Board of Education 10-13-21

001call this um policy meeting to order this uh yeah roll call please mr grippo here yeah this helen is absent mr chairman you have a forum thank you uh all right [Music] okay um is there any public on the policies we'll be reviewing this evening seeing none i will continue on uh so up first is our review a review on the uh i guess an updated policy of the student hazing bullying policy 5131.911 um would you like to i guess begin the review there sure so we knew that the law had changed on this as you as you both know and so we've sort of been following that and what we have in front of us is the cave policy which jeff has suggested that we may want to take a look at and then

002move that forward because his feeling is that the cave policy covers those changes that need needed to be updated in hours so it's a lengthy policy tim we were chatting about it before i don't know if you want to bring it up on your phone or we can get a hard copy do we have a hard copy i don't have i don't have the school email no no usually we have the screen and we can kind of look through this yeah but i'm happy to give you my computer if you want to email him you can that might work um so at least while we're getting that squared away so it appears that uh so we did a lot of work on this policy in 2019 to kind of get it updated and uh add

003a few of our own things um and so this looks like and we knew during the discussions at that time that there was legislation pending [Music] to that we knew that they were going to add things perhaps talking about adding changing the definition of bullying and also i think what other things they're going to do perhaps there are some sections about suicidal ideation in there perhaps and it looks like maybe they have added these things because there's a date of june 30 2021 in here um so i don't know so i think while you guys were working on this the policy was out there but it didn't need to be in place until 2012 so you really had all that while you were making those changes yeah right because a lot of that was already

004on the table was already discussed yeah we had added going through at least the the high level summary of the what was i think 110 page bill um that a lot of the uh additions that the legislation made we had added already in 2019 um i think but definitely one of the things we didn't add was to change to change the definition of bullying from exclusively student to student to it looks like this is adding non-student i don't know if it's specifically teacher or if it says non-student in here um i don't believe it specifically calls out teacher okay i think it just means that it can encompass you know but let me i'm looking at under the definition here see and um oh you had one or oh all right all right school so

005the definitions here are the are as they are defined in the legislation i'm assuming okay so definitely like to read through this one more time since i read it today um not knowing what was new and what wasn't new um i see a lot of improvements and a lot of stuff that we already had which is also good news um i guess the the one question i had and i don't know if you can answer this or not was in there was the there was a clause in there about developing plain language for when there is i guess any an event between two students or between a student and non-student and about the results of the potential penalty for whatever occurred and it wasn't exactly clear and i know we've had extensive conversations about ferpa

006and whether or not this law would try attempt to bypass any of that because as we know that was a a very big stumbling point the last time was that it was a frustration point because we couldn't do certain things we couldn't inform people about things i just wasn't sure if this is saying that we can now inform the other party about what happened because before it was restricted that even the other party couldn't be informed what happened to the i guess the accused the aggressor yes um so it wasn't entirely clear what in this language here that if that is the case or not let's take a look at them because i i think we can find that in here what do you think yeah i mean no if you could do a quick

007you're the one with the laptop so you might be able to do a quick search there we definitely have some new definition of emotional intelligence i'm pretty sure we did not have that in our policy so tim um so you weren't here in 20 night or you just came on in 2019 right when did you come on less than two years ago less than two years ago okay so you weren't here for this um uh so right now i'm conflicted so whether or not to move this on to a first reading since we're unclear as to which parts are changing we know that parts are going to be changing let's say we just table it it's not clear what's changing yeah i don't think it's i mean is there a rush on this right now

008only that we have to have something in place that we have to have something in place because of the timing of the law so when we do have something important what's that what's that moment in time when we need to have something in place or has it already passed i believe it's already passed all right so i mean if it pushes out another month i don't i just look at it and i say there's good intention here but i don't think we should be you know i think we should wait till we know what the changes are yeah because it says board of education january 1 2021. i guess the i'm fine with us doing that i don't think we're going to have necessarily an apples to apples comparison because we're not changing our policy

009if we do it that way i guess if we we could so what you're doing is you're taking you're taking like a 10-page policy out putting in right taking the outdated policy out and replacing it with the cape recommended policy that complies with the law so what's this what is the spirit then of the changes recommended by kate i think they're sort of what adam was referring to that this get communicated to parents in plain language on the website that it also encompasses um not just student-to-student bullying but other types of groups of bullying as well and let me see if i could highlight some of those when we scroll up it seems like this this new policy would be even tougher than the one that we have now it's more extensive i would agree

010yeah and so this addresses this we're at a moment in time when the conflict has been resolved is it like a conflict between state law and federal law i thought there was something related to this that's i think what your original question yeah it's not it's not entirely clear if there is a conflict or not because of the plain language and the reporting of consequences that's the only thing that would concern me um because of ferpa and hopefully that was considered while this was being written just like when we when we examined uh the title nine later on you know that was oh yeah we're hoping that's not there's no violation right so yeah jeff is here i'm just curious if floyd read through it on the legal aspects of it just because it came

011from cave i'm not that concerned on the hot seat already jeff i apologize hello there employee legal assets watson the bullying policy the bullying policy i know it came from i know you're saying that it can't be okay that's fine but i want to know our attorney said he was comfortable with any legal aspects related to it we'll review it with him but um you know it is uh like i said it's just following statute sure so i'll review it with him okay sure yeah so we were debating whether or not the table this until the next meeting because this policy is so large yeah this new policy yeah if there was a hurry on it or not just because it looks like our policy is very similar now it looks like this is a

012little more extensive yeah so like you know we we talk about this in policy a lot we have to follow statute regardless so but there's problems when the statutes at the state and federal level kind of conflict right there there can be but this uh this is not no conflict here that was titled we're talking about title nine was yeah that's a a federal issue that's yeah challenging to say the least but that we do have to follow and floyd did review that and say that we need to implement that okay uh as the title nine piece i think uh my concern was um the language that's at least in the high level overview was talking about um the reporting of um resolution and it sounded like title name no no no this is in

013the okay and there's a recording of resolution to the um to the parents that were affected of the victim right right and i didn't think that that was possible under ferpa am i misunderstanding that no you're not uh it's it's a matter of resolution is is different than details of the outcome and you know that to say that this has been resolved and addressed is about as far as we can go without violating ferpa you are correct there okay but that is uh we have to offer a meeting uh for both parents uh for for resolution as well so i mean those are things that we have done and have to continue to do um the biggest difference is the change in the definition of bullying the right went into effect uh as july 1.

014okay just just to be clear what you just said a meeting for both parents right is that two separate meetings two separate times for the parents to be involved or the parents meet yeah can can be together but typically not okay okay so that said i would maybe i would feel more comfortable moving to a first reading since um i think a lot of our questions were answered here yeah yeah okay um so i'll uh move uh that i'll move that we move that policy 5131.911 students slash hazing slash bullying be moved to a first greeting second um is there any further discussion no all right um all in favor is unanimous of those present thank you uh moving on to non-discrimination policy 18.11 18.11 non-discrimination that was the policy dealing with i think specifically

015with hairstyles it was yeah that was a change in connecticut statute uh specifically indicating that uh we can't discriminate on employees based on this style of their hair the language specifically identifies several you know diverse cultural headdresses and hairstyles for example um wigs head wraps hairstyles such as individual braids cornrows locks twists bantu knots afros and afro puffs so okay we're just following the statutory language sure and uh as far as i know we had received no comment um now okay after the first reading all right great um do you have any further comments all right well actually um yeah i make a motion yeah i will uh move uh to uh move to move uh policy 41 18.11 42.4218.11 uh nondiscrimination for a second uh is there any second is any uh further discussion

016uh saying no no no implementing state law yeah all right uh seeing none all in favor all right it's unanimous those present and so move on to the third reading for uh personnel certified slash non-certified title nine uh this is policy number four thousand dot one slash uh 5145.44 students title nine um we had extensive discussion on this already many times um and that there's it's basically mirrors for federal law there's not a whole lot we knew about it and the courts can take care of the rest that's gonna happen yeah okay um i moved that uh policy 4000 45.44 uh personnel certified slashline certified uh title nine uh students title nine um the moves for uh you know okay so you have the motion written on here it was just a lot better than

017what i was saying um well either way uh move that uh palsy for a third and final reading to the board of education for approval second any further discussion all in favor unanimous for those present okay and finally uh civility code um yeah i don't have updated information on that so i mean table that yeah what's the correct way to i guess table that and definitely until yeah yeah there's just motion uh that this uh item table definitely okay so there's no we we didn't have action on it so we don't even have to address it was just a discussion item okay so we will just decide to take no action yeah at what point we want to if we want to put it back on an agenda we'll do that but uh right now

018i'm not prepared to speak to it all right very good so no x just taken on civility code um and i have no other items on this agenda you have a motion to adjourn i will second all in favor all right policies adjourned [Music] good evening everyone welcome to second of three meetings tonight i'm losing track this is a special board of ed meeting uh beginning at 7 15. uh before we get into it on a call for a uh rule for quora mr zinski here thank you carol i ask that we stand for the pledge [Music] please allegiance flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so good evening everyone in those remote thanks for joining us

019this evening hopefully this meeting is going to be pretty quick we have a very special item on the agenda only one item um but before we get into that uh we do have some correspondence emails dr stone i don't know if you want to address them now or get into it at the next meeting mostly smc related yeah they're they're smc related so i think you know it makes more sense to address it there's nothing specific to this topic so we'll get into the correspondence that brought the meeting after this at 7 30. moving on uh we actually have one item from personnel and that's the appointment of a family and community engagement coordinator so i know if tim or jeff you want to talk about this and sure mr white motion on the table

020might as well yeah all right the gesher board of education that the cheshire board of education appoint ryan j murphy to the position of family and community engagement coordinator effective november 15 2021. further that ryan j murphy be compensated in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement between the board and the cheshire administrative personnel this is very second that should be you or anyone yeah and seconds discussion yeah but i'll just say at a high level what's happened is uh kelly lens who had been with us for 24 years with with the cheshire public schools uh has or did she just retire she's about to retire and the the role has been tweaked a bit uh looking at the specific responsibilities and what we're doing here is uh bringing ryan murphy on board to fill the

021role that kelly lens largely had been following before sure and uh you know if you don't mind mr chair i'd just like to kind of read a statement about mr murphy and provide some background to the board and further back on the board in the audience mr murphy began his college education at quinnipiac university where he earned a bachelor's of science degree in marketing and advertising after working in the corporate environment for several years mr murphy embarked on a new path in education where he earned his master's degree in elementary education from the university of new haven and subsequently his sixth year degree in educational leadership from southern connecticut state university mr murphy taught kindergarten through sixth grade in bethany and in the east hartford public schools during that time he took on a range

