001st patrick's day board of ed meeting uh before we get into it uh mr jessica have a roll off a quorum please here is harrigan here thank you i ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance i think we're all getting acclimated to not just no mass but no dividers it's like we're it's good it's nice i think anyway welcome everyone we have a large crowd tonight joking uh annabelle it's all yours what do you got for us this evening okay hello everyone thank you for the opportunity to get to share with you the tons of things that we have going on at cheshire high school it is a very long list today so the first thing is the spring musical that is why rowan my partner in crime is not here today drama
002club members have been working very hard for months now for the upcoming spring musical so cheshire high school drama is thrilled to invite our community to witness a tale of murder mayhem and scintillating scandals with their production of chicago the teen edition so tickets are now available and shows are thursday march 24th friday march 25th and saturday march 26th we encourage you all to get your tickets and enjoy this wonderful show the drama club always does an amazing job and is very successful in their productions this monday this this past monday the on the 14th it was we had pi day so our math teachers mr redford and miss angeli took 12 students to scsu for the mathematics puzzle program this was a competition and it was a scavenger hunt type of event where clues
003acted as solutions to puzzles so the students had a great time and are looking forward to participating again next year we were lucky enough to have two teams um made of six people team super rambushus and team unscramblers and art one of our teams super ambitious took third place in the competition so that was really cool we're very very proud of them for that on march 15th the senior class hosted our mario kart tournament we were very excited that we were able to get so many students as well as faculty we had a team of administrators um participating in the mario kart tournament so that was awesome we raised close to 200 and we're excited to put those funds towards creating a very memorable prom and being on the prom committee myself we are already
004hard at work um making sure that we can make this event very very special for our seniors um also on march 15th we held a virtual junior parent night and a virtual financial aid night so those very important conversations um especially for the junior class they were recorded and they will be shared with the parents of the junior class that were not able to attend that meeting yesterday 45 students as well for an in-person tour of the connecticut center for advanced technology and they got to tour their government state of the state of the art facility on the raytheon technologies research center campus so students learned about different types of technologies used in additive manufacturing versus it oh sorry precision machining i don't know why i can't get that word out um and automation and
005metrology so they were able to have informative breakout sessions with industry experts to help inspire students to explore careers in that field and also encourage some underclassmen to take classes in that area at cheshire high because we offer a lot of those classes another great accomplishment that chs was recently able to accomplish was that we were able to raise seventeen hundred dollars of um funds that go towards helping ukraine and the current state that they're in right now so everyone was very willing to participate and help donate to a cause that is so present and important and that we feel is a big part of our lives and and growing up with everything happening in the world another thing that i am very excited to talk about um is a fundraiser that i am actually
006running for the leukemia and lymphoma society to support blood cancer research so i'm participating in a student of the year program that is a seven week competition across nine different schools in connecticut trying to raise the most money as possible we've had great great great success we're actually entering our last week of the campaign tomorrow and i can't disclose how much money we've raised since it is a competition but i can say that we have raised an insane amount um and in our t-shirt sales of rams for remedy leukemia and lymphoma society t-shirts we have raised a again very large amount and i'm so sorry that i can't tell you how much it is and how successful we are but next month i will be able to share that with you all and i'm very
007excited about that um so we have planned a dress down day for teachers and students this coming thursday where everyone is going to be wearing their lls red out t-shirts so that's very exciting also on that thursday the junior class is taking the sats so that's an upcoming thing that we are all looking forward to and just today we held our school-wide volleyball tournament which is a tradition that has been going on for over 20 years and walking into the gym and seeing spectators cheering on the participants and all of the teams wearing their team spirit it really honestly felt like a different school year because the positive energy and the encouragement and the atmosphere was so so wonderful and it it showed some signs of normalcy and and signs of life and and just
008positivity back in the school which we're really really excited about and so just a couple points for athletics to wrap up um spring sports will begin on saturday march 19th with the first competitions beginning april 2nd so we're excited to jump into the spring season senior hannah merritt is a finalist for the connecticut association of athletic directors director's essay scholarship so over a hundred student athletes applied and hannah is one of the four finalists so that is an amazing accomplishment and her and her parents will attend the annual athletic directors conference on march 24th to receive her award so hannah is a member of the girls swim and lacrosse teams and we are so so so proud of her me being a senior myself i am very very proud of her and then lastly 21
009cheshire high school students will attend the annual ciac sportsmanship conference that's going to be held on tuesday march 29th this conference although this is virtual this year it'll still have guest speakers and interactive activities to help promote sportsmanship and develop good character traits in high school sports the participants will make up our 2023 class act student group so those are some updates in athletics we're excited to get going with our spring season with the weather being nice so that is all i have for you all today if you have any questions or comments please feel free thank you annabelle any questions or comments from the board mr grippa um i'd just like to comment at the robustness of your report firstly it's a fantastic amount of information and the positivity is just fantastic it's just
010i i hope that if half of half of the people at the high school are as positive as you then it's really going to be a great uh you know last third of the year so it's really a lot of hope in your voice and it's great to hear yes mrs ann i have one quick question annabelle what do you do in all your free time i actually just came from babysitting so i was i i just love to babysit and i just relax as much as i can the a answer was what what's free time thank you yes faith i just have to say it what a difference a mask makes or not one um i love seeing your pretty face um i do um i applaud you i'm just wondering can you do
011hand signals on your t-shirt sales i'm that's not saying it [Laughter] no i'm looking forward to hearing that and congratulations on um such a worthwhile cause and obviously successful even now so um i hope you bring home the trophy and um thank you too for your um just all you guys in the in the school your um awareness and sensitivity and concern for the people of ukraine i think they're all in our prayers and so um thanks for taking action of course thank you just a couple of quick follow-ups with respect to the chicago play i the musical there i sent the board a link for tickets if you're interested next wednesday thursday or friday or thursday friday or saturday excuse me i'm going on thursday looking forward to it uh the raytheon trip that
012annabelle spoke about i've asked sean mcewen who helped spearhead that trip uh if he could bring a couple students to talk about that at our next meeting because i'm sure you'd be interested in hearing about that and the last question i had for you annabelle is do you have more t-shirts left for sale or not we do we're selling them through the end of um through next week um what's a t-shirt cost it's twelve dollars yes okay all right so during lunch waves during lunch waves and then um we're selling them on my school books as well okay so yeah all right and um we're also having a bowling night on sunday um from four to six at apple valley bowl so you can bring your families and friends and we're selling shirts there so
013so if you want to send me the link and about i can get it to the board or anybody who's interested okay i will thank you good luck thank you and i just want to say thank you for an awesome report and uh it's nice seeing your smiling first time i've seen you smile since you know uh covet so thank you and uh you don't have to stay so you have some free time tonight take advantage of it hopefully but thank you so much and we'll see you again before school is over thank you everyone have a great night uh up next on our agenda's audience if there are any members on us i wish to address the board we certainly welcome it the board education welcomes public participation and asks that speakers please limit
014their comments in three minutes speakers may offer objective comments to school operations and programs that concern them to protect the integrity and partiality of the board we discourage any expression of personal complaints or definitory comments about border vet personnel students nor against any person connected to school cheshire public schools if such excuses do exist those should be brought the attention of school administration and if folks need help doing that board members are happy to help guide the way that being said they want to address the borders certainly welcome to doosan you don't have to but you're welcome too i'm jane bate 454 riverside drive i hate speaking publicly but this needs to be shouted from every rooftop in the country no more mandates ever and for those who believe that the mandated vaccines and associated
015tyrannies we're all about health and safety i have a couple of questions for you one why have hcq and ivermectin been hidden or maligned as a treatment for covid when they have been proven cheap and effective by dr zelenko and others two why have congress members been exempted from taking the inoculation aren't they important enough to save aren't they without inoculations endangering dc and there are plenty of other questions but in the interest of time we'll move on to two important pieces of evidence which i believe help to establish the reality of the dangers of the vaccines the first is that ceo scott davison of one america insurance company in indiana has found that death rates are up 40 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels moreover he states that this is the highest rate in history
016and that most of these deaths are not being classified as covid19 deaths the second piece of evidence comes from several department of defense whistleblowers and can be found in senator ron johnson's letter to secretary lloyd austin regarding the dod health records these records include increases of 400 percent or more over the average occurrence rate of cancers infertility and much more alarmingly some of these figures have now been altered again there are many more sources of info on the problems with these rushed experimental inoculations but we need to move on so lastly i offer the what-ifs what if a staff member dies or is harmed by one of these jabs that cheshire has mandated an apology isn't going to cut it nor is all the money in the world the lessons here go beyond researching the
