Board of Education 8-12-21

001you want to check see if we're ready andrew thank you good evening everyone uh carol kevin roll quorum please here thank you carol i ask god to be stanford a pledge of allegiance so good everyone it's uh welcome thank you for coming down in person it's been some time since we had actually attend these in-person meetings so we had to get used to seeing friendly faces again so thank you for being here this evening uh the agenda is published but just to give folks an idea what the unit looks like we have a presentation coming up next on the opening of schools update including clover19 update we're gonna have an audience section after that where folks can give public comment we have a consent calendar after that report to stand in committee we have a

002very long packed business agenda so i'm going to keep the board of that moving along uh after public comment but toward the end of the meeting if folks are still here uh toward the end before the superintendent's report i am number seven's correspondence we'll be reading uh correspondence that we received and was asked to read into record at that point in time and that's pretty much the highlight so bear with us we'll try to keep things moving along for you that being said dr sullen would you please give us an update on the opening of schools thank you very much mr paragini uh uh i can say that all of us are eagerly awaiting uh august 31st to have our students back in school we're very much looking forward to that the goal again this

003year is to have all of our students in school all day every day certainly as safely as possible and what we've been doing to prepare for that we you may have noticed the the large tents go up around town at the local schools again so that we can have our students eating outside a little more distance and outside to reduce the risk of spread we also are having our students like we did last year distanced as much as possible in the classroom we're continuing our intraday cleaning through the fall where we had someone in each school spending time that would clean bathrooms high contact areas throughout the day we're also reducing seating on buses and of course you know i think we know why many of our guests are here tonight many of our families

004because we are requiring masks and when i say we that's really an executive order that uh is is making that requirement you know just today our um our director of the chesapeake health district maura who's with us sent me uh a release from the state that indicated that again you know subject to the executive orders that inside pre-k-12 or non-public private independent boarding school buildings excluding residential dormitories when students are present for example fully vaccinated custodians or office staff do not need to wear a mask when the school building is on a weekend or after hours when students are not present in the building but basically inside all public schools uh all the occupants are required to wear masks so uh you know that's where we are um miss esposito as i mentioned was really

005you know kind enough to join us this evening if anybody you know has any any questions related to that yeah foreigners have questions faith we'll start with you and i'm sorry thank you thanks so thank you for joining us tonight uh i just want to get clarification on some numbers if i could so according to the dph the number of cheshire cases are 17.3 per thousand is that correct correct that was reported today yes so how many of those are in the prison none of those are in the prison okay thanks um so it's a total town infection right correct okay and then how many of those infections of those cases are hospitalizations i do not know that information so we don't know the severity or whether they're asymptomatic no we never have had that

006information available to us throughout the pandemic okay and where does cheshire stand on death right now i think we're at 50 well the last time i looked it was at 53 okay which was about where we were in the springtime so we have not suffered not that i have news we did check today and there wasn't any updates okay thanks um now i just want to kind of go generally does um does the johns hopkins covid dashboard accurately represent connecticut cova data i don't know i didn't i'm sorry i don't know that i i mean it's my understanding that they get the connecticut dph figures i can't comment on that because i haven't looked at it okay i just would like to point out that they do get it according to their citations from the

007department of public health and the seven day rolling average for deaths is hovering since june between zero and one and um it also shows that and i find this interesting um based on the news reports i'm reading that through 8 10 78 of our hospital beds are occupied but fewer than 10 percent are with actual covid diagnosis and our icu has no covid patients at this point i can't comment on that okay i'm just putting it into that information um i can tell you nationally what they have been providing us information on is that about 90 of those people that are in the hospital with covid are unvaccinated the doctors are predicting that with those numbers will rise but probably still remain about 90 percent will be unvaccinated and 10 will be those people that

008have been vaccinated and i understand i'm just trying to get to the lethality of this delta variant and i just wanted my only parting comment is that you know we've got parents here who are genuinely concerned about their children's welfare as we all are we are and um they are obviously questioning the necessity of the mask mandate and i know this isn't your decision um but this is in light of a virus that's gonna become endemic if it isn't already and is not killing people at the rate that it was and at a zero to one rolling average has seems to have lost much of its lethality and so you know knowing that johns hopkins has historically been kind of the gold plate referral um because it takes data from the states i just am

009asking how to reconcile this mandate with what the data tell us well those mandates were decided above way above me as you know those mandates come from the governor's executive order as well as the commissioner of health's order that was dated just august 7th the delta variant now pretty much is 100 um the variant that is amongst us it only began in may so we've only had a couple of months we've come a long way since a year and a half ago but there is a lot of things that we are learning from the other states that have a very large amount of unvaccinated individuals and how it is affecting their children so i would imagine i cannot tell you exactly why and what impetus just made them to make that decisions other than we

010are being on the side of caution um the govern the the mandate right now only goes till september 30th and again it is so that we can gauge what is happening and then as of september 30th they're going to have to reevaluate that so it could extend much longer it could extend or it could be rescinded depends on what's going on we've through this whole pandemic we've had to really go on day-to-day data um things were changing left and right um and as we get these new variants we're unsure of them and what their effects are um you know we didn't see a lot of children getting it per se in the earlier earlier variants the with the normal one but we saw that we're seeing throughout the the other states that we have are

011in seeing higher cases of children you're hearing it in the news you're seeing them we have you know children being on ventilators now that's not connecticut data to my knowledge but it's a potential and in public health we are all about prevention and we don't want to cause that kind of incident to occur in in this state i guess my concern is that if we're all about prevention we have rsv that's out there we also have the group that's it are we going to have to ask when we have created a good question to put forth to the people that make those decisions but i don't make those decisions but you're absolutely right but this is a new novel virus that we do not know a lot of information about while we've had influenza and

012rsv for many years where that information is available okay thank you thank you faith editor adam yes the other mike hi maura uh thanks for um coming to our meeting tonight i know that you've been doing the tour for you know i'm sure you're very popular um so just to to clarify the authority in which we need to mask our kids comes directly from executive order from governor lamont through the the department of health because of it because of a a health declaration emergency that is ongoing for the foreseeable future it's ongoing until i don't know i could i my crystal ball has been fuzzy through this whole pandemic and i cannot predict when it is going to end i mean if it was up to me i would have asked it to have left

013a long time ago but unfortunately virus's job is to keep reproducing and by doing that they find the hosts and will keep on going so until we can do something to slow the spread and the large most important tool in stopping the spread is doing public health mitigation strategies which all of us are doing in this room today by wearing our masks washing our hands keeping our distances and so even if we had instituted a policy here to not wear masks that would be superseded by the governor's executive order would that be a true you know i'm not an attorney either so you know i i don't want to get on legality issues that i cannot sit there and say yay or nay about right i mean because i know those are questions that are

014happening in other states and it's not in my authority to to comment on that so what i'm trying to get at is that we have always um here at the board always want to hear from parents and their concerns uh but uh it is my understanding that uh we do not have the authority to rescind a governor's order would that be correct correct right now that is an order by the state of connecticut in order from the the governor in hartford right okay thank you and i i would add there that you know i don't think most people recognize board of education members are not agents of the town board of education members are actually agents of the state and i don't know that people actually know that yeah and tim's gonna speak in a

015sec i just want to update something so we did find out earlier today that uh is it executive over 13 that's in effect december 30th so in our board attorney advised that you know it's a rule of law right so if we if we decided our attorney advised us this is a violation of rule law so if we voted to order we would start paying fines and then get the attention to state on that so we did get clarification on that second question is that is that the only order in effect because i keep hearing no they updated another one 13b uh came after this one and that was more towards long-term care facilities okay thank you tim you want to mike thank you thank you is it on hello yeah it's on thank you

016uh thank you maura yeah i appreciate everything that you do and you have been doing for the past year and a half thank you um so one of the things that goes through my mind recently is you know i keep hearing the media the surge contagion i'm wondering is that creating more hysteria than would be appropriate and i'm not asking you to answer that question that's not my point mike what concerns me is hospitalizations and deaths but if a if a virus leads to runny noses um i'm personally as a parent entering kindergarten entering second grade i'm not that worried about that i don't want it you know i never want to get music so the the sort of barometer that goes through my mind uh is the flu based on so you have the

017history the past year and a half you can't speak to the next year and a half as you just said i think you're concerned about what could happen the uncertainty of it but just looking at history being the best predictor that we do have in terms of like could you speak to it being in relation to the flu like number of deaths in terms of school-age children uh deaths or hospitalizations across connecticut not i know you don't have the chester data but i don't have the data in front of me i'm sorry okay no no it's okay i wasn't sure we knew connecticut data right but the flu does have fatalities in children um and i don't mean to make light of that in the least no no but it is what you've lived with

018for decades yes yes and that's why you know we're out there every year talking about the flu season and getting your vaccinations and doing your hand washing has has masking been part of that not in our culture but if you look at other cultures they do do do that um you know this is a novel virus that's that's you know mutating um and so there's a lot of unknowns and i wish i could say that i had a lot of data as far as the delta you know and we're really taking day-by-day data looking at those other states where those cases are really high and those kids are in the hospitals so that is where the governor and the commissioner of health is basing a lot of their recommendations and a lot of that is

019coming from the cdc who is directly having direct interaction with all of that so in the in the other states it is leading the delta is leading to hospitalizations and you know death among kids uh it is about it is of all much higher rates of kids than in the past is my understanding the delta versus the original and they're right now the hospitals are surging and um they don't have enough space for these people and we don't want to get to that state here yeah no no we do not want that yeah yeah no i appreciate that um and so one last question uh masking does it i i i'm sure it doesn't stop it does it mitigate it i mean it sounds like that's what you said before in terms of in terms

020of that is a public health mitigation strategy i mean we all know that in the beginning you always usually when when i go into a home that has a communicable disease i have a n95 that i have been fit tested for so it's like 90 that's why it's 95 95 points blah blah blah effective to keeping me safe you know back when this virus started we didn't have them and so these things became the new norm now are they a hundred percent effective no but they're darn good and it's about the fact of keeping those particles both if you're coughing it's only staying to you and if someone else is is positive and they're coughing and they have a mask on they're breaking down so the exposure amount is less um so it is a

021good strategy but the ultimate goal is to more to get the vaccinations and get the vaccinations approved for the younger ages that is our goal okay thank you yeah no i i i appreciate all that and i mean i personally would prefer to not have the masks um including if it was including if it was like equivalent to the flu in terms of like deaths and hospitalizations um but i'm also i also sort of look at my life through a lens of risk and risk mitigation is critical for me um it's not i don't live in a i'm not looking for perfection um but if it does mitigate that's that that can definitely be worthwhile so thank you thank you tim and our board members with questions tomorrow so just a point of clarification so

022later in the agenda dr stones will be given uh his superintendent's update and uh maura hopefully will be here too late tonight but if you don't mind sticking around as i suspect by time we get to that folks will have more questions i really like this everything so but unless there's any more questions from board members and move on to the audience portion okay thank you thank you thank you tim had one more thank you yeah more so in terms of uh wearing a mask the the detrimental so there's the benefit of it and what's the cost of the mask i mean like i have people ask you know people have told me that kids get sick it actually does for me personally i have asthma and you'll you can see me here tugging at

023it very specifically because i have asthma and i ran up the stairs so i get that completely but i'm not sure about i'm curious if you could speak to the health uh give some health perspective on the drawbacks to a mask well i can only tell you what i've what i have heard from the medical community regarding masks is that they do not see any reason why people should not be able to wear a mask i'm not a medical doctor okay yeah there's nothing that has been reported on none that i have seen in a year and a half okay thank you [Music] mark quick question since we're on that topic so during the last school year we instituted a mass policy for the majority of kids that were in cheshire public schools and i

024don't have the numbers in front of me but did we have any when you were doing your contact tracing and when the quarantines were happening certain uh personnel and so forth was there any situation where the virus transmitted among students in the classroom was that mostly from contact tracing going back to i remember correctly the last thing we got in june was large gathering spokeswoman mask and what has been okay the outbreak so i can tell you i have three schools stungs so we do three um so it's not just cheshire um believe it or not we only had maybe and we couldn't find the direct connection we only had one situation in the cheshire public schools where we thought there might be a connection we would i can honestly say that through all the