022of responsibilities outside of the classroom such as district science liaison grade level facilitator team mentor for new teachers pbis coach which manages you know culture and and discipline within a building and behavior and coordinator of summer programs to name a few in addition he was a member of the district's leap team promoting positive relationships with families and conducting home visits mr murphy's previous supervisors described him as talented creative and smart his previous principal described him as a super talented teacher who can do anything in the classroom we are eager for mr murphy to demonstrate that same level of talent and his new role as the family and community engagement coordinator where he will serve as the director of adult education in summer school as well as the liaison for to english language learners and their

023families to students and families who participate in the as well as uh students and families who participate in the open choice program mr murphy will as it said in the motion begin his new role on november 15th excellent any questions from the board so a little background we've been discussing that is someone presented this role to us a while ago actually uh before this end of the school year actually last year and you spent the summer and before the start of the new school year looking for candidates and the role um actually is an administrator whereas kelly's role was not necessarily one but that limited us and nothing to do with kelly and be able to do about learning walks evaluations and the the board felt that this required an administrator role so we're looking

024forward to this placement i know it brings a lot of help and relief the central office and gives a dedicated person to work with open choice ela and the other program so i'm all in favor of this unless there's any other comments or discussion tim yeah just the one other point that the board is voting on this this is a ceremonial vote really it is appointments hiring and firing all happens by way of the superintendent it's not the board's role but i'm totally comfortable showing this support here so thank you yeah yeah i just is this on are you all hearing me oh great thank you um i just want to say a welcome to uh mr murphy and also um impressive background and i'm sure you went through all of the rigorous uh interviewing

025in uh multiple stages of interviewing and um because i've sat on many of those interviews in the past uh so i'm impressed with what i've read of your background and i'm so certain that you will uh you'll succeed in this position as we've created it so um congratulations and uh thanks for being here tonight anyone else andrew welcome board to this emergency town and also you're joining you're joining the group at a very pivotal time there's a lot going on specifically as you'll hear tonight with school modernization um so the community needs to be engaged as we all so i think a lot of people are here tonight um so welcome aboard and good luck to you look forward to working with you seeing as there are no other comments uh the motion is that

026the cheshire board of education appoint ryan j murphy to position a family and community engagement coordinator effective november 15th 2021 further that ryan j murphy be compensated in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement between the board and the cheshire administration and personnel all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous muslim passes thank you [Applause] a few words welcome thank you again i'll keep this very brief um i just wanted to kind of piggyback off of one of the comments about the process and that was one of the things that impressed me the most about the district just how thorough everyone was throughout the past few months ensuring that you had the right fit that you know this was the right fit for all of us i definitely think that it is i'm

027looking forward to you know joining this family and we have great things ahead so i'm welcoming the challenges and let's rock this we're good thank you very much thank you thank you uh there is no old business there is new no new business however before i adjourn i'll take this opportunity to publicize some upcoming meetings uh thursday night tomorrow night can't believe it's already thursday at 6 p.m in town council chambers is a town council school monetization committee meeting suggests that folks are interested in topic please watch and or attend there's further analysis being discussed some of which we'll talk about tonight next thursday october 21st at 7 30 p.m is the board of ed business meeting that will be in town council chambers and we are looking to schedule a board of ed open

028forum meeting either august 25th august 25th it's been confirmed i'm sorry october 25th will be a board of ed open forum meeting agenda details will likely go out later this week early next week that's it for upcoming meetings for now so i have no other new business i call for a motion to adjourn tim is there a second adam seconds all in favor thank you team this meeting is adjourned next meeting will start 7 30. welcome to the 7 30 florida bed planning committee meeting of the whole before we kick it off mr zenski can i have a roll call for quorum please here thank you i ask that we please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states and to the republic for which it stands

029one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i can't possibly imagine why everyone is here tonight but it is so nice to see actual faces in the audience thank you for coming out tonight for those at home watching thank you for watching for those of you that are home and you do have questions you can email us at cps coven19 at cheshire.k12ct.us and uh dr solon will try to answer those questions as he gives his presentation before i hand this over to andrew martell the angel is our planning committee chair just saw a few ground rules this is a special planning meeting of the whole board that's why we're all here tonight it's the only way all of us could be in the same room and discuss planning activities uh together without

030being an illegal committee meeting uh the topic of the meeting is really to talk about where we are school modernization led by dr solin it is not an open forum however there is an audience section where folks out there if you had to speak to the board uh andrew will talk about the protocol for that but we can certainly help answer some questions my guess is a lot of questions we answered during dr solomon's update that being said welcome and andrew i'm going to turn this over to you thank you so much good evening everyone thank you so much for coming out as tony has just stated it's so nice to see so many members of the community coming out for such an important important discussion earlier we mentioned that tonight is the full planning

031committee meeting of the board of education tomorrow night town council will be taking up the issue of school modernization and town council chambers at town hall at 6 p.m and then from there there's going to be the full board of education business meeting which is going to be october the 24th at 7 30 at town hall followed by an open forum for further discussion on october 25th to be determined location but that will be at 7 pm i believe it'll be at town hall um so just going to give a little brief kick off before dr solon gets into the presentation well first we'll take public speaking and then dr solon will be going through really where we are in the process of school modernization um this has been a multi-year effort i've been on

032the board for two years this coming december before i joined the board under the last board they went through over two years of analyzing the school buildings interviewing folks and really taking a look and coming up with a plan what some people don't know is is that the board of education will ultimately make a recommendation to the town council town council is the only governing body in the community that could actually put a project to referendum so back the last time that this was taken up um a recommendation was made to the town council and the town council never put it to the voters and that was for 63 middle school so that kind of kicked off the new process where we went back through and analyzed the school buildings went out toward other facilities

033interviewed teachers members of the public had four public hearings at the schools last june um and kind of bringing us to where we are today um a lot of time has been put into this a lot of effort's been put into this i know everyone has different opinions as to what the plan is to be um so that's kind of why we're here tonight to hear what you folks have to say where we are today the town council is analyzing the preferred option which was the i'm just going to call it the two elementary school option which was the recommendation made by the school modernization committee so the school memorization committee was made up of 13 members of the community with various backgrounds that group over 18 months put together the plan that was then

034submitted to the town council so town council over the past several months has been really analyzing that plan um page by page detail by detail really put into the financial projections as to what it will be the ultimate cost for the community um so that's kind of the background as to where we are today dr solon will give a further update as to where um there's been some discussions between the board that i haven't been part of but also coliers is the colliers is a professional engineering firm that was retained by the town to help assist the school modernization effort and they have been continuing to do test fits of school sites of town-owned properties and some school sites in the community to potentially host these new elementary schools if that's the process project that

035goes forward so with that i'd like to we'll open it up for public speaking microphone is here when you come up please state your name and your street address we're going to keep it to three minutes per individual if you go a little bit over i'm not going to like shut the mic off but just try to keep it two to three minutes but also tonight's about school modernization so if you have another issue that you'd like to address to the board come see us on next thursday at town hall we'd be happy to uh to hear you there on the 24th so with that whoever would like to come up first welcome good evening terry terzakis 226 mcsville road uh two topics i wanted to hit one is the size of dodd and the

036site according to the report from the committee it's projected another 200 students will be in dodd by the end of the decade that's only about eight years away and that's also near capacity according to the report so what happens in year nine and ten or eleven are we then over capacity are those of you or whoever sitting in your seats in 10 years coming back to us and saying oops now we need a new dodd we need to build on that's not going to go over well with all these people when we want it now and if we're still in the process of phasing in what you're hoping to put forward and putting band-aids on this building at probably the cost of millions of dollars to in 10 years come back to us and say

037we need to add on or build again has anybody been here at school pick up at 245 it's dangerous the site is too small that's not my opinion that's in the report the state says they want 15 acres plus one acre for every 100 kids for a middle school that's about 22 acres who knows the site here i believe it's about 10 11 acres that's half of what the state is looking for so why are we ignoring that we're ignoring that the other thing i want to talk about at the last meeting i attended a couple of you said or supported silence from the public equals approval shame on you that is a dangerous stance if you're not getting it this is too important of an issue to not go out and get the information

038from us i'm just a parent with kids but i see hundreds of parents on a weekly basis all you have to do is go to mcnamara park on a saturday or sunday there's parents lining those baseball fields or to a cjf practice we are talking about it everybody has a strong opinion maybe you're not hearing it because it's tough for us to get here we appreciate that you guys are here every night but now that we're back to semi-normal lives normal lives for us mean getting kids to soccer practice to a baseball game to cheerleading to football to making sure grandma's taking her medication we can't get here but we are talking about it i have not heard from anyone who has supported the two middle school option everybody is saying they want new dot

039first and foremost and they're saying they are not going to support the two middle school option this report has surveys you guys took surveys somebody took surveys over the phone and email the committee did a great job at doing research and giving us two great options it is imperative that you now give us that option there are two great options and there are very strong opinions we talked about a pre-referendum a survey email phone if the opinions come back in different we'll go with your recommendation if they're 50 50 we'll go with your recommendation but if they are 70 80 90 in favor of option 2a you can't ignore that please give the tax paying people the option thank you [Applause] i'll jump up at once i'm matt johnson i'm at 75 west ridge court

040in cheshire and i attended the sessions this summer i've been following the school modernization i agree you guys have done a ton of research one question and i was highlighted this summer about collier's recommendation specifically around the lack of i guess the governing body of the state of connecticut and their responsible what they're willing to approve for tax credit or whatever you know basically what money would they put towards it and they're in favor of a much smaller middle school i believe is the recommendation and that there's only been i believe three examples across the state where they had approved a school that would be the size of the middle school that's being proposed one thing that i'm unclear on and i haven't been able to get an answer and i'm hoping somebody either could

041share the information or can follow up afterwards is is what's the failure rate of that because quite frankly one of the things that's really crazy in my mind in this day and age is the fact that there's a governing body that sits in across the state of connecticut that is quote unquote working with the towns yet we can only go forward with one option that's the part that i really struggle with because this is such an important thing i mean thank you for speaking up because that i'm with you a lot of time and efforts gone into this but i don't want to go forward with a plan that was going to put us back here eight eight years later and even eight years later is going to be too late we're going to be

042still catching up this problem has been ignored for way too long you guys have all heard me when i spoke before i went through the school system of cheshire cheshire high i went through doolittle school i went through this this school itself when i was 10 years old they tried to push through the middle school so that was 30 years ago now and here we are having the same conversation couple of other points that i want to emphasize is the whole fact that colliers when they when they come back with their recommendation have also stated when you renovate a school you get a 20-year school right that means 20 years from now you're back here putting your money back into a dumpy school no pun intended but when you build a new school you get