017subject thoroughly which would have demonstrated the vaccines need much more testing than these ever had the ultimate reason in my opinion is that every citizen in this town has the right and freedom to bodily integrity and with the eu parliament currently writing bills to make these mandates permanent this conversation must continue in earnest thank you thank you space by the way you speak perfectly well in public you do a great job thank you i could just correct one point cheshire didn't mandate our staff to be vaccinated the state of connecticut required vaccination or testing and we did have some that did that so just want to make that point of clarification if there's anyone else you're certainly welcome to come to the podium hello my name is sharon houck 424 cardinal lane last board meeting
018we heard two young students say that cnn was being shown in their class i questioned a middle school student and it is correct every friday their teacher puts on cnn my question is why are they watching a political opinion talk show during class time is this part of the curriculum if so are they watching fox also if they are favoring one political show over another or one side of the political spectrum isn't that indoctrination my opinion is no political shows should be shown to middle school student age school to age students this needs to stop this age group is very impressionable also the middle school classes are 45 minutes long so to me the teachers don't have a lot of time to teach the students the needed curriculum now they are teaching only four days
019because they're taking friday off to show the cnn shows so this equals only 180 minutes or three hours if there's no interruptions or disruptions this cnn thing is very disturbing and i'd like to know some of the questions on why it's being shown what's the purpose and is is this um town wide or just pertaining to one or two teachers okay thank you sharon in fact since the last meeting i know the administration's done some research so i don't know if dr sullin or ms solano if you want to talk a little bit to what you found is that one mine okay so the cnn videos that are being referenced is something called cnn 10 i sent a link to our board members letting them know that it is utilized during some middle school social
020studies classes it's not cnn as you would see at home it's a special segment that was found anyone would be hard-pressed to identify what network the broadcast was coming from is this something that we can as a public could watch the cnn 10. it's available on youtube it is okay in fact if you or and you want to like the email us or the board we'll send you the links to the information so i and i thank you for bringing this up because someone asked it last time and when i got a chance to respond during that so we did some research but i encourage we encourage folks parents students uh parents if they're still seeing this it's not what we say it is please uh talk to the teacher you know share the concern
021if they feel that's not going anywhere taught the administrator uh usually by the time it gets there that you know these are problems resolved if there is one and if that's not working you certainly have every opportunity to author superintendent and if folks don't feel the process is working you come talk to the board and we'll help shepherd it through policy and work through it but this is the research that we have so far okay and we'll keep an eye on well i'll look at it too absolutely if you see something that's because we don't want to slant one way or another i don't think any politics should be in the school system at that age and i think everyone's striving to be that way but uh we still don't want the perception either so
022thank you for following up on this and contact us we'll get you that detail okay thank you if there is no other public comment thank you uh we're going to move on to even more exciting uh actually it is a lot going on since last meeting so up next is comm reports of standing committee so faith start with you on curriculum that's right the most exciting um okay so we met this past monday feb um the 14th of march um we approved the minutes of the february meeting um actually just we covered two items uh which were most interesting the first was an over the executive summary of the health and um pe or produced by the health and pe um curriculum council presented and a lot of interesting information came out they presented the
023broad skills and yes critical thinking problem solving communication and collaboration are um in top priority in these classes and as well as the pe specific skills of gross motor movement and throwing catching dance and fitness [Music] so supporting um every student in opportunities for the students and beyond the core curriculum were also emphasis emphasized in this portion of the portion of the presentation um and that would include intramural sports both at dodd and at cheshire high school we did cover the health curriculum um review and so we kind of looked at the um it looked at this by grade level so k through three four through six seven through twelve there are top key topics that must be discussed and this includes nutrition decision decision making drugs and alcohol diseases sexual health and relations relationships
024and i want to emphasize these are age-appropriate and um are geared toward the grade level or grade level span so um that was made very clear and then the final portion of the presentation was an overview of some of the uh recommendations and requests um that the three presenters had hoped that it wanted to bring to the board this includes promoting total wellness to staff students and community increasing the pe and health contact time we do need to find ways i believe after hearing this report to um get our kids the state mandate or state recommended mandated number of hours we do fall short in a couple of and both the elementary and the high school and um also um there are um professional development opportunities and um addressing the uh faculty needs of the
025to support the pe and health program and and i just want to emphasize and i said this to the group um i think if kovid taught us anything it's that we have to instill in these kids a lifelong learning or lifelong love of physical activity to keep their bodies healthy nutrition and um just general the the power of physical activity for sound mental health and um so i do appreciate the time that the that the panel put into their um presentation so we then moved on to a discussion we are examining the policies regarding reconsideration of library books and classroom resources and we have examined a number of different samples of policies from other schools and procedures at other schools for how to how folks in the community can bring a request for a reconsideration
026of library books or classroom resources we will be recommending that we move um the current policy which is under the community relations um series of the policy manual to the instruction section so from a 1000 series to a 600 series also we'll make a pointed effort to make the let the community be aware of where to find these procedures and um we will be providing a draft policy at the april uh or examining a draft policy at the april meeting to then pass on to the um at the to the policy committee for consideration so um that was our meeting and if anyone has any questions open yes sam just a point of clarification there we go um did you say we're short hours in pe so there are some recommendations that span a wide
027range and at the elementary level if you do the math it comes out to maybe three hours and 45 minutes and one of the recommendations in includes four hours when you look at that and you look at our schools they're getting that amount of time in health but the pe classroom i'm the health teacher is also going into those classes in addition when you look at the very younger grades they're having two recesses a day you know we're letting the kindergarteners go out and play so i don't know that at the end of the day their health and physical activity is any lower it just depends on where they're where they're getting that the middle school as faith said certainly gets the largest amount of time which i think is really important because they're going
028from schools that have recess to a school that doesn't have recess so they have a lot of opportunities plus they you know have outside of school opportunities at the high school with the way the schedule changed this year they have a significant amount of pe time and that aligns with the amount of credits that they need so while i think you might agree that every um subject area has these ideals of what ideally would be great um i agree with faith that we want our kids to have as much pe time as possible uh i think the way it shakes out in reality meets the needs of the kids but wouldn't pe time be defined as structure play versus recess which is unstructured play right and so if you're looking at what what is required
029it falls onto that structure play just a little yeah we could look into that this was health and pe and we didn't break out the health lessons that they get so it was it was in one but i can pull that information and i can share it with you and and sam i don't want to make it sound like they're doing nothing um it's just um i don't know if we posted that chart that showed or if you could send it to it was at our presentation and we can i would like them to see it um but you did we are dealing with staffing issues in some cases um and just in the high school level as marlene said the way the day is structured um so it it it's there i mean you
030see it and but we've got healthy kids i'm not saying that we don't but um i just it it was an area that i was aware that sticks out i guess and i would like to see if we can find ways going forward to perhaps close the gap a bit that's all so right i'm just asking what would qualify as satisfying that instructional time structure play requirement that's all and and if it's what's the barrier is it is the scheduling a barrier is it i don't know i'm just trying to get a sense of what you guys discussed that's all so if i can recommend that the materials presented the other night because context is very important if you can't stand all board members you know that'll help phrase it a little better but thank
031you any other questions mr grippa um at our last meeting um there were several i guess several public comments made about the potential of certain subjects uh perhaps being present or not present in our health curriculum uh after your examination did you find that any of those subjects were in our curriculum can you be more specific about which ones you're talking about um well there was references to let's say the the enfield pizzagate and things such as that and i wasn't sure if uh any of that reared its head in your examination that is not in there we in fact um we are using the 2016 um of the framework aren't we as opposed to the recently approved one so the recently approved curriculum framework for health was just released last week this five-year curriculum
032review was based on the previous standards because those were not approved and sanctioned by the state department of education for the curriculum that they were writing or will write to be aligned with that so they do cover all of those um content areas so i can certainly share with you what those content area was areas where i don't i'm not familiar with the topics that you alluded to but i think what we saw was that our pe teachers really have gone above and beyond that they stay current with the types of games and activities that they provide to students and as a result of that we have just an incredible amount of high school students involved in sports and clubs and activities even clubs and activities that would lend itself to some of those health-related
