001meeting of the board of education the special organizational meeting to order uh miss jaczynski could you please call the role here thank you very much could we please stand for the pledge of allegiance just in accordance with board policy 9120 the board is required to elect from its members a chairperson vice chairperson and secretary at its first regular meeting following the first monday in december following the biennial town election the votes of each member in such elections shall be reduced to writing and made available for public inspection within 48 hours excluding saturday sunday or legal holidays the officer's terms of office shall be two years is anybody available to make a motion the biennial election so i move that the bi-annual election officers of the cheshire board of education be conducted as described in policy
0029120. thank you mr peregini do we have a second mr grippo thank you uh all in favor it's unanimous at this point i'd like to call for nominations for the chair of the board of education mr grippo dr sullin i'd like to nominate tony peregini to be uh chairman of the board of education thank you mr grippo are there any other nominations for chairperson of the board i'll make one last call for nominations for chair having none nominations are now closed i will distribute the ballots the ballots have your name at the bottom you need to write in the person you're voting for chair thank you do we need to second the motion no okay for a chair that's a you could all i was calling for a second third nomination oh okay you don't
003need a second to that nomination um no no okay okay meeting so uh doctors only this is a point of order um if there is no challenge uh can we not just cast one unanimous ballot or is there it doesn't indicate that so all right right so at least for foia we have to have written written ballots are written very good on record for a certain period of time after okay thank you i know that there's not much suspense in the audience but i'm happy to announce that the vote for chair is unanimous in favor of mr peregini at this point i'm happy to step aside and he will conduct the next two elections before i do that uh thank you so much fellow board members uh it's uh appreciate your confidence i will talk
004more in the next board meeting uh on this and i know uh just for folks wondering all of us that were elected also we'll say a few words next meeting so i'll wait for that but thank you so much it means a lot to me thank you i'll take care of hannah news no go ahead i'll just hand these out so do the nomination vice chair so i am calling for nominations for vice chair for the board of education are there any nominations faith i nominate adam grippa for vice chair are there any nominations are there any other nominations as soon as there are no other nominations dr song will distribute those ballots oh uh sorry for that sorry um i'd like to announce that uh it is unanimous uh for anne grippel as vice
005chair of the board of ed congratulations [Applause] and we have one final uh office nomination this is for secretary of the board of education so i am calling for a nomination but uh i'd be honored to make one i nominate ann harrigan for the position as secretary for the board of education are there any other nominations as soon as there are none dr son will distribute the ballots sure so it is unanimous ian harrigan is the secretary of board of education congratulations dan [Applause] at this point i motioned to adjourn this organizational meeting is i want to make a motion or second my emotion to adjourn this meeting second thank you all favor thank you the organizational meeting is adjourned but please don't go anywhere we're starting right back up to the business meeting yeah
006because i'm you uh and calling the meeting to order uh mr zensky kayla roll call for quorum please here here here thank you carol uh usually thrown off usually pledge allegiance but uh up next is new board member introductions and uh hopefully there's folks watching for folks in the audience you just saw the organizational process of tonight um so we have a new board member as well as returning board members and myself but uh definitely like uh if you are so inclined if you like to make a statement address the public sam you're welcome to do so sure thank you mr chair um i'd just like to take this opportunity to this evening as my first day on the job to express my deepest gratitude to the citizens of our somewhat tiny but mighty town
007i'm very excited and grateful to serve our community as a member of the cheshire board of education special thanks to my children nina simone ava for putting up with my passion and to my husband adam for his patient listening encouragement and unflagging support i hope to do my best to make you proud as you all know i am an educator by profession and i strongly believe that being an educator is an honor and privilege in and of itself teaching is about offering hope and empowering new generations to enact change for the betterment of humanity and as an educator i feel most obliged to serve as the messenger of that calling so to my fellow educators thank you for committing to making a difference in the lives of children time has proven that what we do
008is simultaneously difficult and satisfying especially during these most challenging of times so i look forward to using my years of experience as a parent a passionate educator and drawing from my various community involvement to my work here on the board i'm committed to collaborating with my fellow board members and district leadership to support the vision and mission of cheshire public schools and therefore to ensure that teachers and staff have the tools to continue to provide high quality instruction to every student so that they may reach their full potential therefore my deepest appreciation again for this opportunity to give back to our schools and our community thank you sam and welcome to the board of that thank you uh mr grippers anything you want to say i'm sure thank you mr chair um i would just
009like to thank the citizens of cheshire for entrusting uh or giving me their trust once again for another four year term i pledge to continue to continue the work that we've been doing the last four years and uh i hope that we represent the the wishes of you going forward thank you thank you mr gripple and welcome back uh i try to keep this short i first want to thank uh everyone that voted this year everyone that ran we had a great deal of outstanding candidates for all positions it was nice to see so many folks stepping up um is these are not sometimes easy roles to perform and uh excited sam you're here uh just talking to yesterday conference uh looking forward to a lot of your ideas um so thank you for having
010us and i thank you for uh trusting me to help us move forward as we've been doing and to my fellow board members i just want to say thank you for your vote of confidence and allowing the chair uh you all know i don't think this role very lightly i am fortunate to go to work with a great team uh all of us and it does help make this role a little easier to perform so i thank you for both your support tonight as well as your support as a colleague uh but i don't want to overstate the the role of the chair you know we are a team of seven uh there is no i in team and that is one of the most overused obnoxious phrases around but it is true there is