043a 50-year school you put the dollars out there that are talking about this middle school compared to the two middle to two elementary school options and it's a no-brainer from a dollar's perspective in this town and it's time that we get a new middle school thank you [Applause] anybody else so may i suggest that if folks are not ready to ask questions now maybe after dr presentation can entertain more questions are we okay with that if anybody else wants to come up now or there's gonna be a presentation done by the superintendent and then we could entertain questions again then do i reserve the right to come up again later this will go up right [Music] there we go i should have told you i was coming um so uh my name is jim jinx

044um 244 academy road um on the town council was on the smc um i just want to mention one thing as far as terry um i think made the mistake we said two middle school options that the two middle school options you meant the two elementary school option right two middle school option is no longer on the table we understand [Music] as far as a survey i myself did a pretty simple survey out to attempting to get feedback from my constituents in the second district i was able in just a few weeks to get over 300 responses to a simple google survey i'm not going to discuss the particulars of the results at this point i just would ask that the board of ed probably could do something pretty similar uh it's really no cost

045so it's an easy way to put the scenarios out there and get people away to get you some feedback pretty quickly even have you know have a professional firm write questions or design the scenario the sequence of the questions i think that would work out pretty well and could be done fairly quickly um the other thing i want to discuss briefly as far as this gentleman sorry your name was again greg matt matt brought up you know coming back here in a relatively short period of time because we didn't kind of do it right the first time um as i've discussed a few times before you guys have all heard this before you know one of my main concerns it's not so much um the educational aspect of the six state versus uh versus the

046elementary schools for me my concern has to do with the fact that um we're growing you know we got projections about a year ago um as the smc members know and you guys all know and we're already this year we've already exceeded those projections we got low medium high we're already seeing the high projections this year and those projections we got did not include a couple of major developments that are happening already in town um they also didn't include the um uh anticipated north end development which right now the first phase has been approved which is about 140 units of i think it's one and two bedroom units um but there's a second phase that's 306 units i think of two and three bedroom units none of that was included in those projections just a

047year ago so if it's um you know we may want to consider looking at our projections again perhaps to see where we we might be uh within the decade so um and if we're you know the state has a concern about the middle school being a middle school being 1200 students you know i guess we should ask how they feel about our elementary schools being 700 students or over 700 students should be a something they could let us know about um so i just want to point those things out again where we don't want to go down the track of of well my main focus has has been from the beginning we want a successful referendum the first first time out of the gate so one let's find out what people want and two let's

048make sure it's the right project thank you [Applause] all right jim thank you so i know tomorrow night at town council meeting colliers will be given an update on your own projections and they're probably going to address your home and confirm the numbers but i want to spoil that they get a preview so you'll get some stuff tomorrow night from the meeting so stay tuned for that anybody else before we get into the presentation i'm seeing none dr solong and turn it over to you thank you andrew appreciate that good evening everyone thank you for that warm welcome um i'm kidding i you know i maybe i need to get out more often but i'm so excited to be here tonight with you because i know and i'm not going to put everybody on the

049spot but if i were to ask all of you is not updating our facilities a viable option i doubt i would see any hands and um i think for me having worked 16 years in this school system seven of which were here as a principal and assistant principal at dodd middle school four of which were at a principal as a principal at cheshire high school i certainly recognize there are substantial needs for our facilities district-wide every every building needs to be updated and i also want to just take a second to acknowledge the fact that that's not the fault of the seven individuals and plus administrators on this table sitting up at the board today i want to commend them because it is through much of their hard work that we're at a place where

050the community uh the town council in the survey was was referenced people acknowledge that we need to update our school facilities and so well there may be consternation over a plan and it is important that we get it right the fact that we're here is something that you know i don't think i would envisioned would have envisioned 10 years ago so i'm excited to share with you this evening kind of you know where where we are very quickly hopefully address some of the questions and concerns that are out there identify the fact that we still do need more information on some things to be able to move forward and then also establish kind of like what's next so you uh in in our full community understands all right what what are the next steps here

051and what sort of timeline are we exploring um i you know i get chided by mr martelly if i don't mention this is uh 2016 this is our last district building project and if you've been to cheshire high school at the concession stand you you don't you go there if you were there before now i'll never forget is a high school principal taking my little boy to the restroom there because we've all been there dad i gotta go pee and he's at the football game with me and i take him into the restroom and he just turned around and walked out i'm not going in there dad now our facilities are something to be proud of and it's a quality of life issue it's a it's a community issue and you know our school facilities

052if that's the pride that we can uh engender from a uh concession stand i i look forward to the day where we can do that for a school building in our community so you know that school modernization committee and i give them a lot of credit too because there were countless hours over multiple years that this was study and uh the committee was given this charge when there was unanimous agreement on the town council and board of education unanimous i don't care what you throw out there it's very hard to get unanimous agreement between both bodies that we needed to do something about our school facilities i i'll throw it out to mr white because i know what a history buff you wanna i don't put you totally on the spot you know that is

053he's a haberdasher the haberdasher the pride of independence missouri harry truman was president 70 years ago when our most of our buildings were built it gives you a little bit of a historical context of our current ages in the buildings so the school modernization committee endeavored to collect facts for all school facilities and there is a lot of this information is available i would say all of it on the town of cheshire website and you can go there you can see the full school modernization report i know it was cited today that's great i think the more people that look at that it's it's even more compelling um that we need to do something we conducted a community survey as part of that process really about you know would you be willing to invest in

054school facilities and i have to say i was really pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback there um mr um parigini talked about colliers as a project leader group they help us tremendously uh put this information together and then we developed i think it was 13 different scenarios of which we whittled that down to a preferred and secondary scenario why modernization i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slide because i think there's unanimous agreement that it's necessary but i beyond that i want to highlight the fact that it's it's not simply modernization uh for modernization's sake that's necessary but it's also fiscally prudent because you know we've talked a little bit already about the fact that you know we don't want to be throwing good money after bad in the community nobody

055wants to do that it's a terrible waste of taxpayer money how if we have a plan we avoid that and for many years and again i not the fault of anybody sitting here and i don't want to disparage previous i know previous boards have certainly worked on this and councils have but nobody's been able to come to agreement and that's why it's so critical to come to agreement now so that we can develop a plan and you know it's just fiscally sensible moving forward as part of our process we toured a number of different districts and in buildings guilford high school if you've been there one of the things i love is a dad with kids that are involved in different events that's the cafeteria at guilford high school on the left side is the

056gym on the right side is the theater and then there's the cafeteria servery here so at four o'clock at night they open up the cafeteria servery families come to you know wait for sparky to finish playing basketball or whatever the case may be you can hang out here with your other child there's wi-fi you can do work wait it's just really really incredible south windsor has constructed multiple i think they're on their fourth elementary school now in the last several years we toured those facilities meridian i think this is plat high school and meridian had a renovation is new so enrollment projections now this is a a key question for us over the last 16 years that i've been here we started i think when i was first my first year here at dodd middle

057school we had about 900 students and we saw we've seen a precipitous decline from the 5500 students we had them to the 4 200 and change we have now that is projected to rebound not to that uh you know previous high but substantially and um jim mentioned the fact that right now we're over uh enrolled you know 21-22 now slr or mylon mcbroom uh when this was done projected our k-6 enrollment at 21.85 it's like 22 30 right now um just today scott jeffrey at highland was telling me that we have five more enrollments that are we're anticipating and they've already come in and started to register um and so we know that that number is legitimate and that it's growing um and it the the question about what's the time frame for an enrollment

058projection so the state requires a 10-year enrollment projection uh they won't allow you to say well yeah but 11 year 11 uh you're 12 they fund on a 10-year enrollment projection uh and so this this projection was conducted at the end of 1920 and so we have 21 through through 30 that 10-year window there and so we are seeing significant growth a lot of that is not just what we've seen in turnover in our community with respect to residences and not just development a lot of it's predicated on birth rate so we get our enrollment projections from nasdaq a firm that does that for us and you know we had seen you know as it says here two 209 to 212 births in a typical year that's cheshire residences now it's over 300. so demographically

059things have shifted our birth rate's over 300 and what they uh the demographers recognize is we have something called the persistence rate of one and a half so every birth of a cheshire resident every cheshire student that's born in town one and a half kids enroll because we have children that move in so you know that's a lot of what's driving these numbers northward again i also like to think that it's the quality of our school system we've always had a great school system i if you've heard me speak before you know a little tongue-in-cheek i say people don't move here for the night life we have a great school system and that just underscores why how it's so important to take care of that school system it's it also underpins uh residential home value

060in our community um so that we really have to take care of that and invest in the the school system uh not only for our students but economically as a community so here's our 10-year projections with respect to space this is darcy school in the upper left-hand corner you'll see that last year we were encroaching on you know the target rate this is this dash line is the target for enrollment in the building the uh solid blue line is capacity in the building so this year this academic year which is the second bar in you can see we've far exceeded that we had to move kindergarten classes from darcy this year to do little and then we just didn't have space to do that i think one of my greatest fears for us moving forward

061is that nothing gets done in a year or two we're talking about what are we where are we going to put the portable classroom at school x y or z you want to talk about throwing good money after bad that's this chain this all this data right here what we've seen in the shift in in the town demographically answers the question you know why couldn't we just do a high school or you know why aren't we just thinking middle school first or we absolutely need to address the overcrowding issue with the elementary schools and there are various ways to do that we'll talk a little bit about that but this is what you know is on the precipice for us where you see schools um highland exceeding their capacity and norton the same chapman darcy

062already has with the shift of 100 students or roughly from darcy to doolittle now this graph looks different so that's where this is so scenario discussions the things that we've just discussed in that process you know we wanted to look at the at a holistic approach to the various scenarios that we have and you know i was having a conversation before this meeting there are so many variables that go into making a decision about what's the appropriate plan selfishly you know from where i sit the most important one is what's educationally in the best interest of our kids that's that's a critical you know variable that i think we all agree upon there are other variables you know finances uh accessibility of a site transportation location there are a number of variables that can be

063considered and the school modernization committee went through a variety of variables again this is on our website and looked at how do each of these variables weigh in to make their decision about the preferred and secondary option so preferred scenario summary just to bring everybody up to speed was two k through six elementary schools located one at the north end of town and one at the south end of town possibly on the norton site existing darcy and chapman buildings are taken offline i'm going to come back to why darcy is is highlighted and vin promised to remind me later norton would be demolished if we build the new norton on that site redistricting will be addressed later on in terms of how does redistricting in this preferred option versus the secondary option what does that

064look like and then we would have phases two and three where renovations to all other schools would be done over time now we as we do future phases are required by the state to do an enrollment study again the enrollment study is necessary for them to fund us at reimbursement our reimbursement rate for new construction at the state bin is i'm not great with exact numbers 46. yeah so 32 and 42. so 32 percent for new construction is the reimbursement rate 42 for renovation looking at the norton test fit and we'll make sure that this presentation is on the website because i know you you don't have binoculars with you but this is the norton or the north end marion and jarvis test fit they presented four different versions of what that would look like

