Board of Education 1-20-22

001thank you carol i ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance thank you welcome everyone thanks for those who brave enough to show up tonight in this nice cold january weather uh before we get into student representative report i'm going to turn over to marlene for a brief comment evening i'm sorry to share some sad news last week cheshire high school lost a cherished member of the cheshire high school community susan zwick who re his retiree passed away last week she had worked in the cheshire public schools as a department leader for the business department for over 28 years she was a beloved teacher in the business department and she leaves behind her loving family and many colleagues at cheshire high school so if we could have a moment of silence in her honor

002thank you marlene and to miss uh swiss family certainly please accept the condolences behalf of the board of education uh moving on to the agenda we're going to move on to the student representatives report rowan what you got all right um lovely to see you all today on this cold cold evening um so right now the high school is in the middle of midterm season um which is always a little stressful it's a hard time to get through but it's always it's an important time to do um and it's interesting talking to people around the school because we realized about half of the student population hasn't bid through midterms because we didn't have midterms last year both the sophomores and the freshmen haven't been through it so there were definitely efforts around the school to

003kind of help them reintegrate to what that's like one of the big things i know is usually the link crew does an event called coco and cram which is one saturday a bunch of link crew leaders get together and we help tutor and just help get freshmen ready for the event um with covid we decided to do an online version of that this year um and we opened it up to freshmen and sophomores and there also was an upperclassman opportunity just to talk about study tips and everything um and we got tutors from all sorts of different uh student leadership clubs to make sure we had enough people um i know people were there from link crew from national honors society science national honor society um there was a there's a tutoring club that was

004formed last year called scope and they helped to organize and run it um and so there were a lot of really great groups that kind of all came together to help make sure that people were ready and comfortable with it because most people don't love midterm seasons but it's an important thing to do kind of to get used to taking those style tests and so i think people out coming out of that we're more willing and more ready to go into it and the nice kind of breakup we've had this week definitely has given us a nice time to study um other than that kind of coming out of winter break it's kind we're kind of in a transitional period but there's definitely been some exciting things happening um winter sports um going on strong

005we've got spring sports registration coming up um we had both chorus band and orchestra concerts um a few weeks ago last week time is hard to attract at this point but it was really nice as part of the chorus to go and to be able to see us perform again it's we had one concert last year but it's really it's so nice to be back and be able to do it with everyone even with social distancing and masks on it's really just about being all together and being able to sing something and so i think that's most of it i'm definitely looking forward to as things start warming up and hopefully as covert numbers start getting better to kind of more activities starting up again in the spring but other than that we're just looking

006through getting through midterms most seniors have applied to colleges we have kind of course registration coming up for the underclassmen but there's lots of good things kind of coming up in these next few weeks and months thank you roland i know you're uh flying solo tonight and about couldn't be here uh thank you for the update is there any questions from from the board go ahead yeah sorry i just like the comment uh uh rowan i thought i was rolling rowan that you didn't have any notes and so i thought that was very impressive that he just rattled through that that was excellent very very good thanks thank you tim yeah please yeah thank you for coming tonight uh you mentioned [Music] you mentioned that people started applying for colleges i'm curious did have you

007heard of anybody doing early application and getting in anywhere yeah definitely um some people have done early decision and early action um a really wide range of schools people have gotten into and slowly there's along social media there's the instagram accounts and everything kind of to congratulate people who have confirmed where they're going and so there's definitely a number of seniors who have already confirmed and are gotten in places so it's nice to see kind of people who i've grown up with since we were like tiny it's a great experience to get to see like where they're all going um and it's just kind of crazy to think about thank you sam yes hi rowan i just want to comment on the fact that you guys put in you know a lot of um contributing

008your time and to your peers to help with that link crew and studying for midterms that's huge um i think it's a great leadership quality that you have and and i hope it continues um i'm sure word on the street would have been that you wanted to cancel midterms but since that didn't happen having this mechanism to help your peers is awesome so kudos to you guys well thank you thanks sam yeah yes please hi roland hello you going solo tonight huh um i just wanted to comment on um having the choral and music ensembles but um while i'm i kind of have a good idea of how horses can sing wearing masks because i'm also a member of a chorus an adult chorus um and we we do that but we don't have um

009performances these past two years but i'm wondering how some instruments are played wearing masks so can you just give me an idea of how an oboe player might perform yeah so i'm not entirely sure that's kind of they rehearse in a very different space for mars and i didn't make it to their concert um but i know for a lot of it i believe it's a mix of um thank you excellent thank you for that thank you rowan thank you so much for being here tonight good luck on remaining midterms and have a warm night you have to stay thanksgiving welcome ago thank you we'll see you next meeting thank you thank you everyone so up next we have a special school partnership award ms solano and miss ham would you like to present the

010award yeah okay so we'd like to call up tripp sanders if we could right up here there you are hi again um oh do you mind different okay six feet although there are many parents that do little who are extremely supportive of what supportive of what we do and are always willing to help if we ask trip has gone above and beyond for doolittle school over the last three years trip teaches at quinnipiac university when he learned last year that we were having a substitute shortage he called the school and immediately asked how he could help he shared that although he teaches a few courses at quinnipiac he is he was available some days to come to do little and help us out a few days a week he signed up right away for kelly

011services and became our first kelly services substitute to this day when we are short staffed we call tripp on the phone and he comes right over whenever he can he has stepped in to substitute for all staff members and has been a teacher's assistant instructional assistant and even a classroom teacher we are so happy to have him and have truly been able to count on him to be there for us not only has tripp given his time to our students in the classroom but he's also begun the doolittle ski club uh which he started last year many families and staff members joined last year and he's organized this it must be pretty tough um for this year again a little disappointing um but this the club will resume in january and february for students in

012grades two through six he worked with the team at mount southington to organize a reduced group price for do little families trip is also very active in scouts and has been instrumental along with other parents and in teaching the children to take part in service projects most recently pack 198 did some spring cleaning for the doolittle school they are in the process of working on and updating the remembrance garden thank you to tripp sanders for all you have done and continue to do for the doolittle school community the cheshire board of education thanks tripp for going above and beyond the students of cheshire public schools and i would like to say this um was like was written by um principal amy o'brien um in their lovely words congratulations [Applause] absolutely [Music] yes [Applause] thanks everybody

013know they've got fun okay yes thank you all for this this is great really appreciate it thank you tripp thank you for all your time and dedication i know it's been a difficult year teaching quinnipiac level doing this is not your service very grateful thank you so much my pleasure awesome thank you next up uh any members of the audience that wishes to address the board of education keep in mind that i believe we have a motion or two tonight and we do take audience input during the motion so there's an opportunity later in case you're too shy now as soon as there are none thank you so much moving on committee reports starting with curriculum the sam i'm actually reporting tonight on two meetings that we had they first was um all the way

014back in wow december 13th um we reviewed the minutes of an october 18th may 18th meeting at that time um under new business uh uh dr solon michelle picarelli picarello and tom vieira and dr gad gave an overview of what is called mental health first aid as a possible approach to consider for cheshire high school it is only in the exploratory stages um but the overview included what's called alg the acronym algae which stands for adult youth and teen programs uh well they're adult youth and team programs that teach participants to assess listen give and encourage in situations where a person may be at risk we agreed it was vital for this for the high school um to be to study this further um it would actually be targeted toward the sophomores and um so

015we are continuing to look at a potential framework for implementation in cheshire um we also had a spirited discussion on what students are reading at the elementary level what skills they're learning and um anne-marie wittenberg and kevin hanlon led the presentation on what's going on in the elementary schools in our reading program and it included information on the role of mentor texts which are under the junior great books heading or titles independent reading reading books and read-alouds in reading instruction and also the design of the classroom libraries at various grade levels was discussed we then had a lengthy discussion with mike pappa scott conway and tom um luwak um on st student dated privacy within the district and our practices um and that was that was a great discussion um and i would refer you

016to the um to the video if you can watch it and then finally we discussed um but it required no action um two overnight field trips one that occurred november 6 through 7th where the chs uh marching band went to the u.s band's national championships in east rutherford new jersey and a february 2nd through 3rd trip um again with the high schoolers um to the winter guard regional region competition in salem mass so our next meeting after that was held um um january 10th and again mostly it's an informational evening no actions were taken however it began with a discussion uh one which we opted to continue because we're dealing with a policy that was adopted in 1996 so it's rather dated but a process for reconsideration of library books and classroom resources and as

017i said that will be an ongoing topic that we'll be examining um had three and three uh updates and and overviews the first was our first look at the high school elective chorus african-american black puerto rican latino study and latino studies um and it was presented by don demayo and aaron griffiths who are are leading the course and teaching the course it is in our first year it is an elective uh by next year all schools in the state will be required to offer it as an elective but we are one of kind of the beta schools um but some of the key points that um ms demayo and ms griffiths made was um they went over the syllabus and it is divided into two semesters the first one focuses chronologically on african-american studies and

018the second focus is more thematically on the puerto rican and latino studies ms demaio and miss griffiths reported that student engagement has been high in the class which is good to hear we then had an elementary a review of changes that are going to be made to the elementary report card to incorporate characteristics of the graduate particularly focus their you know visions of the graduate particularly focusing on complex thinking um and then finally we continued our discussion of what our students are reading by looking at what's going on in the middle school and what skills are they learning and in this case kristen shanley and kevin hanlon gave an overview of what their what the students are reading at dodd middle school and what's being read in whole classes and then read independently by individual

019students and then finally through the book clubs and how each is connected to the standards throughout the year and um that pretty much sums up our two meetings any excuse any questions on the curriculum committee report yes sam i just wanted to i wasn't able to watch the last meeting you had in january 10th but um you know as an educator i always if i want to know something i ask the kids and from my understanding that black and latino course is very popular was there any discussion of i know we're in the beta phase but for next year you're going to have to open several sections because of the high interest was there any discussion about how that's going to look because of an increase is it touch activated okay there we go we

020didn't have any discussion about that at that night sam but um it will be treated like the other courses so with course registration coming up i know last year i think i'm accurate in saying we had about 86 88 students sign up for the course certain number as their first choice second choice etc so we would look at those numbers and we would plan accordingly for how many sections we were able to include based on those teachers etc i'm glad to hear that you've got you're hearing um good chatter about the class yeah and and i hope that again like you know anything else we can at least offer it to the kids instead of pushing it back to another semester or another year right right so sam another thing that came up and and

021it's a point that i guess i raised but um we have two very competent teachers teaching this course and it is a um top a hartford driven course i expressed my um concern and interest in seeing if there might be some way to work with the course to give those two teachers more autonomy in the development of the and uh adoption of resources that they feel would be appropriate for our community because it is a very general course and um you know we we've we've got a lot of smart people in our staff and so i would like very much to see them have some independence as this course progresses yeah i'll add uh this so my daughter's actually in the class and uh so i it's great because i uh trust me when things

022are going wrong i hear from her right but things are going right i usually don't so but she's been very happy with the course and uh you know i encourage parents with students interested in you know to reach out current students without teachers get some some information on it um because i for me i have the privilege of knowing what it is and what it is and i think for folks that wonder what it is it's very encouraging that being said one things that came up was the amount of material to cover not just for one uh group but each one of those three three areas black latino african studies and indigenous is also part of it could each be an offering so i know that uh dawn in particular had mentioned that they'll be

