001the as i said the the town council acted um at their meeting which was held on um let's see april 26th the um appropriation for the board of ed was a budget of 80 million 664 the board had previously approved the budget of 81 million 114 420 so the reduction of 450 000 that needs to be made at this time the recommendation to the finance committee which has forward that recommendation on to the full board this evening there is a worksheet in the packet but there were the reductions would come out of our major account categories 300 of the 450 would be coming out of teacher salaries and the justification for that is pretty straightforward we anticipated seven teacher retirements and for each teacher retirement that would reduce our salary expense from the what was
002budgeted by 40 000 plus we have one teacher resignation which we believe when we hire to replace that teacher it'll take us down another 20 000. so it's 7 times forty thousand is two eighty plus twenty thousand so that's the bulk of the four hundred fifty thousand dollar reduction we didn't recommend any changes to the non-certified salary line um we were able to reduce the pension retirement line by 66 409 because after we had submitted the budget we did get an update from the actuaries on the town pension funding requirement and so it's 66 409 lower than we went into the budget knowing about so that that is a definite pickup that's helpful towards the 450 000 reduction we took five thousand dollars from instructional expense from our pupil services line but that line is
003still going up 90 166 for the year then we removed 78 591 from support services across a variety of the line items in that category and did not um make any changes to the maintenance and operations budget which we believe you know is is and and was very tight because of you know not only the needs of of our building repairs but mostly because our utility costs you know which have increased you know due to inflation and the increase in in oil prices so we didn't want to touch the maintenance budget so that that is the recommendation that was put forth by the finance committee again the board members have the detail in their um package so i'll stop there to see if there are any questions i know the board does have a motion
004that they could put forth um before we move into any discussion or questions i'll just um i'll make the motion so we can just officially answer the discussion um a move that the cheshire board of education approves an operational budget for the fiscal year 2022-2023 of 80 million 664 420 as appropriated by the town council representing a reduction of 450 000 from the board of education's recommended budget do i have a second on that motion second andrew thank you now we can move to discussion tim thank you adam yeah so an observation uh on this just looking forward a year if we are fortunate enough and oil prices drop the utility prices drop in some way i i'm not i'm not particularly fond of uh reducing the pension funding i i have my when i
005see what's happening with the markets and stuff and i've never really been a fan of how it gets funded i'm guessing that we're not 100 funded at this point right no but the contribution we make to the town pension is based on what the actuaries recommend and yeah i if you i don't want to guess but we're somewhere north of 80 i was going to say 80 or even 70 with the market going down but i know it's not it's not really tied to the market the wall street it's there's a lot of uh alternative investments in there which would include stuff like real estate which might be way up but then it could go way down anyway just generally um if we do save on any of that i personally would my hope is
006some of that money savings from the utilities which is not getting touched here would end up going back into the um pensions it just concerns me it always um so that's just a general comment a question so i'm looking at the certified salaries and this is uh i feel like that's a routine question every year the teachers we have 300 350 or 400 teachers a certain most of them stay for 30 years some of them retire and you can kind of estimate the savings with the number of teachers that are leaving with regard to our non-certified personnel do any of them in large numbers stay for 30 years or is it a higher turnover than that 2 years five years ten years where you just have where you have the constant turnover so you can't
007really look at it from a budgetary perspective it's just baked into the budget anyway it's not like you have people leaving at the end of the year that are making a significant salary or benefits well you know certainly from a salary size you know a certified staff whether it's teachers or administrators those are the highest paid individuals in the district you know as far as you know do they do they stay and are they replaced with someone at a lower step it doesn't work that way in the non-certified we don't have those 14 steps the most we have in any of these bargaining units is five steps and that's the secretary's union okay so you don't have the same impact when you get a retirement in the non-certified salaries and we do have employees that
008you know do give us 25 30 and even more years of service than that but it's not i mean if the teachers just say the teachers are 90 of them and i don't know if this is true but say 90 of them get to 30 years it's not 90 of non-certified getting to 30 years i'm gonna guess that it's not but i've never looked at okay at that gotcha and the numbers are also smaller anyway they get paid less than the teachers okay um i had one more question i can't think of it i didn't jot it down but i'll i'll give it back for right now man can you just click i'm looking at the seven retirements one resignation so this is just a differential between we are filling the positions but at a
