and
018i think a few of us have heard them about the esther funds and there is and i just want to ask this question for those out there there are concerns that this essa money is coming with stands attached from the federal government um you have to teach this you have to could you just address that yeah marlene you want to take that yeah no there are no strings attached what we've done is that bounce forward plan that we've talked about for a long time i completed the application and checked off all the boxes that say what we need to do and the strings attached are we needing to report back on exactly how we spent that money we completed that report about a week ago we had to tell them exactly what we spent during
019different periods of time along the way and all of our money has gone into training to training our current people to our curriculum writing institute it's gone into consultants that we've brought in just to level up our game and to make sure that we're pouring money into our current staff yeah our focus when we talk about consultants and training has really been on instructional coaching our administrative team just spent the last three days doing professional development around data teams and coaching for instructional games and things like that how to support our team and honing their craft there was no quick pro quo on any sort of thing there was no requirement for that you know we can't go out and buy hot tubs you know but this is uh it's it's really kind of as
020a matter of fact given the grants that we've received in the past this probably has less strings attached to it than many other grants that we receive so you know we've been free to employ the strategies that the board agreed upon in that fast forward plan and feel real good about what we've been able to do with that money we've tried to be judicious with it to ensure that we can stretch that out for the most value we added for the longest time possible so i feel like we really leverage that well but definitely no strings of passion thank you glad you asked that question too okay so then um i'm the estimated budget thank you to the nineteen-year pollution which is managed within our budget is that managing our budget with the asset funding
021no it's so that's it's it's all factored into the offsets that we have within this operating budget um yeah so those the line items that you see there were not charged to ask those right conditions i mean like if there's things that are related to 19 and these are buds are associated with that shouldn't couldn't some of that money even used like to pay for the tenants and that we did we used 121 of us to pay for the tents okay so we did some but you know there's a balance that we struck between you know what do we need to spend now versus what can we hold on to this money for future years so we did some of it but not all of so that feeds into my question thank you andrew which
022is i'm looking at the chart on the third page of the remaining balances that we have to spend we have through september to spend so i don't know can you tell us a little more specifically what that money will be i mean i'm sure we have a plan for it it's not probably not for salaries are you talking about esther 2 when you say september 23 yeah remaining yeah yeah so like to the column to the left of the 63 000 the 376 that money has paid for things like you see in the far right count um staffing support coaching math we've brought in math and that supported the high school and middle school so that is applied to that yes we can pay salaries yes yeah absolutely what about the bigger amounts the arp
023s yeah all of those things we've used to offset salary costs um in professional development really the bounce forward plan these these we use these monies to pay for that bounce forward plan and i'll definitely share with the board it's because it's been a couple of years the files forward plan we adopted that march a few years back and we really i think checked a lot of the boxes as we moved forward um yeah because we had to do it not last year the year prior um to to really help move past forward like we said how do we come through this resource being better uh professionally for the experience our administrative team our professional team how do we do that i'll send that plan out again but just but that's what it's paying for
024i mean quickly the we added uh an assistant principal on mormon we increased the assistant principal hours to cover two little chapman we added a math coach of god we had a math coach at the high school we added additional reading and math support so those are salaries that are being paid through sr2 and then that will continue to far faster so the longer we could stretch out the use of people's grand funds the longer we can it will refer to our offering in many of these cases we didn't hire a new position so we have our literacy support tutors so we added money into that so that we could increase their hours so we knew that there was going to be this this could be this lag in learning yeah that more kids might
025need support so we sort of increase their hours you know as needed based on what the kids in that school needed so we put it where the holes were um and as far as the training sort of the same thing so when we when we move some staff around and use our own staff other positions we then trained them to make sure they were leveled up because then go into classrooms and help support specifically around this idea of the learning loss and where that needed to be targeted so it's all really data driven and based on where the needs were where the needs of the kids were and where the support and training was that they needed to have great thank you for that explanation that's very helpful and exactly what i wanted to hear
026i had one more question going back to the um essentially the savings that we gained from the turnover and yeah basically we realized savings predominantly with instructional assistants where we posted positions and didn't find qualified applicants right and i guess my question is is that a lot is that very different from the previous years it was more than in previous years and it's been harder because first of all the educational market has been flooded financially you know with our investor money and a lot of people use that money to hire additional folks so you know there are a lot of open positions out there and not as many qualified people to fill those positions so that contributed to this issue and then economically there were a lot of jobs to be had um and so