023getting feedback from arlene uh and at some point has to go back to circ and sde to see if there's a way to take that huge uh curriculum plan and make it more manageable to fit into the semester so i i raised this because uh i'm sure you were saying in your profession uh there's other boards school districts doing this class and hearing similar feedback a little bit more autonomy but is there a way to maybe split this out into other courses so we can spend enough time at cert so i expect at the end of the school year you'll be hearing marlene feedback from various folks so it's encouraging to see that the course is very popular and i forget what was the initial interest last year when we offered the course i believe

024we had about 86 88 students express interest in taking the course and it was that was our very first time offering it so you make some good points about the feedback and feeding that back to the state department and one of the reasons why we chose to hop on and be a part of this first implementation year was because we knew that those teachers myself the principal would be engaged in conversations with circ and the csde on feedback on the course so while they they gave us an avalanche of information and resources we certainly can't cover at all and so they have a little bit of autonomy in what they're able to utilize as we go through but more it'll be nice for us to have that opportunity and have those meetings so that we

025can provide feedback to cirque and the state great thank you yeah yes yes sam thanks for bringing that up um because we had a lot of good discussion about um the importance of a course such as that and so glad that we have the enthusiasm behind it amongst the student body one of the other things that we discuss which i think is really important that marlene brought up for us was that by us being part of the pilot project of this course we get to be involved in the conversation moving forward uh is that correct right yes so um i think it's really important that you know our administration our teachers that we jumped on this and we got in on the first iteration so that we can be part of that conversation moving forward

026great any other questions for curriculum committee report thank you faith thank you ann uh up next is finance mr grippo thank you mr chairman um see uh over the last let's see week we've been the finance committee has been meeting to go over the uh 2022-2023 budget um and those um i guess uh hearings are ongoing and uh that's that should be concluded somewhere before the middle of february um so for now i will uh hand over the report to mr massiana to give us a current update thank you mr grippo good evening everyone the finance report was in the board's package and i will just summarize with a couple of points this is the report through december 31st not much has changed from the november report from an operating budget point of view we

027are looking um strong in terms of meeting our budget you know the the couple of things that i pointed out in the report are that there's going to be some minor variances caused by fuel price increases in general inflation certainly manageable within the the context of our budget related to that there are um the non-payroll expenditure cap that the board is is aware of and i don't know if you're aware of it ms rosenberg but the way we manage our budget is the non-payroll expenditures that are available to our department heads and our principals uh we put a cap on the amount they can spend as a percentage of that allocation that cap is at 50 right now and then usually we'll raise that as we get closer to june so we're going to hold

028it 50 through the end of january assess that and then we'll probably raise it to 60 possibly 70 percent if things continue to trend along the way that they are the other thing that's occurring within our budget which is not a surprise but i just want to make the point again the persistence of the pandemic we certainly are still seeing costs associated with that within the operating budget tent rentals which we completed in the fall we're still doing intraday cleaning again i think we can manage that within the context of the dollars we have with the 50 non-payroll expenditure cap but we also do have essa funding that we can use for that it would take away from the learning loss component but those essa funds that we have total about 1.2 million and they're

029good through september of 2024. so i feel confident in where the budget is at this moment in time and and there are no glaring um concerns within the operating budget medical benefits is the next portion of the update because that is something that is an ongoing concern although it won't affect the operating budget directly so i'm going to turn to the medical benefits report which the board members have and then we can come back to answer questions so the the bad news is that the december claims were 1 million 545 000 so that was quite a significant jump um from the prior months where we've averaged about 1 to 1.1 million dollars per month um there are really two factors one that the board's aware of and one that i'll share of that are affecting

030this year's claims one is the high dollar claims that we're seeing continue to persist they started last year and they continue along in fact this based on the december report i did a review and we had two very large claims in the month of december that have taken um the total claims for several individuals above the 175 000 threshold and so the impact of that is we do get stop stop-loss reimbursement whenever an individual claim exceeds 175 000. so although we ended the month of december with a reserve balance of a million 49 we have about 370 000 in stop loss that will be funded back to um the reserve fund once we receive that funding back from the stop loss carrier so our balance if you consider the stop loss is about a million

031400 000 that's where we'll be when the stop-loss reimbursements come and just looking at the trend in a couple of those claims they will be ongoing so that stop-loss amount may increase and obviously these are uh for individuals who have you know severe uh disease and issues unfortunately the second component that i wanted to talk about which i just received from cigna is a comparison of our covert costs within our claims last july through december compared to this july through december and they're up by about a factor of four now this is the town and of that combined the numbers aren't broken out yet um but because we're about 85 percent of the total claims the impact to us is about 85 percent of the totals i will share so from i'm sorry i said

032july from january um through december of 2020 our total covet expenditures were about 133 000 and of that 115 000 was for testing and about 18 000 was for treatment so that's the good news more of the money was spent on testing and not on people actually being sick with clothing so 133 000 last year compared to went to 439 000 so the spend is up significantly testing is the largest component like it was last year but testing went from 115 000 to 370 thousand dollars so not surprisingly you know especially over the last few months as the rate of covet has increased more testing has been undertaken you know by the town and border vet employees combined similarly treatment for covid is 25 000 again that's that's good news in that we're not seeing

033a lot of people um with very severe covet symptoms what's new in this year that wasn't there last year was the cost of vaccinations so year for this calendar year it's 43 000 compared to zero in the last year and so again the combination of those factors takes us from 133 to thirty eight thousand and of that four hundred thirty eight thousand about two hundred fifty thousand of it fell onto the board's claims so those are the the two most significant factors the other uh point of information i wanted to share after the presentation that we had where tom kowalczyk from usi gave us an update on the medical claims trends and and our budget for next year and we did talk and i've requested a report that compares our claims for the 2018-19 plan

034year which was pre-pandemic compared to 2021 which was obviously during the pandemic and broken down several different ways by claim tears less than 10 000 10 to 25 000 etc by diagnosis type as well as what the code claims were during that period so you know tom um is working with the underwriters over at usi and with cigna and he expects that we should have that report in about a week so when i receive that you know i will provide it as part of the operating budget you know review that we're going through i think that covers um what i wanted to update on the finance and the medical benefits report so if there are any questions be glad to answer them am i on i'm sorry um thanks ben for that i um just

035with regard to the covid uh is that included in the hundred and fifty or one point five four million uh well whatever portion hit december is included okay so that's in the number yeah okay good all right um just going back to your impla impact on of inflation on things are we getting contracts are we are we um looking at ways to extend the contracts or uh because no one really we're all a little jittery about how long this inflation um these is going to be here so i know you do have fuel contracts and other things are you looking at extending those so that we have greater savings down the road and are we are there other supply areas that we can get into long-term contracts that at least set the price for us

036so i'll answer um with a couple of different things our two biggest contracts are one uh transportation contract with daca that contract runs through 2024 and the increases are set at two percent per year how many years through 2024 oh sorry okay so we're fortunate that we don't have to negotiate that one because i would expect that they'll the school districts that are negotiating bus contracts i'm sure are going to see significant increases so we don't have to worry about that when the second largest contract is our cleaning contract and just to give you some context the deco contract is around three million dollars per year the cleaning contract is about 740 000 per year so it's quite a bit smaller but the cleaning contract uh what the board approved last year was the renewal

037for this year and next year so that's locked in as well and we we had pretty um good pricing that that contract did go up by several percentage points over the two years but that's locked in so fortunately we don't have to negotiate either one of those as far as supply and educational supply pricing a lot of those purchases are made under a state contract um w.b mason is one of our larger suppliers but our school staff shops not only the state supply but they'll use amazon where we have an account set up for the district um and and the inflation on on some of the supplies we're purchasing has not been anything that's a show-stopper for us um i'm just trying to think if there are any other there's no other real contracts that

038we're negotiating we do go out to bid on some of the things we need right now we just started prepping a bid for replacement of the scoreboard down at the high school so you know when those bids come in we'll we'll scrutinize them and hope that we can get what we need to replace that scoreboard so from the perspective of the larger contracts we're safe for a couple of years hopefully the pandemic eases by then the supply chain issues start to clear up and um you know we won't have any overwhelming budgetary concerns to deal with i hopefully that answers the question i don't know if there was something more that you wanted to know yeah and i guess just um going back a little bit just to so with our um fuel and our

039uh oil because we heat with oil don't we do um what are you anticipating there so probably a 20 increase is is what we're seeing um i mean the price of oil did jump up but it's kind of leveled off and it's just been ebbing and flowing i mean when we started this year the price of oil was somewhere around 50 dollars per barrel network 73 or 74. so we um you know the only commodity that we're locked in right now is electricity everything else we're just you know paying whatever the market rate is but we have encumbered for higher heating and energy prices and transportation fuel prices so that's baked in to what you see on the budget report right now okay sorry then just for my own notification by the way during my

040day job when i get a call from the ceo i cringe a little because they tell me don't spend this money um and then i somehow figure out a way to maybe spend it but is there for us a um a needs if if need be to transfer amongst accounts and is there a um a transfer limit that would then have to go to the board so the the generally speaking the board does the trances at the end of the year we're not transferring money from account to account during the course of the year in some cases you'll see in in the finance report that has the line by line detail you'll see where we're going to be over and we adjust it to where we're going to be under but we don't physically make

041those transfers we're tracking it over the course of the year and usually the last business day of the year june 30th that assuming that's a monday through friday the board will meet at 7 30 a.m and transfer between our major line items certified salaries non-certified salaries medical benefits etc so that's the board's responsibility and that's within the law that's the way that we do it as far as other transfers the each of the principles there's a series of accounts that they can transfer money between but they stay within each account grouping so it doesn't require transfers outside of account groupings you're welcome um on that note actually um and i don't know if faith had touched upon it already but um there are two line items in the um financial report for a maintenance repair

042and maintenance supply that there's a a pretty decent size over under there is that fuel or later is that something else no so the maintenance supply which is that 561 300 account it's um it's over it's assigned budget by 178 thousand that's the account one of the sub accounts there is what we use to pay for the cost of pandemic expenses just so that we could track it more easily so that's the cost of tents which is about 180 000 as well as the cost of the additional intraday cleaning that we're doing in the schools so that's why it's over we'll balance that out at the end of the year either by transferring from other accounts or by using esser funds so as we progress through the the next several months i'll be reporting some

043more of that detail it's kind of early right now and again i think overall the budget including you know the cost of the additional pandemic health and safety needs still in good shape and we do have some accounts that are going to be under like our transportation line will be under budget some of our salary accounts will be under budget because we've had you know quite a few openings that we haven't filled so there's that ebb and flow that you know goes with every budget and then we continue to manage against um lastly um and i didn't i didn't ask this on tuesday night yes i think it was getting a little late i think we ran up to what 10 15 or something like that um as far as when you're getting the the