033topics for example our feminism club at the high school has brought in speakers on things such as sexual assault so we i think we offer a myriad of things at the at the high school even outside of i guess the best thing to say is outside of what that um that stereotypical hell a pe class is like i think what our teachers have been doing is really current they talked didn't they talk about pickleball and how they've been teaching pickleball for you know years and years and years and now it's the hot thing so they were joking that you know all the graduates that they had really made it the new hot craze so if i could chime in so this wasn't discussed in the last being in particular but i think you're talking about
034uh accusations of transgenderism critical race theory all the other things that were mentioned other topics not necessarily just more you had mentioned that you felt that everything was age-appropriate and that's i just wanted to make sure for this record yes yeah yeah that's all i was getting all the but what i want to say is on your topics that's been researched now for almost two years straight at every curtain community meeting we're looking at textbooks uh miss solano also i think looked at the library books recently did another inventory uh we're not finding anything but as always if parents see that we won't be aware of it so we continue to review that at every quickly meeting the other questions that critical thank you faith up next is finance mr grippo thank you mr chair
035um i was looking out into the audience looking for mr maciana and realized well we all get to sit up at the dais again so i uh hand the report hand the uh report over to mr massion thank you mr grippo good evening ladies and gentlemen the board members do have the updated financial report in their package i will provide a summary this is the report as of february 28th the board's budget for the year is 77 million one dollar one thousand fifty two in about 15 minutes you're gonna see that the board's budget uh has been changed by act of the town council in march but you know sticking with this report through the end of february as i reported the prior couple of months the budget is in good shape we don't have
036any major variances that i can report at this time we do have some impacts related to inflation that's mostly in fuel prices you know the price of oil did shoot up quite a bit came down a bit went up a little bit today you know we're around 100 per barrel not going to be a major problem for our budget the increase in fuel if we exceed the budget line you know we can cover it through some line items in our budget that we're below our budget i will talk about the medical benefits report in a moment as far as where we are in the in the budget cycle we are you know complete with eight months of the budget uh and at this point in the year we were able to increase the expenditure cap
037that we have on non-payroll items to 70 percent uh which is good it's it's in line with what we needed to do so the schools are preparing for the purchases of materials that they haven't made earlier in the year they're preparing for next year also at this time of year we prepare for any maintenance projects that we want to complete over the summer so that activity you know has started in earnest and as we go through april and may will start to lock in where we'll be in terms of expenditures for the year but we will meet our budget this year i'm highly confident it is in good shape i'll pause before i talk about medical benefits if there are any questions okay medical benefits we did provide the board members the report as of
038february 28th i'm happy to say that claims are 821 for the month of february which is an improvement over january it's actually below the 800 15 000 per month budget so we were actually able to increase the balance in the reserve fund by 69 000 this month that brings the reserve balance to 1.46 million that gives us about 1.62 months worth of claims coverage so the trend is moving in the right direction as as we've explained in the past january marks the beginning of the new hsa plan year so employees that are on our plans they're using their deductible at this point in time so i wouldn't expect claims to continue to go down although that would be really nice but certainly claims have come down you know to a more reasonable level and we
039hope that that continues the yeah that's it on on medical benefits so it's some promising news good there yes my question pertains to the million five that we're moving around again in our offering are you getting to that or that's the next agenda item so so what's the bad news then i shall wait is there bad news oh there's no bad news okay yeah i just i know you expect that from the past few months i was being costly optimistic i wasn't sure where it was going but no no i have just all good news tonight um uh before we move on i'd just like to say i'm happy to see that we officially have a trend in the right direction at least for the yes right exactly so uh yeah um i guess uh
040yes please continue on okay the next item under finance um you know we'll require broad board action and i you know i'll provide an explanation of what's happening the town council at their uh meeting held on march 8th approved an increase to this current year's board's budget of one million five hundred thousand dollars and so their action took this board's budget which prior to the action was 77 million 1052 dollars it increased it to 78 million 501.052 and so that that took effect you know as of the action date of march 8. the board now has the responsibility of allocating what account to place that 1.5 million dollars into and the recommendation and the intention of the council was that 1.5 million would be allocated to our medical benefits operating budget line and then once
041that's done the million and a half dollars can be transferred into the medical benefits reserve fund so the the the action of the board that's requested tonight is just to authorize that the 1.5 million be allocated to the medical benefits fund account the further background on this and the board knows that the town council as we began the new fiscal year wanted 1.5 million dollars to go directly into the reserve fund coming from the opera money that was received you know as part of the pandemic relief funds so the town received about 8.3 million dollars the guidance was just received recently on on actually how to do that and so the guidance that the council received was to allocate the funds to the board's budget and then the board can you know further allocate to
042the medical benefits reserved so you know this transaction is technical in nature the effect of it is it it does increase our budget and the other effect is that when the budget for next year is looked at our starting point is the 78 million that has just been increased not the 77 million that we had previously so if you look at what the board approved for next year's budget when the board approved that it was a 5.34 increase now it's a 3.3 percent increase so it's a little unusual and it's a long explanation but this action really doesn't do anything to increase our ability to expend a million and a half extra dollars it's intended to go directly to the medical benefits reserve fund if you look at the accounting that we've been doing on
043medical benefits we already had included the million and a half contributions so this report that we reviewed previously our reserve fund balance will still be 1.46 million does that make sense obviously without this contribution the balance would be negative we would be exactly so there is a motion and i will turn that back over to mr gripper on the board uh mr chair i'd like to make a motion um that the cheshire board of education allocate the 1.5 million dollars additional appropriation to its 2021-2022 budget approved by the town council to the medical medical benefits account object number 520102 and further directs the 1 million 500 000 to be contributed to the medical benefits reserve fund thank you mr gripple is there a second sam seconds any discussion from the board yeah yes yes so
044my question is looking to the future because this makes two years that we've had artificially infused a million five into that medical reserve fund so is there a plan for the future so it seems like we shouldn't have to rely on whatever emergency funds come our way to the town to this should be better built into our budget should it not if it's in our operating budget we should have a plan so i'm just wondering if we thought about it at all you sort of answered the question and just to clarify the the million and a half dollar infusion happened once it's it's just one one and a half million dollars in fusion it's just a question of how it was entered so i just wanted to clarify that didn't happen twice oh i thought
045we did it last year no no this is it's the same million yes oh okay yes the part of and i know we're going down the road that we went with the budget but the board's approved budget request for next year which the council is considering we asked for an increase of 2.2 million dollars to the medical benefits line and if that let's just stick with how the board approved it if that's approved then for next year we're funding contributions in line with expected claims so we should not be eating into the reserve fund after this action since the budget's been increased a million and a half dollars that's already now built into our budget instead of 2.2 million needed at 750 000 will be included in our run rate so it's the same effect
046so if we're the point is if we're funding contributions equal to claims we should be on the right track we haven't been doing that four years prior so assuming the town council approves the budget as requested and the board if there is a change that comes back to the board the board approves it as requested will be at least running even and hopefully we end the year with the reserve fund balance that we don't you know erode because we're funding it in line with expected claims thanks vin can you remind me what we upped our monthly amount so we go from 7 50 to 8 9 or something like that or this year were funding at 8 15. we should have been funding at 900 000 because that's what was expected for next year we've
047requested funding of a million dollars per month okay good okay thank you you're welcome any other questions sam yes theoretically we should not anticipate any misconceptions come next year when dr sullin presents a budget and doesn't look like a seven percent increase as opposed you know from this year from five to seven so there's we should not anticipate any misconceptions based on i mean from your explanation for next year right okay if the entire increase is honored right the panel comes up that's a good point yeah it is a little confusing but i get it any other questions does anybody find before we take a vote on the motions i mean from the public want to comment on this motion as soon as there are none i'll read them and before i finish thank you
048vincent for walking us through this very much appreciate it and a lot of times was spent between utah manager and uh town council and getting to this point so much appreciated uh the motion is that the cheshire board of education allocates the 1 million 500 000 dollar additional appropriation to its 2021 2021-22 budget approved by the town council to the medical benefits account object number 520-102 and further directs the 1 million 500 000 to be contributed to the medical benefits reserve fund all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you thank you mr manciana and i also want to thank town council town manager and chairman slogan for helping us uh work together to get to this point very much appreciate it moving on in the agenda of that oh mr