009lower pay scale yeah so you're going from a top step in pressure it's 14 step 14 so roughly going from a hundred thousand we're assuming a sixty thousand dollars okay higher you know so step three or four is what the assumption is based on okay thank you yeah and this by the way this this teacher salary line does include you know the three and a half additional teachers that were added that we need for next year's enrollment increase thank you mr grippo so i apologize i was not able to make those budget meetings so i'm hoping that mr matiana can you tell us what the town council found wrong with our budget or over budgeted in our budget i know that we put our budget together in january and there's a lot of information that
010comes in after that but i'm always interested in knowing from the town side where they see are where they see that we can give up 450 000 from our budget that was very lean in my opinion uh to begin with that's a um tricky question to answer the way you asked it however the um you know i i don't know i don't think the council found anything wrong per se in our budget and the town council i know that that you know and the board members know the town council's authority is to reduce our budget but not what line items to reduce uh in discussions with the council and and dr solon and i did meet with the town council a couple of times you know it was made clear that you know we entered
011uh and submitted a budget that was very lean because of the medical benefits funding that we needed to increase and we knew that and um you know again dr sullin did a very good job of explaining and highlighting how many of our accounts were actually zeroed out in our request to the council and i think at the end of the day the the simplest way to explain it is the the town council for the overall budget for the town needed to achieve a number that they felt would not impact the taxpayers more than they thought it should so i you know again i don't know that they found anything wrong with the budget but they handed down a 450 000 reduction and and it's you know the board's you know requirement to to meet that
012reduction so we do the best we can in administration to come up with the recommendation that will impact student learning the least um and you know manage to the number thank you for that answer i just so you know it wasn't meant to trick you i know that it's meant to just illustrate this idea that this this is an arbitrary number that gets slashed every year from our budget that we that we deem is necessary to operate at um at a level that we need to operate at so thank you you're welcome yeah and i'll just say when i was on the council and being here on the board uh i would add i advocate for boards of ed being their own taxing authority i think it makes more sense it really i don't feel
013like it there's there's a there's a disconnect between the town taxing for the schools i think new york state i believe boards of education tax they are a taxing authority um i think that makes more sense the the question i have uh for adam um finance committee looking at uh you know we're talking about school modernization student growth you're going to put it on the agenda at some point about reviewing future staffing levels just starting that conversation just wondering if that i don't know if you mentioned that here tonight or if it's yeah um i was actually going to discuss it after the vote so oh [Laughter] okay sorry yeah i'll talk about it after um are there any other questions or any other questions or discussion about the emotion on the floor okay um
014uh seeing no other discussion i'll just uh read the motion one more time motion for consideration is that the cheshire board of education approves an operating budget for the fiscal year 2022-2023 of 80 million 664 thousand 420 as appropriated by the town council representing a reduction of 450 000 from the board of education's recommended budget um all in favor uh opposed abstain okay great so that's uh five four one abstain okay great thank you um uh yeah so uh to sort of uh acknowledge to answer your question from before uh in the discussion um so the uh the uh at the end of our uh finance meeting the the finance committee decided that we're going to meet um two more times this year one time in august and one time in november um in august
015um dr sullin and mr masiana are going to prepare financials as to what our um i guess physical situation will look like um if our our proposed next generation plan does not pass referendum and what that would mean as far as having to purchase trailers to um to be able to accommodate the the additional um influx of students that were anticipating um and the cost and you know where possibly where they would be and you know sort of the options that we would have as far as that goes and so that that's going to be our main topic for august um in november um you know we'll have a i guess a more clear picture uh for uh for future planning and we're going to kind of maybe start working through like a sort of
016like a 10 year plan and see where what sort of uh staffing we're going to need to accommodate for this population increase it what's that's going to look like and and we're also examining any potential um new uh curriculum initiatives or program initiatives of such as perhaps uh a language or or things like that so that what that's going to look look like from a cost perspective to be able to work that into our budget uh going forward as well so that's sort of our our thoughts um you know going forward so thank you um i think that's kind of what we had that's what we had discussed at that tail end of the meeting there um and so uh let's see i have here to ask miss miss solano to speak about grant activity