044medical claims um are you getting um demographic data like at least in age or or sex it's not the age i can obtain that data you know it doesn't it doesn't come as part of the reporting package so that's something i can obtain the only reason i asked is because i noticed there was a noticeable increase in the cardiac claims from year over year and i can't help but wonder if we're having some sort of um long covet effects because i know that covet is somewhat of a almost of a blood disease too uh where it's been affecting a lot of the cardiac system and it's just done a lot it's just an alarming change there and i just couldn't help but notice that we might be encroaching on a new chronic problem in in

045a younger demographic it wasn't you know we were just like oh you know we have retirees and they you know they're getting older and having you know you know chronic problems but they're just wondering for we're now starting to identify a new chronic problem in a in our you know able-bodied what able-bodied uh population so i just you know it's a great question and i you know often wonder what's driving you know where we are you know without claims year over year especially this one um but there's there are additional reports that i can obtain to try and get it some of that and so the report that i requested you know i think is a good starting point give us a little bit more data and you know the way it works when you

046look at certain analysis sometimes it leads you to the next two or three questions so we can keep you know digging uh and i think the impact of covet even though our direct covet illness claims are relatively low to your point it doesn't mean that within our broader claims there isn't some impact from culvert that we'll call it indirect i think time will tell but right now we don't don't have that information in hand i just hope that you know we you know we were talking about the five-year cycle i just hope that that remains true and it doesn't extend to perhaps an eight or nine year cycle because it's uh this keeps getting worse um so and it's uh what did we discuss it was is it well over half of the increase i

047i forget off the top of my head as far as uh you know replenishing the medical benefit budget the budget went up five point four percent three percent of that 2.2 million dollars was medical benefits right so there was really no hope in the report that we got on tuesday really so i i know it seems bleak but you have to have a little optimism here the claims will subside eventually it's just like when we look at things like enrollment for a while there we had discussions that enrollment was continuing to decline but it's not going to go to zero and it started to turn around it's it's the same phenomenon we you know we're just going to have to fund our way through it and if you look at even this month's report yes

048claims are high last year compared to the prior year we were up 22 this year we're up about five and a half percent so let's take that as a sign that at least it's leveling off and again if some of this is pandemic related indirectly then let's hope it subsides i mean we're not i don't expect that we're going to see claims get you know below 800 000 on average so we'll have to see where it shakes out but sure hope for the best thanks adam yeah i may have missed this but just want to make sure you're taking measures right now to try to avoid this going into deficit and having a deficit in the budget at the year end so um you know the more variable costs you have you're tamping tapping the

049brakes on that the town is already aware right because we share the trust fund with the town so okay that's a that's a leads me to a an update so there is that certainly the town council is well aware that when they funded a million and a half to the reserve last year that there was a risk that it may not be enough we are i just received an email from sean kimball today he asked me to join the town council budget committee to give them an update on our medical claims for the year so i will be reporting to them where we stand i'll share some of the information that we shared with the board at a workshop meeting so that you know they were aware of where we are you know hopefully you

050know as we turn into january february march we start the new hsa uh deductible resets to zero so if we get a reasonable um reduction in the claim rate and you know let's say our reserve balance you know once we get the stop-loss reimbursements is that 1.3 million hopefully we can get through the end of the year and not have to use any operating budget money to supplement the medical benefits trust and that's certainly something that i will you know discuss with the budget committee thank you yeah and i i mean as far as going to the council and asking them as to be a backstop that is that is very much a last resort that i would want to do because there are measures that we can take here but it is a big

051question so thank you man i'll mention i won't insist if you're a fan of the godfather that's where that's going just remind the board that you know another measure too is we're personally liable for the budget should we go over it so if we can't get money from the town council it's not a good place to be uh good luck find that in my pockets but point taken and and then on that note vincent i just for the board i i i i was i know i shouldn't have been shocked by the december number i thought it was going to come in at 1.1 which is still pretty massive as far as i can remember that 500 plus thousand dollar hit is probably the largest i've ever seen during my time so you know i

052at the budget meeting the other night there was a very detailed presentation a set of slides was also available on the cps website that talks about what's happening behind the medical claims very very very good information very detailed does talk about some high claims that we're carrying over but nonetheless just just a little tidbit here of the one and a half million dollars that was added to our budget for the medical reserve account after five six months of claims all that's remaining for an initial amount is 89 000 we've chewed through the entire 1.5 million dollars that was added to our reserve in less than six months pre-stop loss reimbursement so it is a little concerning that's all um seeing oh yes seeing no other questions i just wanted to say um we are intentionally

053having our uh finance meetings uh virtually uh not because we don't enjoy each other's company personally uh but that uh like the detailed presentations that we got on tuesday are are better easy or easier to see uh as they're uploaded on youtube as they're directly fed in so that everyone can see the slides and it's not a picture on a screen with some bad audio that i'm you know i know mike does a great job but um you know what sometimes you can only get what you get when we're here live uh so when we're we're all coming in virtually the the audio and visual is actually a lot better and so uh the uh if you do want to watch those presentations those will be up on our website and on youtube uh that

054concludes the finance report thank you mr thank you vincent uh moving on a rather new item is our legislative committee uh and just a little background on that is uh the board of ed has always had in his bylaws uh the ability to form legislative committee we've never actually done anything with over the years until almost recently due to so many things happening in and around us that are a center of control so uh there was uh support on the board to get that going again so that committee is comprised of tim white and herring of faith correct and tim you are the chair so if you want to give us a quick update on that let the board know what you all been talking about thank you tony yeah so we met last week

055we went through a number of different topics uh did not actually take a vote on anything however tonight where i'd like to start is um we got a draft report sort of a consolidation of items from the superintendent that i think fairly encapsulates uh the items we had discussed um and so i would like to just run through this really quickly with some uh thoughts on it uh hear what other people have to say maybe take a maybe make a motion on it um to have an official vote to adopt or uh reject superintendent's draft proposal here and then the idea with that is we could actually forward that to our legislators and say hey this is where at least one board of ed in the state of connecticut stands so keep that in mind

056the first item on the superintendent's list here is prevailing wage prevailing wage is it's a law which then correct me if i go off base here but it's a law which provides um it says look there is pr there are private construction contractors and union i should say union and non-union construction contractors for a government in connecticut to do construction we are required to use the union contract rates we cannot use the non-union rates and effectively what that does from a taxpayer's perspective is it increases the cost of construction for us that's a big deal we're talking about school modernization um you know we could be talking to hundreds of millions hundreds of millions of dollars for the total project costs and just with phase one that we'll be discussing tonight it could easily be

057costing the taxpayers an extra few million perhaps tens of millions of dollars it depends you have to get into the details a lot more but it costs a significant it is a significant cost to the taxpayer by virtue of having this law in place a law which could be uh changed entirely repealed by way of the state legislature of course on the flip side that's the benefit to the taxpayers there is there would be a cost to the construction workers who are getting paid union wages that's important too i'm simply coming from the perspective that right here in the town of cheshire we have school modernization facing us and we're talking about a lot of money and my preference would be to not have the law there but what we did have uh discussion on

058that there was i believe there was consensus on this in our discussion was to modify a request to modify the prevailing wage law which would increase the level at which the prevailing wage law kicks in so as an example right now um there's both new construction and renovation with regard to um is it the renovation the threshold right now is anything over a hundred thousand dollars the prevailing wage law kicks in so what is here come from the superintendent and i agree with it and i think it was consensus by the legislative committee last week is to increase that hundred thousand dollar threshold to 500 000 that is aligned with what the town council uh they may have voted on it or their this is they have voted on already they did okay so the

059time council already voted on it so we would be um in lockstep with them giving a broader voice to saying this is what we believe here in the town of cheshire would be a good thing so that's uh that's the general idea with prevailing wage so all i'm really asking for right now would be to support what the superintendent has requested in his draft another item here that i think is from my perspective is actually a pos it's it's doable it is uh with regard to ownership or control of the school bus depot on sandbank road yes so the school the school bus depot is owned by the state of connecticut and it doesn't really cost us anything to use but there are there's an administrative burden involved with it whenever we're doing anything there

060such as you know there's a building there for the school bus the the school bus company um and so you do things like that we just need to go to the state and get approval to do things it would make it simpler and this is from my you know from my memory when things have happened this is one of the things where we actually could make something happen if we could get our legislators behind it and go to the right people in the state hey can you make this happen i think it's possible and i'd like to i would like it if the board gave our legislators the backing saying this is something that should happen next on the superintendent's list relates to existing and potential mandates impacting education there's a whole slew of them

061and the superintendent has the list vin has the list there's a lot it also i'm gonna i'm gonna dovetail this with the k-8 model curriculum which is um right now is it is an option for me personally i'm okay with options i think they can be a good thing but i don't want the mandates i'd rather not have it i'd rather be able to think of things a little bit more with some more flexibility so basically the superintendent is saying he doesn't want any more mandates i agree k-8 model curriculum falls into the same bucket uh youth mental health access support for social emotional learning resources especially in the last two years this has for me the mental health has been an even bigger concern than previously so it's just looking for for support and

062understanding and moving forward with mental health issues um and the last item on the list is remote learning access which i don't believe the legislative committee actually uh discussed it all which is which is fine i i read it through the remote learning access i first of all i do not want to go back to remote learning like we did two years ago but having it like i said as an option i think um you know in particular like with snow days i could see i could see a situation where it could be beneficial um maybe not even for the entire school system for certain students for whatever reason i think having that flexibility would be a good thing so uh i'm not i'm not gonna get into every word here i don't agree with

063every word here i don't i'm not concerned about that i i appreciate you the superintendent putting together this draft and i support it so just a couple time thank you i know there was a lot of discussion in that meeting so just a couple procedural things you know one there there there's no vote necessary that has to happen in this uh so not tonight um if and when the board gets to a point that you know we want to put a vote behind something or per support we can say get there what i recommend is a lesson came out of legislative for the board of vote on there's nothing to vote on tonight um but that's okay we're just starting the process what i recommend is um and this is great i know i know

064that we've in various boards over the years i've talked about doing something with this well before you and i got here and then the school year starts or after the election we try to get together it's too late because let's say sorry set this agenda and ready to kick off around this month so there's really no rush to get anything out to them however what i encourage is um for board members to digest this give feedback to the committee these are things you want to discuss and um you know maybe another meeting or two we can go through one more time as i think we should present something to our cheshire representatives i did reach out to um all of them i believe i heard back from liz and you know she's happy to hear

065us and take whatever we have to you know to task out in hartford um so you know this is just starting by and i know dr sullin and vincent and marlene others have talked for a long time over the years the things they want to see addressed so i mean that's that's my feedback i you know give us more thought i appreciate all this being put together thank you good start yeah so the the one the one comment on that i'm i'm totally fine if we don't vote on anything tonight but one thing i would like that i i that gives me a little bit of pause is with regard to getting the bus depot getting ownership of that i'm guessing that does not have to go through any sort of law but it might

066because there's a property transfer involved um and it's just in relation to the timing on that i would um i would like to get that to our legislators if we are serious about i mean if anybody opposes that idea then say it but i think this is something that we could give to liz and leslie and say hey can you can you make this happen do what you need to do i'll just add that the council because it is a council legislative priority i believe it is in the hands of the legislators so you know the endorsement from the board of ed could be additional but i believe it is already there i just want to add uh regardless remote learning so one of the things that uh is happening and unfortunately um like the