027you know we're competing with more not just within the educational domain but broader so um yeah there were more than our typical this is not how we want to save money per se exactly but uh and we have aggressively worked on recruiting you know different strategies and things like that but um that's really where the bulk of the savings came from within that ia and teacher assistant playground a those positions where it was harder to hire people so i know that you and ben and marlene don't have the crystal ball but we don't anticipate that yet next year well to a degree i think we anticipated um hopefully not to the same extent uh you know the the minimum wage is increasing maybe that will be more attractive to people uh i think it's tomorrow
028right july 1st first and then 15 june first right here yeah that's two minimum wage increases yeah so you know maybe that will help but um if there was a point where i think if we paid twenty dollars an hour it wouldn't matter we just would have been able to get people you can't just pull them out of thin air so we we do foresee it being continuing to be difficult but hopefully not as hard as it was okay thank you sure if i could just piggyback on that question actually um has the school system looked into fema reimbursement because i know that fema is reimbursing for all um cleaning related to covid and to uh well other covid related expenses uh that normally that arpa would have covered so you can there's that is
029still out there from the beginning of the pandemic to now definitely explore that given the fact that we've used grant money to pay for it yeah already because we had intraday cleaning and stuff like that during the real estate of the pandemic we cease the intraday cleaning in the spring but um surely you explore that i mean just if you're if you're looking to extend the yeah like uh esther money uh fema is kind of clearing up those costs um at a hundred percent so i mean i will look at that yeah because not everything was charged too you know right because if there's stuff you hadn't charged and stuff that you did charge uh that could be picked up by that to be able to send the operations so i don't know if the
030town had done that but it's also extended to the town nothing on the salesman for fema but you mentioned uh first replacement of a short bus yeah basically okay so you know this is you know i'm interested in electrifying our vehicle fleet whether it's school loan or debt going on also it was last fall federal government passed a bill speaking directly to this issue of electric electronic the us vehicle fleet i'm just wondering i don't expect that you're going to be able to buy an electric bus this summer but i'm just curious in general in your own day-to-day work have you seen you know in communications with deco or with your counterparts and other school systems have you seen an increase in the communication about it absolutely and i don't know that we're quite there
031yet for you know the infrastructure is the big expense and deco would would certainly support any initiatives to you know move to alternate fuels and now obviously electricity is the one that's being focused on so it is on our radar okay you know the difficulty we have is obtaining any vehicles we have two van replacements this is a type two so there's a 28 passenger bus that we have to replace but we have two fans on order from last year that we haven't received yet you may receive them for the beginning of this school year so you know not i'm sure that doesn't surprise anybody understands the vehicle market is extremely backed up and it applies to any kind of transportation vehicle as well on the band side apparently the explanation i've gotten is that
032amazon is buying up all the bands for their fleet you know and cutting off everybody else from being able to get their vehicles delivered because they've you know they've expanded using the type of vans that we actually use as transportation vans these days those high tops are excellent hard to come by so but yeah it's on our you know it's on our active radar and we'll keep looking at it there is some some grant money that has been made available i'm not quite sure it's enough but so just um just to follow up on that uh that go are they are they collaborating with any towns on actually electronic athletes have completed this time yeah i don't know you're not sure i'm not sure because i think they are yeah i'm not sure and if
033you know they've got some pilots here and there i know that and i speak to john david who's the president of daco he would certainly be interested if we wanted to do a pilot either hampden i think handmade got a bunch of fun before yeah from the vw settlement i think it was vw diesel settlement i don't know if that's that go but there were a couple towns in connecticut they got it and i think deco is one of the busting companies for the towns my one other question uh with regard to the infrastructure you mentioned are buses do they sit at the bus depot with deco buses or do we they do yes so if we can get the infrastructure in place it's just one place it's not two places okay generally speaking yeah
034and we we do have funding to improve that parking lot because that the lot is really tight right now um there's about another almost an acre that we can develop to expand you know the parking we need to add another entrance because right now there's one entrance exit so we do have a plan and funding to make those improvements that property was actually its prison property that conveyed to the town i'm just waiting to get the final confirmation of those details and then we're ready to go to planning and zoning so my point is as we make those parking lot expansion and improvements you know that would be a time to add you know infrastructure if we need it for you know electric vehicle charging you know part of the infrastructure is we wouldn't have