017sure so the board members have a packet in front of them um a sheet that's entitled grants report end of year 2021 2022 looks like this so i'll provide an overview of these grants most of these grants are two-year grants so you can see we've and i won't go through line by line but i'll with the numbers you can read that on your own but let me just provide an overview on what some of these grants are so we have our title grants title one and two used a lot for uh supplies and defraying the cost of salaries deferring the cost of some ia supports as well title iii is used for support and training around our english learners we do some consultation with aces to directly train our teachers in the variety of services
018that can be directly given to students within the classroom you're familiar with our perkins career in tech ed um grants which again helped to defray costs in that area and have been used in the past to buy some equipment and make some updates in the cte departments also on some occasions for some curriculum writing the supplemental enhancement grant we was not available but we are applying for the next one that is available and i know that sean mcewen is currently working on that our ida grants have to do with special education a lot of that money is used for salaries again ias especially on the certified side some of the arp money was used for tutoring also for in-service for rentals supplies etc open choice is a grant that we get through our students who
019are coming from new haven that district pays us a small small stipend per student for the students that come into our district and we use that to support activities and resources etc that students through the open choice program may need adult education that is our mandated programs which currently ryan murphy is handling and managing that we again defray the costs for resources and training and software things that we need to run that program peck jones we had 27 000 that was used for library books that we've spoken at at length about in the past we did not apply for to use any of that money um this current year we felt that with the um esser grants that we were able to cover a lot of ground smart start again funds our preschool programs at
020darcy you see we have the esser cares act which was shared with some of the private schools in district again we've talked about that in large part in the beginning was spent on ppe but also some of the other schools used it in training the sr2 and sr3 cares act again you've heard a lot about our bounce forward plan and how we use that money both for our coaches increased administrative support summer transition program tutoring providing intervention and also getting some of our teachers up to speed with t cell certification regarding our increase in english learners and that's really the overview of all of our grants i feel ignorant right now what where is the web school so i'm looking just so people at home are following this there's a list here and it says
021cheshire public schools cheshire academy saint bridget's i know um the web the web school is in our nexus um location i'm not sure jarvis okay yeah what grades is it or is it college okay oh okay okay i got it all right i understand thank you um marlene the um in regards to the sr-3 funding um so is that showing the year that we took the money in even though it's spread out like over i think what through two or three years is that kind of how it's represented here so we applied for that money um and have it earmarked but we we're spending it in stages based on what we need it for thank you you're welcome um are there any other questions from early um i just the disaster funds it's a lot
022of money and um it's it's spreading out over a few years are we going to be able to sunset the programs that we are funding or are we going to become dependent on is this going to find its way a permanent place in our budget well i think that's what the bounce forward plan was really about was about really putting the money into our current teachers and and really raising the tide and making sure that we're investing in our current teachers and the people that we have here so that once the money runs out we have something to show for it so we didn't hire a lot of staff in that regard we really did a lot of training so in in some cases um for example you know a math coach at the middle
023school that had been something that was on our wish list and something we moved forward with but we put that in place again because of the needs around you know learning loss and we were able to move some of that money in this direction so you know i think that would be evaluated at the end of the the grant too i think the other item that is a consideration in the factoring here is the enrollment increase that's projected to and what would that look like we're trying to stretch out the resource as long as we possibly can and they've been kind of talked to that earlier but um at the end of that journey we're trying to make that journey really long on the federal support that we have coupled with a strong emphasis on
024raising capacity over just hiring people um so i think we you know the board we thought that that was really prudent i think it's two years ago believe it or not that we were just first discussing this and that that'll run a five-year span by the time it's said and done so i think we're in a pretty good place around that and i think we've asked this before but these funds are it's not yeah any other questions okay great um are there any other questions in regards to any of the items in the finance committee report this evening all right seeing none we'll uh move on from finance um we had an item on the uh jennifer uh uh personnel and we are going to be postponing that right okay um we do not have