049grip anything else in the finance can you report that concludes the finance committee report can um i know dr sullin sent us this um the other day but if you can speak to the impact of the food service information that you provided sure um basically right now everybody in america is reimbursed on the summer uh rate through the federal uh department of agriculture i believe and that rate is about four dollars and change for 50 a student meal because also all meals are free for for lunch it's lower for breakfast next year that won't be available the government decided that they wouldn't extend that into the the next academic year the result for us is that um the roughly 450 we're getting a meal now drops to about 350. we did raise prices a quarter
050this year even though nobody paid them because the federal government paid them all that you know on on its face is not the end of the world that coupled with uh the increase in uh the minimum wage on july 1st to 14 the incredible difficulty with food supply and inflation cost around food has us very concerned about you know would we have to make a substantial raise in the cost of the meal to continue to serve a meal that meets the qualifications for the federal school lunch program uh some states maine actually uh adopted free meals for all uh the hope is that at least the conversation can be had between legislators in connecticut and the school uh nutrition association here in connecticut caps the the superintendent's group and cabe about uh the impending issue
051that we have in current circumstances and is that something that perhaps federal money that came through the state could be used to offset uh supplement somewhere um but you know right now it's just something on the radar uh and it you know i'm sure vin and myself and erica biagetti our food services director will continue to have more conversations about you know what this might mean for us locally and would we have to after the legislative session i'm sure there'll be a little bit more clarity around that we'll have to decide where to go from there vin do you have uh anything you want to add to that just that it there is no impact this year this year not this currently the waivers expire june 30th so this is an issue for the next
052school year and there is a lot that will be you know revealed and you know we'll try and work within whatever the parameters are if the if the amount that we receive is ultimately reduced you know lunch will be a 366 reimbursement we'll try and make that work food prices are up hopefully some of that eases over the summer so as jeff said it's important to put it on the radar it's been handed over to the legislators to see if we can get some type of of release at least for next year and we'll keep the board posted as as we get through the legislative session and into next year um and the only caution again just to reiterate what dr sullin said is we may need to request an increase through the board for
053lunch prices for next year but not there yet so thank you uh i don't know if we're going to cover that the superintendent's report or not jeff but uh dr stone so i just want to say that the the soloist uh regards to is the board they received communications yesterday from dr sullin about um essentially the government going back to pre-pandemic reimbursements for school meals and uh very nice write-up i was wondering if you and i haven't kept up i'll be honest with you i'm not getting my parents square emails this week so i don't know if you sent this out to the community but i thought it was well written it might be good to have out there just for folks so aware and i believe you also uh sent a letter to delegation
054and cheshire on perhaps with the partnership with caps and cape to uh lobby uh power is the v to help us stay with the course yeah thank you in full transparency is often the case erica biagetti is the brains there and she makes vin and i look good on a regular basis she she drafted much of that letter and we sent it out thank you mr gripple um i just want to want to apologize to the board i thought that issue was part of new business so that's why i didn't bring it up as far as finance okay all right because i was a little confused by that okay apologize uh i didn't think i because that should have been part of the finance uh report but um that's okay great that uh concludes the
055finance report i have a question all right so are we gonna discuss this further in new business or we're not i i just at some point when we come back to it um i would like to know how all this you know about a year ago we found we were at 300 000 short in food service and now we've got this and when you finally get some answers i would like to know how this all fits together um because this is this is really disconcerting and i i guess i i get a little concerned when we get dependent on what is really kind of a fickle partner which is the federal government and we're constantly being pulled this way in that and i don't know how we solve this but i i think it would
056behoove our district to find ways to wean ourselves if possible i'm just saying but again let's see what comes out of it and yep so good news it's not going to impact us this year but this don't get planned for finance fiscal year that being said anything else in finance mr gruber i didn't want as many points as you like i did i did want to let the board know that this fiscal year we are running in the black and food service because we are getting a reimbursement of 4.56 cents per meal we're getting reimbursement for breakfast we're able to do grab and go which that's one of the waivers that expires um so we i do expect that we'll have some reserve built up this fiscal year you know the reason that we the
057prior fiscal year you know more the issue had to do with the fact that meal counts were weighed down because students weren't in school but um we always figure out a way and you know we'll try to build a budget for food service next year that we can at least break even that that's always our intent um but again we'll know more as we go on dooley no mr maciana i appreciate the freaking updates on on on this stuff so thank you mr gripple is there anything else oh well now that the bolts are rattling around in my head and we're here um if if i recall from uh well pre-pandemic right that the way food services operates is that you would have a i guess a an account of cash that would that would
058be sort of built up from the uh parents contributing into their um lunch accounts right that you can pre-pay for items as they come along and stuff are we going to be in a position where we can resume normal operations next year or do parents need to i don't know pre-pay now to be prepared for next year or do we have to do anything in our accounts to prepare so that we can be under normal operation next year without you know without any of the 100 reimbursement i mean the plan is to be back to pre-pandemic operation so you know parents will be able to fund their you know students lunch account you know through my school box or by sending a check so all of that resumes again and it's that process is relatively
059easy so i don't expect any operational issues but you know we're going from a period in which meals were without charge to meals being charged for other than the free and reduced eligible so i think we'll we do expect participation rates to start out lower and build up over time so it you know we have a challenge ahead of us but you know nothing that we won't try and overcome the way we always do so when we did the budget did we figure that we were going to be maintaining the 100 reimbursement for next year so just remember food service is not a budget line item in the board's operating budget that's more of an enterprise that operates independently right okay so no there's nothing in the operating budget to account for what we're talking
060about so unfortunately i guess what they say is high prices um figure out high prices right so like if it's going to be a high price next year we're probably not going to be serving as many lunches as we did this year most likely that's right or something if we just saying if we raise lunch prices right if we raise the price it always has an impact on participation rates to some extent and now this is these are really unusual circumstances in the past we've had periods where participation rates drop or the cost of food goes up while we can't raise rates during the middle of the year so we make adjustments you know we look at what we're purchasing we change the labor rates right we'll do reduce hours if participation rates are down
061so there are levers that we can pull these are just a lot going on all at once so you know we'll we always try and operate food service so that it you know does have a small profit and that food service is allowed to build a reserve you know we don't build a food service budget that has to be subsidized by the board's budget that may happen next year and we're going to try not you know to make sure that that doesn't happen but it's kind of early to tell at this point so we'll do it our best and keep you informed and see what happens as we go through the next few months if we get some legislative relief it'll help and if we don't we'll deal with it i mean i guess the
062good news is that we know now right it's not like it's going to be not going to be a huge surprise for next year rings right any other comment on finance come on it's gotten more nothing i mean i'd like to say something about the food service and then maybe we don't have to address it later like faith i i would be very concerned about raising prices of food we're talking about healthy meals for for our children so at any rate um i didn't realize that i i knew it wasn't part of our budget but then but we do vote on those increases correct but we we could vote no for to increase those prices does that mean that we have to absorb it into our operating budget because i would be inclined to do
063that i'm just saying rather than it could be rather than raise the price of meals that could be the outcome you know typically when we come in and make a request for an increase in meal prices we'll explain the justification you know for it the reason that we increased it last year even though meals were free was because our minimum wage you know it keeps increasing it it increases a dollar july 1 and then another dollar june 30th of 23 so we'll be at 15 per hour so that was a lot to absorb you know in a food service budget so yes you can vote no and then we would let you know what the financial impact of that might be and and having said that um i have always appreciated and i know that
064that you and your staff do whatever you need to do to to make this work at the lowest price that we can get away with and still deliver the healthy meals but so thank you for that and thank you for that explanation so i'm sure we'll be taking this up via finance at least before the end of school year been planning well as we get closer and more details we'll plan for next year it's going to be careful that um you know the price increase is needed and there is no vote for it the financial burden has to be absorbed somewhere in our budget that we're not budgeted for next year so be careful of gestures mr gripple anything else seeing nothing i conclude okay the finance report no you get a chance next so