025contact tracing and we did contact tracing right now 101 000 we're just shy of 2000 positive cases in cheshire most of the time these individuals especially the children their transmission was via their family um usually the direct relative being the mother the father the grandparent our recent ones right now are all coming back and being a lot of them are being exposed on vacations so i will say that all of the ones right now younger kids um when we're finding out they've been into states outside of connecticut during the two days prior to when they were infectious okay thank you maura this next one's for dr sollins and sort of topic of mask and unpacking students i i know of one grandparent that reached out to me during the school year uh leona uh that

026the only complaint was their grandchild to get enough water breaks not almost for mass but i don't recall and i don't see everything but i don't recall getting complaints from parents or children that the mass was impacting them did we have any i'm sure there's a case out there do we have any situations last school year where the mass were problematic for kids either because it's a medical issue or something else yeah i don't want to say zero i mean uh to be fair we're talking about the course of hundreds of days and we're certainly inundated with stuff but i will tell you you know in terms of concerns that parents raised masks were at the very bottom of that list i mean i wouldn't say that there were none i think last year you

027know probably different perspective on the world and i think people were just really grateful to have all of our students in school all the time but i wouldn't say it was a significant issue for us one reason i'm asking too is uh one of the correspondents i received i actually was a phone call this morning was is there a way for parents to who who they speak to if during the course of what let's hope doesn't go past september but let's during the course of the school year if there's an issue with an ask and they feel they're not getting attention who can they talk to to bring that a lot of that issue and can the board have some insight into the number of complaints or number situations i mean certainly we can try

028and tabulate that from different places i think if a student is having an issue with the mask if there's a concern with that the first person you should talk to is your pediatrician and then you know talk to our school nurse um and you know maybe it's a fit of the mask or a style of mask we could try different types of masks but you know that would be my recommendation thank you doctor song any yes faith please yep um so could you speak to um special ed's situations or situations where children need to see their the facial expressions in the um in the speaking and what kind of exemptions do we have this time around for those because i i believe we had them the last time didn't we uh it would be incredibly

029rare uh for a child to be exempt what we've done and then as uh mr mastiana's our ppes are here he was able to secure clear masks and you know for those limited you know cases where speech was a real significant issue time yeah uh recess or pe say at the high school level when it's outside i'm not talking about contact sports but if it's whatever the sport might be softball or you know and that's in the spring but yeah so students are permitted to take off their masks outside for recess or pe class when we can ensure distancing the uh state has said as recently as this past tuesday that they're issuing revised guidance uh you know obviously the clock is ticking here for us for our principles they we were talking about this

030you know just wednesday uh so you know it's hard for me to be incredibly crystal clear on this because they did indicate they were changing guidance so we'll wait and see on that right now with respect to athletics students don't have to wear masks to participate in athletics so we are following that as well and looking at any potential updates there thank you sure thank you tim all right yes ann dr solin i'm uh wondering especially in the uh elementary classrooms but certainly across the board uh would i be correct to assume that we have a plethora of boxes of face masks in the classes so if a student needs to change out of a mask to get a fresh one maybe after lunch or if something happens to it um that we have masks

031available but i think a lot of kids are like my kids that they get really particular on a specific type of mask and so you know we we do have masks available if that happens to be your favorite style you know i think that's great um if not you know most most students wore bra masks that they preferred to wear some may change it out through the day but we obviously encourage that they continually be washed to ensure they're hygienic thank you the other thing that the state has indicated with respect the cdc is change guidance where last year if there was a positive student in the classroom i'm sure many of our families and experienced this at one point or another throughout the year if there was a positive student in the class then

032the students that were within six feet of that individual for a cumulative 15 minutes would be required to be quarantined the cdc revised guidance is now three feet and that's you know if you're wearing a mask so with mass being mandated my my hope is that that will substantially reduce the number of students that get quarantined and get to keep more kids in school all the time thank you board members before we move on to the audience section uh again it's been a while i had to brush up on our bylaws so bylaw border bylaw 9325 stipulates a timeline of 15 minutes for public comment now obviously i don't we're not going to have 15 minutes i'm going to extend much time as possible for the folks tonight so i'm going to make a motion

033that the border vet extend public comment for one hour and 15 minutes which i believe should be enough time to quick head count with folks in the room hopefully get three minutes of peace so that is the motion is there a second faith uh all in favor asianas thank you fellow board members and again because it's been a while let me read our our guidance for public comment the board of education welcomes public participation and asked that speakers please limit their comments at three minutes speakers may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them to protect the integrity and partiality of the board we discourage an expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about the board education personnel and students nor against any person connect with chess for public schools such issues

034should be brought to attention to school administration and of course if you don't feel comfortable doing that in a situation uh some of the barney's been more happy to help you shepherd down that path but for this evening we welcome the public to the podium if you would like to speak with us we'd love to hear from you the microphone is there please limit your accounts in three minutes and i ask that you state your name so we could address you appropriately my name is tucker deming 230 oregon road so what we have here is best described as diabolical silliness to speak to the efficacy of masks did you realize that the cdc some years ago funded two very long and thorough reports studies on the efficacy of masks they found out that they were

035not effective at all in inhibiting the viruses or anything we might expel from our body because we're always shedding viruses you know so you wear a mask you actually do more harm than good you're trapping so you can go through a cytokine storm it's called so why are we wearing wearing masks by an edit from the governor who's following his probably uh orders from the federal government we as citizens i speak for myself in this small community don't want an agenda or a program foisted on us from the federal government or even the state government we'd like you guys and i appreciate your dedication to try to steer us through this mess we like you guys to stand up and say no we're going to do what makes sense and not just follow an edict

036from a tyrannical government let's talk to vaccines many of you probably know the um inventor of the vaccine he has uh published his remarks about vaccines the r uh the mrna vaccine which is now being used he says it in vaccine no it's not really a vaccine it's actually a gene manipulation it's gene therapy they've thrown a lot of spike proteins into your body circulating through our body okay very interesting that the inventor feels that there's great harm and risk we have no idea down the road how all of this substance that's traveling through our circulatory system is going to affect us because we're the guinea pigs that moderna and pfizer did have a several month long i believe maybe longer process of having a control group and those who had the vaccines they gave

037it up they just saw but they just gave the vaccine to everybody so now they have destroyed the control group and that's basically what's going on in our country this thrust to get vaccines in everyone's body they want to control they want to eliminate the control group so that there's no issues i mean you can't compare what happened here to this person who did who didn't have the vaccine so dr dan malone i'm sure you've all read him right you read about his remarks you know about him well if you don't you should uh i don't know where this information where you're getting these days of course you have to be very careful about what information you're going to receive and interpolate but it's everyone's responsibility to do that i'm not a medical doctor certainly

038not but we can all use our common sense and see what's going on here it's diabolical silliness thank you [Applause] thank you thank you tucker uh roberto 1146 will phil wrote cheshire i'd like to ask everybody on the board of ed what your personal feeling would be if we did not have this mandate coming down from not from the governor but from the connecticut board of health the governor has actually pushed that down to them to make this decision and legally has no authority to do so so therefore you do not have any authority to have to follow that because it's not actually coming from the governor's coming from the board of health and they don't have the right to do this so look at that follow your laws go back do your due diligence

039and see like he just stated i don't feel these kids should be pushed to wear masks it should be parents choice i ask you all would you have parents choice or would you be pushing this mask on your own if it wasn't for this edict from the governor these masks don't work the data's there uh you guys should be showing us the proof that these masks do anything more got a parent spoke no proof i don't see anything uh there's a letter that i gave to all of you there's actually proof in there that shows these masks do not stop this it does cause problems i mean we talked about clear mask there's a reason why you bought clear mess because we know that young kids have to see the face to be able to

040learn how to speak and and learn words so it's it's causing an issue and that's a risk that's now it's not a risk that maybe they'll get it maybe they'll get sick right let's do a a risk to reward analysis on these masks this is ridiculous okay my daughter's hair hopefully she'll come up and speak and see what happened to her she had migraine headaches went to the doctor the doctors aren't posting and telling you guys everything that happens and where it comes from and if it's from the mask or not they don't even know on half of this stuff that they're going to the doctors she was with a group of kids that were forced to wear masks running around a school playing some kind of sport in gym while running when you have

041to breathe and you need the most amount of oxygen you get in your body you're gonna put mask on these kids so they can't breathe and reduce the oxygen where the hell is the brains in that what is wrong with you people this town republican talent should be stepping up for our free rights the constitution of this state and our government and our country is for me it's for the people not for the governor to be telling me what to do but for me all the teachers if you have if you have issues with uh ask more right there was no kid to kid contact tracing there's no kid to adult contract tracing only adult to kid so what the teachers are paid force them to wear the damn mask our kids shouldn't have to

042wear the mask if the parents want to send their kids in with mass or the kids want to choose to do that that's their right give them the choice i don't understand why you're forcing non not for the parents not to have a choice in this community especially this community with that it is a parent's choice all your teachers everybody that's it works for the town they all have unions protecting them the people that are protecting our kids are the parents and you're taking that away from us you don't have the right to do this i think my wife might come up and say something where she's founded in the laws that that you actually have the right to make this decision not the state the state gives you the right by law to make

043this decision and i think you should make the right decision and make it parent's choice i have no problem with some kids want to wear the mask they're scared out of their minds the parents are scared of their minds they see it all the time breakfast i see parents coming in without masks but their kids have the mask on does that make any sense right stop scaring us maura stop scaring us point put out all the right data every last bit of data you can so we can make informed decisions not the decisions that moore said you see it in the newspaper you see it on television yeah well they're corrupt they're telling you the stuff they want so they can push their agenda i'm sorry i understand that this virus it's scary for people

044it is it should be nonpartisan but there's a group of people that are using it as a tool against you to control you it's blatantly obvious tim's over there pulling his mask half off his face i'm getting harassed by people downstairs that i have to wear a mask when i'm bad asthma and today's one of the worst days i've had my inhalers in my pocket you'd have to wear something thank god i have this mask and i don't have the mask you're wearing because i'd be like tim dying over there our kids are going through the same thing you can go outside and you can play in recess you don't have to wear your mask you can tumble around on each other all the sports do that but when you're sitting in the school nice

045and calm and not breathing heavily doing your work you have to wear a mask does that make any sense to any of you up there and i'm sure you don't feel all that great wearing that mask right now because one it reduces your your oxygen intake two your body god designed us to breathe to get rid of toxins out of our body you're now trapping those toxins within your mask and you're re-breathing it there's also dad out there showing that people with mass that come into a plume of covid they get it more severe than people who don't why because they get that into their system and they rebreathe it and they have no way of getting it out of their lungs and getting it out because the masts are making it worse it's common

046sense folks look at the box the mass that you bought they tell you right on it it's not for coving yeah oh no the health department's telling us to wear this damn mask don't wear the mask right they'll uh a couple other things cheshire as of august 6 the numbers the kids are at point zero zero zero three percent getting sick out of the population of cheshire is that a reason to wear a mask or to do anything that is less than the regular flu when we had regular flu season come on wake up thank you rob [Applause] good evening um olympia brocado volkl road um i understand you said earlier that you had to follow the executive order so i encourage you to explore the statutory basis for challenging the rule of law the

047executive order and talk to an attorney because according to section 10-220 duties of the board of education each local regional board of education shall maintain good public elementary schools and provide such other educational activities and its judgment will best serve the interests of the school district including up to including shall have the charge of the schools of its respective school district so i understand it's it's a little bit uncomfortable you don't want to defy the governor's orders but i would encourage you to speak to an attorney that will help you to explore the statutes and and the articles of our connecticut constitution where you do have legal foundation in order to push back against that because you probably do have more rights than you realize and um another thing i wanted to say you know

048in terms of common sense i miss the days of common sense i miss the days and this is going to sound really crazy i remember when my daughter went to her local elementary school there was a stomach bug or a flu that went around the school and half the kids were out of school and i remember this very vividly so i i think my daughter was out some of her friends were out and then the notice we got from the school was okay we understand that there's a stomach bug a flu that's going around and their way of handling it was this weekend we're going to clean the school just keep in mind come monday that if your kid if your child has a temperature above 99 just keep them home and that was how

049we handled that that was before the day the days where the fear just spread we don't we didn't know what kind of flu it was what kind of variant it was all we knew was that we just operated with common sense and before you know it nobody was out because the hurt immunity went around the school everybody caught the bug and everybody had their immune immunity built my concern is that in the long run if we keep these masks on there it's going to have immunological suppressant against our children that in the long term they're not going to be able to fight real diseases that come along and we don't want to do that and i think i want to operate in the spirit of common sense like we've done in the past because i

