001there we go hello yes okay thank you so much um for the opportunity to update you all on some things that are happening at cheshire high school but before we get into treasure high school i thought that it was only fair to update you all on our final amount that we raised for the leukemia and lymphoma society so i'm very very pleased to say that our team rams remedy volume 3 has raised over 12 000 dollars to go towards blood cancer research yes awesome um and i had the honor of receiving the 2022 citizenship award um for demonstrating you know getting our school community involved so that was a big honor and then in total all of the teams across the um greater connecticut region raised over 119 000 that goes towards the leukemia and
002lymphoma society so i knew that as soon as i got those numbers i had to tell you all because it was something that i'm so very grateful to have been a part of and thank you everyone for your support um in that activity that i took part in um so today we actually had our high school leadership conference that was hosted by mr lee and his peer health class they planned this leadership conference for mostly 11th graders who have been identified as leaders in their schools and would have a great potential being leaders as next year as they would be rising seniors so 200 students in total attended this leadership conference 100 were from cheshire 25 were from amity high school 25 were from terryville high school and 50 students were from berlin high school
003so we had a great turnout and a lot of people got involved we had two amazing panelists that were able to talk to the students alyssa taglia is actually a 2011 chs grad who is now a news anchor for channel 8 news and runs her own non-profit um so it kind of demonstrated to the students the importance of community service and coming back and giving back to your community um and and what success looks like in all different aspects then we had mike papale who is also the president of a non-profit organization called in a heartbeat so he's from allingford connecticut and in high school he was one of the best high school basketball players in the state but at 18 he was diagnosed with a heart problem which caused his heart attack and they
004credited his survival to the use of an aed and others who stepped forward to perform um cardiac arrest you know respiration and everything with the aed so he started this non-profit organization that buys aeds and actually gives them to different communities um which is so awesome and was truly inspirational for all of those students to hear about so that was a great great thing to have on our panel and so the purpose of this entire leadership conference was to create an opportunity for students to get a better understanding of what leadership means and and how it looks not always necessarily being the one speaking out but what a silent leader looks like as well and it created a connection between leadership community service and engaging with the school community which is awesome to know that
005as we go on to our paths next year that we're going to have some awesome seniors to take on that role at chs and then the next thing that we're planning on may 31st is our b1 day so this is a day that the school community has no classes at chs but we build empathy compassion and understanding across all grades through the beginning of the day being a half of the great half of the school splits into a video section creating created by an amazing video committee that has been you know working hard to show what it really means to be a ram and then by a panel committee that um is taking a teacher and a student from each grade to share out how they overcame adversity with at least one community member in
006cheshire so that's a kind of a great way to show that we we always have someone to go to no matter what especially coming out of these past couple of years because be one day has actually been something that has been happening since 2000 um but we haven't been able to have it for the last two years because of covid so the seniors are actually the only grade that got to experience it our freshman year so if we didn't do it this year then it wouldn't really have that resurgence so the whole theme this year is kind of we're passing down that ram pride to the younger grades and showing them what that really means to be part of our chs community um so it will be absolutely amazing and then in the afternoon session
007that's when we have our fun and our kind of release from that emotional rollercoaster of the morning where we have our activities and games and one of those activities is a volleyball tournament hosted by the young republicans where the winning team the teams being clubs or different just groups of friends are donating money to whatever organization or charity that of of their choice so that is something to really look forward to so now i'll hand it over to rowan hello everybody um just going to mirror a lot of the things annabelle said to start it's lovely to be back here in front of you guys again and an opportunity to just kind of give you guys a summation of a few of the things as we wrap up this school year because it starts coming
008fast now um and lots of different exciting events coming up um so one of these events that's kind of part of both the school but also the community at large is the traveling vietnam wall that's arriving in bartlett park on june 1st which there's going to be an opening ceremony for the entire chs community um in the morning of june 2nd and that program is really impressive there's all sorts of different parts of the community and especially throughout chs that are taking part in it there's remarks from the vietnam veterans and members of brave um and then also performances by the chs honors choir and the chs band and so it's really a great opportunity for a lot of different parts of chs to come together for this kind of really monumental event and all