011no hawaiian team it's it's all of us individually we have no authority to make decisions on the board of it uh outside of our meetings uh even myself in a chair role the only only authority i have is to sign a contract after the board approves it you know that's basically where it ends so it is a team we're gonna function as a team and uh i think you supporting this role because you know unfair i do listen i adapt uh i ensure that the board functions as best as it can try to break down barriers we've been pretty good in that regard uh so i know you're supporting that role but then again i think after witnessing what we've been address addressing as of late uh it won't be coming at us you might
012be thinking hey better him than me in that role but in all seriousness uh you know even this role i rely on all of us to help us get through and move things so forward so i can also understand why now some of you are saying we're right behind you uh my size does give us ample shield for a lot of things but all seriousness um we'll have fun uh you know that being said i just want to end with uh you know all opinions are welcome uh you know me i know most of us we may disagree on things but uh we can talk about any topic we can have uh any discussion we're able to do that i tend to operate as a chair as i do as a people coach and collaborator
013in my work teams so i want to see people succeed i want to just get things done and move forward and the best interest of our schools and i'll continue to help us do that and i will need your help to do that moving forward as well so you have my promise i'll continue to work together and support all of us i believe we've worked very well together the last two years and i think even better now that sam is here so welcome everyone i'm going to end it at that because it's time to get to work so thank you and looking forward to achieving some very wonderful successes this year that being said we're going to move on to the next uh agenda topic which uh unfortunately is not the student rep report tonight
014we actually have a different uh item that doctor someone would like to address thank you mr pergini unfortunately our student reps couldn't be here tonight but i will hit some highlights during my report unfortunately tonight i want to recognize a moment of silence for a beloved teacher who recently retired patti ayanello was a teacher at highland elementary school for 34 years and she committed a lot of her life to the kids in our community and to our her fellow teachers so i'd like to read some highlights from her obituary patty ann ayanello of plantsville passed away in the comfort of her home surrounded by her family on tuesday december 7th patricia was born in waterbury and is was the daughter of the late robert and beatrice monoi she graduated from central connecticut state where she
015achieved her masters in education and reading concentration she also achieved her sixth and seventh year masters extensions she was a teacher for the highland elementary school in cheshire from 1986 to 2020 where she mentored the children and prepared them for their later years the patty was the eternal optimist always selfless in every way she was a true people person and loved her family and her career as an educator services for patti will be held respects people can pay their respects tomorrow friday december 10th from 5 to 8 at dellavecia funeral home in southington and a massive christian burial will be held on saturday december 11th at 9 15 a.m from the funeral home and at 10 a.m at saint aleut aloysius church in plantsville burial will follow in south end cemetery in plantsville in lieu
016of flowers contributions and patty's name may be made to the american cancer society 30 spring street framingham massachusetts sometimes you read an obituary and wonder to what what degree did this really reflect the person and i could tell you that patty was kind and constantly demonstrated a love of life in children she was a pleasure to be around her loss is deeply felt in our teaching and broader community and i hope that you will join me in a moment of silence in in her respect thank you dr solon for that unfortunate news um our condolences are with miss inel and her family thank you up next we have a presentation miss harrigan would you like to make a school partnership or work presentation yes i would awesome are we on a hot mic oh yes
017well this is the fun part of of this job quite frankly is when we get to honor um our unsung heroes in our schools who are doing so much every day and um tonight it's my great honor to um introduce this chapman school recipient for the school partnership award ms aaron muddy and she's right here and so come closer so i'm going to say a lot of nice things about her according to mrs burns the principal at chapman school most think that either chapman has a resident artist or martha stewart swings by once in a while to set up beautiful displays at our school functions or create knock your socks off showcase exhibits if the truth be told their secret is aaron muddy aaron has been an active board member of the chapman ptsa as
018well as a constant volunteer at chapman chapman has been fortunate to be on the receiving end of her incredible calligraphy skills and artistic talent before one has a chance to reach out to erin to ask if she could help with a program or a function she beats you to the punch every time and offers her talents and help the really best part of erin is getting to know the lovely kind person that she is everyone loves to converse with her and enjoy her warm company individuals like ms muddy not only bright and chapman school but they bring the school community together chapman school said it is a delight and honor to recognize aaron muddy as the recipient of the 2021-22 chapman school partnership award the cheshire board of education thanks aaron for going above and
019beyond for the students of cheshire public schools thank you aaron [Applause] i was trying is congratulations thank you [Applause] um thank you up next is audience are there any audience members that would like to address the board not all at once as soon as soon as there are none we're going to move on to the next part which is standing committee appointments in your past in your packets are standing committees liaison appointments and school reps with the committee assignments uh for curriculum it is faithhand anne harrigan and myself and the caveat there is i may end up replacing myself with someone else on the board eventually as we have a lot going on but for now i'll be there finance it's adam gripple faith ham and sam rosenberg legislative is tim white faith ham and
020anne harrigan we're going to talk a little bit about that uh later this evening what that committee is going to be doing liaison it's ann harrigan andrew martelly and tim white personnel is tim white and harrigan and myself planning is andrew martelly tim wright tim white and sam rosenberg policy is adam tim white sam rosenberg pug information as andrew faith and anne harrigan transportation is tim and other board members as needed as transportation usually only happens when we're in a contract negotiation year school modernization which is the joint board of that and town council committee representation remains anne harrigan andrew mitelli and myself if and when that committee ever meets again uh just for reference the board chair shall serve as ex-official member of all committees and in cheshire while the chair can vote on