067ecs formula it's a mystery uh in hartford is as part of this legislature there is a study underway to look at how remote learning hybrid learning performed during the pandemic not in connecticut but across the nation and there is a legislative committee that's working on that uh i asked it's been a couple months spending her back i asked sd for any information on that because i think cheshire should be part of that study since we've been significant investment on the technology side so i know something is happening i don't necessarily know there's going to be a vote on whether to allow remote learning i'm not saying i'm 100 behind that but it'd be a shame if cheshire wasn't including that study because there has been a significant investment and we were one of the early

068adopters to get there so we can certainly ask what is on that too so put that up there thank you are you that was that point i'm not sure i i just want to add a little context around that remote learning piece that uh to be clear for folks who can't see this at home or whatever that um my suggestion is not to just uh like without boundaries provide remote learning it's in the event of a snow day after we've had two snow days in the year to allow us the flexibility to have additional remote days that count toward our required 180 days of school and not be added on to the end of the year certainly we have the technology to be able to facilitate that we've done that in the past with very

069positive feedback from the community it was an addition for consideration just following jeff is that two consecutive snow days or just once we hit our two-day max we during day three we go room out correct on the latter part of that thank you faith um it just uh i guess to finally if if this uh becomes a full motion to go to our legislatures um the one thing i guess i would ask is perhaps in addition to just remote learning access was the promotion of synchronous learning i know that that was something that i think sde is looking at or perhaps uh kabe was looking at and i know that um i spoke to i believe was fran rabinowitz um who was um enthusiastic about that and said that she'd actually come and give us

070a presentation if we'd like on on their thoughts on a synchronous learning of something they're very excited about so um and i know that we have these this powerful tool uh what what do we call it a ram uh ramplified classroom we have our amplified classrooms that that can be used to either study with students from other schools or combine uh uh classes here uh in our own schools so i think it's a powerful tool that we can be that can be used so if that's something i don't know if that if that requires legislative action or if that's something we can just do uh but that was just uh something i want to just keep on yeah it's not something that we're able to do and it's not something that you know i think

071our administrative team as it sits today would necessarily recommend this is you know a singular modality in terms of learning so if it's a snow day all of our students are home and it's unsafe to travel and so all of our staff can provide instruction through that you know singular remote modality as i said it was effective last year we think we could sustain that efficacy moving forward um not to be used i mean if we get five days you know beyond the first two i can't recall when we've had seven snow days in a winter but i'm sure it's happened knocking out really don't run my mouth on that but um you know the first two after that second snow day the excitement wears off quite a bit and we're not too excited about

072tacking days on to the end of the year at that point it impacts a number of different plans that we as a district have but also families so the flexibility to if necessary add that uh is an actual remote day for all students would be nice right and i didn't mean for synchronous learning to be confused with yes yeah i just want everything yeah make sure those two are two separate separate things separate thing uh tony i just thank you for clarifying the point of order because i was actually very uncomfortable with voting on this tonight there's a lot to unpack here um especially for somebody who does sit on a model curriculum for the state um committee and there's just way more to discuss to to really have a vote or anything so i

073guess my my question right now is to dr solon are you requesting that this information just move forward to the representatives or can we at least have some further review and discussion on each topic no i'm simply responding to the legislative committee uh recommendations adding the remote learning and presenting it to you as a draft form and so if there was this unanimous enthusiasm to adopt it tonight then i guess it could be moved forward is suggested if it needs to be reviewed i mean that's that's fine too this is just a draft okay because as we were talking about prevailing wage and you're getting into a union non-union discussion and uh that right there alone is a huge topic um i don't disagree with the remote learning aspect but again we need to kind

074of delineate yeah i know you want just snow days but in 2012 we were closed for almost two weeks with you know a hurricane so i i just want to get a little more clarification on each item that you wrote here so that's that's where my comfort level lies i just and i don't know um with their request are they looking for a quick turnaround time in response as you said so this is a first draft uh it's a first discussion we've never gotten this far in the past so i certainly have no reason to move anything forward this point other than just to get folks aware that these topics whether or not this is the final list that we uh give our legislators or even perhaps invite them here to future mean to talk

075about some of our concerns if we can get consensus on it we'll figure that out but um so i you know i recommend keep the dialogue going let let's see the community meet again maybe open it up to the rest of the board member so we can all be there and get some feedback but we're not going to solve collective bargaining issues here we're not going to solve the common curriculum here but concerns from the district should be made aware that if cps wants a little bit of flexibility in the amount of curriculum we can ask for that it happens or not but what that means we have not talked about in curriculum yet so getting these ladies more more ideas so more concrete so i would say keep at it give the community some

076feedback schedule a meeting and you know maybe by the time the budget stuff is over we can reconvene on this see where we are because i guess everybody here has indicated it is important to keep our legislators close we never any boards never really work done directly in this fashion um and town council has their priorities more town white stuff but there's a real opportunity for us giving some of our legislators particularly um liz makes ourselves available that you know if there's some things here that we can help get our air on and the session starts i believe next month could be good timing but we'll see no worries at all yeah no i appreciate if she can come and speak to us a little more good uh just as a quick point of order

077i was just looking through the minutes was there a motion to come out of legislative committee to approve no anything for us to consider okay then okay then we're just all right thanks do we have a deadline to come up with a final draft no i mean the one thing where i think something actually is doable um in the short term would be the bus depot and so it really would just depend on what the legislators tell us if there's any sort of timing involved and i do i'm taking yes a property transfer probably does need to get into a law i think there is a property transfer law that gets passed and signed by the governor so we would probably want to have it lined up for that the rest of the stuff i

078don't expect um i don't expect to to have the a voice would be added um to a much bigger discussion and so whether we vote or not i don't see a deadline to it well to add a time frame the legislative session begins on february 9th right so but as far as the bus depot i know the town council in fact i know i'm talking with uh mr slocum that's something they've been looking into i would suggest you know kind of falls under planning here too so if you know we i know vince is going to bring us up at some point for one of the planning meetings uh if not now for cap or other you know definitely discuss it there was like i don't understand the benefits of owning the land i know

079there's some benefits i just i need to quantify them you know as far as the the trailer that's on there to work that was actually done by dako uh at their cost which was kind of nice because you know so um again we'll get more into it uh but i think there's a great topic for planning and maybe after the budget bring it to to andrew and that answered on yeah but on the agenda that was i mean that's something we can at least agree on in time for the ninth or their rounds and see what the legislative folks have to say what's uh that's fine with me and i'm sorry i'm happy if there's no vote tonight i just put it out there but i understand it i do agree that some of these

080issues are big thoughtful uh thought-provoking issues to consider so thank you yeah yes i would just like to um just generally put out there um for a couple of reasons that we refer to our representatives in hartford by their titles and not by their first names um both for a couple of reasons one for the clarity of the public so that they know who we're talking about and uh second just to afford respect to these women in these offices it's senator abrams representative linehan and representative zepkus it's just just a request thank you yeah by no means am i trying to i i respect what you're saying but you should know me better than think otherwise as far as mary leslie rob and craig are concerned uh they don't mind representing their first name but

081point taken hopefully we'll get them here at a future meeting uh they reach out to all and so we'll see what they say thank you anything else then ah planning committee mr martelly all right thank you so planning committee meeting of the whole we've had two meetings in the past month or so the first one was held on december the 16th over at hummuston school the first half of the meeting focused basically on the capital budget mr messiana gave us a presentation of the five-year look forward for capital expenditures across the school district not including any school modernization related items five-year total plan was 26 million 497 500 with the first year request of 5.4 million um a lot of those projects i just like to remind the board and the public that last year

082the planning committee we put forth a very lean proposal as we were going through the school modernization effort to try to determine which projects or which buildings were going to be hit first and so we weren't undoing any of the good work and dollars that were being spent on various projects across the district um don't have the exact breakdown of that but you know this was our first look at the capital at the five-year capital budget we're gonna have another look at it at the planning committee this full board will be able to review it and then it'll be forwarded to the town council and the town council will actually adopt the five-year budget with the one-year list of projects so we're gonna have other chances to take a look at that in the next

083couple weeks and months ahead second half of the meeting was dedicated to colliers who is um town consultant on school modernization effort um colyers over the past several months has been doing several test fits as well as geotechnical analysis of the two chosen school sites one the norton school site as well as casatana in the northwest corner of town due diligence has indicated no real surprises either on the bearing of the soils as well as any of the property's ability to house the schools and the ability to hook into existing infrastructure and infrastructure being brought to those schools in order to support their development at the meeting also we talked about looking ahead at other items that the town council would have to approve for funding as we move forward with school modernization and that

084one of the major items there is looking at school enrollment and engaging slams take a look at the enrollment trends and projecting out over the next eight years or so for uh growth within the district my friend mr white um discuss net zero buildings at length which we promised to take a look at through the school modernization effort and to make sure that that was included um as we develop the budgets moving forward with the projects that's the report on the meeting of december the 16th um january 11th meeting was held at dodd middle school i gave a presentation an 18 slide presentation on school modernization where we were where we are and where we may be going depending on action tonight by this board um i'm not going to go back through the 18

085slides they are available on district website um there is a video of it so i anybody watching at home could pull that up and take a look at that um i pulled a few slides out um in the interest of time so school modernization was a multi-year effort school modernization was established by the town council but certain members two of which are well two three of us are here this evening um as well as just kind of across that cross-section of some town council members as well as others um that make up the general community um the plan that came out back in april of 2021 which was forwarded to the town council recommended the following phase one is two new k-6 elementary schools one located at the north end of town and one located

086at the south end of town possibly on the norton school site existing darcy enchantment buildings are taken offline norton is demolished depending south and school location and redistricting to be addressed as required i'm not gonna get into the phase two and phase threes of what the project is because um if i was to bet everything i had i'm gonna tell you now that these projects will change after the phase one is implemented and we move forward as a town and as a school district but i could be wrong but i don't know if i'll be sitting up here at the time but that's discussion for a later date um so our first cost for phase one which is the new elementary school in the north and in the south the district share after state reimbursement

087is 73.3 million low and 88.2 million dollars high before state reimbursement you would look at a low budget of 109 with a high budget of 131 million dollars so once i was adopted and forwarded to the town council the steps have been taken subsequent to smc's final recommendation um you know there's been talk that nothing's been done since it was originally forward that's furthest thing from the truth um projects at my house could attest to the nights that were spent reviewing the different plans as well as the different consultants that have been hired um to review the different um scenarios so the different steps of test fits um took place both at the marion and jarvis property also known as the kazatano farm fields over there as well as in the norton school a financial

088analysis was done by the town council as well as james jaska who's our finance director here as well as the establishment of a calculator on the town's website where you can input your property values and it'll tell you exactly what the tax implication would be to the average homeowner which is still alive and available for anyone's use environmental and geotechnical site assessments were done at both of the properties educational specifications were developed for darcy school to evaluate the fit for highland or not which we determined that darcy school cannot be placed over at the highland school site would have to be integrated into one of the new school sites valuation was performed at humberston school and central office for future needs so what does this all mean cheshire public schools next generation phase one summary