009students additionally as part of that will have the opportunity to actually go and see the wall which is a really amazing opportunity that we get um from an athletics perspective as all of our spring sports start to enter kind of the final phases of their seasons um almost all of them have started league playoffs either this week or next week and those will kind of continue onwards and state playoffs will start at the beginning of june um and so we have a lot of very successful teams throughout the high school and so it's always exciting walking around the halls talking to people on different sports teams and different part um different ways committed to them just helping because it's really always a great supportive community cheshire also had 25 future student leaders which were able
010to attend the cic leadership and sportsmanship conference and cheshire was also one of 20 schools to receive a ciac michael's cup award for sportsmanship participation and leadership um and again on the theme of athletics cheshire has also been elected to host the boys lacrosse semi-final state tournament contest in june um so lots of exciting athletic events as well um and finally we just wanted to kind of give a few different summation events of all of the other things that are happening that we don't have time to kind of go into fully um because like we said there are so many different things going on at this point um we have the senior movie night coming up this friday i believe um and which is a chance for seniors to attend a movie night outside on
011a senior walk um it's like a a projector to enjoy the movie with friends and snacks a fundraiser but it's just a really great chance kind of it's been such a weird four years throughout it all that this is kind of a really nice chance for a lot of us to get together and kind of celebrate what we've had these past four years we also have senior picnic coming up on monday um it's at holiday hill and again it's a really fun event for all of us to kind of just get together and kind of celebrate this past year and the four years we've gone through we have senior fun day um where seniors are able to spend outside on the walk doing all sorts of different fun activities we also had prom just a
012few weeks ago last week it was last weekend last weekend i'm losing track of time but um truly it was just a great night i think animal can also detest it it was so much fun it was so great to be back with everybody um we also have award ceremonies coming up we have honor cords um and then graduation which is a weird thing to be talking about uh because the past four years have gone really fast but we're excited to be there and so yeah does anybody have any questions i just have a comment because we haven't seen you rowan since uh since chicago went on i just want to say how much i enjoyed watching you on stage and you did a great job as did all of your your horse i could
013just update one point with respect to that leadership conference today this was the 10 year anniversary of our leadership conference and it was pretty special uh and as such we had a special video guest performance or welcome i should say from uh general james mcconville he's the united states army chief of staff uh so you know the highest ranking us army officer in the land as well as laura a potter the deputy chief of chief of staff for the us army and beside the fact that she is was the commanding general and formerly the commandant of the us army intelligence center of excellence uh in arizona what also makes her special and some would argue maybe even more so than this is that she also attended norton elementary school back in the day um so
014it's it's great to see students who have attended our schools reach such incredible heights and they had a special welcome message for all the students today which was kind of neat i figured i'd pass that on thanks you guys for your report i was just wondering what is in the future for you both um i okay i am going to be going to marist college next year um i'm gonna be majoring in biomedical sciences on the honors pre-med track um so i'm i'm very very excited um and i'm going off to brandeis university to study probably psychology but also probably a lot of other things knowing myself [Music] congratulations thank you okay uh seeing no other uh questions um walt dam's a great town i went to bentley so it's a really fun place nine
015miles outside of boston so it's really great he may be spending more time in the library than you did though that's very possible hola thank you for the great report and um you are free of your duties for this evening so if you don't go too far we have acknowledgements oh okay hang around for a few more minutes um okay uh dr solon sure at this point we want to recognize some special students with the cabe student leadership awards so mr woods if you want to come up as i mentioned uh from the deus there that this is an opportunity to recognize some special students in our community and i think this is particularly meaningful award because the connecticut association of boards of education send us these awards and give us the opportunity to define
016leaders in our community identify and celebrate leaders in our community and which you know and of itself is pretty special but in this case students help i identify who these leaders are that we select their peers which is so incredibly meaningful the outline criteria uh for selection is those who are willing to take on challenges those who have the capability to make difficult decisions in tough circumstances who demonstrate concern for others and the ability to work with others who demonstrate diplomacy and the ability to deeply understand an issue and comment things from different perspectives and ultimately the capacity to honor commitments and so from dodd middle school we have a special letter of recognition from elizabeth brown the president of cabe and the executive director bob raider our recipients this evening i'll read those after