065well we have more uh personnel uh mr white is not here this evening uh personal community did not meet recently uh but uh for better for worse we have an annual um uh 10-year non-tenured uh an interim contract uh update update so to speak that we attended this time of year so dr sullin you want to walk us through what you have today sure thank you chairman paragina and i appreciate you mentioning like this is a an annual event that occurs each may 1 school districts are required to notify non-tenured teachers as to whether or not their contract will be extended because that is so close to our budget being finalized if we did not take action and there were significant reductions to our budget we would be in a difficult spot because then they
066we'd be contractually obligated to have these uh teachers come back this is not got anything to do with the quality of the people that we hire or anything that's a purely financial circumstance that happens on an annual basis dating back you know 20 years to when i was a teacher so uh or an educator so basically you know this evening i'm recommending that we um not renew the interim contracts that we've extended this year for people who maybe are were hired to cover a teacher who might have been on maternity leave or on sabbatical or something like that and that we also non-renew teachers who are in their first or second year of service with the cheshire public schools our full intention is to navigate the town process the budget process and hire these people
067back immediately once that's resolved but like i said this is kind of a i guess an insurance measure against something going haywire in the budget process thank you so we do have two two motions we'll uh we'll do each one independently and have discussion so i move that the cheshire boy education pursuant to connecticut general state statutes 10-151 authorizes the superintendent to non-renew the teacher contracts will all certified professional employees serving under interim contract subject to connecticut general statute 10-151 at the end of the 2021-2022 school year is there a second miss harrigan seconds any discussion on the board yes sam i just want to speak because you know this is always a stressful situation um and speaking from the teacher lens i have been in these shoes and i also worry that and i
068get this as process but i also worry the you know workforce right now the quality of the workforce and i'm hopefully we can retain them later on like you mentioned dr solin but um i just wish we found a better way to again thinking of future and retention and so forth to do this um without impact on finance that's i don't know creed just go ahead i was just going to say you know this is something that we've discussed with our legal counsel and you we you know certainly appreciate for people that are just starting their career it's never comforting to hear at the end of your first year that hey we think you've done a great job but here's a letter that says your contract isn't renewed and we talk them through that process
069and we're just very honest with them if there is the potential um you know what what's the degree of potential that this could actually come to fruition and this year i would consider it relatively low very low um but you know i can't absolutely predict the future with 100 certainty so we'd take this move to cover ourselves but uh this year i certainly don't foresee it happening and we we talked to our people about that do you have a large number of um i wouldn't think so because it's a fair number of people yeah okay you have a total on that carol it's about 30 i think i was always on the internet we had a lot of veteran teachers more so than you know but we did have some turnover in the last couple
070of years uh well carol looks that up uh faith did you have him first i wasn't sure that you were in i did i um i agree with sam this is this is the reason why they say you don't want to watch law being made because it's like watching sausage being made and i don't i i i it clearly it's a problem across the state if it's a if it's a general statute so it's not just because our charter says our budget comes out may 1st so um this is actually for both sections how many well we're getting that now right but last year when we do we ever lose teachers do we ever not and what's the trend been i mean do we just lose one or two and are we able to be
071judicious about whom we whom we don't renew or resign with um or is it just new people we are okay there's um so basically when first or second year people are not renewed in advance we look at you know things like course enrollment uh student enrollment um i i think right this year particularly as we see increases in student enrollment substantial like never seen in my career here increases over the course of this year 118 new kids since october 1st it would basically be impossible to cut teachers uh and i will convey that to the council doesn't mean it couldn't happen we have had had to make reductions in years past i think it was three years ago that we had to reduce two positions both at chs so it happens um thankfully it hasn't
072been terribly frequent thank you marlene you look like 45 interim no no uh total total thank you any other board members i was just uh so i i think the the question the way faith asked it is again the the last time i think i could be wrong uh but i think last time the board had to reduce this was purposely reduced certified teachers was probably in 2010 was the budget got reduced and and this was under dr florio's uh tenure i was 13 or 14 teachers at the time in that sort of number yes but i know it was like three or four years ago that we had to reduce a couple of positions in that large number so so i i hopefully that extent yeah i hopefully we're not doing that this year
073but i think that the question on faith has known that and probably sam is going to is knowing this group knowing that the country's not being renewed to play safe they may not wait out the school year and find something elsewhere that's more stable given the fact that this is a very widespread practice most people wouldn't be hiring until their budget is resolved anyway but you know again we work very closely with our staff and i think there's a lot of trust there and um we try and assure them and keep them apprised now if we went into uh budget meetings next on april 5th with the council and they're like well this is we need to make significant cuts here then i would tell them honestly that you know okay now i'm this is
074what we're facing and just keeping that communication open um being honest with them and i can't think of many situations over the last over the six years that i've been superintendent where somebody's just said yeah i'm i'm not gonna wait it out i'm to jump ship and if there was ever a time to wait it out it's now because they're going to be positions open for people yeah of faith yes is there is there any way to fix this i mean legislatively and why is this why don't we take this up as is part of our legislative yeah at the state level i think they would tell you well resolve your budget sooner you know the town has that option to close their budget before may 1st um and have that resolved in enough time
075to give the board time to figure out what they're doing with that final number it's not just the town council saying if they said on april 30th that all right here's your number we wouldn't know by may 1st like what that would translate to if they made significant reductions you know some of these veteran board members know like we've been there deliberating things out in late june like what what are we really gonna do um with our budget so you know you'd have to move up the the town's budget time frame much sooner any other uh any comments on the board member any uh comments from the public on the motion before us thank you for sticking out with us tonight by the way uh seeing there's no comments from the public the motion is
076that the cheshire board of education pursuant to connecticut general statutes 10-151 authorizes superintendent denominated teacher contracts of all certified professional employees serving under an interim contract subject to connected general state statute tandesh 151 at the end of the 2021-2022 school year all those in favor please raise your hands uh it is unanimous thank you board uh i'm just going to read the motion and we can discuss there's one more motion uh this one's uh non-interim teachers that the cheshire boy education pursuing the connecticut general statute 10-151 authorized superintendent to non-renew the teacher contracts of all non-tenured certified professional employees that are in the first and second years under contract for the cheshire public schools subject to connecticut general statute 10-151 at the end of the 2021-2022 school year and further to authorize the superintendent to
077communicate written notice of such non-renewal to the affected teachers is very second and seconded discussion for the board mr grippa um isn't don't we grant 10-year year four yes okay so that's just a a cutoff point that you or your staff chose for that yeah i mean if the council were to make a reduction that would require us to lay off 45 teachers wow we've got a real real school issue next year just checking thank you any other comments any comments from the public it seems there are none the motion is the cheshire boy education pursuing the connecticut general statute 10-151 authorized superintendent to nom renew the teacher contracts of all non-tenured certified professional employees that are in the first and second years under contract for the connecticut public school sorry cheshire public schools subject
078to connecticut general statute 10-151 at the end of the 2021-22 school year and further to authorize the superintendent to communicate written notice of such non-renewal to the affected teachers all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you motion passes that ends uh personnel update um planning committee mr martelly thank you so much good evening everyone um so i'm going to kind of combine some of these items on the agenda because it's all kind of one of the same at this point um last night we had a planning committee meeting at the hummiston school which is last night march 16th um the board of education we received the education specifications back on last friday of march 11th um for those here tonight and those listening at home education specifications have been under
079development for our two new school projects one for the north end school one for the new norton school in the south end of town it's a pretty lengthy document basically it's the framework for the new school laying out the different square footages of all of the instructional spaces as well as administrative spaces within the school with specific guidelines for the application which is to be submitted this june 30th which will then help guide the design process as we move forward with the new school buildings tonight we're not going to review that document i thank everyone that was there last night we spent about three hours going through the education specifications however we will have another chance to look at it as a group um today ben and i were talking we have a meeting um
080the dodd middle school showcase this coming april 7th so we're looking to have a planning committee meeting of the hall at 6 p.m that night so we'll take up the education specifications at six o'clock that evening and then go into the regular scheduled middle school showcase there with hopeful action by the board on april 21st um so give us some time to really digest it it's a lengthy document i welcome all comments from the board to take a good deep look at that and we can integrate any of the changes in there with our consultant mr dan hanson um that's pretty much the report on the planning committee meeting then over to school modernization just a couple items there the enrollment projections and demographic studies being done by slam collaborative slam is working through we