021committees i do not i just sit there as ex-official member all non-committee board of education members are able and encouraged to attend all sub-committee meetings in compliance with foia that means any board member can attend any committee meeting and in compliance with foia simply means that if we are a non-committee member and we're at a meeting we're generally sitting where the audience sits not at the table with the rest of the committee so as not to misconstrue the meeting as a quorum and illegal of the board but we have direct input to the committees in that manner educational liaisons uh for asus it is myself it's worth noting that uh the board of ed chairs and the asics asus districts serve on the governing board which i do for them the cheshire education foundation is
022adam gripple adult education is anne harrigan uh cabe is myself and uh uh it's worth noting i was appointed to the k board of directors uh this past week to represent uh our area which is district seven we'll talk more about that later the calendar committee is anne harrigan cheshire pta council is sam rosenberg advisory committee advisory council is anne harrigan the professional development committee is faith ham the school business partnerships is andrew martelly and tim white teacher evaluation committee is tim white town council is myself planning and zoning is andrew martelly public building commission is mr grippo school representatives for chapman it is anne harrigan for cheshire high school homestead it is myself darcy is adam gripple dodd is sam rosenberg doolittle is faith ham highland is andrew martelly and norton is tim white
023i hope this is the last of it those are the current standing committee uh liaison assignments just a couple of points on the committees that we talked about any boomer can't attend uh the and sam's probably worth this but i'm just going to walk through some some couple house housekeeping items the agenda development for committees and board of ed is uh is a little different than it has been we've been doing this last two years in the past and our bylaws allow for a chairperson to work with superintendent in developing the border business agenda two years ago we changed that to allow input from all board members and what we did in the past uh when catherine is here is the officers which is now myself and anne can't solicit agenda topics from any member
024of the board we'll collect them we'll review those with dr solon we'll find the best fit for the agenda and timing and bring those to the table so you have direct input to the agenda via myself or through those three folks on the committees the committee chairs developed the agenda in accordance with their respective uh superintendent team members so with curriculum it's salan planning is mr maciana finances ms maciana but you can bring agenda topics to committee chairs for gender development and they'll work together to get those on the agenda at some point so uh we have some community comes up actually a lot of things come up in january so you will see emails come out from us uh soliciting topics and then you will see uh final agenda sent around so well aware
025of it so stay sane we'll go for his emails from from carol as they come out the next couple weeks that's pretty much the process there i don't think anything else is mad i feel like we're missing something i'll talk a little bit more about public information committee and legislator later on in the board of ed uh uh chairs update those committees have been kind of quiet but we're gonna ramp those up this coming school year and get more into that that is it for the committee assignments reports of standing committees we not have we have not had really any committee meetings other side of finance uh but we do have i mean outside of finance report which we do have uh for november 30th is there an update adam thank you mr chair um
026there is a summary here and i will hand that off to mr maciana thank you mr grippo good evening welcome ms rosenberg and congratulations to all the newly re-elected board members adam and um mr paragini as well so the update there was a board meeting on november 18th and not much has changed other than we rolled into the new month and that's good news because from a budget point of view we are in very good shape i'm always pleased to report that we have no major budget variances to um explain at this point in time you know we we're all well aware that there's inflation is creeping up and i think at the last board meeting the increase in fuel prices was discussed but won't have a detrimental impact on the budget because it's a
027relatively small portion of our budget we continue to invest as we need to in the learning loss with the esser and the rfs are funding that does serve as our backstop for any pandemic related expenses i did want to let the board know that we did decide to extend the intraday cleaning in all our schools through the month of january we were expecting to end in december but with the increase in the number of covert cases we thought it best to extend that so we've made those arrangements with our vendor the only other thing that i wanted to mention is we are knee deep immersed in the preparation of the operating budget for next year that's moving along according to schedule but also wanted to mention that excuse me we're working on the capital budget
028so the board does need to approve two budgets the capital budget is actually due in january prior to the due date of the operating budget submission so what i was hoping to do at next week's planning committee of the whole is just introduce the preliminary version of the capital budget won't take long but i did want to put it out in front of the planning committee because some work does need to be done to conclude in january and that's really the highlights for this evening there are any questions i'll certainly be glad to respond [Music] it's really quick regarding the budget development for next school year uh if any board member has any suggestions uh i assume you'd rather hear it sooner and later as part of your development process so i encourage uh any
029board member to contact dr soler mr maciani if you have ideas that should be considered in the budget let them know uh was often times in the past we've gone through the detailed budget sessions coming up in january and um sometimes heinz science is always like you know was like hey i wish we knew that earlier and then we try to do it next year so i encourage more members to contribute if you have ideas to the team thank you tim yeah i just wanted to say um i think the same applies to the public i think it's great when the public comes to the meetings but as you kind of indicated it's difficult to make big changes at the last minute um so the sooner that the ideas get into the get into the
030mix the better off everything will be thank you good point uh sam um just a question what's the recommended timeline or deadline for suggestions that you'd prefer that's well we're let's say as soon as possible [Laughter] you know the reality is that as once the superintendent's budget gets presented there's lots of room to add or detract from that budget so you know if there's not if there's something specific you want us to try and include now you know within the next week or so because we have to complete the budget enter it into our financial system generate the reports and then prepare the presentations for the second week in january is when the superintendent officially presents the budget and then we go through the next several weeks of deliberations so if something comes up after