017leadership is quality is hard to define but remains critical to our society cabe has developed criteria that help to define leadership your principal received a list of these criteria and was asked to name dodd middle school students who met them your principal and more importantly your school community considers you such a school leader we are pleased to present you together with other student leaders across connecticut with our 26th annual cabe student leadership award you should take pride in the recognition bestowed upon you we encourage you to continue to think and act like a leader congratulations and all the best in your future endeavors please welcome from dodd middle school nora de chico and cameron paul [Applause] [Laughter] where do you want to take the photo here with the flowers in the background we'll wait congratulations
018guys if you want to shake hands with the board membership [Applause] yeah sure and i think it's really exciting to have the opportunity to recognize both our middle school leaders and our high school leaders on the same night because our what our middle school leaders do you know having had the benefit of being the principal at dodd middle school for four years and assistant principal for three years before that i have a pretty understanding of you know this this blossoming leadership and you know the the this morning at the leadership conference i was able to share that last week i had the benefit of attending three days worth of conferences at harvard really focused on on leadership hearing from some of the you know preeminent leaders in our country and people who coach you know
019some of the the top leaders in our country around leadership and it really for me after those three days boiled down to two key fundamentals of leadership one is about relationships demonstrating caring for those around you empathy understanding and you heard some of those traits bleed through in caves definition but importantly the other component the other takeaway is that leadership is not some you know unachievable goal of the few it's not about charisma it's not about courage or bravery or something like that well those things are nice leadership is about action leadership is about what you do every day which allows you know leadership to be available to all of us but our students have demonstrated certainly in front of their peers and in our treasure community those actions the the the selflessness the you
020know consideration of others the support being there for people that is really outstanding that is unique to demonstrate that sort of consistency and concern and action on a daily basis and what that looks like in middle school is incredible and at the high school level uh there's just nothing short of outrageous you know when you hear about raising twelve thousand dollars for the leukemia lymphoma lymphoma society excuse me um that's incredible that's that i mean that's literally you know life-changing for people you know i mean going back years ago recruiting rowan to be an actor in some goofy skit that miss solano and i did to play you know somebody from the 1920s to for a video that we did you know his actions i'll be there not even a thought and even though he
021was i think a freshman at the time maybe a sophomore entering his sophomore year it was you know he i'm sure it was hard to say oh yeah i'm gonna go hang out with the superintendent assistant superintendent and i'm gonna dress like a goof and you know on video but he did it anyway leadership through your actions is so meaningful and i'm so excited to be able to honor not only our middle school students but our high school students tonight and so the the cabe leadership award for cheshire high school goes to rowan scassilotti and annabelle kalin congratulations guys [Applause] [Laughter] uh okay make sure you guys shake hands with the board action um so this next recognition is also pretty personally meaningful for me having had the opportunity to work with this person for
022four years at cheshire high school and get to know how selfless they were and how they were constantly focused on doing what's best for the students in in cheshire high school often at great inconvenience but never voiced the complaint and was just a real pleasure to work with and we're glad that even though he's retired from his teaching job he still works with our kids and has that positive influence on our students and our community so i for a special introduction and acknowledgement i'd like to invite uh our athletic director steve trafone to the podium please thank you dr solin it's a grip of members of the board a couple weeks ago i had the honor of introducing you to our hall of fame uh volleyball coach subavon and that evening our girls golf coach
023john williams was being introduced at the connecticut high school coaches association banquet so he was unable to make that but he's here tonight i pulled him off the links and we got him uh so um i'm proud to introduce john uh williams this evening a little bit about john as uh dr solon said uh john served as a tech ed teacher for us for 20 years before retiring in 2018 he remained as our golf coach he's been coaching our girls golf for 17 years and has continued with that a little bit about john under that leadership uh he he took a team that was young and just starting off and has now really built it into a perennial powerhouse in the state and in the league uh their contenders every year in both league and