035to upgrade the electricity yeah no and it's complicated because it literally has to fit into the grid and that's not yeah that's not an automatic it has to fit the capacity constraints to the grid or more of the grid needs to get upgraded and that could be beyond your control or yeah yeah okay thank you but can i think back on that but are there is are there federal funds available to to do this they'll like to find the vehicles to get the infrastructure in place i'm not sure about the infrastructure piece but the vehicle piece that i could i'd have to get more information on the details so then you have to we have to go through the process of applying you know and it depends on how we do it because that co
036is the transportation provider so you know we've talked to them in the past about an arrangement where they would have to make vehicle investment you know and we would pay for it through our contract is one way to do it you know unless we decide that we're gonna take some of the vehicles we own and purchase electric and then it's it's on us and so it's actually that's a little bit easier than trying to run the program through dagno so because we don't have our own fleet we're using companies please right then it becomes an issue of so who gets the funds paid for yeah and there's you know there's this way you don't get to work there's ways to do it you would have to work through there's there's legislation that still needs to
037continue to pass to make these things stuff that just happened this session whether it's state legislation yeah yeah i think it was just as you might be able to be good it was i think it was this year schools changed from a five-year potential bus contract to a 10-year bus contract i don't think it was allowed to go beyond five years correct until that but i think that law just changed i don't know if the government decided i'm pretty sure it's going through because if you have a 10-year window then that's what bus is normally good for not five years then you can build that into the contract where it makes more economic sense to deal with um so i'm a list of school maintenance projects one thing and this is kind of on both
038sides for my other workforce um our fields at our elementary schools are in awful shape and we talk that these are community facilities especially to digital modernization efforts and then here constantly and um improvement um i thought there was being a little bit of time it wasn't some big loophole last year that all this money was going to close down about what to do you know whether we hire an outside contractor to come in and you know take a look and give us some recommendation and cost estimate on what it would do what it would cost upgraded fields you know i mean adding to what andrew's saying i know that john hollock you know is concerned that two fields are coming offline when they do the upgrades at bartland so there's really nowhere else other
039than the school fields to turn so that is and yes there is no specific funding for that but again depending on on what it costs you know there's a split that we do you know with uh with the town certainly something we'll do when we split the maintenance of the field so i think we should have playing thinking about that okay because i think that there's something that we the town would definitely do yeah it's got to be collaborative really because when you look at our curriculum and pe and the building use of fields we're not we don't have the demand for you know well-groomed baseball fields you know within our curriculum and the elementary grades so it's how do we collaboratively work and i know that you know steve mcfarlane and ben and john
040and sean and myself we've all been you know kicking that around for a while and trying to tackle it through different ways uh pretty effectively george watney as well but but definitely room to continue especially with uh parliament yeah so to meet the needs of the community i mean we want to be good stewards of that and work with the town even if we don't quote need it ourselves that was your answers last summer prior to uh the elections was talking quite a bit in fact it was foreign in all the fields in our schools because i just did i don't think it came out of it but it was maybe this was getting the department park project started but uh but yeah i too hear more so now maybe because there's demand about some
041of the fields being in poor condition i know i said ben it's been a while but he sent me emails about the um some of the baseball fields the bases or you know not safe and things like that there's outside groups that bring that stuff in but uh i think it's a good point you race because they need a high demand that there's less of other fields but it's definitely an issue that needs to be um dealt with and we're going to have more joining students in the school system so they can imagine what kind they're going to have more demand not to be able to cross i mean our investment obviously at the high school level we're maintaining those fields we have an expert that comes in to take care of you know the
042infields and all it's just that the elementary school and god was really not used for school purposes per se as as baseball softball diamonds but we're going to have to wrestle this yeah then has there been any funding earmarked for this project or is it just a i know that's it right now i mean i think what we really need is probably capital investment i mean we we can allocate some outside grounds funding you know for this but it's it's a discussion that needs to continue to happen is that something we should add to our finance planning splash meetings in like august or if so if i don't know maybe you have a planning meeting before august to kind of put together what might be the needs perhaps or you know because if it's structural
043or um just is it just grass it didn't have to just deter you know whatever um if we could know ahead of time so that we can kind of incorporate that right somewhat related not to get too far off the discussion as i would also add to that finance planning meaning the utilization of facilities and outside groups we never really closed on that i do run it from time to time uh the person that raised that issue is you know copenhagen however it would be nice to close up on that yeah things have been used this past year you know pretty yeah pretty very nice nice to see any kind of get back yeah the cost uh discussion system but that issue is also also a collaboration yes though they need to be in on