089is as follows construction of a new northland elementary school to include the birth of three preschool programming from darcy school construction of a new norton elementary school on the existing site chapman elementary school and darcy school are taken offline when the new schools are constructed in elementary elementary redistricting will occur when the new schools are built to accommodate the new buildings brought into the fold of the district so procedural next steps this slide that i had here we all received a gantt chart looking out over what needs to be done for various approvals depending on what happens by the sports action this evening um i just got this tonight so i'm not going to pretend like i could run through it so perhaps vin can um talk about what the next steps are um after

090we take a vote so i will be happy to walk through it exactly so looking at the gantt chart the one key milestone that i'm going to focus on is the red line about two-thirds of the page over which is the grant application the state requires that the school construction grant application has to be in by june 30th okay so that is the key date that we're targeting on if you look at the green bars those are the the things that need to be completed at a very high level these are the three most important things that we need to complete by april 1st the first is updated enrollment projections and finalizing the budgets slam which is a firm that will be updating the enrollment projections at this point has all the information that they

091needed it's the school modernization committee on board and town council members know we use mylana mcbroom which became slr to do the first uh enrollment projection so the staff that was at slr has left the key person mike zuba went to slam so slam and we'll be doing the projections but mike zuba gives us the continuity we need so that work is um going to start if it didn't already start again the key milestone date is it has to be completed by april 1. the finalization of the budget once the enrollment is set will be done by colliers and obviously working with both the town and the board the development of the educational specs is that second green bar that work has already begun dan hansen is a consultant that is helping us with that

092uh and we'll be doing educational specs for the new norton school as well as the new north end elementary school to replace chapman interviews actually started uh this week and the first brand with was uh went very well and when i say interviews that's with the school principal staff from different departments in each of those schools and that they're trying to conduct those jointly the norton staff and chapman staff as well as our key administrators and then the third green bar is the development of not only the project budget but also the schedule for the construction which does have an impact on the budget colliers will be doing that again those deadlines are april 1st the next green bar which is a little further down is the step to compile all the grant application documents

093series of forms that need to be completed out um various uh individuals need to sign off on that including the the board chair superintendent of schools town manager and that deadline for that is may 27th and then if you look just two bars down this is the last one i want to talk about the town council has to pass resolutions that the state requires you know among those includes the formation of a building committee the fact that there will be a referendum held by a set date no later than november 15th oh the results have to be reported no later than november 15th and then even though the grant application is due june 30th this scan chart shows completion and submission of the grant application by the week of june 6 so we're allowing ourselves

094some leeway hopefully we don't need it once the grant application is in then the next milestone i'll just refer to is all the way over to the right the green one on the bottom and that is the voter referendum can take place on by november 8th but election day i know we talked about it is it it is november 8th so that is the set election date in november and that's what the gantt chart is shooting for so that's kind of the high level summary of the gantt chart this was uh developed by colliers and i will stop there yeah if we just add i know we don't have this on the screen anywhere and i noticed hopefully being on our website yes because uh it answers uh the one question we're getting asked quite

095a bit uh not just about the election but most recently because we've been working on this is you know why can't we have referendum in the springtime and it's hard to see this but essentially if you take this whole section and move it back to a year ago then there's probably a chance to hit the spring referendum and the items here i know it's very hard to see this but there are some key things that have to happen some work but also some key votes that have to happen between the border that and the town council uh tonight's vote is on the plan is more of a customary action symbolic if you will but the actual vote on the budget the specs and what has to go to the grant application has to happen sometime

096in april on the budget schedule and then the town council has to hold at least past three local resolutions as well as approving the referendum uh and those results uh that's happening sometime in may so there's a lot of work to do besides um what we've been talking about and i know in our meetings with colliers we asked if you know there's a way we can squeeze this timeline make some time estimates but it's just not going to work if we're you know trying to do something february march is just not feasible so i'm glad this is out there i think this will help the perspective for one together so hopefully make it available to the public thank you then it'll be posted in the morning so that anyone that wants to see it can

097great thank you um so with that i would like to make a motion if that's appropriate mr chairman okay i'd like to move to the cheshire board of education forward cheshire public schools next generation phase one plan to the town council for approval do i have a second adam all right discussion i just want to ask vin worst case scenario okay so somebody who picks this up or sees it online for the first time they're seeing a lot of work being done prior to that referendum right because it's necessary based on timelines once that we get to november 8th worst case scenario the referendum doesn't go through where are we from that point on because there's a lot of application processing and all that so if you can give a simple answer i'm afraid to

098give a simple answer to that one well i mean my gut answer is you're not back at square one because you've you've invested a lot of work in developing the plan so i think the next step would be to reassess and that would be something that the board and the town council would do and determine do they want to keep that same plan and go forward with the referendum on another date or is there a different decision to be made to adjust the plan and then go back to referendum it's not unusual in that town's history that we have an item that goes to referendum that doesn't pass the first time but does pass the second time the latest one that that comes to mind is the construction of that permanent structure at the town

099pool didn't pass the first time but it did the second mr chair might i add to that response please i i think you know from a procedural perspective mr maciana is spot on i think um logistically i don't want to lose sight of the fact that you've seen our not you uh miss rosenberg not you the board but i think you the community has seen our enrollment projections and the escalating enrollment and how that's you know really kind of exceeded expectations at this point my reservation about not moving forward is not necessarily simply the just the procedural but logistical with the number of students we have exceeding capacity in buildings to the point where we would have to invest at that point in you know portable units which just to me reeks of waste when

100that's you know in our hands right now to be preventable so i didn't want to lose sight of that element as well are you done sir i'm good thank you vin for that because again we get a lot of you know feedback where there's so and there has been a lot of work i mean we're going way back years before obviously i was aware of it two years ago but i just want some assurance that it's not again we go back to the one and done it's not gonna die in referendum we did all this work we're gonna be able to still capitalize on all the work that we've done so that we can move all this forward if i can make one more point and that is that if it fails that referendum in

101november the next cycle means that we we basically lose a full year because the state you know has that june 30th deadline they don't look at school construction applications in an interim period they do it basically once a year after the june 30th date ends so that that is a loss of a year and i think that speaks to the point that dr solon was making that you know now we have to potentially make provisions for alternate spaces for students so if i turn it back to tim uh so to further complicate that a little bit there's a uh blackout period where neither the board of vetted town council can promote the referendum i think that happens once the town council sets a referendum in other words we can talk about the project details that

102we can't say hey go out and vote support this planner so i bring that up because in addition to all the work that has to still happen there still is a communications aspect to this that has to be vetted out and other things and uh i will tell you this in some manager meetings i've had with um dr solon and vincent and town staff and colliers on this milestone uh i like to plan for the worst hope for the best so i think there is some i i think we'd i uh who was it was uh marlena that used to call me tony downer right was always had a negative outlook on things i don't want to be a tony downer but if our sewer treatment plan upgrade failed the first time out and that

103was only 33 23 million dollars um you know the finance and this have to be clear but should this fail um we would we being the board of town council would have to have some time to figure out why what the feedback is what could be different you know uh maybe redoing the phase one and you know that's not going to happen in thanksgiving right so now we're in and if you look at the collier's timeline for construction of schools i think you know once this does pass then the design work actually starts and at some point the construction starts after we find a project and so there's you're talking about three years out potentially before the doors open to the first school and there's gonna be two schools done at the same time that

104three years puts us right at the height of our seating functional capacity so there really is no going back without feeling some pain for a while so the good point i i'm not going to hold you to others will pass on that i think you know we we're all going to be ensuring that the right information gets out there to help it people make the right decision but um i think will behoove us to not plan for uh how to handle rejection so we'll we'll we'll figure it out i'll have an answer but some we're all aware of for sure good point soon thanks tony i'm gonna i'm going to support this motion tonight um i do think that going forward new construction makes the most sense for for these two projects the two different

105schools i think it makes the most sense if we're doing net zero or sustainable construction having said that this is expensive you said the state are our portion is probably going to be like 73 to 88 million dollars the red sort of the range 73 to 88.2 thank you um so i just want to reassure the public that we have looked at alternatives one concern that's been raised with me by several people including parents at norton is that norton is nice so why would not why would we knock it down and build new um we have looked at renovating as new and i believe the initial construction cost and i say that very specifically the initial construction cost because when you build new with sustainable construction the life cycle costs should be and i would

106support i do believe generally speaking and i would support this is the life cycle costs of sustainable construction are lower than the life cycle costs of non-sustainable construction non-sustainable construction being what we do all the time so i'd like to move forward make some progress on our built environment here in cheshire um but the initial cost would be higher for sustainable construction um and also uh taking that out of it the numbers we're looking at right now the 73 to 88 million or so as we've looked at alternatives my understanding is that the renovate as new for norton would be you know possibly seven million dollars less seven to eight million dollars less um to renovate as new but there are real reasons that we want to that i want to move forward with this

107the plan that we have right now and i'm wondering if somebody else more knowledgeable about this could speak to some of those such as what um you know what jeff had just what jeff had just mentioned a few minutes ago about um the portable classrooms stuff like that i mean that is something that i don't think many people really would want to have and i'm just wondering generally so summer what are some of the the um benefits to doing this rather than doing new construction rather than renovate as new so if i just get a little history i just want the board know that the town council and a lot of us were there in the fall when colliers did respond to a town council a question about renovators new on the dodd property and

108they present uh two things one was a test fit of what that would look like and the cost associated with that as part of that discussion the the just the fact that you're still stuck with an existing building layout and you build as new and you it's just you're locked into that whole design wasn't helpful it was about seven million dollars cheaper to renovate however in vincent and jeff gregory i believe the other issue though was some of the cost a lot of cost is negated because there's at least two million dollars worth of trailers to rent for over two years that that was the high low financial so it wasn't even palatable to town council however i think there is you did talk about some of the benefits and pros and cons on that

109yeah you know additionally to what you just added there uh mr chairman the issue of lifespan around a renovation project is 20 years new construction is 50 years and so you know when we look at the longevity of the facility after netting out things like trailers and the quality of life with respect to the traffic that they're being rather nightmarish and things like that you know it just didn't sound like didn't in the evaluation of numerous people didn't present itself is economically uh or logistically the right decision vin is there anything you want to add to that i'd also make the point that if you're gonna um try and renovate norton keep in mind you're doing it in place so you'll have students on the property in the building at the same time that you

110have construction work going on you can't build a school you can't renovate a school as quickly as you could build a new one even if it's on the same site because the way the construction that normal would work is that you'd segregate the new construction in fact the construction entrance would probably come around the back of the property so renovating norton will actually take us a longer period of time than a new construction would take that's certainly one of the considerations obviously the cost of the trailers has already been mentioned and from a life cycle cost perspective probably the most important thing is you're getting 20 years against the dollar spent on a renovation you're getting 50 years on new construction not not to mention um if you renovated norton we did look at it