024state play and it's grown we've had more girls come out for our girls golf team than ever before and not only have we had an increase in enrollment but some of the best scoffers in the state have come from cheshire high school on the girls golf side so uh it's it's really took john's uh i give him all the credit for that one thing john did too is girls golf is still young in the state there's not a as many teams as we have boys john was a instrumental incorporating the southern connecticut conference girls league uh for golf so now we we have a a place where our girls can compete for a league championship and in 2021 john's team won that championship um so and probably a little thing about john is just the
025other day john earned his 200th win as golf coach with his team so allow me to present john williams our girls golf coach who was named the connecticut high school coaches association girls coach of the year john [Applause] thank you this [Applause] congratulations coach williams um i guess um moving on uh we'll uh we'll go to the audience section of the evening so i'll ask anyone who has uh any public comment on any uh matters pressing uh dealing with the board of education to come up and speak sing none uh well um someone could be moving in from the gallery no okay all right thank you um we'll move along to the consent calendar and uh we have a grants resolution um [Music] cheshire board of education approves the consent calendar as presented is there
026a uh a second second i saw anne's hand i know sound travels faster but well sometimes no not ever that's okay and second all right thank you i'm not gonna fight you over it if you really want um is there any discussion on the motion and go ahead so is this the only item on the consent calendar i believe so trying to find a copy of it okay thanks yeah okay i'll wait is there any question on the cons on the con the consent calendar motion no okay great all in favor post all right unanimous uh unanimous vote thank you okay we'll uh move on to committee reports and uh this is ham i'll move over to curriculum all right thank you um we had a curriculum meeting on may 10th the items we we
027went over were the world language cheshire curriculum council review and we heard presentation by archer bronco kristen haas katie oporoski and tina oconee um and so they just gave us an executive summary of um of the council's work uh we went over the mission statement which you've got in your notes i'll briefly read it the world language program promotes linguistic and cultural proficiency and literacy while cultivating a lifelong appreciation and enthusiasm for languages and the cultures they reflect the world language program consistently implements interdisciplinary learning strat learning strategies and actively cultivates global citizenship the world language program is in grades 6 through 12 and students have um are able to take a spanish french german latin and italian in cheshire high school and some of the key goals of the presentation of the group was
028just to continue to focus on curriculum revision and development use of the language in realistic settings and reformatting midterms and finals to adopt a more performance-based approach so i would really encourage everybody to watch the minutes of the meeting because we had a very good discussion about where language should be going the language instruction should be going in cheshire public schools you know the possibility of expansion in an ideal world and i think we'll probably be going back to address some of the questions that were raised but it was um it was a very good very good um back and forth with with the team and the committee um and then kevin hanlon shared the um um lis links assessment which is given to all english lang english learners in january february and early march
029um this is the first time we had this uh test since 2020 and plea i would like you all to make uh note of the numbers we have increased in these two years from 51 english language learners to a hundred and one and um one quarter of the students who took the of the students taking the test demonstrated an overall proficient level of english on the las links of the students who took the assessment in cheshire last year the vast majority did score growth in points and or moved up in the proficiency level and parents were notified of the results in their children's status in the in the program um so we will at the next lesson have um an overview of the s.a.t performance at the high school for the 11th graders so new
030business we um heard about a new um textbook that is part it is being recommended by the uh in accord accordance with um dual enrollment correspondence the title is financial accounting 18th edition by williams bettner and carcelo um we have made a um we will move this it's it's available for a review like right now and we will uh um pending the uh completion of the review period and other than that it was a quiet meeting oh that's my any questions yes so this is actually just a follow-up because i did receive some word about this dual enrollment course is this the state has something about not allowing dual enrollment anymore especially with if you can just clarify it's been a little yeah that's the state actually in the last the minute of this session
031passed a law that prohibits dual instruction meaning that like synchronous teaching is what might i've heard more about um really shocking to be honest that they did that uh a law prohibiting it not even like you know under any circumstances no carb outs no nothing so even you know we don't even go to a teacher and ask hey would this be here even though a lot of times the teacher would encourage it so you know it's kind of a headstretcher but not having to do with dual enrollment where we it's kind of got meanings of enrollment because the dual enrollment as we see it is um a treasure high school course with college credit so like really college experience through uconn or we partnered with nagatok valley as well so that's the overview on i