025to table that or anything so there's nothing to report at this time basically right correct okay okay so we'll move to planning and school modernization sure um kind of a big update but uh on may 10 the town council unanimously approved three resolutions forwarding the projects to the next level um and allowing the board of education to apply to the state for the actual grant on june 30th for filing the application with the state oscgr on june 30th moving the projects forward so it was a pretty um monumental night there were some members here from the board of education as well as town council um for as town council approved that um so unanimously approved that was that was great um also if you i'm sure everyone here knows this but for those listening at
026home um oddly in the state budget our reimbursement rate went from 35 for new construction to 50 um in the budget so now all these projects it's going to represent about 20 million dollars in savings to to the town um based on the approved based on the discussed budget for the new school construction project what else june 30 we're set there's going to be additional discussion on june 1st with the potential adopting the actual cost for the project um and then moving forward with the application on june 30th i have to give a shout out to the superintendent he's really put a road show together going to every um meeting of every local board and body possible i'm pumping the project it's going to be in the parade um pushing for a vote um when
027it goes reference referendum in november enough you want to add any sure i can take up uh yeah thank you and i i want to um thank marlene too who has been joining me as part of the roadshow act uh and we have covered a number of places just wrote a quick list down the library board of directors there was a dodd day festival we went to uh last saturday we've hit highland dodd and do little ptos in the last two weeks i think that covers all of them actually we've been to all of them we went we had a school business partnership in thank you andrew and uh collectively with the economic development council is part of that uh as well we as you said would we'll be in the memorial day parade um
028there's a board to so look for us to be honoring our veterans that day and passing out some information on the project i've also solicited chs juniors for a social media intern um tick tock isn't my thing if you follow me on instagram thank you but we need i need to up my game um particularly as we get out more information and uh as soon as i sent the video out to our juniors and i shared it with marlene she said well i want an intern too so um we have 15 students that uh expressed interest in helping us with social media and i know they'll be instrumental in us communicating with the broader community for our you know not only our referendum but beyond so that's it for me on school modernization i actually
029should include that uh the executive committee meeting uh took place yesterday with uh leadership from the town and town council uh and you know we're trying to nail down specific language for the referendum and what the uh i've i know i've had some questions from the board about what the non-advocacy period means and everything so um vinon and i uh will be representing the board at a meeting with oscgr on the 23rd of may just kind of nail down the last bits before we move on here so looking forward to that same good i just um kind of where are we with the building committee establishing that group so um there's a a process that the council wanted to engage in where they would identify individuals representatives from the board of education and representatives from
030the council to select that committee that you're speaking of to to solicit and select those members our advisors and colliers have been pretty clear about having a small committee that would be dedicated to this group over the course of four years that it would be important that they have you know a decent degree of project and or building experience as they'll be kind of guiding you know two schools over the course of that time and so the the i think the plan was to kind of discuss that project that the council would discuss that project at their june 9th uh council meeting is that fair andrew yeah andrew i thought i heard you say the referendum in november is that locked down is that what the council said they want to do at this point
031it'll be locked down when the council passes a resolution which we anticipate is happening june 1st all right so let me rephrase it it's not by virtue of a vote yet but is that what they're going with there's a november referendum okay so this so that means it's we're looking at opening in the 25 26 year if everything happened 26 20 26 huh august of 2026 so 26 27 okay so this was the discussion that sort of john my loan was leading talking about if we could shave a few months off and we're saying we're not going to bother with it we're just going to go with a november referendum and or is it possible to run parallel tracks and get that expedited i don't i don't recall exactly i'm just curious if you could