065in terms of bus traffic uh pedestrian traffic vehicle traffic and what you'll see here when you you look at this in in closer detail later is that this the the entire perimeter here is the actual plot itself there's a line that you'll see traversing the site that outlines where wetlands exist there's also a dash line that highlights where there's a current sewer line where you couldn't dig through that so you know as much as the property itself is is rather large there's a fair degree that's not necessa you can't build upon so we had a firm outline four potential options for there now the town council had recom made a recommendation to consider moving hummuston and central office to that site i think part of the rationale is it's 109 years old the building and

066it's not uh handicap accessible has numerous code compliance issues um and to be fair just like i would say about our our parking and arrival and all that it's a lot like other buildings in our district um to be honest so there are four different plans that were designed by architects to kind of highlight what a layout potentially on that property would look like for a new north end middle school that would replace chapman be larger than chapman school and we would redistrict to alleviate the pressure that we're currently experiencing or that we anticipate really experiencing as enrollment increases now this is one phase of that the other phase that has to happen simultaneously is basically doing the same thing at norton where we would build a a new school behind the existing norton school

067they you know built put a wall between the construction site and the um the uh existing building and start construction behind that that building uh what you'll see here and this is a construction access uh to the to the rear and it's also um you know available for bus traffic potentially if this site were to be fully developed the architects came up with two different test fits for that site the costs [Music] when you look at the new north end school and new south end which also assumes a demo of norton the total uh cost there is between 72 and 87 million dollars that's the that's after reimbursement the the gross cost is 108 and 130 for the construction of those two facilities that does not include doing anything with hummuston to move that school

068and central office to a north end site that does not include that uh the alternate scenario phase one is the construction of a new six through eight middle school unfortunately to my surprise and this is what's different between 20 21 and when the board had previously moved forward a new middle school the construction of a new middle school in pulling six through eight into that school does not do enough on its own to alleviate the uh the enrollment issue that we're gonna have so you would then not only have to build a new six through eight element or middle school but you would also have to build like basically a replacement of chapman at the same time and a site for that would have to be identified in this phase the plan would be to

069take darcy offline in that process and then redistricting is required and like in the other scenario renovations are then done to other buildings one element of this uh that's not available in the other plan is that dodd middle school upon the opening of a new middle school would serve as what's called swing space so if we're working on another if we're working on an elementary school that wouldn't be a new construction in terms of how this plan was designed to be in renovation the preference would be to not have kids there when the renovation is taking place it can definitely be be done it's done every day all over connecticut but it's more efficient cleaner um a better scenario if we were to move students from that building that's being renovated to this building will

070we renovate that building just faster more efficient now what do you do when you get to highland highland just doesn't you know work well here it's too many kids so you know that probably wouldn't be a dodd wouldn't be an adequate swing space for that situation i don't think but that's just a consideration so what are the costs of that plan and i want to talk a little bit about how this you know what this ultimately translates to for the average taxpayer but you know gross total budget 154 to 185 million dollars for the two buildings uh net post reimbursement 100 to 124 million round numbers subsequently we would still have to you know work on uh updating our other buildings because as we acknowledge you know we don't have the luxury of saying well

071it's just this building that we have to worry about phase one is not the end of the story um there's still going to be other kids in this community no matter what we do that need facilities updated comparison of preferred and alternate scenarios and i think this is you know really kind of where the rubber met the road for our committee and i think it's good to articulate this for for the public so the point was made about the projected enrollment the larger projected enrollment of the middle school at you know roughly 1200 students you know is a former middle school educator assistant principal principal um i don't necessarily see that as the world's largest hurdle you know i was principal here with 900 students we did a lot at that time and we still

072continue to do organizational and structural uh things that make big schools small we put you know grade levels on wings we are floors we you know put them in teams students and teams it's much more intimate and it's a great model and it's been really successful for us in in cheshire and i think that we could do that with 1200 students if if need be um but it the state did say in all fairness that that's something that they don't like to see they didn't say it was something that we would never do never consider because there are other schools that do hamden's doing it right now um there are other districts that do it and i think we could do it but i would remind you again unfortunately that in and of itself does

073not solve our enrollment you still need to build another building at the same time so that's um one element that we we looked at um the projected enrollment for the two schools uh is you know within the scope 653 and 669 for the new norton and new chapman that does balance our schools a little bit better right now we have one school in highland that's substantially larger in this process the school sizes would be 653 669 612 and 780. that it is somewhat you know easier from a staffing perspective um i i will go back to the the middle school scenario because i've been asked this number of times starting and i have to give our chair mr peregini a lot of credit because if he's asked me once he's asked me a thousand times

074like what do you think is is best educationally and my my answer is there's a one a and one b from an educational perspective you know i've openly shared with with him in the modernization that i do see some benefits to six through eight our teachers have said that um and i you know i went the first thing i did was ask them you know our middle school and our our sixth grade teachers who suggested that you know that was preferable um but it's not it like i said it's a 1a and it's a 1b um it's it's hard to argue that what we've done over the last many years has not been successful we have the fifth best performance in the state of connecticut on the current system it's not broken and so i'm

075not necessarily looking for a solution to a problem we don't have do i think it's preferred if all other variables are equal yes but as i mentioned earlier there are a lot of variables that go into this decision um and so that's you know just my my feeling on that so schools taken offline uh eliminate costly improvements uh you know darcy is an amazing program in a building that's not so amazing um chapman same thing you know it's shameful in my mind that we really have buildings that aren't handicap accessible in 2021 i know we can do better for our kids there as a community um so redistricting the difference between the two in the preferred scenario the two elementary 18 percent of our community would have to be redistricted in order to address the

076um situation with enrollment and in the alternate scenario um so it's you know it's again it's it's not a dramatic difference between the two the estimated co district share for phase one projects um differ by about 37 million so what's the tax impact on that so the this is from the accounting office at town hall the tax impact for an average taxpayer for phase one projects differs by 223. the two elementary school scenario is 389 a year for the average taxpayer with a market value of their home of 303 or 304 and two cars valued at a total of three or thirteen thousand dollars that's over how many years have been 20 right 20 years so that's the average cost over 20 years some years a little higher some years a little lower as you

077know the the rates fluctuate 389 a year on the average yeah that's the market value 100 on the home yeah thank you the alternate scenario cost with the middle school and new elementary school is 612 dollars a year for the average cheshire taxpayer for for the next 20 years and i you know i don't make this decision i i weigh in on this decision i weigh in on what's best for our kids and our community i uh full disclosure i want to make sure something happens something needs to happen i you know i've been here as i said this is my 17th year in the district we need to move forward um and we're we're at a real you know crossroads here and i don't think that if we were to to pull the trigger

078on a decision now the last thing that we could be accused of is making a snap decision i mean seven years later here i mean yeah i this is not a snap decision there are a lot of variables and again no matter i want to reiterate no matter what happens and tony has repeated this a thousand times too sometimes to the chagrin of some others this isn't the end phase one cannot be the end [Music] because you end up leaving a lot of kids and families in a difficult situation i didn't i received the gong usually from vin but uh that i mean that is we're getting to the end here but uh this this is it's a phase it's the first phase of what needs to be subsequent phases so when you know i

079think when you consider financially that's a reality when i consider the fact that educationally we're not talking about you know apples and oranges we're talking about a nuanced difference that provides some some benefit absolutely as i see it but not dramatically shifting the course of life for our kids by any stretch so um based on the information here that that's where the committee came up with a nine to three vote to support the two elementary school options additional considerations that we still these are hurdles that we still need to cross things that we have not put a bow on that i really you know i don't want to speak for the i do speak for the board a lot but i i you know i'm not going to make this decision for them um there

080are some questions that i know i have i'm sure they have that we just want to try and tie up before they ultimately vote on a plan to move forward and i've tried to outline some of them here there's been a suggestion from members of the council that a new central office hummus in school be added to the north end elementary project i think that's admirable and ambitious um but we don't know the gross cost that we've been given an estimate to build that on that site is 12 million dollars to you know engage in a a full renovation of hummus and central office would be 7 million but the the trick there is that we're not so sure that the state will reimburse renovations on a 109 year old building we got to find

081out we got to know the estimated gross cost if we didn't do a standalone hummuston school in central office on the north end but did it as part of a wing of a building right so it's part of the same footprint different entrants things like that but it's it's like an extension on your home kind of thing it's just a add-on to the facility is nine million dollars that's also a lot of money um the other question that we have is the estimated cost of renovation as i mentioned would be 7 million for dodd but again that needs to be verified if the state would even do that but the the piece that i missed that i know vin will want to remind me of is is darcy school um when when we look at

082the the financial financial you know estimates provided by the town it doesn't look like darcy and those students are factored into the financial equation we have to make sure that that's the case if that they're indeed planning on closing that building and what's the cost there uh what is how will that shake out um is that something that money that's better spent in the in the immediate future on moving the darcy programs to the new elementary school on the north end you know my opinion on that is probably um you're serving a lot more kids by doing that it's critically important for darcy who if you don't know and not familiar that has a birth to three program we identify students with some of the most significant needs in our community birth to three provides

083coaching and intervention for those families that's run out of darcy school it's state contracted then we have preschool and we have a smart start program which is also a preschool program there which supports students with individualized education plans and their peers for transition into kindergarten we still have kindergarten there because it's so critically important the synergy that exists between those three programs is really critical for those students who have significant needs early in their life early intervention is paramount and so we can't split those programs up and put them in different places because we compromise the quality of our program so when i'm talking about you know educationally what are things that you know um are critical non-negotiables that's one of them the 6878 is not for me and for i know i speak for

084marlene and our team on that so you know that's something that we need to get an answer to i think before we really say okay this is the right because this is a significant commitment obviously when you look at those those numbers on the board um inventory of current space it dot or at the excuse me hummuston you know you can't read these i appreciate that we'll get this on the website uh immediately so that you can see this um it basically outlines the space that we have in that building we have about 30 students who participate in alternative high school program a number of other students who receive support tutoring there we also have in that building our central office team it's it's uh a lean team there's not uh you know relative to

085our peers we have myself marlene vin and then uh human resources director k-38 curriculum coordinator special ed director and then we have support staff and our finance department our food services department is run from that building technology as well i think that covers them all right man so you know that that group would need to be housed someplace and again as i i think you know it's it's difficult for me to worry about when i invite people to a meeting at that building if i know it's not handicap accessible so what do i do you know i've seen a student crawling on his knees up the stairs on crutches and i know our community can do better than that but i also know we have 25 we have needs everywhere that's the thing there's they're