081received the draft there's still some work that needs to be done there there's a meeting actually next week with the town planner um to go through all of the building permits which have been issued as well as all pending applications and approved new subdivisions in town to integrate those into the enrollment projections for the good lookout over the next eight years for growth trends within the district additionally on that there's been a traffic study which has been underway for the marion road um site which we haven't received yet but once we have that we'll be able to take a look at that see how the impact of the school would be on that neighborhood and that's pretty much all i have there i did ask vin if he could tonight to provide the board with
082just the summary of the ed specs for both the norton school and the north end elementary school based on total square footages and um just kind of want to share that with the group thank you summary of what we have yep thank you mr mortelli the the only thing i'll add on the educational specifications is that these are required documents as part of any school construction grant the board has approved educational specifications before for roof projects for the ada compliance work that we did at cheshire high school last year these just happened to be for two new schools which we're pretty excited about the person that mr martelly mentioned dan hanson prepared these and he met with about 60 of our staff members you know broad spectrum at both norton school at chapman school as
083well as at darcy school dan also toured those three schools prior to preparing these educational specifications so he received a lot of information and a lot of input the document each school has its own educational specifications because they differ in one sense the new north end elementary would have all the darcy programming included in it the norton school would not in terms of the document that i handed out this evening i will highlight quickly and if we could start looking at the one that's named norton elementary school you'll see it says draft and it's also indicates that it was redlined so this is the document that mr hansen created and then the red line changes are based on revisions that dr solon ms solano and i made to the document so if you look at
084the norton document you'll see the second page in which is page 30 it's the last two pages of the document the general education programs you could see starting at the top full day kindergarten we would have five classrooms each classroom at 1100 square feet early elementary grades one and two you would have 10 classrooms at 950 square feet and so on so the general education programs i'm just fast forwarding to the total on the bottom that square footage is 52 475 square feet special education is that next block and we would have four special education classrooms uh rooms for specialized for occupational therapy physical therapy speech as well as social worker psychologist and counseling room that total for special ed programs specifically is 3325 square feet and then the next section is administrative and support
085facilities where you can see that there's the principal's office the conference room the health services is 650 square feet that's nurses offices on the bottom of page 30 the cafeteria and food service kitchen that's 2 800 and 1950 square feet so those are larger spaces and then on to the last page you'll see that the total of those administrative areas is 9 275 square feet and the total for this building would be 65 075 square feet that's usable square feet that's our program space the building will be larger because this does not include hallways and bathrooms and all the other spaces that go into the four walls if you will that that make the building up this is going to be an iterative process so the planning committee spent quite a bit of time reviewing
086and making comments as mr martelly said the the full board and and the planning committee uh will meet on april 7 to you know drill down further on this and hopefully make some final comments ultimately the board of education has to formally approve the educational specification running out of breath here um so that's um the next board meeting next business meeting is april 21st so that's the goal to have the ed specs done by then the next document that i handed out the new north end elementary school the basic square footage for general ed special at an administrative is exactly the same the only addition you'll see is 14 650 square feet for the early childhood programs that are currently housed at darcy so that would be the birth to three as well as the
087early intervention half day pre-k programs and the smart start pre-k program so at a high level that's where the the building square footages are coming out i will tell you that there will be some further trade-off of discussions held as to some spaces may need to be larger and we need to reduce the spaces in other areas to try and make it work so there'll be some negotiating back and forth i see miss rosenberg looking at me like whoa whoa whoa but that is part of the process and the last point i'll make is that these square footages based on where the enrollment projections are expected to be are roughly in line and the important component there is we want to make sure that we can take full advantage of the state reimbursement on these
088new school projects which is about 35 of the eligible costs so you can't build a building that's too big that exceeds the expected enrollment because we won't get the full state reimbursement so there is some give and take that has to occur but within the parameters of maximizing the reimbursement and i think that's the summary okay thank you um firstly uh for the public um if you have three hours to spare i don't know how the audio came out but we did have extensive uh conversations about um both of the new buildings we went through well each document it was about 30 pages in length um so if you want to you know kind of play along i guess or keep tabs on us make sure to watch that meeting last night we really went
089into great detail there and um for the board members who didn't attend um i just noticed that the uh the full documents are are embedded in our our agenda in case you um didn't have them and if i could uh request um i don't know if that's andy's job or not but the that comparison document that we also had about what we have now that was really helpful in in uh the discussion about you know well all right so you know we had this now you're asking for this what do we have now that way you know everyone can kind of visualize uh kind of what we were talking about i found that very helpful last night um so if we could get if everyone could get that document that'd be great i'll make sure
090that we distribute it by email to the board members great thanks and uh that's it thank you yes faith uh they did i'm halfway through the meetings i give you all pat on the back for your three hours um all right just a frame of reference how big is this room what do you think i mean we so i because when you say you know 2700 square feet for a media center and i know it's going to be levels and this and that but um or you know um what is it 900 for a classroom correct i'm just trying to get a visual 900 for classroom so it's about the size of a highland school classroom the document that um adam just mentioned that comparative document is really nice because it tells you the size
091of the existing rooms in different places probably some of which you've been in like the dodd calf and things like that and you can say oh okay that i you could get a better sense of it so that document will really help we'll make sure everybody on the board gets that tomorrow like for instance one of the big things that came up last night was the gymnasium so a lot of the new schools that are constructed the gyms are smaller gyms right so when we were going through the plan last night um we want to make sure that the gyms are properly sized in order to be able to be used by not just for the school but also for the community so the gyms will be kind of reflective of like the dot middle
092school gym versus one of the smaller ones which are in some of the elementary schools currently an interesting well not so interesting thing as we're learning throughout this whole process is that even the gym space can't be unlimited so it's going to fit within the enrollment projection so if um just by chance if for some reason uh uh the town would like a i can't imagine why a bigger gymnasium space at that one or both schools and it were to be approved by you know the board and town council that extra space is paid for by taxpayers it's not reimbursable if we choose so it's it's very interesting and uh yeah there's a there's a i applaud you for watching the video um you'll see there's a lot of give and take discussions from mr
093hansen because we do have to fill in parameters and i think the next steps uh is a meeting with cgr soon that's being planned but i just want to bring up the milestone we have a milestone chart that uh mr warrington gave us a while back somewhere buried in our thousands of emails if if you're going to send out materials from last night vincent can you also send a milestone chart because we are heading into april which is a very critical month as as andrew mentioned um the final draft of the expects is due and budget and redistricting is due april 1st for review uh town council gets a presentation of that on april 12th that's a milestone and uh orders their next joint meeting which is the 19th and then uh the board of
094ed has to vote and approve ed specs by april 21st so that's gonna be a busy month uh so all this lands but um i do applaud um all the folks involved because i understand mr hansen you get a lot of folks uh in and around the school system help get feedback those specs so i'm much appreciated on that so for that dance or something oh yeah good okay um i've raised this with a couple of you guys um already and i just want to uh at least get it on the record i am concerned about what is happening up in hartford um i had we all know folks in farmington who just got whacked post referendum with another million dollars because of the um uh you know the i guess uh discovery that the
095formulas used to calculate their reimbursement rate were off and you know in 150 something million that's that's i guess a drop in the bucket but uh just for the sake of um giving the town's people the most up-to-date information can you speak to what's going on with regard to school construction reimbursement and what we should be looking out for and do you anticipate an answer to what they're going to be doing how they may be readjusting this formula well from what i understand it was basically a misappropriation of the formula that was the issue in that case although i can't speak to it in great detail what we're doing to try and avoid any surprises uh is to continuously engage in conversation with the oscg we had a meeting with them how long ago two
096three weeks ago i don't know a month ago and we are in the process of scheduling another meeting before the month's end so you know through you know continuous conversations with them we don't want to find any surprises uh you know and on the other side of it i understand like if it was a million dollars that farmington shouldn't have been granted that would have come out our pocket too so i don't know it's just uh it's really terrible what happened and we're trying to be as proactive as possible to make sure that you know everything that that we anticipate doing they're really clear understanding on both sides of what's getting paid for and what's not and if i said something the reimbursement rate for this application round has already been set so the the