031the next week there's still lots of time and that's just for the board's approval because then it goes to the town council and there's still time for input as much you know as has been kind of said as much as i said as soon as possible the process is really iterative and it evolves over time you know when we present our initial budget presentation is january 13th from that point forward we will have many meetings and discuss many things but you know certainly if there's particularly a bigger ticket item inclusion earlier is definitely helpful thank you yeah and during the month of january during the month of january uh there are board finance committee meetings the whole where we all work through the budgets and uh there have been years where during that process board
032members have been able to successfully add ions to the budget at that point um and even uh i would say anything's possible during years where when the budget came out of finance coming to the board the vote uh even then things were amended so there's opportunities don't feel like you have to put something in but any hugs up if you have ideas you're welcome to call us welcome to give it to him thank you mr chair uh mr massian i noticed that there was a potentially a page missing from your report or is that uh for medical benefits oh we don't have the medical benefits report yet from cigna okay okay so after that it was really bad nah well hopefully not but yeah usually cigna's report comes in around the 10th today's the 9th
033so it didn't come in today so yeah usually we meet i think next week right so that's correct we're a week early okay i'm sure it'll be wonderful uh when we i'm not sure about that but yeah okay thank you uh is there any additional questions or information from mr macciano hearing none i conclude the finance report thank you adam uh school modernization while the committee has not been meeting and we haven't had any planning meetings ms martelly has any uh any happenings so as was mentioned earlier there's a planning committee meeting of the whole a week from tonight which is december the 16th at seven o'clock at the hummington school building and central office second floor boardroom um i believe at that meeting we will hear an update on the ed specs and the
034test fit for the two elementary school sites i don't know if you have anything to add jeff no that's it i mean they're like the items that i spoke about at our last meeting that were in progress are just starting to be wrapped up now and hopefully by the 16th we'll have a lot more detail to review so the the 16th amendment is the planning committee to hold the entire board so we call be legally in one meeting and get all the information and ask all questions of the experts that are there so i don't know if there'll be any action but definitely some information update i suspect will be more meetings like that i do i have reached out to um the town council uh recently and uh i'm gonna be touching base with
035mr slocum soon to see where where everything is i know worrying about things from colliers uh perk tests other things but i had also asked uh the town side to give a list of dates and deadlines when things are due by uh procedurally so i think we might have that in 16 too so i know uh never a dull moment on the board january is going to be probably a very very busy month for us between finance possibly modernization um hopefully it's just those two things nothing else unplanned for so stay tuned uh but if folks have questions about the planning committee agenda uh definitely ask andrew and i'll certainly get you up to speed thank you for standing committees i lost my agenda so dr sillan are you up oh i'm sorry we have
036approval of minutes my bad i heard it memorized by now uh in our packets is minutes from the board of ed business meeting held november 18th is there a motion to approve those minutes mr grippo uh moved that the board of education approved the minutes from meeting held on november 18 2021. thank you mr gripple is there a second ann harrigan seconds any discussion or changes on the minutes amendments i do not have any scenes there are none the motion is that the board of ed approved the minutes of the board education business meeting held november 18th 2021 all those in favor raise your hand all those abstain there's one motion passes thank you sam dr sone do we have any correspondence so far this evening uh we do not i don't know i'm sorry
037i apologize and this is correspondence from a second the secretary i apologize i didn't see any in the packet but if you do have any correspondence we'd love to hear it i have no correspondence i'm brand new at this job future correspondence can be sent to ann harrigan [Music] i wasn't available until earlier this evening oh i'm sure correspondents will be coming at some point but thank you man great okay up next is the much anticipated superintendence report so dr sullivan that's uh it's yours mr paragini thank you for that build up uh the first item is kobit 19 emails we don't have any relevance this evening's meeting um i did promise some information from cheshire high school in lieu of our student report tonight i was excited to participate in the supermarket challenge earlier
038this week tuesday night at the right in southington uh it's kind of like nothing i've ever seen before where uh chs teams including our team with myself dr gad um mr trophone and mr tartarelli our team name was unshelvish uh that's where our success ended is with the team name however we were able to collectively with all 23 teams of four shoppers each descending on shoprite at the same time the look on the people's face when they came in reminded me of when i used to shop around eight buses in dc and the people would walk through and you'd have 400 kids in the food court it was that sort of shock but there was a lot of success we had 1800 pounds of food items worth more than 2 300 donated to the cheshire
039food pantry through that effort i want to thank dan lee and all of our folks at cheshire high school chris stewart mary flood folks who contributed their time and energy to make this possible and provide this as part of our week of giving campaign at cheshire high school the english department team time t-h-y-m-e time to shop took first place for the second straight year i will just say they have an unhealthy approach to this as they've been studying the flyer and i'm not even kidding to win this event but good for them we had a very successful winter concert uh series at dodd this week where we did open the event to people to be able to attend in person socially distanced and we also simultaneously streamed the event and had over 800 views online
040so it was very successful i encourage you to check it out i appreciate the incredible hard work that our musical team and students put together not only there but across the district but you get a taste of it on our youtube channel the varsity sports season began last week so we look forward to our students competing in the very near future they'll start uh actual game competition at some point next week depending on the team uh and we start to host more home games in earnest in january the cheshire education foundation is a philanthropic group that was formed more than 20 years ago to support the cheshire public schools they are just a dedicated group of individuals who are really have one focus and it's how do we improve the educational experience for our students
041by supplementing resources and should be either tomorrow or early next week we'll be sending out a message and a flyer to our staff if anybody is interested in submitting an application for a grant we certainly welcome that and you know most recently i know that our high school science department was really excited about the digital microscopes that they received oftentimes these are grants that start of a project or it's a first effort with something these were our first digital microscopes they've proven to be very successful so from there on the operational budget would pick things up we also started a coffee cart at highland elementary school that's been very successful the two that we have at dodd in it at chs as well as a lego program at chapman elementary school so really great stuff