086everywhere and we have to identify what is the priority need i i really feel like if i had to weigh out the two um supporting the hundred plus students at darcy into that new building and we we still could and should continue to do things to uh support our kids at hummingston i'm not saying that they're not as important but when you look at number i'm not as important we're not as important as as our students so just the something we we have to weigh out inventory current use of space at darcy those programs are a little bit bigger like if you if you have your child and a had your child in private [Music] pre-k program a preschool program they're larger rooms there are a lot of cool stations there that needs to be

087replicated wherever we go and the state has been very clear that they are very supportive of the additional square footage beyond what they would typically approve for specialized programs like that so you know critical questions again what are our critical priorities is replacing darcy a greater priority than updating hummuston we have to figure that out what are the costs of each again these are not just binary issues they're they're multi-faceted issues that we have to consider here state reimbursement on hummeston you know would they even do that uh we're still trying to figure that out uh definitive costs what what are we looking at definitively after these questions are answered um before the you know i think it's fair to ask the board to vote on this or the the council ultimately and then what

088are the implications for future phases what would that you know kind of look like at this point in time now again after we do any phase you know when we go back for another phase we need an updated enrollment projection that's required and then ultimately you know for for me it's it's really important to know does the board have all the information they need to make any sort of decision is a critical decision it's an exciting time for us um i i hope that come april you know that we are at referendum uh that's the timeline that that we are moving forward on a plan that works for our kids community um and then again no matter what it is it's it's to be phase one so finalized test fits for the north end um

089are what we've been working on to make sure that that works um before anybody says well this is predetermined so you you didn't do any any sort of look at all at a middle school we've already had test fits on the north end for a middle school we know that it will fit there and the the previous test fit for the middle school wasn't as thorough with respect to the wetlands so we realized that the wetlands are actually a little bit more of a hindrance than we had in that original test fit but it would still work we need to develop something called educational specs that's what we have to draw up for what the building would look like in terms of room spaces whatever the state needs that for our reimbursement critically important the

090board would need to vote to approve a plan and you know they're certainly aware of the expedience of this that this really has to be done as soon as we can you know feasibly do it because we want to make sure this goes to referendum soon april then town council vote to appropriate needed funding and then ultimately the voter referendum in april and then we have to submit a school school construction grant by the end of the school year so the clock's ticking i i'm excited because i know we all agree that we have to move something forward and i i hope that my presentation this evening gave you more context gave you more information cleared your sinuses and you know i'll certainly uh entertain any questions from the board sir taking down my master

091probably a meme on me um so jeff without getting too much ahead of toronto's town council meeting uh we've had some uh informal discussion with colliers or the test fits one of the things that came up was uh town council's question can we move darcy birth to three and even the pre-k to highland will it fit basically i heard tonight your preference is not to put a highland that if yes [Music] um it wouldn't if we were to move our darcy students to highland there just wouldn't be space for that um and the there would have to be a significant investment to create the space which isn't factored into the numbers that we're looking at here alternatively you know we need to confirm that any darcy space added to a north end what would that

092do financially um if we if we are prioritizing closing darcy in phase one so that was my second question in your opinion how critical is it that we address hummuston and darcy immediate phase one and that's something that can wait until after the first elementary school or telemetry schools or even sixth straight middle school's built where where does that fall in your prioritization process and sequencing sure i think from a an educational perspective the services that are delivered at darcy are you know they're second to none the facility itself though is in dire need of updating and you know just regular maintenance things like windows et cetera if we put off maintenance of that facility or if we if we put off doing taking kids out of that facility and doing something there's going to

093be cost incurred to maintain it until we get to that next phase which i really i don't know that that's a great fiscal decision i think it's a little bit you know like we talked about before throwing good money after bad um and then you know we also though have the consideration of hummus then the students there the facility there code compliance there as well and it's i think it's important that we get the data the information from the state as to whether or not they would support that if so what's the how much you know support would they give to that um and but educationally i think you know we're providing a great experience in both places it just we're run the clock's running that's all i have for now thank you yeah i

094want to piggyback off of something that tony said also so if we were to go with a six through eight middle school project would taking the sixth grade out of highland make it more feasible to put up the darcy program at highland yeah it's a great question and yes to a degree but when we talk to colliers and the demographers it's not enough to not build another elementary school you you'd still need even if we pull the sixth graders out of our existing schools with our trajectory for enrollment we still still need to build another elementary that would only exacerbate the issue right um my understanding also is though no matter what we do we we need a new chapman so um it's not just because of enrollment it's uh due to the ada compliance

095and all of that with that school as well i can't argue that that no no no i know you're not i know you're not but i would say you know again the point was made earlier about have you been to dodd for a rival and dismissal and yeah but that's every building and chapman is kind of like that everywhere too uh it's it's chapman is i will say probably uh one of the worst as it goes to that stuff but um none of them are winning the beauty contest time in question you keep saying you need to hear sorry [Music] you say you need to hear from the state um with regard to darcy and hummus and reimbursement and everything have those questions been submitted and when can we expect an answer and what can

096we anticipate what this is going to do to town council projections i i don't know these questions have been discussed and raised with colliers who is pursuing that with uh the state unfortunately i don't have an update on that as of today it is relatively new as we've started to make sure that all these things are working right um and so i know that chuck from warren uh chuck warrington from um colliers is is working to address that and we hope we needed an answer yesterday right so that's where we are we are pushing it um so oscgr the office of state grant reimbursement they're the folks who kind of balked at the idea of a 1200 student middle school have we gone back to them or could we go back to them while colliers

097is going through the process just to say like you know get something more formal in writing from them saying that they wouldn't support a middle school of that size to say that they would or they would not they would or they wouldn't um i don't think that they they would say we're not going to support a middle school of 1200 kids they're not they're not going to say that we know that that's they they do that there's other buildings in connecticut where they've done that not many but it's happened it would have to be you know clearly articulated how those services are going to be provided and how you're going to make 1200 kids work and but they didn't say no we're not going to do it um they just said it wasn't their preference

098they would want more a lot more information from us to be able to articulate how and why it was going to work and how it fits into the bigger plan for our facilities um which i mean could we could deliver that um so i mean they didn't say no but it's it's an additional hurdle um but if our community felt like absolutely this is the we have to do it this way i'm sure we could get it done but you know when i think as i've said is multi-faceted as i sit here trying to rationally digest all of these different pieces from educational enrollments to financial you know i can understand why the smc settled on the solution they did thanks andrew um is the test fit at norton did that include an environmental impact

099study then i don't think so right so so the only thing i'm curious about i don't know whoever has ever walked the woods back in norton is there's a culvert back there that could be 70 years old which is as i understand it that's kind of the age where something officially becomes a wetland yeah i do know that we did discuss the culvert they were certainly more than aware of that on the property they did walk the site yeah um they did review um all of the the information that the town has gis information on the site and we're very thorough in our conversations but that's a next layer i think they don't they have to do core samples and everything in both locations i mean that's part of a future process um okay once

100approved there was but there was nothing they're experts they have some knowledge and there was nothing that jumped out at them as being an obvious deal breaker it's a great calculation it did exist and they didn't say anything that it was a problem to us okay thank you um so the numbers that we're putting out there i i mean i i'm thinking i recall these numbers from a year ago pre-inflation i'm just curious does colliers have you know they're building models i'm assuming that they could pump in some numbers and give updated numbers yeah i think dude they'd be willing to do that chuck addressed that ben do you wanna that were modeled out by colliers do include a construction inflation as we go through the different phases of the plant and i believe they

101use four or five percent i don't okay so it's built it's built into the model so they can built into the long-term model yes yeah well no i think there was like a new cpi announced today and stuff so i'm just okay it could it could get put in and get updated numbers relatively quickly okay thank you um hummus then so these numbers those numbers you put out there they just surprised me the 7 million and the 12 million and the reason i say that is i'm just looking at it as a per square foot hummuston's 15 000 square feet so this is for the public correct me for around 15 000 square feet split half and a half between administrative offices and the high school it's oh it's thirty thousand square feet fifteen on

102each side oh fifteen ninety seven oh okay okay okay yeah all right then those numbers make sense because the numbers look like they're twice what they should be unfortunately you know we've endured the fact that the there it does cost more to update that facility at 109 years old you know that i remember several years ago when we had the slate tiles blowing off the roof which becomes a real damage when you have you know potential issue danger when you have flying rocks through the air um and it was expensive because we had to replace it with slate yeah um so there are definitely issues in updating a building is but it's still you know may ultimately prove to be cheaper to do that than to build another facility okay but you know i think

103these are questions that we we really need to get answered before we say oh yeah this is our plan and here's why well you know the number of the the numbers in my mind they make total sense now that yeah you said the building was twice the size than i what i thought it was right yeah yeah um let me see uh and the last thing so taking the buildings out of it just thinking from a programmatic perspective there's discussion about for seven years now we've been discussing this including a sixth grade middle school has there ever been any discussion of a seven through nine middle school uh no okay um and off the couch and i i think you know from an educational perspective having been both a middle and high school pr uh

104principal i i wouldn't recommend that okay uh i think that transition to high school where you have access to a lot more clubs activities for a lot of our students that are college bound having access to the breadth of activities and experiences at cheshire high school is really pretty critical um and in addition to just you know music arts the choices that our students have matriculating from middle elementary to middle school are enhanced that's one of the arguments for a six through eight middle school those are doubled when you go from middle to high school and so you know i think what we'd be doing is inadvertently limiting our freshman and i really wouldn't recommend that okay i'm trying to understand my head why it wouldn't necessarily be limited but i'll just take it i'll

105take it if they are in a different building on a different schedule and stuff that we would typically have to do for busing and then for a facility i'm assuming it would be on a different uh location than the high school that which i think right yeah ultimately yeah so when we went in front of them was it march april it's it seemed like it's so long ago the reason why i ask is back then we did not have our smc the formalized plans voted upon in the detail that we have today and whether this board makes a vote uh or the next board after the election i'm not sure how the timing of that will be possible thinking about the assault colleges on this based on these plans we have now based on your

106preferences i think it'd be worthwhile to go back and say hey this is where we landed walking through the plans and see if they have a visceral reaction in either one specifically darcy and hammerstein i really would love to know what their thoughts are on reimbursing a 109 year old building because it's cheaper to do that in my mind and it works for for for us that's you know another four or five million dollars i could put to phase two we're in phase one so everyone thought i know that question so i'll ask colliers tomorrow night the town council meeting if that's something that they would recommend it's a great question i i think it makes sense chuck uh our lead from colliers has repeatedly said continuing to connect with oscgr through the process really