050love this town i really do and and i love that this is a constitutional town we value our freedom and i don't want to see us losing that because of fear and i'm probably just going to just come out and say why i'm concerned and i think i've sent this to the board of education some of you might have already seen this masks affect respiratory function of the body you okay some of you have already seen this you know the heart muscle needs oxygen to survive that's according to the american heart association um the oxygen lowering effects of masks forces the body to compensate by increasing the heart rate i can't believe that we're doing this to our kids that we know that this affects their breathing and their heart rate and yet we're forcing

051these masks on them and so even though when people say has any parent come forward and complained about this i have a nephew who has terrible terrible asthma and this is really making him feel this is just having a lot of a negative impact on so many kids nobody is saying this nobody is going to come forward and say this because nobody wants to be the one who's complaining this is having terrible effects on on their breathing co2 levels breathe back into the lungs or an extended period of time causes drowsiness dizziness tiredness headaches and lack of concentration masks harbored germs just as you know robert bricato said my husband just said it's unfair to force them to wear these masks for six to eight to eight hours and i think in back in the

052days of common sense before fear we would never have dreamed of doing this to our kids facial recognition and social skills social interaction and being able to read one another's expression for social development and lastly what i'm really concerned about is the long-term psychological and depressive effects that masking them is potentially causing depression in them nobody's going to come out and say that their child is depressed or that their child is suicidal nobody wants to point any negative you know press on their on these children but i would urge you especially when you i think you know better i i think in your hearts you know better and i think in your ground it's common sense you know what the truth is and that's why i would encourage you to talk to an attorney and

053explore the statutory basis for challenging any executive order that comes down so that the town has autonomy to make decisions based on what you know you know based on the participation of your constituents so i i just wanted to you know thank you for for taking the time and to hear our concerns and i i would like to us to move forward and operating out of sound judgment and sensible conclusion and let's continue to do so for this town in the same tradition thank you for your time [Applause] uh olympia i just want to say thank you this is a very uh thoughtful you know well written email the whole board has that i just gotta point i'm gonna make a note that i absolutely will follow up with a board attorney on challenging state

054statutes and because i suspect that you know if we're not able to address this now come end of september i'm sure folks won't have an answer because uh it would be good to know officially what you know where our legal team stands so i have a takeaway for that and uh i'm not sure if your letter's the same as mr brocados that he sent today but uh if you wish i had to run into the record i could do that later but i do have that but thank you okay thanks yes sonia brucato um 11 46 wilfred road so um at my school we had to do this thing where we had to run laps and while we had to run mask we had to wear masks and so some of the kids they looked

055even more tired and they looked like they were going to pass out and they had a lot of hard bree hard time breathing than when they were outside without the mask and so um [Music] i just felt really bad because i actually had um a better time because my mask was under my nose and the kids actually kept their their mask over their nose because they're afraid of getting covered and so some of the kids told me to put my mask up when i had my mask over under my nose because i thought it just wasn't right for me to wear a mask because it just affected my breathing and also when i was in class i just the mask was like i had a very hard time breathing because like it was just sitting

056there in class me trying to focus while i was struggling with breathing so i even had a migraine to go to the nurse and i had to go home because i didn't feel good of the mask thank you sonya how you doing mike ropetzky 855 ives row i'm here speaking concerning the mass mandate being implemented by our school system my son will be starting the special education pre-k program at thursday at the end of this month he has an iep for speech delays and i'm concerned that him wearing a mask will delay this further as well as hinder other developmental and emotional progressions seven percent of communication is from the actual words spoken 38 percent is from vocal tones and inflections and the remaining 55 is from kinesics which are body language facial expressions and

057other social cues that means up to 55 of my son's communication ability will be covered and inaccessible by a mask that allegedly protects them from a virus that has an affectionate of 0.057 amongst children nationally as educators please tell me how that makes sense i want my son's peers and teachers to be able to read his emotions appropriately because i feel the non-verbal percentage of communication is higher for him due to the verbal component being below the average for his age i want my son to have the best chance possible in catching up to his peers and feel allowing the mass to be optional for him will help him do this i'm more concerned with these four min aforementioned development issues than the probability of him contracting or being adversely affected by covet 19 which

058his age bracket is amongst the least affected in both the transmission and severity of the virus the governor has left masking mandates up to the towns the town has sent an email claiming it's the state's decision yet numerous other towns have mandated a mass optional policy with the most recent being woolkit connecticut practically our neighbor why is everyone passing the buck i want real answers on who's making these decisions and why i would also like to know specific criteria for implementing this mandate as well specific criteria on what needs to be met in order to end this mandate right now it seems like nobody has an idea what's going on when it will end or quite frankly why we're doing this this should be a parent's choice this is my child not the board of

059ed's not the towns and not the state of connecticut thank you very much [Applause] thank you mike i just want to say uh first of all welcome to cheshire and uh if you haven't had a chance to talk to robin and carrie our director uh please reach out there for any concerns questions you have and how to mask may impact your kids she's been very helpful in that regard thank you my name is tony sparrow 40 burntwood drive um okay good evening my name is tony sorry i'm a little nervous um i have two children in the cheshire public school system tonight i'm here to speak on the subject of mass mandates in the upcoming school year we speak so often of looking to science of looking to the numbers and making these difficult decisions

060but the science clearly shows that children are not greatly affected by this virus and the majority of kids exhibit nothing more than what we would see with a cold in the state of connecticut the number of confirmed deaths due to covet within the age group of 0-19 was four in the united states the number of confirmed deaths between the ages of 0-17 was 337 according to the cdc the population of children in united states is 73 million 0.000462 of the population died of the coronavirus yet we sit here debating whether or not our children should be masked for six hours a day whether or not our children whether or not our children should have the ability to breathe fresh air these masks have become such a topic of debate but the effectiveness of these masks

061are not debatable the cobin 19 virus measures around 0.125 microns the mask our kids are wearing for six hours a day does not prevent these fibers from penetrating the only mask that could potentially block this virus is the n95 mask the cloth mask our children wear it's a petri dish for bacteria and often times our children come home with filthy masks filled with leftover food and saliva last year it was herd immunity will get us out of this then it was getting the vaccine will get us back to normal then it was if a certain number of people got vaccinated we would be able to put this all behind us connecticut has one of the highest vaccination rates with about 70 vaccinated but yet we sit here with mass gone now with the delta variant

062all viruses change that's what viruses do we will never get back to normal we're waiting for this virus to disappear because it won't my son spent the majority of his day when he did return to in-person learning wearing a mask he did not get a mask break during recess because the mass break on the playground meant he played by himself or not in close contact with his peers he came home several times telling me that other kids pulled their masks down to get fresh air while playing zombie tag and was quickly reprimanded for doing so the only time my son received a mask break was during lunch snack or the occasional trip to the restroom to pull his mask down so please do not tell me that kids will have masquerades i love my sons

063dearly and will fight for what i believe is best for them every parent should have the right to choose what is best for their children i have spent hours researching masks and the effects they have had on children both emotionally and physically and i have learned a great deal and now i do not know how i could possibly ever consent to allowing my children to be masked for six hours a day five days a week so i stand here today asking you to please let math be optional for our children thank you [Applause] tony thank you you did great you you weren't that nervous and also thank you for your correspondence i appreciate what you said been sent back and forth to jeff all the board has that by the way too thank you hi

064my name is amy bahata singh 455 budding ridge road cheshire um earlier tonight somebody had said you should check with your pediatrician on masking and it just turned out i was at the pediatrician this morning doing the health assessment which is due and i asked do you have any data or reports or something that you can share with me that shows the effectiveness of mass protecting kids against covet 19. and she said no so i the pediatrician couldn't even help i've spent time looking to see if you know there must be data out there we're all wearing these things cdc says to wear them um it and i i don't even know where that comes from but anyway um i lost my train of thought uh i the only data i found was negative data

065just like all the people before me have said and and i can only speak from personal experience that my kids my two children go to school here they came home with headaches they came home tired they came home just not their usual selves and um i know i last year i had plenty of conversations uh my daughter who was in sixth grade she just stopped talking she stopped talking because nobody could hear her in the mask so i don't know what sort of education that is but it's it's it's not up to par for me and i mean if the pediatrician couldn't even say you know give give you a good reason for wearing the mask i don't know why we have them on thank you thank you and and uh there's there's an update

066uh later in superintendent's report and responsible to covet emails and a lot a lot of what we've heard so far tonight are similar questions you saw there so i think uh we'll address some of these questions one of the questions i had is in that situation where you know there's uh the child doesn't feel they're being heard and becomes quiet later on you could address this but what support structure will be there if that happens can they talk to the teacher can identify it be ahead of it but we're taking notes on this i'm going to try to address a lot of these a little later so so thank you for that detail bye yes good evening chris constantine 978 marion raul treasurer um i guess the questions that i have are the executive orders

067in executive order if we send our kids back with no masks on are they gonna police gonna come and arrest our kids there's somebody gonna i've i've emailed uh superintendent no email back i've emailed that uh ned lamont no email back and actually it's getting quite frustrating and annoying because i'm trying to figure out when is this going to end is it this month is it next month is it when the cdc says it's over are we going to wake up and it's going to be the omega variant in october we own well i mean i don't understand i have three restaurants if i listen to what uh governor lamont wanted i would have shut me down put me on a business if i listen to the people calling the police on me the health

068department on me because i'm not wearing a mask in my business it doesn't work like that if anything we've strived from it but i if i listened to what they wanted to do we would have shut down and have 100 people would have been out of work so i don't understand why we don't have an option to send our kids back to school who's going to enforce the rules when the health department comes in wallingford and says chris you have to wear your mask and i said no i don't they don't say anything because there's nothing they could do if miss moore comes to my place in chester and says hey you got to wear your mask i said no i don't because it's an executive order it's not a law there is no law

069if i read the executive order it says i can get a doctor's note that i don't even need to to give to anybody and just tell them i don't need to wear a mask but i'm not going to argue with police officers here about wearing a mask so what science are we following are we getting money from this that's what i want to know does the town get money to follow the recommendation it's a recommendation it's not a mandate so let's not be fooled here do we does the town get money can anybody answer that do you get money does the tom get money funding from federal government to follow the mandate no is that what is that the carrot i don't get it no there's no money as far as i know there's no

070federal funding right jeff we receive esser grant money but it's not to follow the mandate it's an executive order which is the rule of law by the governor the local health departments could fine you if if they chose to they have to get paid from us they can find you all you they want so my i guess my question is is what is the grant for we have grant money to provide there's it's on our website actually everything that we're doing we're also you know using that money to purchase tents masks uh continue our cleaning but we've really invested predominantly in uh supports for students academic supports for students do the teachers get more money does the superintendent get more money from it okay no no so i mean i guess my question is is

071why don't we have an option this isn't a the mandate is a mandate why don't we get an option i don't understand if kids want to come in in astronaut suits wear an astronaut suit if they want to wear gloves wear gloves is there somebody every time somebody touches the door handle sanitizing the handle at the school no so what good is it so it's the 500 students going to doolittle elementary school touching the handles and then playing with their mask is that going to save lives unless you have somebody there sitting there wiping every handle every door every knob what's the mask going to do i mean i just i'm really confused on this the cdc says get vaccinated the cdc says wear a mask even though you're vaccinated so where's the science who

072are we listening to is it father fauci is it the cdc who are we listening to as far as i'm concerned my job is i'm bringing my kids to school i got restaurants i don't have time to go pick them up bring them to school teach them give me a tax break then give me my money back for school because i feel i'm getting ripped off i got to sit there and teach my kids on tv and the computer and how to do math zero minus two three doesn't make any sense i'm not a teacher i'm a pizza guy cut eight slices that's it i mean i'm i'm honestly i'm frustrated because at the end of the day when the governor says close your dining room down close your bar down open at 10 open

073that one don't do this who's paying my bills nobody so i chose not to listen to him because nobody's going to help me just like nobody helps our kids out isn't that what we hired you guys nobody wants kids wearing masks and schools if they want it's an option if if we listen to everything the government says i'm confused uh cigarettes are no good for you they still sell cigarettes they cause cancer alcohol causes liver failure still sells alcohol so when people say to me it's for the greater good it's not for the greater good it's it doesn't make sense it's not for the greater good so i i give me the answers that we need to hear why should if it could be made uh optional why can't we be optional why is everything