044that discussion are there any other questions okay i'm seeing there are no there's no additional discussion um the motion on the floor uh well there's a motion on the floor how's that that i read previously that's right um so um i'll call for a vote all in favor it is unanimous thank you that concludes the finance portion of the meeting excellent up next we have our personnel um board of education applies a 2.75 compensation increase to dr solon's base salary for a total of 446 dollars in addition the board agrees to adjust dr solon's group term life insurance policy to three times his annual salary from 2.5 times his annual salary the board will compensate dr solon at a rate of 2 000 annually for the purchase of additional life insurance and his contract is
045hereby extended through the 2024-2025 school year sam seconds yeah so we've uh we've had a few meetings uh about dr stone's contract i think there is uh i think that board is generally happy with his performance in the past year um his annual goals the top two correct me from getting anything wrong here jeff the top two goals were basically uh working through the pandemic keeping the kids in school the second goal was school modernization keep that moving down the track um what he is what i believe he has really done successfully with the school modernization is not so much advocating for it although i know that he is a supporter of it but the real goal is to provide the information provide the facts to the community to understand uh what's happening why it's
046happening trade-offs that exist if this doesn't happen there are other concerns so it's not simply a matter of this is what we want there are trade-offs costs and benefits everything i think personally i think that he's been very successful in achieving those goals this year and for that reason i'm going to be supporting this motion today um i just uh also want to kind of ping back on what what tim said we did have a number of meetings so if the public is watching i want them to know that this has been discussed thoroughly and um one thing that that really struck me in the in the discussions is that you know the key to a successful business a successful organization is maintaining and improving the employees within that operation be they teachers be they
047uh you know management staff and private corporation i just i think jeff and his team have truly worked hard to um just bring good or just excellent training to an ongoing training for our staff um if we are you know we have seen the results there are certainly areas that we want to see improvement in but um as i said you know the key to any the success of any organization is the staff and i think he's done the job and i think 2.75 is very reasonable in our uncertain times so i am also going to support it this year as well my i have a logistical question are we not voting to extend his contract no it's because it's right at the end lessons oh sorry thank you voting for this motion as you
048know we've had our differences in the past and i'm happy to say our relationship has improved and uh i think you've done a fantastic job the last couple of years and so i think this well deserves it thank you i too will support this motion as faith uh mentioned uh tim a number of personnel community meetings uh to go over dr sone's review uh uh updating goals from this current fiscal year ending today and we're going to be working on uh dr zone's goals uh for upcoming school year this fall under claims personnel guidance so uh you know any anyone that's been paying attention protecting the entire town half this past school year um knows that's been quite quite a challenge for all the stakeholders in cheshire public schools cove with the pandemic just the
049division out there and that all that plays directly into our classroom so you know the fact that that was someone's able to lead but for um what's that how crazy is our employee base uh 400 key trees and keep them motivated and you know rolling in the same direction and overcoming challenges it's a lot to be said i know it's not just dr solomon but uh he is coordinating a lot of folks and then besides his day job as attendant has mentioned the school modernization committee has been a tremendous time commitment from at least 2019 when committee action started and you know while that ended you know our work and years particularly just just began so as folks of real life i've seen and i saw your spend the night with the superintendent is that
050july 14th coming up tonight without you yes it's not always smooth sailing it's meaning that things are not perfect in cheshire and every board member last year if there's a situation or opportunity to improve that the stone's been very receptive as well as the rest of the team and you know right to his right that nexus support staff and vincent and marlene so i i support this i think it's very reasonable um and especially in light of the work that's coming um i think this is justified in you know i also want to credit uh salon and you know his team for you know putting cheshire on the map not that it wasn't but uh it seems every year school is more recognized for a number of things so uh that doesn't come by easily
051so um [Music] angela and then sam so um i've watched you take our school monetization effort a little rogue show and i've seen it in multiple different forms and i think that you're able to talk to the audience at hand and you're able to be relatable and you're able to kind of get people who might be naysayers against school modernization kind of bring them up which i think is like crucial we all know spiritual at this moment but yeah i mean it's it's i watched the pandemic i watched you i checked your christmas graduation your kids like the staff like community likes you we like here i just want to say that i would go above and beyond what we're compensating you for but um i want to respect the process that we have gone