107supports an expedient facilitation of our grant request and ensures that you know we have money flowing in during the project um the the hummuston location where it is is certainly from an educational perspective favorable to the north end for a couple of reasons first of all with our alternative high school program we have a number of students who split time between the uh school at hummuston and cheshire high and we you know five minutes down the road if that is really convenient for that additionally as we've increased offerings at hummuston we're splitting staff time between chs in hummus then and you know having that access in the center of town is very helpful to be able to say all right i can run an art teacher over for a period to provide that service to

108those students hummus then and so we've been able to expand offerings and business and other things that may have traditionally been limited or only available online so you know it is beneficial from an educational perspective to have it where it is as well but it's a great point to you know solicit oscgr on those issues um a couple of things so jeff you said that um when you were showing the um test fit for norton it said pending school end or south end location um i assume that means pending approvals that it would it would be a go right or what did you mean by that so um i think what what we're talking about is on the north end of the site um here are you is this what we're yeah you just had

109mentioned pending and my concern is i i'm just trying to interpret what you mean by bending like you're pending approval what happens if we do not if we're not able to make that work what's our alternative for norton is it or is it going to be renault as new is it going to be leveling existing norton right so i think we've got a plan for that yeah so access to the facility for construction isn't wholly predicated on this but this is definitely the the best way to do it and limit disruption to the existing site there is an easement back here that's town owned that exists we can access that so if if this site were to be approved um you know that that would be happening is the way i understand it vin any

110caveats to that as i i've just suggested or not but the belief is that we can certainly use that for construction access and then the desire would be to use it as a bus we could certainly control or dictate when buses would come in around that with a gate right so there's not perpetual traffic in the neighborhood but for bus arrival and dismissal to be sure you this is the plan i mean that they're we're we're one of two options yeah no i know but i mean it's there's nothing that's going to really stymie us from putting something in that south end as far as not not i would answer that with a bit of a qualifier not for seen you know there's nothing foreseen at this time that would hinder our ability to do

111that because i should think that would possibly affect the price of the project the cost of the project if we had to yeah there's nothing foreseen that would would not allow us to proceed with either of those two options and i i don't want to over i just want to urge one caution with regard to that inflation i you know i you mentioned that colliers was using a four percent four to five that was when cpi was in the two to three range now with it being at five um i'm just wondering could we ask them yeah absolutely we can ask them tomorrow we'll ask them you know immediately to see if they can provide us anything for tomorrow night i think what i would add to that is that colliers did provide a low

112and a high for each of the projects and each of the scenarios so you won't know what the cost is until you get this approved then go out to bid but there's enough of a range that you know if if the construction inflation increases a point i think you'll be covered potentially if it increases five points then that's a whole different set of financial questions that we would have to address but my only point is there is a range that's already been identified low and high we've been talking on the high end just to be conservative as we walk through the different scenarios thank you regard regarding norton property this i think colliers might discuss this tomorrow night but i'm not mistaken i wanted jimmy no one of town council owners asked about the cost

113difference between renovating norton uh or building new as being proposed so i think we're gonna talk about detail but i think one of the test fits they drew up that might be shown tomorrow night is what it would look like if you could not build a new parcel and learn how to use what was there it's not renovated as new it's uh keep in place and add on is new so you'll be stuck with the existing layout which has its pros and cons but that that would fit um the construction access we still have you know the one entrance from the front of the school i think we have more answers to one night about that i will say that it is a little cheaper to renovate norton but there's offset so if that were

114the case just think worst case scenario if this was the plan he could not put a new school on the back of norton for various reasons and he had to use some footprint that means we are doing renovation while the kids are in school which means portable trailers i think they estimated a cost of 1.2 million dollars per year probably for a couple years so keep an eye out after that last night tomorrow night ask that question get more detail so let me put that out there sorry no no problem in stereo maybe um so yeah that's what i thought hold on can you hear which one's on mike okay all right um so going back way back 10 minutes ago um the uh reimbursement rates for hummuston you have on here uh 42 for

115because i can't take my glasses off uh 42 for the school side and 21 for the office side is that for the new the new construction that would have that possibly could be in the north end or is that a reimbursement rate to do the 109 year old hummuston building currently and is it is there a difference if it were to be built as new then the answer is in both cases the central office reimbursement is 50 of what the school reimbursement is because it's a central office and not school space per se so if we were in that scenario that you see that was the renovation rate 50 percent of 42 of the 21. if we were looking at new construction it would be 32 and then 16 for the central office space that's

116subject to confirmation you know by colliers with the state but that is the rule that the state follows for reimbursement of central office or non-educational new and renovation so the the 42 number here that's um that's just a regular renovation of hummus and that's we're talking about okay so then as new uh are building a new structure in the north end would be 34 for the school portion and not that much right yeah 17 for the for the central office okay and that's why you know when tony says can we go you know confirm this in essence with oscgr and yeah i think that for us to make a good decision it's important to have the right information and verified information and we're really close there's been a lot of work done i think we're

117really close it's just you know dotting eyes and crossing t's and you know again if if we have to be really conscious of this this isn't the end of the road um and making sure that we can afford subsequent phases and commit to the subsequent phases um just uh one last question um so um we were talking about the uh the secondary option the uh sixth or eight school um but then you also had the new chapman and the one thing that hasn't really been discussed here tonight is where would chapman go because there was talk way back when that it would be built at the chapman site but there was no really thought as to how it would be worked out or the traffic would remain the same essentially there's not a whole lot

118of room there the only way to effectively do that would be you know a significant multi-story because the building footprint itself first of all would have to be built while the existing school is there which you know confines space substantially and then if you are to address i mean i i know we've talked about being at dodd for a rival and dismissal chapman's no picnic um if you're to address that that has to come off the street all that traffic and onto the property you need space to be able to do that as you've seen in these other test fits so it's really not feasible on that site you know there are potentially some other locations but there aren't a lot of options there really aren't and that's another consideration thank you thanks i just

119think it's important if we're talking about renovating or relocating or building new for hummuston central office building that we also think that if we were to build a six through eight middle school we have this facility that could house um the homiston and and the central offices and be used for suing space and i don't know put parks and rec here so that down the road we can build a new high school on that property but i know i'm getting way ahead of myself but as we are talking about hummuston um we do have a scenario that would be a much cheaper than 12 million dollar renovation um right under our noses i feel yeah that's that's absolutely true to use dodd is not just swing space but an ultimate home for uh hummuston that

120would be many years down the road so the construction of a new school it would be roughly three years from you know the point we have referendum until we open um so that would be phase one if we start to use you know subsequent phases maybe that's ambitiously five to eight years down the road we're doing renovations that process is about two years by the time we get to to be able to relocate over here i really you know would love to see this space be utilized in that way if we were to do something like that but i also recognize that that is a super way long off a long way off in an ambitious environment it's a long way off so i don't know if there's a question for you or for colliers

121but as you know one of my concerns is consideration serious consideration of sustainable buildings all the numbers that we're looking at here i presume are all based on legacy processes legacy yeah construction yeah and that's uh you know in short that's initial the lowest i shouldn't say lowest the capital costs without considering the operating costs the cost of the fuel the gas the oil whatever is heating the heating the building i'm just wondering do you know right now at what point in the process assuming the process goes according to the way it's built right now at what point in the process do we look at a sustainable building rather than just looking at these costs that are based on historic models i i know that chuck from colliers has said that you know that definitely

122needs to be a consideration as we go into design and planning um i'm not necessarily obviously an expert in construction so i think that's something that we'll ask him to speak to tomorrow so just really simple then at what point right now in the process would design and planning happen before or after referendum um you know probably after i mean to have full design we have to design educational specs now which is like what is the building use uh what would we be looking at but then ultimately you know architectural stuff happens post referendum okay so i just want to say that i think that that from my perspective that discussion would need to happen before we go to referendum because the referendum number is the initial cost but we're getting the life cycle operating

123costs too right yeah so i just want to put that out there it's a good point you know operations are a factor and i think you know given the fact that our average building is 70 years old no matter what we build it'll be dramatically more efficient but i still think you know to your point that we should aspire to be as green as possible not just for environmental impact but for future operating costs as well yeah and so we'll ask chuck to speak to that tomorrow okay thank you on the north end property there is no natural gas service there so for it's worth you know the oil but i believe vincent yeah i don't know i don't speak for you but you know if that does happen up there uh it could be

124an opportunity to engage the gas company if they'll just want to service line to that area so put that out there in case you're wondering we haven't i don't know where the nearest gas natural gas line is but we would certainly prefer natural gas over oil but that said you know certainly when we get to building design which will happen after random after referendum that's where we would have to incorporate whatever additional energy improvements we want whether it's solar or geothermal those would all occur during that design phase which is going to be lengthy probably a one-year process to design a new school after a referendum is approved so there's lots of time and lots of discussion that i know will have to i don't i don't know detail that it would would go into

125it really but i i just have to i'm just going to say one time i really truly believe that that there need there should be some numbers on the table regarding that before we go to referendum i because numbers could be significant for the initial cost but not necessarily for the operating costs uh offset by the operating cost operating cost thanks yeah the point you made about life cycle cost is relevant all right so a lot of information here tonight but i'd be remiss to not open it back up to the public if anybody else has questions for the superintendent for any of us [Music] uh dr sullivan you uh tim white asked or ninth graders going to the high school you quickly answered that and i think with more excitement i've heard in your

126voice tonight for those exact same reasons is why so many parents want sixth graders to have a middle school experience so please remember that please remember what you thought of when you heard tim's question um you also mentioned we have a great system we do it's not broken we don't need to fix our educational system but are we advancing it are we riding on the coattails of a past reputation are we being leaders in education in connecticut and if we are one of i think 22 school districts that don't have a sixth grade middle school are we moving forward hampden's moving their middle school their sixth graders to the middle school are other towns going to follow suit are we going to be the last ones are we being leaders and proactive in our education

127or are we just sitting back is a professional athlete going to be happy with oh i got 200 i got 20 home runs this season no they're going to continue to advance themselves to be better we need to advance ourselves to be better when people like myself speak passionately about a new middle school we're speaking passionately about scenario 2a which includes the new chapman so a lot of times you keep mentioning the new middle school doesn't solve our our chapman issue well it does it that's in this that's in the plan we understand that chapman's happening in both plans we're on board with that we understand that that's going to help with the overcrowding because it could be a bigger school we also understand that it's going to take a grade away from every other

128school so that should certainly help with the overcrowding it may prevent higher costs from having to maybe add on to doolittle or add on to highland we've taken a whole grade away so maybe there's more space should help with the costs you mentioned using dodd as a swing space will that affect the costs of whatever buildings are being built i would think a contractor who has to work around an existing building and maybe only be allowed to do certain things at certain times because we can't be noisy or we can't do something while the kids are in school but if those kids aren't there does that affect the cost of building that new school so i don't know if that's been planned i didn't see it in here but we should factor that in if