074mandatory [Applause] thank you chris you're on the four-minute mark but i ain't going to follow up with the wolcott i was not aware of that situation but thank you [Applause] for that maura do you mind do you know any information on the local decision so we could do the same thing they're doing well i'm going to follow up with i'm going to flip up the look at board event and find out what's going on but thank you tony yes sir people watching at home probably did not hear what maura said so the question and this is amy right amy hi amy uh the question from uh amy to actually once you come to the microphone that way the folks at home can hear you which we're probably going to speak anyway segway um my name's

075amy borden and i'm a mother of four i've lived in cheshire for 10 years i did not grow up here um which is always the first question from cheshire people um i would like to first address what's what's going on with it with wolcott and um why we don't have an understanding of why they're able to have an option for masking and we're not seems like we do have an option because first of all let's address masks the health director indicated that n95s which is what she wore when she went to someone's house lucky her um is what protects against viruses so if the pandemic is happening out in the world and not in the hospital with all due respect to the first line the first responders and nurses and doctors that that do have

076a medical need for uh things well above an n95 and ppe um how come we're not being told that we should be wearing n95 masks by the all-knowing government that has all of the data and all of the access to the manufacturing facilities and the textiles to put these things together why are we wearing surgical masks that i've already touched probably five times now because it keeps slipping um so it's totally at this point it's not sterile um why are we telling our kids to wear something that isn't protecting them number one it says on the box clearly by the manufacturer that it does not protect so it says so my child that they've taught to read comes to me and shows me the side of the box and says mommy this isn't gonna help

077me this says right here it doesn't protect against viruses and especially the coronavirus okay then somebody at school told you so go home spray it with lysol okay so now she's breathing in a mask that doesn't work that's infected with saliva that she's been spitting all day because there's no policy and procedure in place so we're using a experimental use authorization for a medical device which is what this is our children were asked to wear it we complied we complied thinking that it was going to make a difference it has not made a difference it's made a difference in our households where we're coming down with strep impetigo fevers from breathing in these germs rsv is on the rise okay that's the truth so i don't know if she wants to talk to me about

078that later but i could probably fill her in on it we will be filing a freedom of information act request with the superintendent board of ed department of public health and department of education in conjunction with the uh with the board of ed before me that promises to check with the town attorney on the governor's orders and in that information we would like to know everything that's been discussed about masks and we would like to know if there's any policy or procedure in place to roll out in two weeks for our children do you have anything in writing for us to review by any chance no but if you make the request for so we honor it and amy just a heads up you're on the three minute mark i'll give you another minute okay

079um the reason i'm asking for a policy and procedure is because it seems like when i ask questions out in the parental world and in the educational world nobody seems to understand that masks being a medical device are supposed to be put on in a proper procedure known as donning and removed in a procedure known as doffing they are all supposed to be also supposed to be fit according to the shape and the size of the face with which children is critical they're supposed to be taught not to touch them they are supposed to be taught to be doing hand washing after doffing the mask and prior to donning one they are supposed to be provided a special receptacle for them to be disposed of does anyone know if that's being done or are we

080just throwing these things in any garbage can or paper basket or wherever i'd also like to know like the gentleman before me who's going to be enforcing this who's going to be recording the fines for the day and will we have to come pick up our child if we send him to school without a mask you mentioned sports i was extremely excited having been a three sport college athlete in division three to find out that our teams would be able to participate again this year but it's completely dumbfounding to me that the kids in school that are sitting a minimum of three to six feet apart then leave the doors and go smash into each other spit on each other sweat on each other run jump and play with each other like normal kids they

081don't have to wear a mask that does not make sense um when all this is over now that we know what we know i believe it was one of obama's administration the person said no crisis should go to waste so are we going to take this and use it as precedent for the flu season and rhinovirus are we going to be telling our children to mask which by the way you will pay for because you did get money for coronavirus mediation and mitigation and there is funding so if you have funding i suggest that you start stockpiling some masks for the first day of school because this gets pretty pricey when you put together your policy and procedure for donning and doffing masks how quickly and how often these things are going to have to

082be replaced and that needs to be detailed how many minutes a child has to wear it then they have to take it off dispose of it wash their hands and put a fresh one on they're not supposed to be wearing these for six hours a day and i'm not there to enforce it so the burden is on you guys so i'll be asking for that i have studies for amy you're on the five-minute mark i just the pharisee i want to all right i'll throw more seconds i'll finish up real quickly i have studies published in jama java uh reviewed by the apa new england journal of medicine i really find it um unfortunate that i showed up tonight with this amount of information and our health director has nothing in our hands i'd have

083i'd be happy to hand this out um our kids most to my knowledge are not going to be interacting with 70 to 80 year olds during the school day so i think that we should rule in favor of parents choice which is the group that i'm representing behind me and also at the southington board of education tonight and um we will be following up with letters to each and every board of ed member and administration to find out where you stand on this issue thank you thank you amy [Applause] thank you good evening my name is kalyn cotino and i thank you 118 birch drive cheshire um i want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight i'm an emergency room nurse i've worked the past 14 years in the er like

084everybody in the beginning of covid we did what we had to do we stayed home we locked down my husband's a police officer i'm a nurse nobody wants to be around us we did what we had to do everybody was caught off guard by this novel virus and i wanted to ask maura how do you know how do you differentiate between delta because in the er right now we send rapid covid's we do we do pcr tests that we send out and it's either detected or not detected we never hear back how do you know it's a delta virus public health at the beginning provided us when they sent the tests out to cdc they were sequest sequencing it um they are not doing that anymore but uh they are giving us that information um

085on the websites that how many are percentage-wise and it's been growing since may and i believe it's almost at they don't give us individual they don't tell you how they actually figure out it's delta okay all right so as an essential employee i worked in the er while pregnant with my now one-year-old daughter and at the height of the pandemic we didn't know what was going to happen as time went on in all my years of being an er nurse i battled tuberculosis bacterial meningitis and even had ebola training worked through all that to do this you need speaking that amy's donning and duffing doffing sorry i should know what i'm talking about we have to have a nurse actually for ebola training read us through getting ourselves dressed and getting ourselves undressed as well

086as the only mask we wear at work for covid patients are n95s a face shield and a gown and that's what is like standard practice across care after initial worry i moved on and i realized that this virus unfortunately some people die but people die every day and i'm just again i'm a no filter er nurse and i apologize for saying that but i realize that it really goes down to the elderly the vulnerable populations and that those that don't take care of themselves and that's the nature of the beast um it soon became that most healthy people quickly recovered from their symptoms and have moved on with life like most of us we've all moved on in life well people that i'm friends with here and a lot of people that we hang out

087with at home have all moved on from this the only thing that's abnormal is our kids going to school with masks the past year there was no flu there was no gi bug and now rsv is coming back what did he do i understand that some people are still skeptical and have many worries regarding govid and the spredicovid it's their right to continue to mask and or receive the vaccine and those who have wanted the vaccine they're there and if people want to vaccinate their children that's on them but as time goes on i do not think it's okay to keep masking our children there is more harm than good there's hypercapnia there's hypoxia there's just it's just not good for children and as a mother and an essential medical employee i'm demanding that mass

088be optional our children need to enjoy their childhood they need to see each other's faces and as americans we have the right to that choice so thank you [Applause] hey everybody my name is michael sheehan harrison road cheshire i just wanted to start to say thank you for all the hard work that you guys have done over the past year and a half and the people in here that have been supporting us and supporting you in the every way we can you guys have done a very difficult job and despite some of the differences we have on how things are done i do appreciate everything you do um sorry i need to take this off a little bit uh to quote section 9030.1 part 4 the cheshire board bylaws titled the relationship between parents and

089schools parents are recognized as having the primary responsibility for the upbringing of their children including education parents who send their children to public schools delegate to public school educators some of the responsibility for their children's education in so doing parents acknowledge the crucial role of educators without abdicating their parental duty in short the bylaws recognize the primacy of my responsibility to raise my child in that role i agree to delegate some of the educational responsibility to his teachers not all educational responsibility but some our role as parents should not be self-limited nor restricted by educators and administrative staff to serving as a room parent or fail or field trip chaperone in fact a parent's role is to serve as the lead partner in a relationship between parents teachers and administrators for both the academic and

090moral instruction of a child lately i've become increasingly concerned about that relationship surrounding districts are erupting in wars of words over critical race theory separation and segregation of students into affinity groups an activist educational framework that reaches all the way down to elementary grades and seeks to challenge the legitimate of this country's founding principles i do not want this for my community and i certainly do not want it for my child sorry my hope is that cheshire public schools would promote open multifaceted conversations on this subject rather than ignore the issue which could lead to vitriol however i am concerned that our district has already aligned itself with agencies via paid contracts and membership dues to have all unequivocally embraced critical race theory the connecticut education association the connecticut association of boards of education and

091the connecticut association of schools have all come out to endorse that notion that the difference in the performance of students in our state which are vast are all due to systemic racism which has been sustained by a white dominant culture i urge this district to take the lead and critically examine this issue seek the existing scholarly voices that counter this narrative you will find diverse voices of people who played active roles in the civil rights movement of the 60s and other voices that have all personally experienced deep-rooted racism they certainly do not deny racial issues of the past or present however they discuss the fallacies and dangers of critical race theory its emblem its emblems and all of its offshoots most importantly these voices seek to unite and uplift all people i urge cheshire public

092schools to latch onto that goal i urge you to commit yourselves and our schools to uniting all students in a common goal of achieving equal opportunities for success for all members of the cheshire community thank you [Applause] thank you mike and thank you for your correspondence i think was back in june of july on the topic just a heads up on that topic we are going to be having a quick curriculum committee the curriculum committee meeting at the whole board of ed sometime mid-september talk about exactly what the schools are doing and are not doing on that topic so stay tuned thank you hi i'm megan jones i live on 925 east johnson avenue um i'm terrible at public speaking so it's okay though so am i not alone so just on the the my

093own personal experiences with my own children if you put your mask on your face and you wear glasses and you breathe like a sweaty kid they're gonna fog up my daughter has my myopia and she takes her glasses off for the entire day when she's in school and so she's gonna have a lazy eye if we can't keep her glasses on her face and a lot of that has to do with the mask that honestly she came home with someone else's mask someday on it one day on her face like this is she's six like this is kind of crazy to even think that this is like going to protect them from anything when i'm explaining that it's like putting underwear on your face and she's like yeah but she had a pokemon mask so

094in the aspect of just being children this is crazy they're not getting sick i mean last year when we didn't know what it was my kids were at camp sloper the entire summer we did not social distance we played with our friends we hung out with our families they shut my salon down for two and a half months in new haven i worked there i complied i shut down they're trying to shut down again or like put masks on again let me tell you that mass mandate started on monday and there has been 20 maybe 15 percent of people wearing masks in there i have yale doctors nurses they contradict each other on whatever's going on i i just think there's no science behind this i've done a lot of research kids should be kids

095and i think we should just move on with this and stop abusing this when they should just they're not going to get sick and if they do then there's an underlining condition because there's no data saying that healthy kids are dying from this thank you megan my name is uh matt long i live at 50 autumn court uh i'd like to start off by saying that i'm genuinely happy to see so many people who care so much about their children and what is happening to their children in their classrooms and i'm glad that they have come to this space to work it out and to settle it i hope that it's because you trust these people because it is their job to look at all the evidence all the data not just what is being

096given to them by whatever news network and i trust that they all do that i trust that they look at all the data and will come to the best decision and i hope everyone in this room also trusts them and that they will trust them even if a decision is reached that not everyone here likes i urge you guys to make sure you follow the science and i hope that that will result in healthier children and a healthier town and good health for everyone here and everyone in the town that's all i have to say thank you trust these people matt thank you [Applause] hi my name is mark edwards i live up on williamsburg drive and i do have a nine-year-old at highland going into uh fourth grade this year and um you know

097i i i'm kind of shocked and surprised especially with um maura not having um the data with her or the school board having the data with them because the data for children as some people have said there's no science that these kids get sick and um i heard more talk about other states i don't live in texas i don't live in new haven i chose to live in cheshire for one reason because i wanted my my grandson who we who my wife and i raised to have a great education um what happens in other areas um really not a conservative mind i think this school board needs to look at what's happening in cheshire and cheshire only um and for you guys to not know what the data is how can you make a legal