097reimbursement rate won't change no matter you know regard who knows what's going to happen but as it stands right now we're being assured that when we go in june 30 with the application the reimbursement rate has already been set for those applications so it's not like a moving target where we're going to go in and then the number will change yeah i just i really wanted to say how impressed i was with mr hansen's um reporting and um both finn and tony i think just alluded to but i would really like to emphasize how he went into the schools talked with all of the players and um and got he got a very good sense of our schools by doing so and of our darcy programming and how it's going to fit into the north
098end elementary school and um i just i just really appreciate what he did because and i i just want to give him a public shout out i really do um because i think it's important and i i felt very confident that that he got to the really to the bottom of of what we need as schools and one thing that he mentioned that hit upon me was some of the accommodations to the buildings for sixth graders based on what sixth grade teachers were saying and so i i just thought it was really great that he incorporated some of those things although i will say it gave me renewed concern that we aren't building a six through eight middle school as our second school and um that's all i'll say about that but he was great
099and even if i can imagine so post meeting i think mr hansen was impressed with the amount of questions and um how thorough we did on our analysis of the aspects so i think that that's good to mention it's a critical project so yeah got to be uh going to be details possible thank you uh missed anything else mr martelly that's it thank you thank you uh moving on we are now moving on to the policy committee it's uh mr grippo uh public comment was earlier in the meeting public comment was earlier in the meeting public comment was earlier in the meeting when we started no it's uh the beginning we moved it up three years ago so that you guys have to wait all mean to talk but if there's room at the end
100we'll try to squeeze you in okay thank you policy thank you mr chair um so um policy met on march 8th um where we um discussed a uh a personnel uh policy on nondiscrimination uh at first look it seemed very familiar um because didn't we just um send this for uh execution i guess yeah that's the wrong word but you know um so uh and this uh this time around um this is an equal employment opportunity uh policy um for uh non-discrimination and at this point there's this is another legislative adjustment correct and so the addition to the policy reads as follows the district recognizes that it is a discriminatory discriminatory practice to request or require an initial employment application a prospective employee's age date of birth dates of attendance at or of graduation from
101an educational institution on an initial employment application unless requesting or requiring such information is based on a bona fide occupational qualification or need or when such information is required to comply with any provision of state law or federal law we had a discussion about this and this essentially translates to not asking for a resume anymore or at least a resume that requires dates except for years at a position correct okay or years of graduation obviously or anything like that yes based on age discrimination correct um and so uh we are there any emotions while uh we we uh move this uh to a uh first reading and i don't is there a motion there's no emotion no emotion okay so there's no third reason oh okay getting confused thank you appreciate that there's a lot
102of policies yeah um and uh so for second reading um we uh reviewed again um the uh five policies that we moved uh for a first reading last last month so the policies that we moved for a second reading with no changes was policy or 1101.1 community relations parent involvement policy number 6146 graduation requirements uh 6146.1 grading systems 61 48 fafsa completion program and 6159 individualized education program special education program we moved all those for a second reading uh after that business was done we adjourned the meeting um are there any uh questions or discussion uh let's see just point of order we did not cover 9321.2 which is under the review of policies um oh i'm sorry yes we uh i missed that uh that was a discussion correct let's see let me see
103here i have a right here um electro oh yes okay thank you um so uh we did discuss a bylaw 9321.2 uh which was about electronic board meetings um it says as of april 30th we will no longer be able to hold virtual meetings of any kind uh that would be a business and uh subcommittee it appears that through the reference material that we had that that cabe and perhaps the legislature may be looking into [Music] perhaps allowing this in the future but it may be an entire school year before we would be allowed to have any sort of uh uh virtual meetings again and um at least for me i commented at the time that at least for subcommittee meetings we do do a lot of detailed work and that when we do when
104we meet virtually unless we feel that there will be a robust public comment at that time that um the recordings actually end up being better and that you can view it a lot more easily on youtube so that you can uh sort of get that better audio and perhaps even a visual experience if there's a slide deck involved but as as of uh right now it looks like april 30 well we won't be able to do that anymore if i could chime in so yeah cave as uh to serve on the board uh uh ask the legislature consider changing extending this but that is completely up to this legislative session at this point and i don't even know if it's on their uh list of bills so it could likely be we won't know until
105the start well the school year we'll see thank you um is there any addition oh faith go ahead uh jeff what's the impact of um the personnel non-discrimination policy um basically the the only issue there is that we can't basically solicit somebody's age or other information that it would make it easy to determine what their age is in the hiring process which really isn't that big a deal for us so it doesn't affect how you do your job no not really any additional comment seeing none uh that concludes the uh policy update how many yeah thank you i also want to thank the policy committee for all the work being performed it's uh just when we think we're over the policy reviews uh there's always changes coming so it's uh thankless work but we thank
106you uh up next is approval of minutes in our board of education packet we do have meeting minutes from uh the last meeting held on february 17th before we get into it i move that the board education approve the minutes for the meeting held on february 17 2022 is very second and seconds any discussion changes seeing as there are none uh the motion is move at the board education approve the minutes from the meeting held on february 17th 2022 all those in favor please raise your hands is unanimous thank you correspondence dr sohan do we have any written correspondence this evening we do not and up next is the much anticipated superintendent's report well thank you so much i know it's probably even more so anticipated in march because it is board member appreciation month
107and you know i i don't even say that tongue-in-cheek i i don't know that i ever really appreciated the amount of time and energy that board members uh put in without any pay or real recognition into supporting the the school system and making sure that you know we we provide our students and community with a great experience so thank you to all of you who serve on our cheshire board of education and there's like a small token of our appreciation in your your gift bag a little cheshire public school swag to wear proudly uh i'd be remiss i know my co-workers realize i have a nauseatingly high level of pride for my irish heritage as a first generation american of irish descent so happy st patrick's day to everybody out there tomorrow we have a
108professional development day and i spent time you know reviewing everything that uh ms solano our instructional leadership team uh mr hanlon and uh our building-based instructional leaders have put together for tomorrow and am just so incredibly impressed with how it it really encapsulates our past present and future with complex thinking social emotional learning our vision for high quality instruction and i half jokingly told them i wish i could have submitted those documents to the professional development hall of fame so i know it might be tough tomorrow to not have your kids going to school i'm sure they'll enjoy the weather um but our staff is doing some great stuff and you know kudos to marlene and kevin and everybody who works in our instructional leadership area uh cef trivia night we've talked a little bit
109about that next saturday i just want to give a shout out to dennis denninger who is the emcee of that incredible event uh you're too late if you were still looking to get in uh that event is now sold out i'm looking forward to going i also want to thank eileen wilderman in our culinary services department who the kids are making special cupcakes uh to be a fundraiser for cheshire ed foundation so thank you to all of our our students and ms wilderman i know that earlier in the year actually even dating back to last year our goals uh district goals that we had established from 2011 to 2021 we never really got the opportunity to work on last year through the heart of the pandemic and we were focused on making that transition this
110year and it starts with uh having conversations with our stakeholders and so i've started the pto pta tours i was at chapman today darcy on march 28th norton on april 4th april 5th i mentioned we have a town council budget presentation uh the tour continues at chs on the 6th of april highland on april 28th died on may 18th and we're still we've had some conflicts we're just trying to book uh doolittle uh so i encourage parents if they can make it to that uh those meetings at their local school building to attend and provide feedback some really good conversation today at chapman i really appreciate the parents who came out to to help with that and finally tying into the cheshire public schools next generation phase one plan we have created an account for
111questions and uh feedback uh through email because that's been it was really successful through the pandemic as a way to communicate with the the board and you know district leadership so cps next generation at cheshire.k12.ct.us it's our typical um end of it but a typical extension but cps next generation at cheshire.k12.cts so that concludes my report thank you thank you dr sonny questions for doctors a quick question how do you define success in that how do we define successfully how do you measure you said it doing it that way was was very successful uh the uh emails yeah uh i think we received the volume yeah the the volume i thought was great you know it uh certainly in a remote environment it gave people the opportunity to provide a lot of feedback questions uh
112but you know i know that not everybody can make it out to these meetings it's another vehicle for people to provide their feedback so i know you guys appreciate that so cps next generation thank you for doing that uh mr um just for clarification the uh the pta pto tours that you're doing um so you're you're discussing the the next they're not the next generation standards but the the um our goals our goals for the i guess the next 10 years that we're putting together so you're going to be discussed discussing that with the people who attend and you're also going to be discussing the the modernization project as well correct okay so and you know it's it's a chance to comment or whatever absolutely so you know we we are going through some of