129we're talking about coming down to dollars and dollars um we keep mentioning this obviously has to go to referendum we're begging you please put these two scenarios they're great scenarios in as much detail as possible to us get that information out to us give us the choice before it goes to a referendum get out to the people friday night there's a high school football game between six and seven o'clock there's going to be a thousand parents walking from that concession stand to the to the bleachers if you're free please go talk to the people speaking of that site i had laughed when you brought up the concession stand it's a beautiful facility i don't know if anybody here has been in that concession stand i cooked hamburgers in there for five hours on saturday i've

130been in there many times i have football player cheerleader marching band in my house it's pretty it has all the equipment it's too damn small whoever planned it just rushed through and put up a new building that thing is too sm you cannot pass two people without physically pushing each other out of the way let's not do that would that cost 400 000 i think to build that building 500 more it was done wrong so it must have been rushed it was not thought out properly anybody who's been in that building and cooked or was a cashier it was done wrong so please guys let's do it right thank you [Music] uh braxton kerrigan 317 wood pond road uh so a few of you have any idea who i am because i'm new to cheshire

131been here two years um i work at southern connecticut state um moved all over ben and how many states i don't know went to lots of different school districts uh i will say this uh i had a wonderful conversation without dr slum beforehand and that's why i didn't come up here before um my push is to please consider the educational aspect that's something that's dear to me i'm an educator myself um i'm pro the sixth sixth grade in the middle school idea i will tell you that i am also pro renovation to our school systems i will vote for the k through six two k through six schools i will tell everybody that i will vote for that what i want everybody to hear over the next three four five six seven eight months however

132long it takes is what is the educational cost because if you're gonna ask people to vote dollars is one thing educational cost is significantly more important to a lot of us the other thing i will say that has not been mentioned is what i was kind of waiting um no offense is the one thing i think you didn't do you keep saying we got to do a phase two we got to do a phase three has anybody looked at page 27 verse 32 i don't have it with me right now i didn't bring it i'm literally doing this off the cuff there's a two percent difference in cost if you do all three phases two percent the average cost per pay uh to a paying um taxpayer is 98.13 to 100 and 52 cents two

133dollars a month is the difference why i get mad about this is that i've gone to three different town councilmen in every single time it's a 30 million dollar difference we're not going to get that taxpayer it's a spun argument it's a spun argument please stop focusing on always finances that's that's a factor that is a factor if we're talking at 20 i'd be different it's a two percent cost that can be eaten up in a mis calculation of the increase in building costs by the way point two percent difference over the next thirty years in building cost and renovation cost makes up that money point two percent easily within the error so i i should have mentioned beforehand i'm a mathematician i love the numbers i do all that stuff i should have mentioned

134that beforehand but i think it needs to be accurately done and then explain everything to all of the citizens and then let us vote so i appreciate that aspect up to it um but i will say i will end with this i am voting for the plan that you guys come up with but i'm begging you that you consider the educational cost first because the financial cost is negligently different and i've heard you say you prefer two or three times you really do like the six day plan so that's that's what i'm hanging my hat on and i've done my own research and i personally prefer it but that doesn't mean it's i'm not the expert so i'll end with that braxton hey would you mind emailing the board the the statistics you pulled out

135between those two pages to present different so i will see that i will i send it to the town council members yeah please do i was going to say tomorrow night yeah please spa but if you want to email us we'll be happy to bring that to you okay since you asked me a question i'll say one more tiny thing i'm sorry uh i'm also the general education director at southern connecticut state and i can't share this for ferpa reasons but i went and did my own analysis if you adjust for cost of um uh socioeconomic factors and you do a linear regression there are 10 schools that lie above the linear regression of the 30 schools that are major feeders all 10 schools above the linear regression have six to eight models most the

136ones below the linear regression do not if you understand that you want to talk to me about it please do i can't actually share the data ferpa requires that so just since you asked i'm sorry [Applause] was going to say can we give that man a round of applause for getting to page 32 of the plan [Applause] excellent thank you mister feeling i'll be back up here um one thing i neglected to mention earlier was just to say we've all seen some recent rankings of the cheshire school so congratulations everyone on the good job you're all doing there um uh one one thing dr solomon mentioned was and this is something that on the school monitoring committee we were really concerned about was it isn't just one phase it is it is we do want

137to get to all the schools eventually so we all we talked a lot about and you can see tonight how long it's taken us just to talk about a small piece of school modernization you see why this is taking so long but we talked a lot about on the smc making sure the first phase does enough you know because there's a good chance we don't want to think this way there's a good chance we go to referendum we get a successful referendum that could be it for a while um so we want to make sure we're we're doing enough in the first phase so that's one reason why i'm so concerned about we go out to referendum or we have a successful referendum for we have the two elementary schools and we get to the

138point you know towards the end of the decade where we're you know likely to be exceeding what the projections are now and we have to kind of add a 1a on to this three-phase scenario where we're having to expand those schools so if we are going to go down that road what is that additional cost going to be but i'm also talking as we're talking about going back to os cgr you know i would like to know what do they think about us um you know given that they've confined us to this 10-year projection which i think for our situation doesn't make sense um you know we we don't have to take the risk of the schools being the wrong size we have a perfectly good scenario with the middle school and a new chapman

139where it eliminates that risk altogether we do that in the first phase schools are the right size and we have plenty of room to continue to grow no matter what happens beyond this decade because obviously you know theoretically we're all going to be here in the next decade as well rather than this just this decade so um it'd be good to know from our cgr how they feel about funding schools that are when we build them they're already too small or they're bumping up against the their preferred size of 700 students for elementary school and you know the notion that we may have to add on to those relatively shortly thereafter i mean it's something i could bring up tomorrow night as well for colliers but it's just something i think for us to all

140be thinking about okay thank you [Music] anisha dinsmore 550 wood pond road um so i guess my question is is why is this ultimate decision being left on 11 votes why aren't two viable options being given to the public because it's our tax dollars it's our children's education i think that this is such a big kind of question i think either choice that happens it'll be wonderful for the school district as a whole but i think the ultimate decision should be based off of the entire constituent as opposed to 11 votes because it sounds to me like nine of those votes were made on some things that a lot of us wouldn't care very much about my tax is going up 300 a year i spend more than that in target in one shopping trip

141so like for me i just look at that and i'm like i would rather my kids get the best education in the best environment that they can get it in rather than simply looking at a dollar sign [Applause] patricia kramer 189 south brooksville i just wanted to start off by saying thank you for all the work you guys have been doing for years and um i've been on top of this subject for as long as i've lived really in cheshire which has been about four years and i don't want to just say thank you to you guys but i also know the pressure that the staff has been under working in these facilities and the students and what they put up with with days off because of gas leaks not being able to be in

142school because there's no air conditioning simple things like that it affects them but not just the physical environment of gas leaks and temperature of air but our environments affect us learning environments change other schools can have you know a classroom this big to have group work done and it's collaborative learning your space really dictates what you can do how you learn our schools are doing amazing they're winning awards the students are excelling they're happy they're thriving imagine how well they'd be doing if our facilities worked as hard for our kids and our staff as our staff and students work to accommodate their facilities we would be so much further than where we are now and where we are now is amazing i moved to cheshire for the schools i did and they've done nothing but

143reward me with my kids happiness and how well they're doing academically socially even in sports it's time we give back we give back to the teachers we give back to the students and we reward them for all of their dedication and effort and creativity with an environment that provides the space to be creative and free and just a proper technologically advanced learning environment so besides environment with regards to the i'm on the record saying that i would really prefer a six to eight model there will be two buildings built regardless the difference over the course of these projects in price is negligible but that brings me to another really important point and as a group we need to decide how to engage the population in cheshire who really doesn't want to invest for the next

144few decades in the school system whether they their children already grown and gone and they're on a fixed income where they can't afford the 300 a year raise in their taxes this may be based better for the town council but maybe some sort of tax subsidy for people who are living on a fixed income retirees that type of voter now i know there's an angle there where property values are going to skyrocket the better our school systems are because who's buying my home when i move out of it somebody who wants to come here and put their kids in our school system if people aren't moving in to use our school system they're not buying our homes so in order to engage that group of voters we have to really reach out to them on

145a public outreach avenue because they vote just like we do and we are we're all here because we have kids and we're dedicated to their education and their safety that's not all of cheshire's population and i've been knocking on doors and that's what people ask me is this going to be a forever spend and how does it affect me so i have kids in 7th and 11th here they're not going to benefit from a new facility but i believe in the future of cheshire's education system and let me see there's one other thing we need to get this right the first time we really do people have mentioned to me this the pool and i'm i'm engaging people on that that prospect of the spend and not getting it right the first time you guys

146have so much on your shoulders it's an amazing amount of decision making get it narrowed down to as few choices as you can and give it to the voters let us help you make that decision give us the information we need to properly decide how we want to spend our money and let's help we'll help you by narrowing it down the voices the taxpayers i think that's it yep that's it thank you hi i'm eric gillis 245 south main street and i've been listening to a lot that was said so i thought i would just add my voice to some of the comments that had been made so the first thing i was just wondering we want you to to get something have people considered ranked choice voting on a referendum to make sure that

147if it comes down to between one or two options that the no school option isn't the one that we pick right maybe we have our first choice but we'd want to have something in the end maybe a ranked choice referendum would be a way to do it and then jim mentioned what happens if you don't get phase two that's a big concern for me right because we all i guess i've seen too many times this doesn't go right there's lots of change orders for example or you do your soil test and you find out that the cost is going to be way higher than usual right if the costs explode on phase one you're going to have a real challenge getting people on board for the next phase right and that's just the risk that

148you carry once you get into the design phase there always seems to be change orders so i think you're carrying sort of the trust of the voters into phase one that's a reason to make sure that if you if you can't get phase two that you got as much out of the process as possible right because you're kind of walking into unknown territory on that so that's really all i just wanted to offer but you know i think those are important points thanks ranked choice i believe that the referendum vote is entirely governed by the town charter and it would not allow something like that speak to it tomorrow i mean but i'm pretty sure that's what we'll bring up i'm gonna take this off there we go my name is chuck neth 1355 notch

149road so i just wanted to point out a couple of advantages of scenario six a lot of talk has been about the uh other option but there was a lot more that went into it than the price i know everybody wants to just point to the price but if you look at the full plan as dr sullin pointed out which is what we should be focused on there's only a 10.6 million dollar difference to the district on the high share that's three percent so it'd be crazy to suggest that three percent is what tilted in favor of one versus the other if you look at just phase one it's 37 million and i've heard tonight you know some people are saying that we need the full plan and then i hear well what if we