111as as part of option 1a um you know and the cost that were determined were only for a school the same size so that would have other impacts on what you'd have to do to make sure you have enough capacity in the elementary so i think that's one of the reasons that the norton renovation in particular was not attractive and if i if i could just add to the the circulation that the test fits the preliminary test fits that have been done for that property provide for safe and more seamless drop-off for students and buses and queuing and you mean the situation over there now i mean i don't go there but i've been through the neighborhood before i mean and now you'll be able to actually have buses queuing on the property and have

112parents be able to drop off their children and have parking on site versus that kind of bottleneck where the school blocks off the entire rear portion of the property so um that's just my two cents on that thank you yeah i know there are definitely um there are definitely factors in there that don't have a straightforward obvious economic impact um the dust in the hallways while kids are walking around anything like that the traffic i mean i've seen i've seen norton you know i'm i'm at norton again now as a parent um the traffic could just stop at the right time whatever 9 a.m do little it stops at about 8 a.m at that four-way intersection it just becomes a nightmare um but with regard to norton specifically yeah i mean if we could improve

113the traffic flows that that doesn't have an obvious economic benefit that i that i could quantify but there are real benefits to it so i'm going to support this motion tonight and thank you for the for the feedback on that oh there's no dumb question like mr gripper oh did you no uh oh okay andrew feel free to vet the questions oh i i wasn't sure how it's uh who's the pro okay andrew thank you um i just wanted to say that i will be supporting this motion uh this evening i think i said it at the last meeting i've probably said it many many times over the last several months i think that this next generation plan is the best plan for cheshire the best plan for cheshire public schools to accommodate for the

114growing capacity that we have and is a great first step in modernizing our schools um as uh mr white can attest we were both graduates of of norton school um and uh and of cheshire public schools generally um and um as the uh uh the modernization committee uh progressed the one thing i was like oh man i hope we don't have to you know demolish norton school right love norton school my son goes to norton school your kids go to school it's a great thing to have that second generation of kids be able to go there and experience what we experience mostly mr rilles kickball field isn't there anymore but um but probably the best part right um yes but you know um you know it as adults we have to make adult decisions and

115we have to decide on on things uh for for the future of our school system uh you know the for the next generation of students and i think uh building uh a new school on the norton site and building a new elementary school in the uh the north end i think is the right thing to do it gives us the most flexibility uh since even even though we have these great studies that the population is still you know is not for certain it could be much more it could be it could stabilize could be less who knows but by building uh by accepting this plan i think gives us the the best way forward so i will be supporting this thank you yeah hi thanks um for all this information tonight i just wanted to

116explain why why i will not be supporting moving this project forward because there's some really good aspects to this project and the really good aspect is um a new elementary school in the north end of town and combining uh the darcy early childhood programs into that new construction because that affords us to close two buildings d'arcy and and chapman school which are really an adequate facilities the reason that i will not be supporting this moving forward is because it's for me based on a very flawed whole project aspect which is that um we heard so much information from really cogent information from educators and and people across the board about building a six through eight middle school and including a sixth grade in a middle school program and um and also a lot of information

117that we've garnered along the way over the years about the inadequacies of both the building and the site that dodd middle school currently sits on so for me two two school buildings being built one of them i completely agree with the elementary school on a very appropriate piece of land and including the early childhood and preschool programming but for me the second school really needs to be a sixth grade middle school we don't have a plot of land for that right now but i would like to encourage the whole town to start thinking about where we could get said piece of land and get the middle school off of that inadequate site uh and be able to put our sixth grade into the middle school uh programming so i just wanted to explain why i

118will not be supporting this project moving forward thank you man i appreciate everyone's comments and i don't have much more to add i've said them in various committee meetings so i just think it's time it's been two years in the making here and if you want to throw in the process before it's many more than that and you've got a viable plan you've got a viable plan that that addresses the most urgent need uh so anyway i think it's time for the to be able to give the town the chance to speak on this and and i know we've had public hearings and everything um where attendance has been light but i can't believe that this issue is flying under the radar so low that nobody is paying attention to it so i think it's

119time for us to make an a to take a move and then for the town council to do it and give it to the people and let them vote up or now it's it's long past due thank you faith can i just add something no please of course yes of course andrews just in response to and i think i'm gonna be voting in favor of this for the exact reason what she's saying she won't be voting in favor of this for is is that we don't have a site for the new middle school whether it's a seven or eight or six through eight and that is why phase one needs to move forward which is the two new elementary schools which is going to address our biggest need first and then phase two will be

120hopefully a new middle school and then we'll have the time to find the piece of land in order to build the adequate middle school to get it off the dot parcel and we could plan that over the next three years as we're going through the construction of these two new schools those schools could open and then we could be having that discussion moving a project for a new middle school forward so since we were elected in 2000 and whatever it was 2019 right um we have been studying and touring and going through the different facilities listening to the people and we had no idea what was going to happen with the enrollment and and here we are and so from where i sit here and from where i sit during my day job in town

121hall i feel as if we have a window right now to get a project forward this project was vetted and vetted and vetted and vetted by this board by the board before i mean this it's it's time to move something forward and if we wait any longer um i'm just not going to put kids in trailers so that's why people in favor tonight yes tim thanks tony yeah one other point um i've been asked about inflation and hedging it i know that so these are big numbers and the inflation is concerning me as imagine is to a lot of other people colliers gave us a quick update on what they're doing in terms of hedging inflation risk right now did you could you speak to that just briefly then i mean i can do it

122if if you start i'll pepper anything that you miss so yeah just so people just people in town now basically um the way i recall being conveyed was that in years past there was always some sort of risk for budgets their their contracts costs going up or down but generally they probably stayed within a band of a few percent say two or three percent and it was understood uh by colliers by the construction companies that that was part of what they did they took the profit with the loss and those small and that's relatively small banding and now that banding is widening and it's really on the cost side where it's widening and so what colliers has done has said they've been going to their contractors and saying all right put all your cards on

123the table tell us what your real costs are and we'll split the difference with you i think that's what pretty much what he said um so it is part of the discussion as this moves forward inflation is happening we see it so we're being mindful of it to the extent that we can thank you nothing you want to add you got it nice i'll leave it well good [Music] yes sam um so i again thank you all for sharing your points and being the new kid on the block i did follow this for the past two years and i think there's our you know having saturn planning for the couple meetings and looking all the information i think there are more pros and cons going forward and i feel more comfortable um especially after what

124um andrew just said that you know this is not one and done and and that's and that's where i feel most at ease is that we we as a board are going to go forward and and make sure i guess that's our task and make sure that we um we plan for that middle school we find you know that land and so on so i will be voting for this just you know mathematically i'm that's my background and there are more pros and there are cons with this and i i also want to thank the work that was done prior to this because it it has moved quicker than anything else i've seen in the past projects with this town so i appreciate that um because our kids can't wait and i have taught in

125one of those units and it is not fun so um i appreciate all the work thank you to the three of you that were on the committee and the engineer that sits out in the audience over here too um because i think we do have a pretty like face said a viable plan moving forward thank you thank you sam uh i always say my comments for last but before i do that uh is there anyone from the public that let the comment on this motion just in case i can answer any questions chuck's good and said enough okay uh chuck nut by the way you can't see him on camera but he was our acting chair and school modernization to help bring these plants to us and that being said before i say a few

126things um i do because there has been a lot of work that's gone into this not just by the three members of the board the board past board members and town council members but i do want to thank chuck and all the monetization committee members i think so much time has gone by that maybe some folks actually forgot the names so no particular order i just want to say thank you to matt bowman rich gossenberg ann harrigan jim jinx andrew martelly renee martinez sylvia nichols cataldano jeff pangaro myself don walsh rob orris chuck neth as well as a couple of former committee members there was a lot of work put into this plan um a lot of great debates a lot of that's history but it's relevant history and i know folks really want to

127look at those meetings they're all archived in the town website but i i i want to just put another piece information because we do a new board member and i was really surprised in talking to some of the public during the election cycle on how the modernization committee came to be so without going through the last iteration of the plan in 2017 what happened since 2017 uh essentially the board of ed put forth the very comprehensive uh plan would cost to the then town council and it went nowhere for very reasons a lot of stuff was happening in 2018 that kind of circumvented both the board and town council however late 2018 opportunity presented itself with the alexion building being available and uh you're probably asking well why is tommy telling this history because it's

128relevant this is the missed opportunities that short-sighted planning tends to bite this town so wonderful opportunity of luxon building at the time it was big enough to accommodate sunday middle school sixth grade middle school hummuston so unfortunately due to the timing and uh the fact that we have to go to referendum and that the owner of the building had a buyer ready to go uh the town counts on the board of ed that was working just could not get it there fast enough so i was missed opportunity and then for a year nothing happened for again various reasons but in 2019 uh what folks don't understand is there's as much as we want to have a body committee of the board of end town council our town charter doesn't allow us to do that i

129can't simply invite town council members to be part of our modernization committee if we had one of vice versa the best avenue was to create a separate committee uh comprised per town charter under a town council where we could belong to that but also open to the community because the big issue with the last plan in 2017 was as much as the board did a lot of work and as much as we tried to televise and promote the means that happened there was not a lot of public participation and it was very lacks town council participation at that time and there was no members on the on the committee for that so myself uh chairman chair helen at the time and ann worked with three members of the town council actually was rob orris uh

130paul bowman i think patty flynn harris at first to talk about this committee and also vet over 37 people that responded to volunteer for his committee so there was a very uh cordial bipartisan effort by the sixth of us at the time to get that committee going we the six of us as well as when andrew came on board when catherine uh uh stepped down from committee and i believe this feels like it was yesterday but so long ago pierre dalbert came on the board when so when uh patty from harris was the town council we put the last few folks on that committee committee was 13 people of which seven were community members and it was a strong emphasis that we have more communities say because this is a big nut so uh i

131think that was the right way to go uh you know we learned a lot of lessons from that committee i hope that the committee members will will stick uh close by because this is just the beginning and there's a lot more to do as sam uh alluded to so i hope that the folks on the committee will help us in the near future uh but to say that this was an unfair flawed process is not grounded in reality and uh it is not driven by a town council the reason the town council is involved all this time is because the board of ed has absolutely no ability to acquire land perform physical analysis tap into our town financial planner hire environmentalists pay colliers the perk test it was something that we needed the first plan

132around so i uh someone asked me is why is the town council telling you what to do they're not this has been a collaborative process since october of 2019. and what folks probably didn't see between these meetings and town council meetings and modernization committee meetings those series of management discussions we've been having to talk about process and progress so at this point the town council essentially needs to know from us what do you want to do is this something we should pursue because i think in an upcoming meeting uh there's a request for more funding for colliers to continue working on the perk tests environmental studies traffic studies and before the town council could spend more money are we on board i think we are for the most part um so it is a collaborative

133process both bodies cannot get to this point with the amount of detail that we have without working together and off on the community so i want to thank everyone that was involved in that process because it was a lengthy process uh moving forward and samantha mentioned this and made a wonderful point and something that's overlooked and one of the main reasons the recommendations came as a different modernization there is no space to put a sixth straight middle school in cheshire it would barely fit on the marion property and there's some concerns there upon that size of a school on that parcel if we did put something there we don't have a place for chapman chapman is a new school that's going there the existing chapman property is too small to have the school in place