032speak to it yeah go ahead well what i was going to say is the referendum date doesn't impact the application date which is the more important date um so june 30th we will still be able to submit the application november we hold a referendum that doesn't affect the timing of the project that's right to the extent that we can start doing some work in advance of the referendum that can be done such as preparing a request for proposal for architects so that the day after the vote is held if it referendum passes then the building committee can get to work very very quickly on hiring the architect to begin the design work for example because we already did the process of issuing the rfq getting their getting their qualifications in reviewing everything town supports it
033say they do and then that day they can you're the one we want we already know it so okay okay great thank you welcome yeah the motion that was approved i'll just read it i have it right here by the town council was um can i read emotion like this yeah i mean okay reporting okay um be resolved at the time of council authorize the cheshire board of education to apply to the commissioner of administrative services and to accept or reject a grant for the construction of a new so there's one says nora and the other one says north end and be a further result that a school's next generation building committee is hereby established as a building committee with regard to construction of a new northern elementary school with members to be determined we
034have further resolved that the town council authorizes preparation schematic drawings and outline specifications for construction of a new norah elementary school there's the same resolution also for north end um so andrew you briefly mentioned your report that our reimbursement rate went up from 35 to 50 that's um kind of a big deal um do we know how that came about and has oscgr had any comment on that as far as will that change um qual you know how they look at our qualifying spaces or is there any other changes that might happen because of that change so state representative liz linehan and courtney cullen and i believe were the two that pushed for that on the state side when it was included in the budget um so state rep was there to discuss how it
035all came to be and kind of walked through what it means um so it's 50 for both new construction and for renovation um i don't know how oscr is going to look at i think we have a meeting um on 20 i believe it's the 24th not the 23rd right yes i think you're right there at the uh on the 24th the um this is not unprecedented that it be a legislative change in the reimbursement rate uh farmington meridian others have gone through that i think vin and i were looking at a couple other towns that also had the same thing so um they went to 60 percent in two towns that we were looking at so it's not unprecedented um it's it is you know short-lived and so you know i think there adds
036a level of urgency for us to act if we are to secure that reimbursement rate i mean at the estimated construction cost now it's going to save 20 million dollars so it's a huge it's a huge benefit to the community um yeah and i i looking back on past projects i think the last time we had a reimbursement rate that high i think was in the 1970s when we we put the first edition on to the high school i think of something like 60 or 70 back then so um thank you to our legislative team for really helping progress this project forward it's a real opportunity for us and i hope that we can make good use of it um any anything else from your report or questions or comments okay thanks great um are
037there i don't think there are any other standing committees so um yes yeah just one point on the personnel i don't know if uh jeff you might be able to speak to this so we're gonna have a personnel committee meeting uh regarding your annual review uh tuesday may 31st do you happen to know if tony was leaning toward a full board meeting or just the personnel uh he was he was definitely looking for a full board meeting there a full full crew i did um awaiting some responses on that okay in terms of availability i sent out the calendar invite on that one okay yeah and just for the public who's watching and my expectation is this is going to be we'll do it in executive session um so it's the public's not invited but
038just being aware that we'll be doing his annual reviews starting it'll be more than one meeting yeah um but we'll be kicking that off on may 31st thank you mr white um okay uh next up is approval of minutes uh can i have a motion to approve the minutes faith second oh oh yeah i will you know i can i oh yeah you know i've been reading the motions sorry so i i guess yes excuse me uh move at the cheshire board of education approve the minutes from meetings held on april 21st 2022 and may 5th 2022. is there a second to the motion tim is there any discussion uh ant go ahead just a quick question uh probably for jeff um is there a reason have we ever discussed having um the minutes of
039our meetings on the consent calendar not that i recall i mean i think they could be part of the consent calendar you know carol and i can look into that discuss it with tony i thought we had um talked about the various things at one point i remember yeah talking about the consent calendar definitely yeah but i i don't recall off the top of my head if that was part of it and you know carol and i can certainly throw that out i'm just i'm just wondering if there's a faster way to do it or or if there's a re or if there's a good reason to have the minutes as a separate item maybe there is i don't know so we'll look into it yeah definitely explore i say consent and keep it simple