042pay attention for that and i'll share more uh in the coming months about the grants that they've approved finally i i don't want to steal tony's thunder with the cave workshop but i don't ever really get to tell board of ed jokes and this was kind of a board of ed joke that i heard at the connecticut association of board of ed's conference yesterday and it was how many board members does it take to change a light bulb and the answer is none the board simply says let there be light and it's the superintendent's job to figure out what kind of light bulb is going to be in there and what the wattage is or if it's candlelight that and it just really talked about the roles there were a lot of great uh presentations
043at that uh conference yesterday and um one of them by none other than mr peregini and myself so it was a really nice event quick kobit report the vaccination status of our students is very high in our community and we're grateful for the support that was provided to us by tresparcott to help make that possible the 12 to 17 year old population has a 66.7 vaccination rate 18 to 24 which obviously doesn't only you know brushes upon our students at 18 19 is 81 and the 5 to 11 population right now fully vaccinated is 26.4 percent because a lot of our students just got shots this past weekend they won't be fully vaccinated for two weeks uh we're anticipating to fall at about 50 percent the koben rate in the community just like across connecticut
044is it certainly bounced up after thanksgiving um unfortunately there was a youth athletics incident that also had a substantial negative impact on our kovid rates but what we're seeing in the last couple of days is it's kind of falling back what i did i like to compare periodically our data now compared to data from the year prior on the same day just as kind of a snapshot of where things stand if you have a question about our data it's available on the cheshire public schools website under covet information at the top of the page current conditions so on december 9th 2020 we had 124 students that weren't able to come to school because of covid and that is the result and that in that circumstance by the way that was you know partially remote we
045had a good percentage of students that were remote learners at that time obviously now we have all of our students in school and we have 117 students unable to attend due to covert related issues are unfortunately our positives last year at this time were 30 this year it's 49 our quarantines 94 last year 68 this year the real difference in our positivity is around highland where we had a real spike and so i met with chespercott and the nurse and the principal jeffrey and our nursing coordinator nancy stanton we all met with trespasca on monday and went case by case to evaluate this there's really no indication in reviewing these cases that it's from in school spread we can connect them to in in almost every case a parent a sibling a um somebody in
046their community in their sphere that got positive to say that i i can't definitively say that there was zero command i don't know it's impossible to know but we can certainly identify in most every case where this person came in contact with somebody who we knew to be positive and in those cases it's predominantly if not exclusively outside the building um other coveted related information we decided uh to permit fans to attend athletic events masked um the winter season uh typical it's typical our attendance to not have a packed gymnasium um boys basketball does tend to see a large crowd periodically and in our first home game for our boys is after january so other communities i know around us are also permitting fans to attend and um you know we we can certainly pivot
047if need be but right now we're on track to have people in attendance at our games and have them be somewhat normal our games in our student athletes by the way are required for ciac guidance to wear masks at all times during competition practice et cetera until december 23rd when school lets out at that point we've permitted student athletes for ciac guidance to only remove masks during game play so if you're you know basketball player on the court the mask can be removed if you're not um on the court you must wear the mask on the bench the other you know item that we have related to kovit is substitutes well we we do have some staff that are quarantined uh we have permitted them to teach from home rather than just take sick time
048if they're healthy enough to do so because we certainly believe that's in the best interest of our kids i have to pay you sick days anyway i have to pay a sub to command you're a much better resource for our kids than our our sub who's going to be in there with all due respect you don't know the students the way that the teacher does and so we do allow them to teach from home but we need a sub in the room and that takes subs and as you know there's a sub shortage across connecticut uh i solicited our alumni again and we have over 25 volunteers already the you know the invitation just went out last week and so that hopefully will be very successful again for us and provide relief in the in
049the buildings for substitute coverage so that's all i have i'm certainly happy to entertain any questions uh mr grippa uh dr sullin you just mentioned the teaching from home um are the are the teachers or is the classroom itself uh utilizing our um in-room technologies to better have the teacher better communicate does does the classroom shift to be able to use that or is this the head on a laptop situation when they do that the worst case scenario would be that the teacher is predict projected through the smart board at the front of the room the best case scenario is that we leverage the is our high school marketing class called them the ramplified classrooms the amplified audio in the room and that's you know those classrooms are certainly outstanding to be able to facilitate
050that sort of instruction um we've certainly increased the number of classrooms we have that offer that but we're nowhere near 100 on that is it is our current account i think was it 60 it's about that yeah it's about right about 60. and are most of them at the high school or is there no no they're distributed throughout the district i mean proportionally yes you have a large number at the high school but they're proportionately distributed throughout the district right okay thank you sure uh tim yeah thanks tony yeah jeff since march 2020 since it started have we had any hospitalizations of which you're aware um but i believe there have been um i if you're asking me to designate between student i know that families have been impacted okay i you know students staff
051and parents um we've lost members of our community to it adult members okay so um it's been impactful okay the the incidence rate though maybe you know at this point in time certainly among vaccinated people we know it to be very low the rate of hospitalization i know that as of tuesday morning there were 500 people in connecticut hospitalized due to coven 19 complications five of those were school age people so it's it's it's rare okay um you mentioned the vax rate [Music] uh for students 66 percent for the 12 to 17 and 26 percent to the 5 to 11. do you have any suggestions on what we as a board i could do personally i think it'd be good to get those rates up if we could do you have any thoughts from it