134infrastructure happen on site and they're probably so there's a good point here we don't have the land to expand the other point it was made tonight something that sunk a broken record this is just phase one this is a multi-phase plan for me and i know for all the board members this is not a short term one and done we do something three years from now and we don't do everything again for 20 years that's that kind of thinking that's caused us to have this problem that we have so that being said knowing that there's a phase two knowing we have to address doolittle because that's come up quite a bit knowing that we're going to have to renovate that middle school or build as new what is seven through eight or six through eight

135and even dull dots lower on the list in terms of school needs in that regard it has to be addressed wouldn't it be nice when the time comes let's say in three to four years whatever board is here is looking at dodd and actually has land available to plan for a new middle school a new high school if not in the next five seven years down the road so we we need that long-term planning so i'm committed to it i know our board members commit sam's so this is not the end this is just the beginning it may sound like we're getting ahead of ourselves but if i say this but i've been involved with our schools since 2009 and a lot of progress has been made as sam mentioned because back then had i

136i proposed 100 school i'd been left out of the community we had a hard time just getting the church high school boys locker room renovated and that was a drop in the bucket here we are fast forward 13 years later after at least six years of studies we have the body of the board of ed the body of the town council looking at an overall 400 plus million dollar three-phase plan and seriously willing to put the first phase out the referendum to me that's a miracle in this town and it speaks to the folks involvement so this is not over there's a lot more discussion to be had i certainly support this um you know i'm not gonna get into the sixth or eighth versus seven three debates there's merit on both i agree with

137sam samantha on you know there's more pros than cons there is no bad choice but we have to continue planning and working ahead not just us but with the town council and as we get moving on this as the town council starts uh finalizing their discussion on this once we pass it over uh we will be working with them talk about let's get ready for phase two um and i would just go back to somebody said earlier in terms of the referendum itself um you know if it does fail in november it's a problem and uh there's literally no time to recover from that and be ready for the enrollments that's hitting our elementary school right now so we will plan a little bit ahead for that strategize that being said i don't want to

138keep the meeting running longer so i want to thank everyone for the help um but this is just to confirm that you know we're ready to move forward this next generation plan and the one thing that wasn't mentioned tonight that was mentioned in the last two planning committee meetings as the one modification to the uh the scenario was there's been a lot of talk about what to do with hummingston um and uh lot to do with the birth to the birth of three program from darcy we know that that program itself will not fit highland uh if it did fit we are maxed out with space and highland we'd have to build out in that property which is impossible um so we don't want to shove birth to three at highland it makes more sense

139to put it in the new elementary school uh as an add-on on the merriam property we're comfortable not knowing the final cost for that we don't have to wait for us to move forward colliers is working on that hopefully it's within the range that's already there but as far as hummingston goes yes we need to do something hummuston it was not recognized as a priority one in the list but it was uh asked by a town council to include something in phase one so they at least have some money allocate from referendum so at the end of phase one we can start doing something there there is still no plan for homestead doesn't be a good fit no matter where we look at it the the planning committee i know most board members if all

140of us don't feel we need to wait another four months to vet out hummus then to move this forward so hummus then is not part of our consideration right now we will take that up as is either part of the capital project process or or the town council on a separate uh plan for that it's something out of the question but as far as the board is concerned it is not critical for this very first phase but to address it shortly thereafter so by and large that's the overview all this information will be online including the gantt chart and android i know you mentioned that the financial calculators on the town website i can't find it uh the link to the modernization committee disappear from the front page um so we need to get back

141that out there so um but pay close attention to that that being said um you know again it's i think the fun i believe this is fun is just getting started let's see where it goes i assume we support this barring any other comments uh i will call for a vote on the motion mr mertelli would you read the motion one more time sure thing to the cheshire board of education forward cheshire public schools next generation phase one plan to the town council for approval thank you is there a second i'm sorry all in favor six in favor all opposed want to pose thank you team the motion passer six to one [Applause] onward and upward okay next on the agenda anything else from planning mr martelly that concludes the uh planning committee for this

142evening thank you uh policy mr agrippa thank you mr chairman i'll try and uh make it brief um the uh the bulk of what we discussed on december 21st um i would recommend that you um view the uh the record the video that we had um done um so that uh you can uh view it at your uh leisure um but what we did discuss uh uh firstly was to uh bring our uh student hazing bullying policy to a third reading and i'll bring a motion forth uh shortly on that we had discussed that again it's even showing up on the legislative agendas the uh the definition of bullying is still a little confusing even though it's been reviewed or revised by the legislature uh but uh otherwise the the policy itself i think is

143uh i think the policy committee agreed is in its uh the best form that it's ever been thanks to our attorneys at uh uh bertram moses isn't it yes yeah yeah all right um and so um that's a a great policy and i think that if anyone's concerned that they it's a it's not easy reading but it's understandable reading um up until of course you get to the actual definition of bullying which is still very confusing uh we're going to try and uh clarify that as time goes on um uh secondly um we had a great discussion on school safety and security um i asked uh dr solon uh to bring uh with him or i asked dr sullivan for some clarification uh or updates on school safety and security brought with him uh mr

144uh vivia vivia um who is a i guess a uh sort of an unofficial consultant to the cheshire uh public schools um and i brought it um i wanted to discuss it in in light of the the oxford school shooting that occurred in michigan and some of the the fact pattern that occurred that uh that alarmed me and and i wanted to know if those sorts of things could theoretically happen here or are there are there laws in place or procedures in place and um we we reserve them or we received a lot of assurances that our procedures are uh and policies are a lot uh tighter and a lot more um uh i don't know forceful or uh or there's a lot a lot better intervention in our school system yeah and there's a

145lot of interdependence and checks and balances along the way um so there was a lot of great discussion there uh which was which is on video if you'd like to watch our discussion of left of bang in the uh alice training uh that has been done in the past and will continue on in the future for all of our staff um so and students um hopefully and um so yeah there's a there was a lot of great discussion there um so um and we adjourned at 7 15. and uh so i have a motion let's see where's the motion motion is right here so i'd like to bring a motion mr chair um that the cheshire board of education give a third and final reading to policy number 5131.911 student hazing student hazing bullying and

146direct the superintendent to put said policy into immediate effects is there a second that's a tie there i'm going to go with tim 10 seconds great yeah discussion mr gripper um yeah is there any discussion on that motion oh yes yes [Music] sorry i i i said this to you i have a problem with just a single act in my life um but uh kids are cured kids do silly things kids act irrationally and i want to know just you know and it could seem like a single act could seem like a significant thing and that child goes home in his eyebrows but that one significant act will be in that child's record and i just yeah so i i absolutely share the reservation around the ambiguity and the the language and a lot of

147times what we see in law is that legislators will write a law but judges define laws really and it goes through a judicial process before we really have a little bit more black and white around what is meant i'm definitely sensitive i think our administrative team is sensitive and i mentioned before that there are a lot of checks and balances in place and when we have significant incidents to the developmental you know place a student is in whether they're 7 or 17 is dramatically different the acts are dramatically different and there is some check and balance that allows for the superintendent over periods of time to remove items from a disciplinary file so you know if the behavior was as you indicated the concern a singular event that was not repeated for many years there's

148there's still an opportunity to expunge that i can also tell you as a former high school principal the absent the military academies you know we don't get requests for disciplinary records of students applying to college so i don't want to say that's not important because it is but um the impact may not be as severe about something that happened in the distant future and as i said there's a opportunity to expunge that if it is warranted but yeah i understand the ambiguities is tough it's tough for us administratively too well [Music] sorry i'm not talking here asking for a um a record uh the child is going to be labeled a bully for a potentially irrational act and um everyone in that peer group little stigma i don't know i just i wish i knew

149more i i i i can't wait for we can't wait for a court to define what significant means i i just have serious problems with it just a single act because i know you're going to be careful i guess but down the road i i don't know um yeah it's just the way the law is written it is problematic i don't disagree okay i i just i have i just want it on the record that i have a serious problem with the way that it's written right now as far as i can tell dr someone can just kind of give a quick i'm i'm i know firsthand that there are restorative practices you know when a child does something there's there's a process that we go through before getting to the point where you have

150to put it on their record so to speak um so i don't know if you can kind of shed some light on what what the process is restoratively sure if i mean it really what makes uh conversations around this more difficult is that it is so circumstantial and individual each case is incredibly unique we look at things like the time frame over which acts occurred we look at the severity of acts we look at any potential history of prior intervention and was this continued after prior intervention generally speaking from a disciplined perspective our philosophy is not that um you know it's not punitive in nature if punitive responses were successful the you know most outstanding organization in the community would be the cheshire correctional facility um and so we don't we don't come from a

151punitive we come from a restorative as you said sam or or uh constructive perspective it's about teaching the student to avoid these things in the future and that being said there are also consequences sometimes the behavior is significant enough that you know statutorily the the consequence is the identification of the bully label which i hate that myself to to say that oh now you're a bullying you're a bully we don't say that we say that the act what you had done meets the definition of bullying now what do we do to make it right how do we learn from this you're not a bully um but that's you know kind of our philosophy on things in a nutshell oh yes and go ahead is it safe to say that um this policy was reviewed and

152revised to meet changes in the law yeah it was um it reflects changes in the law and was drafted as um adam said by our legal team and we you know i think we really appreciated on the policy committee having reviewed past you know policy and the law that um what was presented to us by bertram moses was incredibly clear and as concise as can be under those circumstances great thank you because i very much agree with faith on this issue i you know legislating behavior is i don't know it's a difficult road to go down but i mean our our policies our school policies have to be in alignment with with the law and so um i don't know how we get around that but i do commiserate with you faith can i commiserate

153with both of you and in faith i i annie took the words on my mouth i we don't want uh the laws dictating definitions of behavior but i am encouraged however you know what dr sullin was uh what i and again i know there's no guarantees but i i guess the for parents out there that might be paying attention to this i i hope uh they realize that just because there may be a single act of bullying for their student doesn't necessarily mean it's going to hit this vague criteria i trust that dr sone and his team will follow process and procedures they've been doing to make sure that you know wrongs aren't happening this process so i i i will vote for this i i like but i think it's up to us in

154our school districts that if we're running situations with the definition of that term to give our legislators some feedback to help fix that if we get there but so but i am encouraged by a lot of the other changes that have happened to this policy since 2018 um which i will go through them all but so thank you thank you for doing the work and i know policy spends a lot of time on these issues so i appreciate your time on this seeing no uh further discussion all in favor of the motion it is uh six four uh against one against thank you mr chairman that concludes uh the policy uh update all righty we're in the home stretch so uh in our packets uh we are in section five which is approval of minutes

155we have minutes from meetings held on december 9th uh both the organizational and business meetings that evening as well as our meeting on january 13th so i uh move the board education approve the minutes from the meetings held on december 9th and january 13th 2022 is there a second second any discussion or changes additions edits to the minutes seeing as there are none uh i move the motion is of the board education approve the minutes from meetings held on december 9th and january 13th 2022 all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you very much mrs harrigan correspondents do we have any correspondence this evening i was given no correspondence to read this evening thank you thank you very much and now we're at the much anticipated superintendent's report dr sullivan