098or responsible or educated decision however you guys want to put it not just the science so what's your legal rights to follow a governor's mandate or health department's mandates how do you guys not know that coming into this meeting because everybody knew that we were going to be here tonight so how do you guys not know that um or if you do you're not letting us know that you know that and that's not right either because you should have that information in front of you right now of what is the legal right of our children if you don't know the legal right of our church children you should not be on the school board you know i it's kind of like i'm thinking shame on you guys for not knowing that and if you do

099know that you should let us know exactly whatever it says per the law what statue you guys should be telling us what that statue is um somebody had said we'll look into the talk to their attorney look into the legal thing and you know what i do know wolcott they're they're gonna have it's gonna be parents choice which is the same health district as us and moore knows this she's not gonna say it here because if we know it she sure knows it and um you know and to me that's just playing games with our children's lives they're our children not yours they're ours and i think that every child um should have the right my grandson talks horse all the time and people here who my kids my grandson plays with their kids they

100know it and this started when he started wearing masks you know uh we're putting two to two together he's very active you know he was at football practice at bartland park i saw 50 kids on top of each other you know and um and i've heard them people say okay we're going to play sports which i want him to do and it's not going to change um you know we're in each other's houses all the time you know we're having pool parties for having birthday parties and that's not going to change outside of school so why have this mass mandate and i also do know parents who are very afraid and they want their kids to wear masks that's their choice and you know they they have the right to have that choice but we

101also have the right to have the choice for our children and how we raise them and i always thought the school board was here to make sure that the parents choices you know that we that you guys make sure that we did have the choice um not do this especially if you don't have the laws and data in front of you maura should have said what the data showed that was it 300 and like 30-something kids across the country across the country how do you not know that maura you are the health person here how do you not know that why is it the school board asking you maura what is the data nationally what is the data for cheshire that's the questions that you guys should be asking the professionals not opinion not because

102of personal affairs because there are a lot of health professionals that do have personal affairs or parents or maybe even you guys do but that should not affect your decisions um i really don't know how more you don't know this marcus that's up you're on the five-minute mark so you can wrap up again i appreciate that one second though but you know in all this stuff it should be data educated decisions based on science for cheshire accurate data accurate data exactly for cheshire what what happens at the border or in texas or in california is none of our you know it's concerning but it's really not what's going on in this town covet is is is to a point where it's rare in this town and and that's what the decision should be made on

103thanks thank you mark [Applause] can i speak again uh unless there's someone else we've never had 15 minutes left so there's a little time i just wanted to base something off of what i heard morris say where uh the state wants us to get vaccinated i know i heard rumors that the state is going to try to put a vaccine curriculum together that might be handed down at some point i don't know if that's true or not but just keep your eyes open on that and she was talking about getting vaccinated trying to to curb this and thinking that mass are going to get rid of it mass are not going to get rid of it the type of virus it is it's in animals it's in humans you're never going to get rid of

104this like you can like a polio so live with it get it if you get it if you if you take the numbers of the people that have had it take the numbers of the people that are vaccinated you're going to be around herd immunity if you're not already so there's really no reason not to to be afraid of this and and be afraid of getting it especially for our kids actually anybody under i think it's 54 or something like that the numbers are so low that you're better off just getting it getting over with it and live on right the numbers of death are so low it's point zero zero zero eight percent in all of america if maybe that was just connecticut that's connecticut so it's really low uh i don't know what

105everybody's afraid of why you're forcing these masks uh i had another reason for coming up oh that and just getting getting hurt immunity what yeah we talked about we know you can yeah are the teachers going to enforce a mask right what happens oh that's my point you were talking that there was a fine i saw that in the mandate there's a hundred dollar fine that you can get if you're if you're in a restaurant you're not wearing a mask the restaurant get 100 fine i don't know if that's the same for the schools i know as a person outside you can get that fine well we have a 40 million dollar dog park or park that's been that we want to put up on uh on the chapman property you know what take that

10640 million dollars use that for fine money for when you get fined for these kids have not wearing their mask and take the masks off the damn kids not waste it on a park i think the park's a good idea i'm not i don't want to really throw it under the bus like that but right now our kids health is more important than a 40 million dollar park in this town the other thing is i'd like from the board to mention uh another gentleman brought up critical race theory and other curriculum that's coming down i'd like to see this board of ed put put in their bylaws that any any new curriculum any new books that are out there has to be a public notice put into the paper so that everybody in this town

107sees that it's coming i think it also should be on the front page of your website as a banner any new curriculum is coming down i know in the past years ago i came up to the board and talked about curriculum and was pretty much told to shut up uh i didn't like that oh the respect rob no one told you to shut up i know i didn't no you didn't okay but i was we did listen to you just so you know yeah i was told that i had to go remember no i i don't want to go there but just let me know i wanna so we are working on that okay and the reason why we have correspondence number two on our agenda after years and that is because of your feedback

108so great i would love to see that so we all know what's coming down the pike to see you know so it's interface so we know we don't have to look for it or get digging around in a meeting but uh that's all i'd like to say thanks thank you [Applause] thank you robert hi my name is tina ruddy and i'm a cheshire resident we are now in week 72 of flat in the curve the curve is flat the goal post for regaining our freedoms is constantly moving when we complied with stay home stay safe and removed our children from their friends forcing them to sit for hours behind a computer screen that's when we began justifying taking away parental rights and started to allow elected officials to make health decisions for our children i'm

109not here today to convince you that we shouldn't be wearing masks i'm here today to remind you that wearing a mask is a health decision and any health decision made regarding a child belongs to their parents not the board of bed not the superintendent and not the governor it's my job to protect my children and it's your job as the board of ed to represent us the parents and the students we have medical professionals and various medical institutions telling us that masked work yet we also have medical professionals and articles in peer-reviewed medical journals stating that it's not safe for these children to spend hours a day in masks not only is it physically detrimental it's psychologically damaging with such conflicting information and our children's livelihood caught in the middle how do you justify taking

110this decision away from parents what data do you have that supports the position that a parent is no longer qualified to be in control of this choice children ages 0 to 17 account for 22 percent of the u.s population a report generated yesterday from the cdc cova data demonstrates that the total number of deaths across the u.s in children ages 0 to 17 is 543. that is a mere 0.11 of the total cova deaths in the u.s 543 deaths representing 0.11 of the total deaths our rate in connecticut is even lower to put this in perspective i looked at a report generated from cdc data for the 2018-2019 flu season it states that in this same range 477 children died from influenza so that seasonal flu accounted for a similar number of deaths for this

111age group in an even shorter period of time yet we did not consider masking them canceling their sports keeping them away from their friends and filling them with fear now we let the parents care for them as they felt was best in my understanding this board does not work for the department of education and you don't work for the department of health you work for us the parents and to clarify to say that the board of ed members who work for the state is based on the idea that towns are incorporated based on state approval board of ed members work for the citizens that elect them they do not take an oath to do what the dph commissioner says they compete for support from the residents they have sworn to represent so i respectfully ask

112you if this guidance is coming from the dph when did the board of ed and superintendent agree to be the arm of enforcement without an alternative platform for learning are you prepared to deny an education to students if they do not wear a mask if i send my child to school in a mask can you guarantee that they won't come home with coped are you prepared to defend yourselves against a lawsuit because you denied a student a public education guaranteed by the connecticut state constitution it's never 100 safe to send kids to school and parents always assume some sort of risk from bullying to the flu playground injuries school shootings parents are qualified to assess risk for their own children and take action accordingly allow them to do so thank you for the opportunity to

113speak tonight thank you miss ridden mr was your first name i apologize i didn't catch it earlier tina sorry that's tina hi i'm meredith nielsen i'm a cheshire resident my children attend dodd and cheshire high school i'm here to state for the record that i vehemently oppose putting mask on children in schools it appears that the governor's office has put out conflicting information about whether schools have this choice either way this issue will likely come up again at the end of september it would be nice to see more districts notably this one standing up for what's in the best interest of the students rather than waiting to be told what to do in silently falling in line with procedures that are clearly not good for the children masks are not good for kids i saw

114the information sent out this week about the supposed myths of mask use what i saw were theoretical concepts and general reassurances based on guidance from alphabet soup agencies what i did not see was any actual science those who have seen the studies more than 20 years of gold standard science are aware that masks are not effective in stopping the spread of respiratory viruses even if they were why aren't we concerned about the harmful effects the masks are having on our kids did you see the study from germany where health effects of masks on over 20 000 school-aged children were documented headaches difficulty concentrating malaise impaired learning fatigue skin conditions fungal diseases in and around the mouth anxiety wounds behind the ears impaired vision shortness of breath nausea and more what about children who are hard

115of hearing hearing and i know you mentioned earlier clear masks but it sounded like that was for a very few children have been doing speech therapy with masks on really even i find it hard to communicate with people because i can't see their mouths i can't imagine how stressful it is to deal with this all day in an actual learning environment healthy children should not be forced to cover their breathing organs just to get an education i would like to briefly address the vaccine issue while i'm here first concerning the policy of only unvaccinated students having to quarantine after being contact traced i am truly disturbed by the willingness of this school system to call out our children's medical status creating situations that could cause them to be harassed teased or bullied by their peers

116this policy also isn't based on science the vaccine cannot stop transmission i am also disturbed by the pressure put on students directly from the school system i'm mainly referring to a recent video that was sent out that was essentially a vaccine commercial and which encouraged everyone to run out and get the shot since when is it the school's place to be giving medical advice is everyone here 100 certain that this injection is 100 percent safe for every single student can you imagine if this school system or any of its leaders could be held liable for any health issues resulting from the shot because you advised everyone to go get it perhaps you'd start considering some of the scientists and doctors who are shouting warnings but whose voices are being silenced this includes the guy who

117invented the mrna technology by the way he pointed out the flaws and the dangers in the way this shot is being used and has thus been portrayed by the media as an anti-vaxxer it seems to me we should be listening to him which brings me to my final point where is the critical thinking in all of this we have been reassured time and again that our kids are learning to think critically in school why don't i see our district leaders doing that if this board and administration is truly interested in advocating on behalf of the children everyone would be gathering as much information as possible that includes what's being censored and dismissed by mainstream media and our so-called experts it means asking the hard questions and being willing to read what you were told was

118wrong because looking at another perspective can only deepen your understanding on the issue at hand and that's all i had but i just wanted to follow up on a prior question a gentleman asked about whether the district is getting money by following the guidelines i've also been wondering if if the orders are not law do we lose money because there were private schools i don't know if there were any public schools last year and they did not require mass all year long the kids went to school without masks they sort of flew under the radar um but i know people whose children went to these schools and i think from the people i talked to they were private schools so the question is why were they if they're licensed the same way and they have

119to follow the other mandates they have to follow all the vaccine requirements so why did they not have to follow the mask mandate and i can't seem to find an answer to that so if anybody no i mean do we lose money that that's what the assumption was because they were private schools does anybody jeff do you have any yeah i first of all i'm not familiar with any private schools that didn't follow mask requirements i i just don't know that's not my venue but uh with respect to losing money if we don't follow uh health guidance i'm not aware of that i don't know that we we do lose money if we don't or we you know i don't know well i think because the question keeps coming up what what happens what does

120the state do if you don't follow nothing because it didn't exist so is it money is that what's leading this no i i no but so krishna just a heads up you're you're on a five minute mark which is fine we'll go a little longer because we have a few more minutes but uh federal funding we don't know if it's affected because there's nothing tied to federal funding on vaccines mandates masks etc that's a whole different avenue the sr money is that was grant my private federal government to give additional resources to districts to deal with uh additional resources staffing academic needs to bring kids back up to speed to what we call bounce forward in school system i don't know what the state would do if they would pull actual our pilot money and

121move uh tax money to us i don't know we know about the fines but like i said earlier we'll so we'll see if we can release our answers part of the question i'll see if we can release our um privileged responses from our attorney on this but it's a good question and for what it's worth and uh actually let me i'm gonna wrap up with something related to the state afterwards related to this but so as far as i know i don't know what the impact would be on federal funding or state um but you know we're we'll we'll get back some some official legal response in that somebody has that okay thank you hi i'm mandy sweet i'm here to request that our children have the option to wear or not wear a mask