150don't get to phase two well then we've we've got that cost of 37 million but scenario 6 stands on its own so you talked with the other option you'd have dodd as a swing space well if you don't get this scenario or you don't get the phase two then you've got an empty dodd for however long that might be that's not ideal as far as the scenario six again stands on its own i think the other point with scenario six is the redistricting so redistricting redistricting is going to be required in either scenario i think as dr solomon pointed out it's 18 in scenario six it was 15 in scenario 2a the advantage of redistricting in scenario 6 is you're moving students from an old school to a new school in every case and you

151can look at the redistricting map it's in the report but every case where you're moving students they're from an old school into a new school if you look at it for scenario 2a it's split you've got kids that are moving from an old school into an old school and some are moving from an old school into a new school so redistricting would be you know it's never an easy decision but i would think it'd be more favorable if you're moving to a brand new school when you talk about the the school sizes scenario six again it'd be 653 612 780 and 669. in scenario two they're 515 570 751 and 463 so with all the schools equal in size i think dr solon touched on this regardless where you live in town you got an

152equal learning environment at the schools and chapman right now is a small school there's not an equal learning environment to let's say highland which is the largest school and speaking of highland there's been talk that the elementary schools would be too big they're smaller than highland is currently so it's not any bigger than we currently have also in his presentation he showed the the dodd school so in the window of the eight year enrollment there's an ample capacity here at the middle school the high enrollment is 789 the capacity is shown as 906. so you're saying that we're going to be bumping up against the capacity i heard you got more than enough capacity in that eight year window at the middle school you know the when we talk about the um families moving to

153cheshire for the schools that's true so in 2019-20 there were 177 new to district students 62 percent of them were at the elementary school level and 40 percent of that was tied to new home sales so with the elementary school option scenario six you're addressing that right at the beginning and that's going to help families move to town families are moving to town when their kids are young and trying to get into the elementary schools and there's also been talk about the the right size of the schools the enrollment projections etc so at the end of phase one in either scenario if the actual enrollment was on par with the projection everything would be great but what happens if the enrollment is actually higher as has been suggested here so in scenario six you have

154flexibility you have an elementary school on the north end in the south end of town where you could add on to that elementary school without affecting the redistricting map if you did it with scenario 2a you'd have to redistrict a second time which would be unpopular um the middle school you'd also build say we had an enrollment increase now you're kind of stuck that middle school may be too small at that point as well so there's more flexibility with the scenario six plan and then there was talk well the capacity of the schools you'd be bumped up against it and i shared this information with mr jenks on the functional capacity of scenario six in 2930 and going down the schools for the new school will be at about 96 functional capacity too little we'll

155be right at 100. highland would be at 94 and the new school in the south would be at 98. on scenario 2a with the enrollments as they are chapman would be at 98. doolittle would be at 94. highland would be at 92 and norton would be at 97. so you're going to be up against the percent of functional capacity at all the schools regardless what option you have but scenario 6 offers you more flexibility so if you're worried about not getting to phase two you're stuck in scenario two a you have to get to phase two if you look at the enrollments in scenario six you have the ability to add on during construction to address that and then finally the scenario six calls for about 188 000 square feet of new construction so to

156the front of the gentleman that just spoke about square foot costs and inflation and you know overruns you've got 188 000 square feet in scenario six scenario 2a you got 293 000 square feet so not only are you building a bigger building envelope you're also worried about the cost the overruns on a square foot for that project as well so it's more susceptible more at risk for those overruns which again would point to scenario six so the last point i want to make is it's kind of been turned into this while i'm i'm pro new elementary schools or i i want a sixth or eighth middle school and we should really be talking about is we need to modernize our schools i think all the facilities as we've seen all need to be worked on

157and the point should be to address the schools not to get what we want in phase one for personal reasons is to address the schools and a plan that makes sense overall and over the whole plan that's all i got thank you uh i'll remember the question i have for you in a minute but let me just say something i first i want to thank everyone who came here tonight and for your patience through all this so uh i appreciate i speak for the whole board when i can say this is not a simple process forget about the fact that's taken six years and quite frankly it's taken at least 10 years to get to this point and uh there's a lot of variables and i think someone i think was matt said earlier they

158got there and taught the folks and he didn't say i apologize i heard i heard that uh we have been i have been in fact as last night i was talking to the parent until 11 30. um and i heard some of this tonight which is where can they go to find more information and uh it's hard to find i don't understand it isn't a town website the studies the meeting minutes the plan but even the plan from 2017 which contains a lot of the detailed physical needs assessment rebuilding folks can't find that and i bring that up because when we actually have these discussions like tonight and we talk about these the buildings it's news to a lot of people and i echo chuck's point trish and others we have to get the facts

159out there whatever they are your sentiments our opinions but point people those facts understand that it is not just about phase one and for me it is beyond that it's not even about a k through five or a six or eight parents no matter who you talk to in every school want something done in their school that's been very clear norton not so much norton's pretty proud of their school uh they definitely don't want more space so by and large everybody wants and needs something the challenge is parents are asking me we do phase one what happens to doolittle what happens to cheshire high school what happens to the rest of the schools hummuston darcy you can't stop at phase one i recognize i think we all do that close to a half a billion

160dollar price tag is a huge nut for this town digest but if we can get a large chunk of improvements on these schools now we're creating a more echo solution for all the schools i am more concerned about beyond phase one i had one parent tell me that tony that's great sixth grade middle school i get it but so you're telling me my kid's going to go through i want to use the word she used but a less than pleasant experience at the older schools for the first six seven years then go to a nice luxury school for three years then go back to another um less than stellar experience in high school i don't use the word the kind of sandwich she called that but the points taken you can't stop there i'm with

161you so folks should know that the current town council financial analysis and i am very happy because i've been on this war for a while i could tell you years ago it was difficult even to get the turf field passed and that was a drop in the bucket compared to this we have folks in town council including jim that are willing to bring this to the voters voters are willing to do something based on service smc but to echo dr someone's point we need to come together on what actually can be done so that being said please continue asking the questions we i take a lot of notes tonight i think most of the forums have too we'll bring some of these questions to the town council tomorrow i'm sure they're more happy to answer

162but i i can't emphasize that um you know i i was gonna ask dr solon you know what happens if we miss uh referendum next spring and i know the roman's coming vince mentioned earlier was a three-year from the point referendums passed to actually get the school built so that puts us right at the year where we exceed our functional capacity that is not a good thing i don't want to have portable classrooms at the cost of one point whatever that number is going to be it's it's it's not so i want to get past this um we need some more information on kind of working but i i believe town council may talk about deadlines and dates if they go to spring referendum um you know it's time between now and january potentially where

163they have to vote on february i'm not sure but for some reason the bodies can't get to april what does that do for us you know we're talking about now a potential november referendum and how far out does that put us from starting to make progress and i didn't talk about f from fails but as you feel the more that we this is prolonged beyond the spring the more in jeopardy we get within our functional capacitors coming and not being ready for it you know certainly the data that we have today around enrollment confirms the trajectory that was outlined by slr that we are growing at the rate i think it was jim brought up some of the developments that were around town that have subsequently you know post slr evaluation been approved and so

164we recognize that the likelihood that we continue on this path is is pretty high so i think as that happens it confirms your fear that we do run the risk of running out of space and having to be unpleasant um you know or looking at making investments that are just ridiculous to to put portables on and spend that money chuck and otters tonight uh in some emails i received earlier mentioned what is what is the communication plan not just between now and um when the town council has to vote and referendum but when that vote happens tim you were in a town council is there a period where the town council members were members cannot market yeah there's a it's called the blackout area right in advance of a referendum vote you can share factual

165information um you cannot lobby a position uh for those 60 days i believe it is uh in advance of the referendum so we might bring that up and andrew you had experience in this too but it's going to be very critical that no matter what goes the referendum we're going to need your help the public's help to make sure the facts get out there and i know other school there's like south windsor and others you've been involved with andrew uh use pacs uh but it's gonna be critical otherwise um i think the voters my opinion it's just and i don't have a crystal ball or i can't tell that horrible numbers were two weeks ago i wish i knew what they were for 600 million but um i it might have been gym or someone

166else's town council mentioned that you know the most recent largest referendum town had was the sewage treatment upgrade plant at about 33 million and that failed the first referendum and that's our you know it's always it's our wastewater system one of the most critical things we have so i i am worried about a hundred million dollar plus referendum going out there and our voters armed enough information to make a decision because there's a lot of folks that you know i i the fall festival some of us were there and you know we we have folks coming to saying you guys are spending money we don't have i can't afford to live here there's folks that i mentioned earlier they don't mind the tax set we hear from a lot of folks and i want to

167make sure that the information's out there so so i uh not minimizing anything said tonight actually has been very helpful your feedback but it is not just as simple as what we want i will tell you personally i would love to have first and foremost a brand new high school build it elsewhere convert this existing high school to a new middle school combined facilities but that's not the need you know we're going to get there hopefully in my lifetime in phase three but um you know we wouldn't be addressing enrollment the other physical needs so i i go back to those facts and uh so again it's there's a lot of variables this has not been a simple process i'm happy it's taking this long but there's more information about there but there's more to

168come so please keep sending us questions please talk to town council uh if anything was presented tonight dr sullin's gonna make this plan available online right andrew so read it ask questions um you know we're happy to help no one uh hasn't answered questions that's one thank you for being here tonight so andrew i'm sorry i know i went off of tangent but i'll turn it back to you thanks um so just to reiterate tomorrow night there is a meeting for the town council to discuss smc at six o'clock and then our next business meeting i incorrectly said it's actually the 21st of october um full business meeting at town hall without anybody else if anything yeah just one last thing uh jeff uh referendum fails does the federal government compel us in some way

169to address the ada issues at chapman so we've been compelled for many years to address the ada issues across the district when i first started six years ago i know that pre predates me but i remember first starting that it felt like a phone book the plan that vin shared with me about our ada compliance issues we've been making progress on that over the course of many years and as long as we're continuing to make progress on that um dr wood at the state has you know found it in his heart to allow us to continue to keep moving on that trajectory so you know we're yes compelled to continue to do these things but they're not going to come in tomorrow and say you need to close chapman or chs or hummingston because they're

170not ada compliant so it came about that the list came to us when i was on the council so that was more than a decade ago right and i thought at the time they said you can you know do this over the course of time but at least at that point they said eight to ten years and these things should be done right you know i mean just this summer we had a massive ada compliance project at chs with doors um they're just not wide enough for ada compliance and so it's a massive project and that's one of those things where you hate to spend millions of dollars to update a facility that you know i mean i'd hate to see that happen in a place like chapman or something we shouldn't be making smart

171investments at this point thank you anybody else all right well thank you everyone for coming great discussion tonight and look forward to continuing to hear from you as we move forward with the process with that kind of a motion to adjourn second second second all in favor all right thank you