052i i think the 26 for the 5 to 11 is artificially low because we have a higher rate that has received the vaccination like as of this weekend but just not yet become fully vaccinated two weeks after the second shot as a matter of fact i was curious in durgby there's only one district with a higher vaccination rate than us in west hartford is at 29 we're 26.4 so i think we've done an exceptional job in that respect you know i think it's um we'll continue to make vaccinations available to those who want them um they're not required you know that i think we've done a lot to promote them that the access and we've seen a lot of people take advantage of that we have one of the highest staff vaccination rates in connecticut
053we have you know we offered in house i mean i think the board and the administrative team has done everything that we possibly can to bring horses to water if they choose to drink and so um i i just continue to stay the course with this and hopefully um we're in a good place just adding that my five and seven-year-olds were both this week they got their second dose yeah so they'll ultimately you know bump that number up significantly the the crew that got the shots this past weekend do you happen to know what the teacher uh faculty staff vaccination rate is free i believe it's north of 98 okay that's great yeah okay it's exceptionally high and then just the last comment that i'm going to make because this has been on my mind
054for a few weeks now at least is that intersecting with school modernization the public health health aspect of this and the air turnovers you know so this is all part of i think it does need to be part of the discussion with colliers um public health aspect is part of it new buildings mr macian and i attended a virtual webinar on last friday provided by [Music] department of administrative services focused on the impact of school design on student health and it was really interesting and that those elements when we go to actually you know god willing design a school here in the near future are certainly you know paramount considerations as well as i know that you know the green content of the building is you know also really important so hopefully we get to
055that point where we're discussing that in [Music] earnest thank you any other questions for dr solomon as superintendent oh sorry i knew someone faith please just a couple of just you said the subs uh you said the subs are volunteers or are they paying no no we pay the substitutes so the kids will be paid yes okay yeah okay unfortunately the uh last year was a little bit different we didn't it was uh easier the pipeline from our alumni to get into the classroom because of an executive order that expired and now we have to submit all applicants through the state which adds a layer uh they're required to background check and do things we were doing background checks too but the state process is longer i appreciate the state chief talent officer uh shauna
056tucker has been very helpful with us to try and get our 25 people through asap and um so do you going to your vaccination rate do you have um an idea of how many are have received boosters and are you hearing anything out of dph that once cdc gives the uh blessing blessing i guess um that the dph will also make the booster mandatory to be fully vaccinated i haven't heard that they would make it mandatory to become fully vaccinated only today faith what a contemporary question the fda approved the booster for 16 and 17 year olds so really it's a very small percentage of our students that already have the booster it would be anybody 18 and up so it's a very small percentage of our overall population and it's only a percentage of
057those kids that have already accessed the booster however i talked to kate glennon today at chespercott they're working on making a booster clinic available for our community they're looking to see if they can do that they haven't made any promises yet i i you know we're but we are trying to determine if that's something that's viable because we know all of our clinics have had substantial interest okay and then i just said one more um is there any way for us to detect the asymptomatic is really impossible to detect um and i think that's in part uh the reason that we need to be vigilant around notification when people are with a positive individual um that we're taking the right steps that are recommended by a medical professional so if you have a positive child
058at home and your child's not vaccinated then there's a set of rules if they are vaccinated there's another set of rules but it can get complicated we encourage you to check the nurse to check with your school nurse i will say that you know our nurses have been extraordinary throughout this process they've had to juggle frequently changing rules and regulations they've had to do communications that at least triple what they've ever had to manage in their career as a school nurse and they do it um not only exceptionally but they do it without complaint in in knowing that they could walk away tomorrow and probably find a job that pays significantly higher and so the credit they deserve i i would be here all night talking about what you know they meant to us over
059the last 18 20 months i would ask you know respectfully i appreciate as a parent that it's really hard when the school nurse says well your child's demonstrating a coveted symptom you need to uh have them tested before they can return the school nurse is only following the guidance there and they have a really tough job i understand as a parent it's hard to keep your child home i would argue that our school system has done more than most um to make sure that our kids have access to school as much as possible and i i hope that people can uh demonstrate some patience and respect for our school nurses if that's where you're getting the message from if you've got to take it out on somebody i'll give you vin masiana's phone number or
060mine and you can contact us but sir please go easy on our nurses they deserve our best and not our worst side yes sam that's stolen can you just kind of um for peace of mind elaborate on i'm going back to when the kids are quarantined and what the workload expectation is they stress upon trying to make up work what's or is it building specific sure teacher specific it's really more teacher specific we um have worked with our teachers to try and find a balance when a student can't attend school and what students are engaging in when you're in pre-k i mean we have preschool students that are quarantined you know we're not going to have them on camera all day and sending home you know large packets of work for them to do or
061anything like that we want to keep them connected to the building at the high school level we you know many teachers elect to just they think that at this point in our curriculum and instruction let's turn the camera on and engage students some kids are engaged in group work other students all right well at this point in what we're doing i'm just gonna send you something home others i have um you know kind of a hybrid approach it's really specific to the individual student need the individual student capacity the individual teacher curriculum and where we are in the process what i would recommend is if a student or a parent has a question and their child's being quarantined that you reach out to the teacher definitely first and foremost they'll be the best point of