122regardless of their vaccination status this is the only way to appease all parents of the cheshire school district there is alarming evidence that she was masquerade and effective and can do more harm than good if there is risk there must be choice if masks are mandated again us parents are being backed into a corner since virtual learning is no longer an option all children in the u.s have the right to a free public education it's discrimination if you do not allow a child that's right based on whether or not they wear a mask are you willing to face legal action because the parents that stand beside me on this matter are willing to do so i will not spend another dollar on a face diaper that promotes bacterial growth putting my child at risk for

123infection you do not pay for our medical our medical bills and until you do you have zero authority to force my child to do anything i birthed him i raised him he is my child and i will make any and all medical decisions for him thank you [Applause] thank you mandy hi my name is jane bate and i live at 454 riverside drive in cheshire i spent two delightful decades teaching instrumental music in this system two former students happen to be in the room tonight i mention that simply because i'd like you all to imagine how teaching wind instruments or chorus would go with masks required but here's the main point of my message oberon herbert in his book the right and wrong of compulsion by the state writes and i paraphrase that the only

124reason the government should restrict any freedoms of an individual is if that person has already restricted the freedom of another he follows that with and i quote when governments do so act when they interfere with the energies and faculties of innocent men they simply join themselves to the already swollen ranks of the users of violence and the despisers of rights and they lose all true title and to be obeyed or respected by men that concept has haunted me throughout the lockdowns required masking and now the pressure to vaccinate with an experimental vaccine that has killed and permanently injured untold numbers of victims yet i'll bet few if any who have bent to the will of the state on masks and or the vacs have abridged another's rights to the point at which the law whether

125state town school system or other should step in i believe that every one of us not just in the schools but throughout this nation must be given our freedom to make these decisions for ourselves and for our children anything else is tyranny [Applause] thank you miss bates miss pete do we have anyone else yes please hi my name is being a teacher resident for 20 years uh i just want to offer some my personal experience first of all thank you for all your effort for last year too to put kids into a school and deeply deeply appreciate that for the parent uh first of all i think let's see i mean i i live in stone because i used to work for bristol mars square as a research scientist my personal experience we all need

126at least a couple of years to develop any drug at fda approval i'm not looking for a generic company we only need a year to make a general copy of approved brand drug how long did this take for this vaccine to get emergency authorization think about that it's uh the people being told it's safe safe at a world time frame because at the cme a lot of side effects won't show up i think i forgot the name i think it's a little probably it's you know later might something like that it's given to a preg woman to suppress their pregnancy reaction i think eventually found that that caused the birth defect for the kids [Music] so i mean for this vaccine if you feel like you have a high risk it's your freedom to choose

127that but i never want to see the board education put a mandate for students it should be the choice of our parents [Applause] i'm sorry we're a little past the uh the time is anybody else that wants to come up can we actually hear how you feel about this sure i'll offer board members if they want to give some general responses they don't have to but we're saying welcome to tim yeah i'll try to be brief just i think i basically tried to explain myself before which is you know if this is akin to the flu and somebody was saying something about that um i don't i really don't want to be wearing masks but that i i have to hedge that because basically in relation to the trajectory and not knowing what this is

128i i i just don't know i need more information and right now i'm basically looking at it saying i'm not a constitutional lawyer i'm not about to engage i don't know where it goes you know to the u.s supreme court in some of these areas if it's a gray area asking our attorney to go all the way down to dc i'm not ready to go there at this point um i hate this situation i do i mean some of it honestly some of this to me it really does border on i suspect i do believe that the masks have a mitigating factor here but at the same time my son who just finished preschool i mean for the past year basically i would go pick them up at preschool and the kids would pretty much

129be like here maybe here at the end of the day and the teachers the the teachers were doing everything that they could but this was the reality of dealing with preschoolers and he's going to be going into kindergarten i absolutely believe that the masks are going to have a mitigating effect on this but i don't want to i don't want to go down a path where masking and public health takes over from what we've known for a long time like with the flu when people die i i don't want anybody to die i don't want anybody to end up in the hospital but it is what we have lived with and we've been comfortable with that risk for a long time i i honestly i wish i could give you a better answer right now

130these are just the thoughts that are going through my head that's that's all thank you tim uh next board member uh well we want the board members to and data it's a speak or no answer it's not a personal feeling mark i appreciate it but we're going to have the board members to speak we're not going to go back and forth on the topics andrew do you want to speak me you can address that question sure so um during the pandemic i watched my vibrant seventh grade daughter go from a student who was involved in multiple sports activities drama be stripped of everything and sitting in front of a computer in her room for six hours a day being on this board we if you guys didn't watch all the meetings or we were on

131zoom multiple nights a week we did everything we could to keep when we had to keep the schools closed and then when we did open the schools we implemented every policy that was required by us in order to keep the kids in school the most and you know as a district we did have the students in the schools the most we possibly could more than most of our surrounding towns what i do want is i want my daughter to be in school all the time i want her to be able to participate in all the different activities i do however think that we need to base some of this on data and numbers and facts and actual reports of the cheshire community um and i was going to ask earlier tonight if we like if

132i decide not to send my daughter to school with a mask on what's going to happen she's going to get sent home we're not offering a at home remote option this year so i want the kids to be in school i want them to be safe but i also do think that it is apparent it should be the parents decision um [Applause] thank you angel um i'm going to take this down sorry um i am can i i will confess i am after my line of questioning i am concerned that our public health director who's been guiding our policy doesn't have the data or the the arguments ready at hand to support the mandate um i don't believe the data anymore support the fear that is driving our community um i do believe you guys

133have the right and responsibility to raise your children as you see fit and i do think we state that as um as mr sham pointed out in policy 90.30.1 and i advise all of you to go home and read it it's on the cheshire public school website um under policy you'll find it under board of education then policies read it please i really hope we do ask our attorneys um what obligations we do have um so just a couple of points to go back to 90 point 3.1 yes uh there is a law that requires students to come into school and i really applaud you for being here and exercising your constitutional both state and federal constitutional rights to speak out keep it up it is so fun to have an audience here that that

134being said um you guys they're your children and you have the right to raise them and sometimes those decisions that you have to make if something isn't following according to what you believe is right you have to make a really hard choice and those choices are expensive sometimes they're inconvenient and they're sacrificial and you can take that for what it means for however you want to interpret it i am a duly elected member of the board of education and as i understand the law right now and this was brought this cove the governor's covid mandate was challenged this summer by rob samson and some others went all the way to the supreme court and unfortunately was tossed out on standing so it stands and i fear i i this is not equivocating because i truly

135hope we get to a point where you do have the choice but right now the supreme court isn't even supporting our choice in this state so i hope someone challenges it and we get a favorable ruling but i do fear breakdown in the rule of law i think the consequences of that are going to be far more worse than what we're dealing with right now so again i'm going to close i'm not i i i fully support your i love the idea of your having a choice but i'm sorry we are tied and i'm not happy about it at all and as a citizen um i'm not happy but i'll go back to it again if this policy is not in your child's best interest then you've got to ask what do you have to

136do to and act on that thank you thank you i just have one question i mean we keep going back to the governor's mandates laws requirements whatever you want to call them if we make it optional what's going to happen if we send our kids back with no mascot pay the funds who's going to find us maura that doesn't know the facts who's going to find it i'm i'm genuinely curious are there going to be police officers arresting my ten and seven-year-old i went to school at chester i grew up in chester i have a business at chester and a business in walworth so i don't understand who's gonna enforce these laws nobody and it's not my new norm and it's not my kid's new normal i'm not even using that word what's the new

137norm i don't understand this isn't the new norm what next month is going to be another variant they're going to put more fear all over tv six months from now they're gonna come a booster shot another seven months is gonna be another variant this is gonna go on forever where's the end i just i don't know where's the end is it this month was it last year was it six months ago where's the end are we scared of the parents backlash that want the kids to work then wear it fast wear a mask nobody responds to emails so just continue not to respond to them i mean i don't understand chris thank you i'm going to address some of that in a little bit yeah i just want to know who's going to enforce this

138if i send my kids to doolittle next monday tuesday whatever when school starts and i send them i drive them there and drop them off from the front desk and bring it and tell them to go inside i don't want to do it to them because they feel like they're outlawed this isn't about being an outlaw we have choice are we in america what country are we on i don't get it what world are we living in so if i drop them off my ten-year-old seven-year-old it too little what are they gonna do send them home okay send them for one send them home twice or deny my kids an education send me a tutor at my house i'm not teaching them i'm not educated i'm a dumb pizza guy so i'm not being serious

139so you send the twitter to my house and pay 50 grand a year to teach both my kids or give me my money back my taxes i mean i won't put what choices are we left with you guys just say it's mandated by the governor well he managed me to close my restaurant i didn't close my restaurant chris i hear you i'm just i'm just trying to we'll circle back nobody so it's not even an excuse let us finish the answer but no no listen first of all you're not a dumb pizza guy because you're pretty you're pretty articulate so thank you for your thoughts i think you give yourself less credit than you deserve well let us continue answering yeah i'm sorry i don't know if we can ask the enforcement question but i

140will say this i know in our administration i seriously doubt uh the the teachers administrators are going to arrest your kids or arrest you but it's a valid point and so bear with us as we go through this i'm not going to force them out will they send them home i'm going to let dr stone answer that toward you uh dr sloan are they going to send my kids home we're going to need legal guidance on how to navigate a governor's order yeah the enforcement has stolen we've asked for it and so let us continue having our responses to you folks and we'll circle back so please thank you adam you want to say something thank you mr chairman um the unfortunate reality right now is that what faith says is true that governor lamont's

141executive orders are the force of law no they're not yes they are yes they are it's not it's a mandate okay we can debate the point well actually so nobody enforces because there's no law what are they gonna force so for fairness of just moving forward not to stop discussion let's assume that adam and the room we agree to disagree but let's hear what he has to say thank you right now our hands are tied when i ran for this board four years ago um i i thought that i had more power than i did right i thought that i could effect more change than i have um and that i could help the parents more than i have and i'll continue to fight along with the rest of this board to to give you

142as much parental choice as we can right right now it's not a lot as the chairman of policy we read policy all the time and everything is based in state law we can only change so much of that policy but there are policies on our books right now where your legislatures that you vote for can change a word and transform this school system to things that you will not like it's there i'm sorry i'm speaking right now i'm speaking right now please i'm i'm sorry but i'm speaking right now i'm here to help you and i want to help you and we will continue to work we work sometimes three nights a week during covid we would have meetings for hours and hours trying to keep these schools open and i pledge to continue to

143do that and pledge to to help your children and give you as much choice as possible but as of this moment that's where we stand as we led up to this meeting every day guidance changed the governor crept as you know crept day by day by day inching towards that mass mandate you could see it coming from a mile away and so here we are today and now we need to research as to what we can do as a board to restore parental choice so we just need to know what that is and we will continue to research that thank you adam uh before i go and did you want to say anything thank you so just briefly um one of the reasons i love cheshire is exactly what we're seeing here tonight uh concerned

144parents expressing their views and their desires and and being involved in what's going on day to day with your kids and being involved with the schools and it wasn't that long ago when my children who are now young adults um i was the parent at the schools at school board meetings expressing um my parental rights to raise my children the way that i see fit um i also would like to extend my deep deep gratitude to maura esposito director of jessica because i know or i don't know exactly but i do know that she is working really hard every day and her goal is the same as all of my colleagues here on the board the same as our goals and it is basically to keep our community safe and it's not fear-mongering i don't

145i'm not fearful i have um i have been vaccinated because i want to keep not just myself safe i want to keep my family's members safe and i want to keep my community safe as parents we are responsible for our children as board of ed members we are responsible for 4 500 approximately children and that there's a difference in that you should be here you should be here advocating for your particular children and to get the best for your children but we all whether we have kids in school right now or not we're responsible for all of cheshire's children in public schools and um i just want to assure you that we are doing our due diligence each and every one of us your superintendent is your administrative staff that we have here and the

146people at chesapeake health everybody is doing the best that they can i think some of the reasons that we get conflicting scientific data and facts is because this situation changes on almost minute by minute basis we're we're treading water here to keep up with um what's going to happen schools open in a couple weeks we've got to make some decisions parents need to know what to expect when they send their kids to school and we're making those decisions based on what we're hearing uh today and yesterday it may be a different set of data that were that we're talking about um in the future and when i talk about feeling responsible for all of cheshire's children in schools i i mean that sincerely and i take it as a personal choice that i make that