052through and spent hours going through so um so i think i'm just going to pretty much upload what everybody says but being in the business myself and knowing your colleagues they all you know say wonderful things about you and it's i feel less as a pride really knowing that you're leaving the district um because they make comments to be basically saying that the district is a well-oiled machine runs smoothly and you show a lot of grace we've got a lot of negativity plus on the other side you brought in positivity so i appreciate it thank you unless there the motion is on the table um all those in favor station this mission passes right thank you let me just say one quick thing first i i'm a member of the team and you guys are
053certainly the real key contributors and parts of that team i appreciate the relationship that i have with our board of education um because you are so reasoned thoughtful ask challenging questions and have a real commitment and desire to improve education for the kids in our community and i think that makes my job that much easier and more rewarding to know that we're working so collaboratively to try and support the kids in our community but i'd also be remiss if i didn't recognize certainly the two people to my right and carol and mike and the countless people who work in our school system who do so much i mean you know i'm probably more visible in terms of like whether it's you know out at the front of a meeting or on the news or whatever
054but the work that these guys in particular do behind the scenes that really drives our success can't be overstated because they're they're really incredible teammates and professionals and i wouldn't say that we're lucky to have them because you know we we work to hire outstanding people and put them in positions to be really successful and they work really hard it's got nothing to do with luck um their success and our success so i just want to acknowledge them too and say thank you again for your faith in me and extending my contract another year so thank you absolutely i did not mean to admit carol i used to see her right listen there's always opportunities for people to grow and and overcome issues but by and large i believe we have an awesome staff here
055you know again it's we're fortunate i have some really good dedicated people and um let's see what happens in school here at this point all right 10 minutes long personality for another motion yeah thank you motion that the cheshire board of education compensates dr solon for two unused vacation days at her dm from the 2021-2022 school year from the 2021-2022 operating budget seven sammy samsung discussion discussion yes could you put a dollar amount on that just for the record okay i think it's about a thousand dollars one thousand dollars yep generally roughly okay so either for two unused vacation days dr songs contract a lot did you want to talk about that oh yeah basically so um i think the idea here what i have i think at least chair chairman paraguini has um because
056of the pandemic the working has been a little bit crazy in the last two years um he had a number of excellent had a number of unused vacation days and then part of our discussions about his contract negotiation this was just part of it saying all right we will give you uh compensation for two unused days and i believe you had quite a few more than that um at the same time this is related in my mind this is related to the pandemic and the uncertainty related to it um and so this is really use it or lose it going forward yeah which is basically no more not a payout next year i mean it could be something extraordinary but yeah the idea is this time and not next year i'd prefer we not deal
057with any more global crises moving forward let's hope that school modernization is the biggest uh button from now on yeah no i was just gonna say so to then has i've been taking into consideration that thousand dollars and after operating i did this [Laughter] it's already it's already incorporated into the numbers it's not going to create the nexus right in any you do want your organization folks to take the occasional reasons you know health peace of mind but also when when they're out it ensures that there's you know folks in the office cover day to day so um we encourage dr saul and his team to take vacation yes chance for your help any other questions from the court seeing as there are none uh the motion is on the table uh in favor of
058the vision atmosphere passes anything else yeah uh correspondence i did not see the first time um thank you the whole business i have no new business um as this is the last uh meeting of the school year next school year starts tomorrow i don't hear us from us for a while but yes my first year and then i just want to thank you all um especially the team over here for a smooth transition and just welcoming and so on and watching me could be you know individually before the year started just to make sure i was comfortable getting into this team here so i really appreciate i know we have our differences but i think you know to what tommy's been promoting with kaden support we actually are able to promote stability and what it
059is we expect the community to to be like basically so i just want to thank you all individually i'm glad you brought that up i was going to just say that this year has been uh incredibly challenging and rewarding for all of us i i i'm really personally really happy with how the board is operating you know everyone has a voice to the table no one is shy to bring up ideas concerns you know i welcome sam to to the fund and we i think we drove right in after the election and i'm not surprised it's nice to always have that fresh perspective and i'm encouraged by the coming school year as well i can't wait to see what we do come this fall and supporting dr solomon and modernization there's a lot to be
060done and i'm just trying to get our kids back to their higher sense of normalcy the school year so uh i'm not gonna would i i hope uh the this summer is enjoyable for everyone and get refreshed and come back charged charging forward again so that's all it's like this is any of your comments or questions or it seems there are none overrated until those donuts so uh do we need to continue uh so against the name gary one enjoy your summers take so much time off now that being said i'm gonna ask for a motion to adjourn faith adam all those in favor as unanimous adjourned thank you everyone thank