062contact if that's not you know if you're concerned after that conversation certainly the principal is a great point of contact uh then you know k through eight maybe mr hanlon or at the high school you know miss solano or myself um but usually you know reach out to the teacher and they can help clarify and certainly you know the vast majority of our teachers if something's not working for the child they want to try and do that i would say all of our teachers want that so um that's that's kind of the point or the path i think to support those issues uh any other questions for the superintendent's report thank you dr sone appreciate the update and uh i think our we all received a couple emails from davidson today and some other more
063detailed updates i have not read them yet dr solomon by selling over the weekend and of course anybody has any questions on those please let dr sullin know up next we don't have any old business business uh i'll keep this short so uh dr solo and myself and samantha had a chance to attend the cave leadership new board of ed member uh conference yesterday uh it was uh nice to see uh colleagues finally get together since we've been pretty much on lockdown for code it was pretty well attended um as dr sullin noted uh he and i had an opportunity to uh lead a discussion on civility and divisive times and uh well it may not feel make us feel better we're not alone as a board for our neutral members uh lots of school
064districts are facing um criticism at various topics and levels and you know there's just unfortunate undertone of incivility in some cases for a number of reasons but uh it was interesting to hear some of the stories from other school districts and uh a lot of great questions were asked that one of the things that we were asked actually dr stone was asked was hey you know what do you guys are going to do in a post mandate environment with mask how you determine that because it seems like districts are trying to grasp that should that day come and i hope it does where school districts have the ability to decide on masks what criteria we use and it's still evolving i think dr sullin you're attending a number of uh caps discussions on that but
065it's evolving so um but a lot of issues around mass i also noticed by some of the questions that uh board members won't necessarily get along in some uh some boards and so some incivility within boards so as uh as ugly as it may be sometimes for us and it hasn't in a while we have it pretty good so i'm not gonna win it stays that way but uh it was nice to know that um that meeting that was held in august that started all this is watched a lot by boards all throughout the state and referenced a lot in a good way so um they all complimented how the whole board uh they being cave leaders uh managed that situation so uh you know thank you and do know you're being recognized for for
066helping in that regard a couple things that came up throughout the conference um in fact it's funny tim internet tim mentioned hvac uh one of the things that i think the state department had talked about was uh or cave did as part of its priorities for legislature was you know additional funding and there's also an hvac component i believe related to clean air so i know there's a lobbying effort to get more funding around that but essentially increased funding is something that cabe is focused on with the legislature both in general per pupil funding as well as special education excess cost i did talk about the fact that we run into a cap with that and that they're trying to get that cap limited another big topic that came up was mental health support funding
067and the issue of just not enough medical mental health professionals available to assist with school districts every school district has a need for it i'm going to predict we're going to see some of that in our budget but finding those professionals is challenging because demand is so high and the other update that was discussed quickly was that the state legislature is studying remote learning from last year uh not so much here in connecticut but looking at other states to see what work didn't work and i did ask the question whether or not um connecticut would be looking further since it is in the backyard and cheshire in particular we spent a great deal of investment off in our classrooms so that being said i intend to reach out to that community to see if cheshire
068can be consulted to share experiences of what worked and maybe didn't work because i think we were on the leading edge of that here in connecticut uh so again great conference a lot of topics discussed i'm sure sam was overloaded with do's and don'ts but uh thank you for attending yes it was nice to chat with you too it's great to see you there and i encourage all board members to take advantage of some of the cave seminars um be it policy financial topics uh cultural awareness et cetera while they're not the end-all be-all as a reference they're they are helpful in many regards that being said i somehow i don't know how this happened but i found myself now on the k-board directors and it's it's uh it's interesting because i always felt cabe
069while is a good ally uh and certainly helpful reference for us don't tend to focus too much on districts like treasure uh more irony districts so the fact that we are represented there is a plus so i can tell you i we have the years of cape now and i plan on trying to get them uh to hear us where it makes sense so it's a good thing you know we'll see where it goes i know one of the things i'll be helping them with is setting up a legislative breakfast sometime in february for our area seven which includes cheshire wilkin of other schools but that's to be determined that being said uh the couple of committees we uh highlighted earlier uh was public information committee and legislative we've had these committees i i know
070our intent last year was to use them but because of cove we really didn't engage those committees but with school modernization um we all know there's gonna have to be strong messaging and outreach so uh we'll we're gonna be working with that committee to see what we can do there legislative everyone i've spoken to and you know reviewing the the assignments we're all concerned um to make to make sure that harford uh helps cheshire and our reps uh do that by and large where they can uh but i know we have some concerns with funding uh a number of topics so i to be determined at some point uh the legislative legislative committee will schedule a meeting with the board of as a whole looking at the dates we're going to figure out when and
071how but i know uh dr sol and his team have a list of legislative priorities much like the town council does when they when they uh they need to discuss what they like their reps to look out for them in hartford i like to try to do the same thing so uh our reps are very supportive of us i talked to liz and leslie often uh so they could have a two to get them to come to one of our meetings and dive into some of the things that um we're worried about so if you have topics for religion committee please afford those with tim and dr sullen we'll collect them and we'll put together a meeting soon for for discussion yes who wants to ask a question adam uh well it wasn't so much