156it's all yours thank you very much uh first i want to just begin by apologizing for my tardiness tonight unfortunately i had something come up that was unavoidable um in part i'm you know disappointed i hate to to miss uh our meetings but also to miss suez wick's moment of silence i considered her a dear friend and colleague you know her commitment to cheshire high school was incredible even after her graduation to come back and substitute and spend time there her smile made a difference every day at cheshire high that she was there so rest in peace sue um i want to take a second you know it's not rare that i applaud when we pass a motion but i think after six years of working diligently on addressing school modernization that was was warranted

157and i uh have to say i i'm wildly excited about the thought of moving this plan forward what it means for our kids and our community um you know they're this is educationally and logistically and financially beneficial for our community and i hope that you know those watching and our broader community will support this plan uh to that point you know mr peregini talked about where to find the school modernization info if you go to our home page there's a bold center of the page top of the page school modernization link if you click there you can follow the link to the town site which does have the financial calculator a little bit difficult to find i agree when you go to the town site but if it's easier you can just go to our

158site and get yourself there pretty quickly if i can interrupt you quickly i am tomorrow when i go in i will make sure that that's on the school modernization it is on there if you go to if you go to the town website you go to government to the drop down you go to school modernization but once you're there it's kind of difficult to find it you gotta click click here button then you gotta click another one it's uh it's a little needle in the haystack but we'll uh we can find it off our page maybe a bit easier um i wanna announce that the cheshire ed foundation has their annual trivia contest scheduled at the gideon wells dining hall on the campus of cheshire academy on saturday march 26th teams of four compete in

159fun trivia contests for a great cause the cheshire ed foundation does so much and sam is a member of that to support our school system by offering grants and scholarships it's a great organization the event begins at 7 00 pm byob may be the best part of it for some of us um i i you know with all due respect to my former teammates i've not had much success but i've always had fun um so i'll notify folks when tickets are available the cost is about fifty dollars per team uh so certainly very reasonable and uh worth a great night out good times um more good news we've seen a precipitous decline in covid cases since we've returned from school on january third during that first week back we averaged at that point more than

160130 positive students daily for the week so a lot of positivity that that first week after christmas break the absentee rate in our schools was over 10 on average a lot of students out so uh i appreciate everybody's in the community support as we had that early dismissal uh that thursday to really address the needs of our kids and reschedule the professional development day for the 27th what we've seen this week is that we've gone from about 130 positive cases on average to 60. so a really as i said precipitous drop-off the absentee rate this week has been below 5 so dramatically better which is really gives me hope and optimism that we're on the right side of this we're also offering a booster clinic in partnership with just for cot that'll be offered at

161cheshire high school on thursday january 27th please see the chesapeake website for more information or to book an appointment for your child age 5 to 18 it's also available for our staff at this point so encourage anybody that's interested to to seek that out moving on to my next item it's the aces open choice we're not required to vote on this but i think it's important to have conversation and communication around this we currently have open choice students enrolled in our schools that's that's great they're a tremendous benefit uh to our community and they provide a diverse school environment and the funds that we receive from the state help provide additional supports and programming uh we think it's really a mutually beneficial program and so as you know marlene and myself and ryan murphy we

162evaluate our enrollment next year unfortunately you know if anybody remembers anything from my budget presentation i think it's two things medical benefits and you know ballooning enrollment so there aren't as many new spots to available to offer next year but um we do have uh several openings that we were going to offer based on the lowest spots of enrollment across the district at the elementary grades chapman is looking at one seat in kindergarten one in first and two in third grade norton won in first grade do a little one in kindergarten and nine excuse me five students in ninth grade at cheshire high school because we're opening these seats doesn't necessarily mean that they get filled last year we offered 14 seats and eight were ultimately filled mostly at the high school so we're offering

163them they may or may not be filled and we receive three thousand dollars per student from the state of connecticut like as i said it goes to provide additional supports and programming um predominantly directed toward open choice services so the cost is offset dramatically there so that's what you know our plan was to submit uh as i said not perhaps the the growth we would like but um under the circumstances we're happy to do anything um and then finally covid19 emails there there are none for tonight's meeting um and so that concludes my report thank you i'll certainly entertain any questions sam yeah show your hand um dr i just want to say um thank you to whoever idea that is to send out the interest in the late and early um arrival just to

164study hall to eliminate at least decrease you know population um i i'm i'm thinking that that is helping in assisting with the covet numbers you know the decrease in covenant numbers yeah i mean that was uh a student suggestion pre-omicron uh for junior um privilege that you know we revisited post omicron and felt it was in everybody's best interest to lighten the load where possible in terms of the population density yeah that's something that's working so i apologize my second question is how are we messaging the open choice program we we message that through new haven okay uh new haven communicates that through aces to their um you know entire population of uh school-age eligible eligible children and we you know hope that they get filled from that perspective and it's okay uh one of

165the i think the downsides is i've had numerous conversations with students that are open choice participants over the years as a principal and superintendent and we are the northernmost town the the farthest drive from new haven uh to participate last year you know when i found out exactly how much time the kids had to be out at the bus before six o'clock in the morning for high school it's obscene so we added a number of seats for the high school run to um necessitate two buses so that it i think it it changed the pickup time by 45 minutes which is significant but it's still very early and so um hopefully the message gets out and you know our kids are having a positive experience and you know they tell a friend and we're able

166to fill those seats just kind of follow up to that do you have the number of kids who leave or attend from our district their magna schools i could get that for you unfortunately i don't know that off the top of my head that it's a limited number uh tony's suggesting one uh we do have some we have a diversity of magnet opportunities or vocational ed or you know so uh i can provide a more comprehensive uh report to the board on that i actually have a report for that i said on the governing board afford it too yeah the aces boy i think it's one don't quote me but it was pretty yeah at least into that the magnet program in new haven i think we yeah that goes up full time we have

167more than that who attend the educational center for the arts which is a part-time magnet program in in new haven that our kids from chs go to i'm sorry adam even uh just a couple comments um you know it wasn't too long ago i think that you know that you had reported that uh for open choice i think um students participating was at 30 so at least we're up to 37 which is you know a little better but no progress right you know it's progress right exactly so i'm glad you know that we still have seats uh still available to help expand the program thank you um and uh secondly um i'm happy to see that the the cheshire um education foundation is having that trivia because i know that the team that uh i

168was on with mr mrs ham i believe uh we took third place that the last time was offered so i think yeah you guys are formidable opponents you guys are prize winners that's not gaming yeah oh man we took second place one year they took second place challenge accepted that sounds like a challenge they took second place the year that i couldn't make it that's the uh i was on their team the year before we didn't place it it kind of hurt a little bit yeah i think they gave me a prize though anyway so anyway uh yes uh i'm glad to see uh open choice releases increasing and uh lastly is seeing our coveted numbers are going down amen yes sam yeah jeff um about the early dismissal for i just wanted to report

169that i have heard from teachers how much they appreciate having that time and all of the half days that they had built into the schedule last year i think and i i just want people to know that the reason they appreciate it is not because they go home midday and sit around on their couches eating bonbons they really need that time to put together materials when they have students who are coming in from quarantining at home being remote learners and and other students going to being remote learners on a daily basis it's different and they are working really hard to put materials together so that they can send home the correct materials to keep kids on track with their learning and i know that marlene knows this and jeff knows this but um i have

170heard reports of how much that's appreciated and even if it's only 60 kids now instead of um i you know it might be worth thinking about adding another early dismissal day down the road for for the teachers so that they can do what they need to do to keep all the kids uh better on track so i just wanted to report that and and um let you know that it really is appreciated when it happens thank you if i'm hearing it it's going to be it's it's um it's backed up by professional literature of late about burnout in the profession and that you know i could shower you with gratitude and uh even if i gave you a day off the work file's up tomorrow and it's it's contributing to burnout so giving people time

171they need to execute the additional work and for us one of the other components is the skills that they need so marlene and her team our administrators put a lot of time in acceleration last year which lends confidence to people to be able to navigate the challenges that we face this year and so yeah certainly that time is very much appreciated thank you any other questions from the board and superintendent's report thank you dr song um moving on we have no old business new business uh it's a few quick items from my my for me uh the board knows but there's a cable legislative breakfast coming up on january 28th i know at least one of us a couple of us have already registered for it we're in area seven so it's not just czech

172republic schools board members that will be there but area seven starts from cheshire all the way down to milford it's about school districts so there should be ample representation from boards there in addition to and in no particular order representative linehan representative abrams uh and representative zupkis i heard back from a couple of them but there'll be more from the area so i encourage us if we can make it it is in the morning which is kind of a mixed blessing because good work schedules not everybody can make it but it's not just to hear from our legislators they hear from us but we can also hear from other board members and get some ideas what's going on with priorities so if you can make it great i'll see if it'll be recorded so this

173will be available via webinar for us um i one other item uh i uh somehow got taught in doing the ymca polar plunge uh for camp sloper yeah yeah you do want to see plunge in the cold water i don't blame i think a lot of people's town would love to see that um it's at the end of february it's worthwhile cause uh we do have a team treasurer set up and i believe that after someone you have a team cheshire public schools uh i'll forward links out to folks who make donations um doug levins who's the community co director here mca is uh it's hard to turn that turned down he's quite the persuader so uh you know we're trying to raise a lot of money for those kids and beat sunnington this year

174so anything you can do would help um i i am going to take liberty as chair to do one thing tonight i'm going to embarrass my daughter so my daughter victoria is a senior at cheshire high school uh she's very heavily into her design um she was entered in the connecticut regional art show and she actually won the gold key award i just found out the other day she wouldn't thank you she wouldn't tell me my wife would tell me and i didn't even see the artwork until my shoulder was a little embarrassed but uh very proud of her for that and i know the artwork will be on display uh in hartford for a couple weeks and also further embarrassment for her she uh got accepted into new york school of visual arts as

175well as the georgia school of art design so hopefully she's going to become illustrator or animation expert we'll see just so you know that it's not just a boastful parent i saw the artwork it's amazing so stay tuned for our social media i did ask our art department chair mr casarto to get student permission to post the artwork on our social media accounts hopefully you'll see those up there soon very amazing stuff thank you it wasn't as victoria i think there was a there's also a handful of students two other students which is great uh that artwork is amazing um you can't really see on the website but it's amazing how talented these kids are so now that i've gloated and embarrassed my daughter enough i am uh i am done with the chair portions

176update uh very quickly upcoming meetings uh we continue our budget process next week there's a second public public budget review uh administer review of charter accounts uh january 27th at 7 pm that will be virtual um there's also some more discussion some responses from the board that night depending on that meeting goes we may have more workshops to be determined uh we have scheduled a february 3rd meeting especially in board event to adopt the budget if we're ready and necessary and um some upcoming committee meetings we have a calendar committee on january 31st at 4 p.m and then as we head into february we have a policy committee of february 8th at 6 30 p.m and i'll leave it at that that's all i have for meetings uh i call for a motion to adjourn

177mr gripple seconded by faith all those in favor thank you everyone the meeting is adjourned