147i continue to mask up when i go to the grocery store when i go to public places and i do that not because it's mandated but because i want to do whatever i can do to help others in my community if enough of us are getting um are keeping this virus from from spreading if i can do just my little part in all of that then i will do it and i will do it gladly and and a half i happily we have now it's time to move forward we've done it for a year and a half you've done it more than a year and a half thank you i hear a lot of people stay safe how about free free we can replace a lot of things but our freedom is cherished thank you

148i know the doctors care about us but how come we're not giving out free chemotherapy free insulin to help the people out i mean i don't i'm confused the doctors love us they care about us our government loves us i mean i don't get it my father or my mother paid 400 for an inhaler an inhaler so you know 68 years old but if they cared about it so much and you guys care about it so much give us a choice i don't what what's the fear what's the backlash what's going to happen chris all due respect i'm just i'm just yeah i hear you but this is not but this is not that we can't do that you already had the public i know i guess forward and you have anything else you want

149to finish up with i just want to say thank you all for coming out tonight thank you and um expressing your views because i know that i speak for all of us when i say we're we're listening to you we need this information i i personally like to hear what's going on by the first day of school we're in writing we need to know what our kids are expected to do we need to know thank you amy but we could we're beyond that public comment please allow us to talk we'll keep moving forward so moving forward on the agenda so i just want to wrap up so you guys ask what the board of comments are you're hearing it so so i'll take my mask on as well so i am a supportive parent's choice

150i'm a parent i got two daughters well one is a school system my youngest who graduates his senior year pretty much missed a whole hole last year because she was worried about coping to schools and learning actually helped her she's anxious to go back to schools she's willing to put the mask on and be there because we know deep down her being in the schools is the best bet for her to get the best education best emotional output even with the mask time so i'm with you and quite frankly i wasn't on the board i'd probably be with you tonight because it's um i do feel these mandates are getting a little ridiculous and what i looted earlier in the evening when i asked uh and more wouldn't have the answer because it's more more

151a different level but it's not just the governor's mandate it's out the executive orders the normandy phd if that doesn't expire it stays in perpetuity and i know how to change that what i don't want to do is fight the state and put us at legal risk and we're going to disagree tonight i this argument this well this conversation i should say because you all have been very very vocal but in a positive way even you chris you're very passionate thank you i know where you're coming from this is happening everywhere and i sit on weekly this is about you tonight it's not about the board members what we do but you should know you know all of us work our butts off i can tell you you know adam and i myself there isn't

152a data goes by where i don't hear from folks a phone call a text an email these conversations i can't always tell you what you want to hear but if you follow me over years you know i will do what i have to do to get your voice to the right person and i'll continue doing that that being said we are getting legal advice or what we can and can't do we hear from the state education department we hear it from our board attorney i don't have the answer what the enforcement is going to be but knowing our professionals we're not going to arrest your kids you know i wouldn't get behind that you know we send them home i don't know but you're right amy will have a policy on mass guidance what your

153kids what you can't expect in the first day of school if you have a mask you don't have massive clarify those things i would hope that the folks that trust us and i hope you would trust us please send your kids to school we need them in school they want to be there i'm hopeful this thing lasts very short not past september i'm hopeful where you guys can help us beyond tonight where you can help me fight for you is i sit on uh two weekly state calls one's a board of eric check-in that the connecticut associate of the boards runs all the board chairs in the state we meet every week we have we have these same conversations we have represented from the state in that call they hear our concerns they hear our

154feedback i did not hear about the wilcott board chair he was actually on that call this morning my guess is they were taking a gamble there i will find out i have no problem finding out that if that's something we can leverage we'll we'll bring it to the superintendent and discuss it but i also sit on uh a weekly call between the state department and the department of health and that's where these decisions are more or less happening in near real-time discussions i think yesterday you sat on something where i don't want to get into it but they're starting to relax some other restriction i believe that's happening because it's folks like you that are being vocal that are writing some very incredibly uh emails lists of facts and and i i tell you i

155haven't read all of them i think i responded to all of them that data i am bringing right to those meetings in fact um tomorrow or this weekend i will contact all of you that email us what's your feedback i will send you email address where you can forward information to the same people i talked every week because i do believe that is having an impact and this is my personal opinion a few weeks ago you heard governor lamont after the cc changes guidance with effect within two hours that the only requirements of mass transit followed by oh yeah we're gonna require uh masks in public spaces lamont on a news conference uh i guess he didn't hear the whole thing but he preferred to leave that decision local superintendents and we got very hopeful

156and then the next day he changed it and then last week he put a mandate through a press release it so that tells me he is feeling the pressure uh but i will tell you this i i i wish i could tell you tonight that we can vote on parents choice we can't i'm not saying it's out of the question but dr solomon feels very strongly about the safety of our kids he believes that well they're not going to speak for him if if mass were useless he wouldn't be recommending him but this is not the only solution there's there's more to it there's the hand wash and sanitizing the appearance that you've been through last school you'll notice more this is not the only thing that's going to help and i don't want to

157help so i i get that but i'm trying to find a way to have the right fight with the right people so that maura and i'll do sweat with maura i i understand what i just paired with facts tonight i have no reason not to trust her not because i trust her blindly or department but i know what a department worked for the last year i know how to help us i think we all appreciate how they help the town they were tremendous help to cheshire public schools and help us set up these safety guidelines and contact tracing and that's was one of the main reasons why we're able to keep so many kids in school last year so in other respects tomorrow i appreciate the fact that she doesn't have some answers i'm sure

158by next time she'll have the answers but i would not i would not let you trust uh sway with with her in her department but i'm trying to i'm trying to find ways that you know we get to push down from the state that we can do the things we need to do but i'm also trying to be conscious of the fact that we'll be careful about this this is still highly contagious but you know we're following their advice we're trying to do what we can but uh again i can't tell you telling your parents choice we want you to have that but we need to do it in a legal way and one that's safe i'm trying to get there i wish i could tell you what you want to hear tonight i just

159can't chris you keep raising your hand i'm sorry and then just listen and i usually no no no no i just want to start to set the timeline because normally we don't do this back and forth and i'm going to know i'm always i'm always uh i'm always uh warned by cabe not to do this interaction because it goes very south and i i think we know we we could probably do this all night i can't we have a lot of business the only thing i wanted to point out was in lamont's uh newest executive order 13-8 if you look under revised mass requirements one underneath its a nothing in the order so they require their use of a mask or face cloth covering for anyone whom doing so be contrary to their health i

160can go to any doctor and tell them i got a toothache and give me a letter i'm just i just want to know what a parent's rights are yeah can you find us the way around this i know no there is right it's right here it's right here it's exempted so it says you can read everything get a physical disability documentation by any agency any agency i can go to my dentist to tell me two thirds because my allergies from breathing okay such documentation but this is how absurd this is such documentation shall not be required to name or describe the condition that qualifies that person for exemption i can send my kids i don't even need to show the teachers why he's exact what the condition so it's it's not even so when you

161guys go back to the governor's orders well he just put it right here for everybody we can all be exempt i just go to my dentist tell my kids they're a teether they don't need to wear a mask that doesn't even i don't even have to show it to anybody well that's no we don't want to fight with the teachers in the same boat and yet in the same in the same executive order he mandates mass in schools so we're caught in the circular circular uh the circle jerk of logic unless you have a disability my kids are disabled they can't wear them like i don't know what you have to say it's just chris i i'm not i'm not i'm not laughing i'm not smiling because i oh i know i just i i

162appreciate we all appreciate the abso absurdity of this a lot of this stuff but i'm sorry you had you had i'm sorry chris you had your hand listen by the way after olympia we're going to move on to the rest of the agenda dr solomon is going to address more public questions as part of the super update later but um i would we're all available to you and and you know i'll make us all available to you first anybody but olympia i read the please it reads like a delegation it's actually a delegation i mean that's why you know people were hopeful i don't want to give you guys a hard time no and you're not giving encouragement because i work with statutes all the time and i work with the department and we we

163drop statutes and regulations and we know that there's it's how things are worded and sometimes it's what we don't say we're so it seemed when i read the stat when i read the we call it a mandate we got to stop calling it a mandate it's an executive order but if you read it it reads like a delegation and then within the delegation for those who choose to do it will have to follow this mandate so sometimes you have to re-read the statute more carefully and just because sometimes like when you first read it um it reads like a mandate because now we're trained in the thinking it's a mandate but but it is an executive order with but it implies that it's really a delegation to the municipalities and it becomes a mandate so

164just look at it from that perspective you know that i don't know i'm just so i find myself doing this because i want to talk about the masks you know so i don't want to poke holes in it but olympia yes i agree and and just to get off this for a second then there's the connecticut state department of education if you go on their website it's mandated masking schools and it starts right so this translation starts happening the point the point is every board checking meeting we have every week with all these we're in the same argument and every board attorney comes back with a similar response as a rule law and i know we're going to disagree on that bear with us i know this is not an easy situation i i i

165trust dr sullin our teachers our administrative staff and my students lives in schools we can't guarantee your safety heck i can't guarantee my kid's safety in schools but we're doing everything as we can to keep your kids safe i know this one's very problematic for us if i had any doubt whatsoever that we're jeopardizing our kids or your kids i wouldn't be doing this i know we're going to disagree on this but bear with us i'm hopeful that in september we make more progress on this but that being said i got to move along on the agenda all your points will be in the media minutes which are going to believe is a very lengthy afternoon's meeting the letters you sent will be in the minutes for those you asked for it we're gonna get

166to those a little later there's no consent there's number one there's no consensus of the board you're gonna bring it to a vote this time otherwise we could try that but there's we're not there yet mark thank no thank you please thank you everyone i would entertain a motion in recess for a few minutes the board wants to take a breather i make a motion to recess for 10 minutes second second all in favor would that be a mask break the with a mass break if you want to you know peruse we'll be back in 10 minutes at 10 o'clock we are recessed you border vet is going to continue in session continue to meeting if any board members made a run for it please come back up next uh committee rep so committee reports

167so mr gripple do you have uh i'm sorry i apologize this is where i need uh regular caffeine not decaf which i've been trying to drink tonight i'm sorry on the agenda item four is a consent calendar uh so i in our boardwalk packets we have essentially three items in there i was gonna keep stretching out until andrew gets here while i was opening yeah agenda for the consent calendar you have the details there's three items contained in there it's approval statement on class slice policy it's approval of the aces area copper education services that we partner with our annual membership agreement and the appointment a hearing officer that we normally do every year do i have a motion from tim move that the cheshire board of education approves the consent calendar as presented is

168there a second [Music] adam seconds is there any discussion really all right tim so uh being there's no discussion uh the motion is that the cheshire bar education approves the consent calendar as presented all those in favor it is unanimous thank you now up next is report to standing committees starting with finance mr grippo and mr massiana i happily uh turned the report over to mr maciana thank you mr grippo good evening ladies and gentlemen i will make this super fast the board members do have the financial report as of july 31st 2021 really the only notable item there is one that the approved budget is 77 million one dollars and like 77 million 1052 for this fiscal year we only have one month under our belt um you could see that we've encumbered and

169expended about 49.9 million dollars most of the payroll encumbrances are done so those are done you know a little bit ahead of schedule but we still have to do the remaining encumbrances and grant entries which will happen most likely during the month of august as we sit here tonight we have no major variance concerns to report thankfully it's only one month um and you know we we recognize that um you know with the pandemic there's going to be some uncertainty as we go through this budget year however we do have 1.34 million dollars in esser funds which we could use if we need to for safety and health related devices that's all explained in the report but that money really is targeted to learning loss and academic improvements and those grants are good for three

170years so that is the long and short of the financial report for tonight i can jump right into medical benefits if you would like board members do have actually the june and the july medical benefits report so the few things that i want to point out one that the budget for this year for medical benefit contributions is eight hundred fifteen thousand dollars per month we do expect claims to be nine hundred thousand dollars per month so we know that each month we're under funding by about eighty four thousand five hundred dollars however the uh town council when they approve the board's budget for this fiscal year they did make a direct contribution of 1.5 million dollars right to the medical benefits reserve so if you look at the top section of the report we came