032just wanted so it doesn't impact us because it it has ties with um trunks's and yukon and you know post our teachers are teaching the class to the students in person there's nothing remote about it no hybrid but because they have it articulated with tungsten our students then get credit for it at cheshire high school and through and through the community college yeah yeah so so just understand what you're saying is that synchronous learning is now illegal so yeah so that all of like all those wonderful all that wonderful equipment that we have in our classrooms we can't use that to for virtual learning anymore not for virtual not for not for synchronous which is again shocking this was no no talk of this whatsoever feathered in at the 11th hour um i don't know
033where it came from i think it's called a rat in hartford then um then uh yeah so the the video equipment without the audio equipment you still have the benefit of the audio in the room um which is really where the value is but it's uh the it was shocking to hear that there was also again another 11th hour law that indicated that teachers should have a three minute uninterrupted required to have a 30 minute uninterrupted lunch the uninterrupted part is not problematic the contract that we have with the teachers union has a 25 minute lunch so now we have to find a way to adjust all of our schedules with no notice you know i mean no contract the contract implications there so that goes into effect uh for next year so maybe there's
034hope uh there's always an inevitable special session perhaps yeah bring that to the attention of our legislators yeah legislators would be kind of stunned on that but the potential i mean there is yes a way but i i would be more stunned to see that than i am to see this before kova do we have um the synchronous learning option um yeah i mean we it wasn't outlawed certainly and you know when we went to covid we leveraged that uh opportunity for kids but we we had the ability prior to covid for teachers too yeah i think ability versus uh certainly we had the ability did we ever do that no i you know i don't think we really even thought about it we didn't have people out a lot for 10 days at a
035cliff or whatever and so you know that was one of the innovations i think that came out of kovid that was you know probably beneficial yeah certainly i mean during covet it was a lifesaver for a lot of kids i i thought in the in the high school the um where the principal's office used to be there's a room right at the top of the steps the second set of steps going up yeah i thought that that actually had been used for synchronous learning in the past not necessarily every year but i i was almost positive it had been used at times for that that would predate my tenure as principle which i mean yeah so there's a difference between distance learning and synchronous learning with distance learning you know i might be teaching from
036hill house in in anders case two students all over the place including other places but not live instruction with kids in front of me at hill house only remote if you're doing both if you have kids in front of you and remote that is the part that's outlawed okay that strikes me as absurd and i know you have nothing to do with it but this is really ridiculous that somebody even divided without any discussion in the first place so was this too to um preclude any um abuse of the contract for teachers or was it to get at the problem that we had during covid of um kids who just went missing i i mean if it's a ladder i get it um i do i mean i think it is draconian now you can't
037just outlaw a method which apparently you can but um but um there are a lot of things that went into that that implementer bill that have got many of us steamed and scratching our heads but but at the same time i mean there was in some of those in some schools i mean there were just entire swaths of kids who who went but so yeah any answer i give you faith would be entirely speculative given the fact that there was zero conversation on the topic so i i'm not sure what the rationale was and and honestly the 30-minute uninterrupted lunch i don't necessarily have a problem with the timing of it i have a significant problem with you know with you know that for us to be able to implement that in august there are
038busing implications potentially there are contractual implications potentially there's not much of a runway to to fix that but um certainly scheduling implications of some sort you know lunch staff you know it's uh it's a real wrinkle but no discussion on that either any other questions i i just want to say it just really limits our opportunity you know i'll give an example we wanted to expand our world language um to our kids and they can take you know chinese and in other schools and now we can't do that okay so that limits the opportunity and like dr solomon said it impacts our schedule even if by five minutes you still there's issues transition already the limit schedule now you've just made it worse so i just didn't want this to also stretch to our you
039know relationship with um chunks is in uconn and so on absolutely okay um thank you mrs sam uh we'll move on to finance um and i will um begin by handing over the meeting to mr maciana thank you mr grippo good evening everyone the board members do have the financial report as of april 30th in their packages and i will summarize the board's budget this year was adjusted at 78 million 500 through april 30th we've expended or encumbered 94.3 percent we are on track for a year-end close on june 30th that i do not foresee any issues balancing the budget so with that being said there is a lot of activity that goes on in april may and and june to get to uh you know a zero budget line and we're you know doing