040yeah amen um any additional uh discussion additions subtractions okay um oh yes go ahead yeah um forgive me i did notice um under the curriculum report for the um april 21st meeting it said in miss ham's absent ms okay it was anne who never mind i take it back i was i was miss kevin hanlon and i was gonna say miss hanlon never mind i misread it entirely forget it oh okay and miss hamilton will be appreciative too make the minutes all right uh any any other discussion seeing none um i'll read the motion one more time uh move that the cheshire board of education approves admit approves the minutes from meetings held april 21st 2022 and may 5th 2022 all in favor it is unanimous thank you um madam secretary is there any correspondence
041i have received no correspondence thank you and now it is that time of the evening for the superintendent's report i know you've been waiting with baited breath on this one but i planned on sharing much of it about school modernization which i've already covered but i do want to speak really briefly about covid19 as we know there's been a significant spike uh particularly in the northeast and we're not immune to that there's uh the numbers have increased in our schools uh we're seeing a pretty significant uptick the i guess the silver lining if there is one is that we haven't seen much in the way of substantial impact and illness from our kids but it does mean that they miss a significant amount of time and it and it can certainly be substantially impactful more
042so for adults unfortunately as we're seeing but um there is an uptick i would strongly recommend you know that families consider masks our staff consider masks we've communicated that at the very least take advantage of the testing that we have available next wednesday are hundreds of eighth graders about 288th graders will be traveling to washington dc we're going to require that they all test before they leave for dc um that's a requirement from dc actually that people travelers their tests before arrival but i think it's just a way to try and protect our kids and community as a reminder if you look at the [Music] board of ed website there is a covid update page there that i personally update the number of positive students every day uh so i remain connected to the trends
043that are occurring in the district and we have seen a significant uptick uh particularly cheshire high after um prom and things like that so you know i appreciate that we're all coveted weary but i would ask people to try and remain vigilant if you're symptomatic please test stay home and certainly wear a mask if you're symptomatic and or if you're positive certainly you know don't come out in public so you're not jeopardizing other stuff just a quick update there um jeff as far as the testing goes for the uh washington ship i'm i'm assuming that we are insured if let's say half the class tests positive or something like that how does that yeah so you know we've been covered through um nation's classroom is our tour provider they do a great job and they've
044been really flexible and working with us and so yes there is you know protection there for families but and it is a take-home test you know i so appreciate the partnership we have with our emergency services director and cheshire jack kasner the fire chief and beth crowley the librarian the the library director i called her today asking for tests i was able to swing by pick them up in an hour and you know because they are also giving tests out to people in the community if anybody needs one they can stop there if you need one for your child or um you know just call our school nurse and we'll send them home whatever you need thank you um sam first i was just going to ask about distributing the test kits and i know
045that the government just published that they want you to order tests online as well yeah they're available through the government online um for the dc trip we have a dc trip meeting friday afternoon we'll be handing them out there to kids to take home um but it also through the nurse if you need thanks adam um yeah so one of the things that you've done in the past at least going back six months for the younger kids i don't know in high school i don't recall when you were doing it for the high school but you were offering the booster clinton or vax clinics right um so just an observation if you are if you're thinking about a booster clinic considering the school year is almost over it might be beneficial to at least consider
046doing a booster clinic in august rather than say now when i believe it's available what i saw on the news um you talked to health professionals i'm not telling you what to do you just want it as an idea yeah it's not uh i don't think it was fd it was either it meant the first level of authorization but it needs one more authorization i think before it can be administered is where i believe it is today okay uh the five to eleven um we you know as a school system we don't necessarily offer them i certainly communicate sure families if they choose to and that should be done with consultation with your physician um you know we're just making it available as a public service sure in cooperation with chester cop yeah okay yeah
047i understand what you're saying because you know i did have this conversation with our nursing director today about her decision um or you know her recommendation to hold off on vax on getting a booster until the fall just to be or at least mid-august because uh really takes a couple of weeks post inoculation to um be fully protected and unfortunately it looks like the way things are going covet may hang around even longer than we anticipated so yeah no i mean i think the vaccines at the vaccines as far as i'm concerned it's working for me the booster and everything but i'm also not convinced that these things can go on in perpetuity every three or four months so i'm just thinking delaying it out until then could be beneficial from a teaching in school