072a question as an addition to your comments um when we attended the the cave conference back in november um i attended a a talk on i guess legislative uh priorities for cabe um and uh that me you know the room was full of superintendents and board of ed members and um i mentioned um in the meeting our great uh remote learning program with the new technology that i spoke about earlier and they were very interested in the technology and how we used it so just to piggyback on what you're saying about having a voice at the table there uh a lot of people that were very interested in that so just want to make that comment yeah and i i think even some of the members uh those these were mostly uh board members and
073attendance yesterday uh we're interested in that too i saw a couple of hands go up i wasn't sure did you guys have questions i'm sorry tim first and then sam or sam sam first i just want to echo what adam said because there were some really um comforting and encouraging comments that we were the model uh board that they looked to so that's i felt good coming on board here um and i know tony is there potential that the workshops were great um is there potential to bring in-house some of those topics that we saw yeah uh senate samurai had a chance to the talk which is great and you know uh we both felt hey you know it's not always easy for programmers to go through these things as a way to bring them
074to us and we've done that in the past we actually had uh patrice mccarthy come down uh three four years ago and just walked the board through some just general legal lease things but uh there were a number of uh cultural commentators one of them the legislative priorities um so uh yeah there's definitely an opportunity and i guess the question is let's think about what we like to hear from them and i can certainly work with them to schedule some time with you know to come down here and dive deep on us maybe you know give us a speed on things but also hear from us on some of the topics that you know that are near and dear so yeah absolutely yeah work on that um so beyond cabe uh this was a large
075part of the day i happened to attend the cheshire chamber of commerce annual um holiday get-together last night in auction and uh uh i ran into doug lovins doug levins is uh the community engagement director here at cheshire ymca and i managed to somehow sign myself up to for the ymca slope or plunge challenge doug is very persuasive in that manner as you know he's a huge uh advocate for ymca and helping our community so i did forward to board that invite in case anyone interested uh i said it was a cool way to do a team builder but uh ingest of course but uh yeah i will be there i'm not gonna chicken out i prefer to write a check well i'm hoping that the the and this is kind of funny because there's
076a bad weather day to march i'm like you want cold bad weather for the plunge i'm hoping march will happen if it's warmer but we'll see nonetheless it was fun um good turnout there last night uh that's really all i have uh on my update uh oh and the civilian discussion i i did want to say um i hope we're well those are nice to do um i i i once it wouldn't surprise me if we have uh board members and others which reach out to us over time uh because i i ran some board members that say i know how do you guys handle this how do you handle that and uh so i pointed them to you all too because at the end of the day it's not just uh what we we
077do up here but things we handle one-on-one so you might be getting reached out by some board members our districts it's a good thing and i encourage folks to build those relationships because we do tend to share and learn knowledge from each other faith um wow i'm really excited about that deep dive into what is it mixville park not your dive in march yeah it's a it's the polar plunge yeah yes have a good time um we'll hold the towel for you hey i um i just wanted to i i don't know where i read this i think it was ct mirror or something that the state is actually looking at um uh remote learning is a viable alternative to in-person learning and i know when we finally meet perhaps with our legislator our legislators
078i'm going to say i'm going to ask them to back off because i think we are seeing so much uh fallout from this and granted we are a suburban uh more wealthy community than others but i just if cabe can also reinforce that we have seen very little good come out of remote learning and um just dissuade legislators who somehow think this might be another way to reach i i you know it should be used as a last resort yeah and i apologize i might be uh confusing the topic so um i really meant to say hybrid learning use of you know remote learning in that scenario you know our students were home disconnected from the classroom it was uh synchronous learning right so the idea is and and cabe is not taking a stand
079behind that uh yet way another but what is happening what is actually happening besides the news media pundits that are publishing this stuff is that in hartford the legislator did commission a study to find out what did work and what didn't work so don't know yet there could be a possibility that down the road the goal would be to [Music] possibly allow school districts to somehow incorporate hybrid technology learning into its academics which we can't do today only if it makes sense we're not there yet so that study i don't think is going to be done until and reported until uh mid to late next year uh no 2024 and that was kind of the joke was oh it's gonna take two years three years after the pandemic started to see if we can you
080know the speed of government sort of thing so so hang in there but uh no one's taking a stand on that yet that's all i have i'm going to kind of leave it there because i did promise everyone and talking to you all we're going to keep these kind of efficient so that one more that's it thank you mr chef um i just wanted to say i misspoke i did not mean remote learning i meant synchronous learning um they are very interested in in the amplificat using technology to amplify learning to reach out to more students um the example that i gave specifically was that when we have our learners come in from new haven that we have a significant drop off when they hit high school and that there was a potential to use
081that kind of technology to be able to keep them learning here in cheshire and they're very interested in topics like that that's uh so i misspoke thank you no it's uh so it's not come our way so we'll definitely get into it that being said uh before a motion to adjourn a meeting oh by the way and i apologize i meant to acknowledge our esteemed colleague sylvia nichols from the town council earlier this evening uh so i know if i don't put you on a spot but if there's anything you wanted to say or enter the board but thank you for hanging out with us tonight good to see you uh i'm not going to read all the upcomings but uh the the most immediate ones are december 13th to 7 p.m is the curriculum
082committee meeting at hunston boardroom december 21st at 6 30 p.m is policy committee i think the agenda has a 16th but it should be the 21st that will be in the and board room and december 16th at 7 pm is the planning committee meeting of the whole also the homestead boardroom and then uh the school has winter break from december 24th to january 1st and then in january 13th uh kicks off the next budget process with the presentation of the superintendent's budget here in town council chambers at 7 30 p.m um that is all i have thank you board members for sticking around this evening welcome newborn members that being said any uh motion to adjourn the meeting mr gripple is there uh your motion to adjourn seconded by ms rosenberg all in favor ayogianamus
083that means adjourned thank you everyone out there for sticking around this evening you