040that in earnest and you know part of what we do at this time of the year is we look at you know what are the remaining needs what are the remaining funds we encumber for you know purchases and expenditures and maintenance projects so that's that's all moving along pretty well we do meet every two weeks just so the board knows internally you know with dr solon ms solano um you know and our other you know accounting staff just to look at each of the line items open purchase orders the grants and make sure that we are allocating money appropriately the only other thing that i i'll add which i've added in the past is you know we have four hundred thousand dollars four hundred thirty nine thousand of esther tube grant funding that's being used
041this year and we have eight hundred ninety eight thousand of our passer funding that'll be available for the following two fiscal years so you know we will be able to make good use you know of those proceeds and so you know the point is we we still have you know those balances intact for the next two years so that will help us with any kind of learning loss or counseling or guidance or other needs that students have you know related to the pandemic and other items and hopefully you know we don't have to allocate any of that funding like we have this year and in prior years for you know health and safety needs around the pandemic so really that's the high-level summary of the budget we're tracking well and june 30th is the final
042board of ed meeting at 7 30 a.m to balance the budget so look forward to that one every year not the 7 30 a.m part though um just a question there um on the on the line item uh budget section uh is this reflecting the proposed changes um no okay so this is before proposed changes right well this is your the proposed changes are for next year's is that your question yeah we'll get to that oh boy okay um i've got it mr gripper don't worry continue on please okay i'll if it's okay i would like to do the medical benefits update next and then we'll talk about next year's budget again the board members do have in their package the update uh for medical benefits as of april 30th claims for the month of
043april were a million ninety seven thousand nine seventy down a bit from march but certainly above the you know the budget that we had um if there's some good news in this month's report it's that if you if you have the report handy stop loss reimbursement for large claims increased by 335 000 this month so on a year-to-date basis you know because of the large claims that are underlying our claims trend we've received 705 000 in stop-loss reimbursements because of that increase of 335 000 this month we actually increased our reserve balance by 63 189 dollars so even though we exceeded the expected claims that stop loss reimbursement help buoy and increase the reserve fund balance so that's the good news on that of course we do pay a premium for that stop-loss insurance and
044um just anecdotally and related to this this morning the board of ct prime met to discuss and approve a renewal of next year's rates for loss and our premiums are increasing 20 percent expected 15 but i believe as i explained at the last board meeting the overall claims pool for the nine-member communities is running very high this year the um will pay out about 125 percent of collected premiums so you know we'll collect about seven million dollars in in premiums i'm gonna pay somewhere close to eight million dollars in claims overall for the pool so the insurer that issued the insurance is basically going to be taking a loss this year last year they had a very nice game even though cheshire didn't contribute to that game last year so um the stop-loss insurance premium
045is factored into next year's budget we just have to make an adjustment because it's 20 instead of 15 percent but cheshire's claims related to the ct prime pool this year um we were the the worst runner in the last couple of years we are not this year so some of the insurers are doing worse and in related conversation around that at our board meeting this morning you know one of the consultants that we use did explain that the trend you know across many of the you know medical benefit self-insured pools this year is running very high claims are high whether or not it's you know directly related to covert no one knows for sure but the speculation is that it is related to covid so um you know that's that's kind of the long and
046short of where we are for our medical claims this month and what we're looking at for our stop loss for next year and you know again the fact that we've been with ct prime for the last five years has helped us had we not been in ct prime our premiums would be a lot higher than they are today in fact the last three years running we've um collected reimbursements you know at you know basically 40 more than we paid in as premiums so again that's one of the benefits of being in a in a pool where you know the members are actually managing the premiums so again and it's kind of like bittersweet news but um i think overall considering our claims have been so high we we got a decent renewal and we've got
047two months left in in the medical benefits here so you know we hope that um claims you know still subside but we have no way of knowing any questions on medical benefits sorry about that i think we've run out of questions about medical benefits well as we as we close you know the month of april i i should add that we have 1.41 months of claims reserve week the reserve balance stands at 1.27 million dollars so you know that's that's not a terrible place to end this is kind of perennial or in every meeting but okay so is anyone looking to see if are we um actually experiencing more people getting sick hurt whatever or is the cost of delivering that medical care well it's a combination of but is it a combination of both
048of those items but clearly our experience you know this year and and the the prior two we have seen an extraordinarily high number of claims above 25 000 not necessarily hitting the stop loss limit of