113the history of how we arrived at complex thinking and social emotional learning and our performance standards and you're kind of evaluating are those still you know contemporary and you know it will then frame out what might be an appropriate timeline today's conversation at chapman we we talked about the fact that 10 years is like an eternity today if you think back to the world 10 years ago i had more hair at least i know that but there were so many other things that you know we're different self-driving cars amazon and you know the just the evolution of things is so fast i know i've shared with you the justin trudeau quote that i love the pace of change will it's basically the pace of change will never be as slow as it is today again
114it just it's rapidly accelerating every day and so it's um you know i don't know that 10 years would be a great benchmark for us maybe closer to five and these are in person right because i know they are yes everything's important have been virtual for a long time so yep okay yeah in person live and in person great thank you anyone else seniors there is none thank you dr sullin uh we have no old business we do have some new business uh predominantly around the healthy food certification so i'm not sure who wants to walk us through the uh should we just make the motion and this well there's three motions uh why don't we just give a summary and then we'll get into it okay thank you the um this is an annual
115event the board has to approve the recommendation to include and continue on with the healthy food certification this applies to all all food that's sold outside of the reimbursable meals which always meets the connecticut nutrition standards so this is for food items that are sold a la carte at school stores vending machines anything other than what we serve you know breakfast and lunch as a reimbursable meal so this is a requirement the um benefit of doing this is that students will always if they're served in the school they will always have food that meets the connecticut nutrition standards and we do recommend doing this we do get an additional 10 cents per meal by participating in healthy food certification so the way the three motions work the first one basically is the board certifying that
116we will participate in the healthy food certification program and then the next two motions are exemptions which allow for the sale of items not during school hours and not by the school so at the concession stand or any type of a bake sale that's held outside of school hours those are not required to meet the connecticut nutrition standards so this is something that you know as a technicality it needs to be done and it's kind of the long and short of the reason for it i think the motions although they're a little wordy kind of speak to for themselves yes speaking of wordy that being said um if it's okay with the board i like to make one motion encompassing all three so that uh because essentially the same thing we could discuss all at
117the same time and not not reading each motion uh for a total of six times over the course of a half hour because we'd have to have folks here that want to go home in our audience so here's what i propose we move that pursuant the cgs section that 10-215 f that's what the f stands for the cheshire boy education certifies that all food items offer for sale to students in the schools under jurisdiction and not exempted for connecticut nutrition standards published by connecticut state department education will comply with the connecticut nutrition standards during the period of july 1st 2022 through june 30th 2023 this sure the certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimbursable meals at all times and from all sources including but not limited to school stores
118vending machines school cafeterias culinary programs and any fundraising activities on school premises sponsored by the school or by non-school organizations furthermore the church of education will allow the sales students of food items that do not meet the connecticut nutrition standards provided that the following conditions are met one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend to the sale at location of the event and three the food items are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity for example soccer games school plays anthros classical debates are events but soccer practices play practices play rehearsals and debate team meetings are not the regular school day
119is the period from midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as food sales furthermore the cheshire board education will allow the sale to students of beverages not listed in section 10-221-q of the connecticut general statutes provided the following conditions are met number one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale of the location of the event and three beverages are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regular scheduled practice meeting or extractivity the school date is the period from midnight before 30 minutes after the end of
120the official school day location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as the beverage sales is there a second mr gripple seconds that is the three motions in one discussion on behalf of the board of ed miss rosenberg i just wanted to clarify vinnie so we have to do this every single year this whole process yes we have to improve these motions so that we continue to participate in the program okay and the language of the motions is not mine that is yeah provided to us by the state thank you for bearing with me on that one uh up next is chairperson's update i have very little to update um uh well so we had a fun thing last feb uh february which seemed like last weekend sam and
121i participated in the polar plunge i'm still following from that one it was uh definitely below 30. it was in the 20s but this was for uh ymca camp sloper funding it was uh uh and i and let the record state that i did invite all board members all in advance um but i don't blame you for uh not having time to be there so in short i i think the between cheshire and sunnington it wasn't just us it was uh uh we had uh david welber was there we had um jim jinx we also had mr jeffries from highland school we had various uh athletes there yep ryan uh mr murphy uh so it's very well attended and i think between the two towns i think a hundred thousand dollars was raised so that's
122uh that's huge for for kids they'll attend there it was fun i i strongly encourage folks sign up for it next year uh it was a fun time uh that being said that's really extended the update there's uh uh i'll read the upcoming meeting minutes a little later uh before we move on to german i believe there was a gentleman in the office that wanted to so i want to do this properly because i want to be accused of not knowing what i'm doing so uh because we have audience at the beginning of the meeting i can't just have people talk at the end so we're gonna do the right thing here i'm gonna ask the board to amend the agenda to add an item eight uh replace item nine with uh public comment so
123we have a person talk and then we'll make item nine of german so i move that we add a public comment section nine at the agenda to allow probably person to speak is there a second smartelli all those in favor thank you so you're up my name is tucker deming oregon road so quickly i'll be quick uh let's just review for a moment we've had these last two years which certainly have not been normal have they and uh we'd like to say they're behind us we're done with it but we're not this madness is going to continue unfortunately now we're going to uh be encouraged by the uh pfizer uh group and others to vaccinate our five to eleven-year-old children with their latest this would be doing great harm to our children certainly you've been
124aware of the uh the vares the adverse reactions that have been evident from using these this gene therapy it's not really a vaccine we don't want to curse our children with this please we've done the masking thing on our children which is going to be harmful enough certainly the psychological physical problems on and on have not all been tabulated at this point this is uh i i can't imagine as a youth trying to wear a mask for the uh two years i mean it just boggles the mind um but as much as i appreciate and i can see you've got many plates in the air here we don't hear a lot of pushback about yes the federal state mandates being descending on us but we've got to be vocal about this we've got to come
125up and with some way some mechanism of outreach to the community or some uh definition of what is appropriate and what isn't for our children to be involved with next is the smart card so we're going to get a vaccination card so they're going to keep on mandating another booster and uh we're gonna have to have a card to get on an airplane whatever it's gonna be we are actually connecticut is one of the 21 states could be 25 now uh that has signed on to this smart health card well that is going to really spell the end of our freedoms um so thank you for uh listening to my comments have a good evening tucker thank you and thank you for sticking out the entire meeting i uh uh it was very informative well
126i should let you know ahead of time you showed up that we just you literally just missed the public comment i didn't realize you're gonna stick around so thank you for being here uh we're gonna move on to is what is item 10 now which is adjournment do i have a motion to adjourn and i'm sorry faith i'm sorry anne's been so fast tonight that i didn't see you at hand so faith uh faith has emotion is there a second same seconds oh thank you yes be i point to order let me read the yes thank you dan our board secretary keeping me in check thank you because we added the planning committee of the whole yes for the first one so does that mean that the middle school showcases at 7 or 7 30.
127that was one of my questions for the planning committee meeting at 7 30 showcase it should be 7 30. yeah and those will be a dodd correct yeah so thank you for catching that in uh and i noticed that uh just earlier this evening the invitation went out for the planning committee the whole so show that inbox so that being said upcoming meetings for the board of ed thursday april 7th there are two meetings there's one at 6 00 p.m a planning committee meeting of the whole and that is to review the education specs for the proposed phase one modernization that is being discussed that will be six pm at dot middle school following that meeting again april 7th at 7 pm is the middle school showcase also at dodd middle school tuesday uh well
128there's a policy committee that's uh maybe meeting in april that'll be determined but we'll publish that date once we know monday april 19th is a curriculum meeting that will be the hummingston boardroom at 7 pm thursday april 21st is a boardvet business meeting in town council chambers that is a and also we have a joint town council board of ed meeting being scheduled on the 19th yes so it's not listed here but also on april 19th is a joint town council board of ed uh meeting discussed school modernization and because we don't have enough meetings there's also another one april on april 5th this is a town council board of ed budget review it's probably room 207 or 210 that'll be at 6 00 pm in town in this building so um all these are
129on our website they'll all be published i'm sure someone posts these on facebook as well but uh and by the way these are all in person meetings everyone's welcome to attend if you feel comfortable mask is optional and just uh just a little other good news uh april 11th through april 15th is spring break and uh may 31st uh memorial day in schools will be closed just in case parents are planning ahead that being said do i have a uh yes yeah sorry that's okay um dr selen the launch this is another date the launch of the new website just for public information okay thank you but we may have it one of these meetings anyway sometime in april uh do i have a motion to adjourn faith faith makes the motion is there a
130second i see him yes all in favor thank you everyone thank you for sticking around tonight meaning is adjourned you