048perspective um and oh have you had any conversations with anybody i'm curious the new from what i recall last winter the omicron and the delta and they came to the experts came to the conclusion that the masks that most people wore not n95s weren't really all that useful do you happen to know if this current variant or is it somebody told me it's the old variant that came back i don't know do you know if n95s are like the mask to wear or do the other mass actually have a benefit if you happen to know just from talking to the public health people um we've received information about the validity of masks you know throughout the pandemic being incredibly beneficial each level of mask having a different layer in protection certainly n95 being the gold
049standard for that surgical mask being quite high you know and then just to decline down to the cloth mask better than nothing but um in terms of current data i don't have that okay all right thank you can you um give an update on how those metrics that we adopted in february apply and is there any chance they're going to kick in so the metrics that we um adopted in february were uh basically dissolved in late march when we had met those metrics the vaccination rate the positivity rate uh case rate and as things have evolved the proliferation of home testing that doesn't get reported to the positivity rate case rate um the vaccination rate has been fairly stagnant over the course of the last you know probably six months or so so they're not
050really as germane in the um the addition of new treatments for those with covid those different variables they're looking more at things like case rate or a hospitalization right now and believe it or not sewage runoff to determine the amount of covid in the community those things have increased the you know you see the hospitalizations have increased the and the so that is out there that's the reality i'm also sensitive to the emotional impact of um re-masking for kids with three weeks of school left and so as of today you know i don't think we're inclined to move in that direction um you know i think there would have to be really significant medical direction urgency to mandate it and that hasn't happened to to mandate there is the recommendation as i said earlier i
051would recommend based on the conversations i have with our medical professionals that you do consider masking but you know at this point still very much a personal decision to follow up doesn't um so the executive the governor's executive order whatever remnant there is of it expires june 30th right it says the dph still has some authority authority extended authority but um you know like i said i don't think that they've had there's been zero direction from them that they would be moving or zero indication i should say that they're moving toward a mandate i mean i have a regular meeting with the commissioner of education there's a regular superintendent's meeting every month and that's coming up on friday i'm sure this will be a topic of conversation but i would be pretty stunned at this
052point to see a directive in that direction can i just go a step further can you tell us anything about more outdoor use at this time of year or yeah it's been a little difficult through the month of you know april and may we've had a lot of rain um but you know as hopefully as things clear up we still encourage folks to head outside for example at the high school i talked to dr gad and we decided to put lunch tables outside which is a break from past practice pre-covered we would never do that because of fear of rodents and things like that but we um we've done that so we are trying to leverage outside space as much as possible particularly now as we're starting to see the increase again thank you i
053was just wondering if that was part of the conversation again absolutely any additional questions for dr sol okay thank you dr solon thank you um see we have old business there's no old business that i'm aware of um there is no uh chairperson's update um i guess uh before we close i'll just read off uh the upcoming meetings um monday may 23rd we're gonna have a robust policy committee meeting we may have to you know divide that up a little bit um that's going to be virtual now that even though that going forward we won't be able to have virtual classrooms we'll be able to still have virtual meetings so we'll still have virtual public meetings so um that will be live streamed um uh thanks to uh dr solon i think right that's gonna
054be coming right off your computer that evening um thursday june 9th we'll have a business meeting location to be determined um monday june 13th 7 p.m curriculum committee meeting hummingston boardroom uh tuesday june 14th uh 6 30 p.m policy committee meeting um that may be virtual again we'll see depending on the uh volume of material we're going to be going over and uh thursday june 30 at 7 30 a.m is our uh uh year-end meeting uh in the hummeston boardroom um and it looks like uh cheshire public schools will be closed on may 30th for in observance of memorial day um i have no uh yes so thank you for making the 23rd virtual but i just want to go beyond that i know we've added some dates for the finance committee meeting in august
055and just kind of want to propose that to be virtual as well too if at all possible i think perhaps we could work something out okay thank you my second question is um this from last week dr solon um the teacher of the year ceremony just reminded me did we announce one already for the upcoming school year we announced our teacher of the year annually at our convocation ceremony in the fall okay um i would like to entertain a motion to adjourn oh it's that uh second uh well it was kind of a tie sam second uh all in favor all right this meeting is adjourned thank you