171into the year with a reserve fund balance of 814 000. we received 1.5 million dollars as a direct contribution this month's claims unfortunately were a million forty one thousand one ninety one so about a hundred thousand higher than what the expectation was if i can give you any good news tonight this month last year claims were 1.2 million so it's not as high as it was last july but certainly higher than what the actuarial expectation was and so the bottom line is we are ending this month july 31st with 2 million 89 564 in the medical benefits reserve that gives us 2.32 months of reserve assuming hundred thousand dollars of claims per month uh the only anecdotal information that i did want to add is i did look at this month's large claims over twenty

172five thousand you know we did have six claims that totaled over 300 000. so six claims accounted for you know roughly 30 of the million dollars in claims so we are still seeing some um you know extraordinarily high claims that are you know bringing out claim totals up we'll keep watching it and continue to report out and unless there are questions yes um i i i am concerned that we're continuing to look under the cushions and everything else for ways to shore up our funds and you know we get 1.5 which has given us 1.5 million which is give us some breathing room but we're just consistently missing the mark and i don't either i don't know what to say about it i don't know what to do about it other than have we heard

173back from the actuary why you know we we ask this every month why why are we missing it so badly and is where's the problem and we don't have an answer well no the problem is the large claims are extraordinary and they can they have been all of last year and they work for the first month of this new um of this new fiscal year you know we will provide a a summary of last year cigna is is going to provide that you know for us and we will share that with the board and um you know it's claims there really are not that's the non-controllable portion of you know what happens in a given year on the medical benefits side so there's really not much that you know the board could do there's not

174much that we could do as administrators other than to watch understand you know what the underlying trends are and um i always do hope for you know better period this is a period that if we look at all of last year you know was extraordinarily high an increase that we had never seen previously and there's no one thing that's driving those large claims we did share with the board some of it is cancer claims some of it has to do with you know bone hip joint type heart um and vascular disease and um you know some you know birth and fertility claims it's really not one thing and some of it is covert but that's not the lion's share of it either i wish i had a a better answer and can give you confidence

175that the rest of the year isn't you know going to see high claims like this so again the only thing i could offer tonight is this time last year the claims were 200 000 higher is it fair to say then that your crystal ball is as fuzzy as morris yeah it's bad it's bad working on it though ann thank you adam um yeah then i'm just curious so we're at the beginning of the year uh and most of the i'm looking at the certified salaries in classified salaries yeah most of it is maybe not classified salaries but even so just looking at certified salaries most of it is expended or encumbered okay so you got a million dollar balance there what does that million dollars represent is basically teachers you're gonna be hiring the next

176week or two depending on sort of what happens with the classrooms though you're saying the the money that is you're looking at the current balance column correct 1.183 million i'm just why is that money there because i would think that most of it would be encumbered at this point unless it's teachers you hire in the next like two or three weeks well that's some of it but right because we don't have a hire on board we can't encumber those funds and we won't incumber the funds until we have somebody in the position oh and then also some of it's going to be a few hundred thousand because of retirements that's also part of it and then part of it is we don't encumber all of the of the salaries necessarily so there's extra pay that

177is paid to a teacher for additional duty that isn't going to be something that's got it okay um and some of the um some of the balances especially on the certified salaries will change as we um adjust for grant funding that's going to be received so you'll see as we get really in through august and into september's final report you'll start to see where those final encumbrances land but there's always some certified salary dollars that sit in that current balance uh sure through the rest of the year yeah no no i i could think of it like a few hundred thousand but over a million uh that that'll make sense thank you you're welcome [Music] one last quick question a medical benefits report so i just doing quick math you know obviously it always seems

178like june is a higher than normal month when we started out this the school year so we're all we had to dip into 308 000 into the medical benefits account obviously that rate you'll be out of money in you know seven months hopefully it's not the case but uh but i know it's on the town count so we were gonna keep an eye on this so you know assume the next couple months are a similar pattern we're still having more discussions on what we have to do if that continues but sure thank you for the update though okay that concludes the finance report thank you mr gripple up next is uh personnel uh who wants to talk about the item tim or jeff or both tim go ahead you start it uh yeah so item

179on the personnel personnel me personnel committee met a couple days ago one item on the agenda was what i'll describe as a tweaking of a job there was someone who retired and the responsibilities are changing a lot of it is the same and there are some changes to it that was the only item on the agenda and with that i would like to make a motion based on what came out of the personnel committee and then discuss the motion the board of education sorry the board of education moves that the position of family and community engagement coordinator be added to the contract between the cheshire board of education and the cheshire administrative personnel thank you tim is there a second faith second discussion yeah so this is like i was just saying a second ago

180this is a this is a position there was a position that existed um she retired many of the roles that responsibilities that had existed for the retiree will still exist in this position it's being tweaked a bit with some new responsibilities i think one key point here is that and jeff you could speak to this this was not in the administrators union before and this position would now be in the administrators union um the reason that i i supported this the roles the the responsibilities covered by this position are uh in my opinion important and valuable uh one is covering adult ed which i believe is state mandated anyway right for things such as uh uh getting a ged graduation equivalency diploma and there's other things that in there that are really um i feel

181we're very important from a policy perspective something like internships what has you know i graduated cheshire high in 1990 and what i always remembered back at the time was you go to college you go to college and i am a firm believer in education but i do not believe that a formal education such as college is necessarily better than an informal education and so with some of these internships what you could find what could happen with something like that this role is assisting high school students to be looking at you know like being a plumber or an electrician or something something a little bit different than just simply going into um what's often expected of cheshire high students going to college and i think that's really important um i think broadening options and helping students

182believe that there are other there are options besides college i think that's at least at that moment particularly at that moment in time i think that is really valuable so i think these responsibilities are all really important and that's basically why i'm why i supported moving forward with this position are there any comments from the board of ed members and just for the record we had a personnel committee meeting discusses in uh much more detail tuesday night i mean it was tuesday and then also a couple months ago it came up today and uh another key plus another key benefit of this position is that uh uh by the way kelly lens is returning october she's the one that's leaving uh the current role but in the current position uh that person cannot conduct uh

183teacher observations which is just key for for reviews so having um this role augment the way it is it frees up ms solano from doing reviews and focus more quickly so it does buy us some capacity and bandwidth in central office which is you know it's much needed so i'm in full support of this that being said the motion on the table is we move at the position of family and community engagement coordinator be added to the contract between the cheshire board of education and the cheshire administration personnel all those in favor it is unanimous thank you board up next is planning thank you mr chairman the planning committee met back on july 27th comprised of mr white catherine helen and myself um a few months back we contracted with energy resources to take a

184look at the district buildings as a whole to study for installation of solar arrays at any of our school buildings um fast forward to this last meeting on the 27th and they came back with two different options one at highland school and one at doolittle um i have been pretty much against any ground installations at the school buildings in order to not encumber any of our playing fields um they did look at both ground mounted installations and as well as carports um coming back with the car ports because of the cost of steel and copper um being so exorbitant at the time that it really didn't make sense from a zurich application standpoint in order to move forward with any of those installations um however vin will you pick up from there and get into

185we the next phase of it sure thank you mr martelly and i will try and summarize this and if i go a little astray i'm sure mr white will get me back on track but the uh really the end result of the work that was done with energy resources and we've been working on this project actually for over a year inside of the planning committee is that they have two potential solar arrays one at too little one at highland that could work and and generate a significant portion of the power for those respective schools the um energy solutions on our behalf did submit uh two z-rec applications one for each school and they were approved and so the next step in the process uh for us which the planning committee um opined on and voted

186in favor of is to move forward to basically lock a contract for these z-rex at doolittle at highland and what that means is that we have the right to take advantage of you know this financing program so that we can do solar arrays at doolittle and highland it's it's at our option we have until april of 2023 to complete the installation um the thing that you know was striking though about the approval of the z-wreck is that the school district actually has quite a bit of of um flexibility in terms of what actually gets installed it does not have to be a solar carport array it could be a roof array it could be some other type of ground-mounted installation and so the decision that the planning committee made was to go forward and we

187did submit the signed contract which eversource has accepted our only commitment was for doolittle two thousand one hundred twenty dollars in the form of performance assurance which is essentially a performance bond and two thousand nine hundred ninety two dollars for highland if we do go forward and we complete the arrays that's refunded uh to the district and so you know we now have the ability to continue the design work continue the discussion with planning on a solar array solutions at one or both of those schools whatever the planning committee on the board ultimately decides and even though the contract indicates we have until april 1 of 2023 to complete the installations we actually have the right to extend two six-month additional terms so we can actually go you know one additional year april of 2024

188to complete the installation so you know working back from there you know ideally by april of 2022 we would have the design work done and a decision made to go forward so um all the paperwork has been executed with eversource the funds have been sent we're just waiting for the um executed copy of the contract to come back from eversource so it's on its way and we'll continue to work through the design phase so that is the update um from my perspective thank you vincent tim just mind i do want to get out of here before 11. everybody just i'm going to be very quick because i don't think i heard it i could have missed it not against you tim just in general uh basically the issue with regard to this is if we

189did the project right now due to supply chain issues the costs have increased what do they say about steel like 150 it's gone up in the past few months or a year or something like that so it actually would have made a lot of sense if we could have done it say six months ago we didn't have the z-wreck at that time we could do it now the z-wreck being the financing incentive um so giving you know given another two or three years it's entirely possible that the costs of raw materials will drop that's the hope um but that's that's why we're not doing it at this time because we would end up paying a higher rate than we would be and that really doesn't make a lot of sense at least not to me

190so thank you [Music] thank you tim mr martelly or mr messiana thank you for watching on school construction projects this summer i mean in the interest of time i will just tell you that there's a lot of staff is back in the school buildings on august 26th our students are back august 31st there was no construction project and many are still going on that will prevent school from opening so i want to reassure everyone of that although we do have a lot of moving parts this is the time of year that our administrators get very nervous so most of my job from here on out is to keep everybody calm and we will do that and we will open on time and i'll save the project by project update for the next meeting if that's

191okay well absolutely vince i figure usually that time you have more throw update on the completed projects and all the work that went into it with the before and after pictures yes like flip this house right the before and after so we're looking forward to that okay thank you that completes planning completes planning thank you speaking of flip this house and by the way i i think we uh can go to 11 or we can extend it but i mean i'll stay as long as we need to but i know every time i say that my board members go nuts but that being said up next the school modernization committee update mr martelly again school modernization well we do have a special guest here this evening but before we have him come to the podium

192i believe mr chair um the quick update is the town council continues to review the report of the school modernization and scenario 6 which was their preferred option town staff is reviewing the financial implications implications rather of that scenario the next meeting of the town council specific to school modernization is scheduled for august 19th at 6 30 here in council chambers coliers who is the consultant hired by the district continues to do the test fits of the school buildings the two elementary school options related to scenario six and what i'd like to do is once we do get those test fits is to schedule a planning committee meeting of the whole to discuss those test fit reports and also the financial implications to the town school modernization really quick and now we have um mr

193jinx for uh i don't know what we're calling this option all right well according to the herald cartoon today this is jimmy's option jimmy's option three yeah i was gonna say the best sand castle that sounds like guilty talk right there well thank you for sticking it out this long let me turn this on is it on i'm on you guys mind if i sit down instead go ahead [Music] so for the record jim jenks 244 academy road i'm the town counselor and uh school of modernization committee member so first of all i just want to say thank you again for the the meeting i appreciate it very much um you know my goal is to kind of come up with a a proposal or a plan that we all can kind of agree on

194and the community can rally behind and and and we can have a successful referendum on sooner rather than later um my uh so what i did in in in looking back through our our data from the school modernization committee was come up with a kind of a hybrid plan i know a lot of you guys have heard this already to some degree but i'm going to kind of go through this go through this again since we're all here so the uh i think this kind of addresses a lot of the kind of would have been brought up to this point as negatives as far as the um the current scenario 2a which is uh the new six state middle school plus uh plus a new chapman and also some of the um some of the

195uh critiques of scenario six um so first of all just kind of before i go through the the details on the second page just wanna point out that um the uh my proposal called the the casper tunnel fields campus proposal um includes a new second six state middle school as well as a new chapman on this kind of a campus property on jarvis and in marion road the um the highlights being uh in the first phase which is that uh the sec the second six state middle school new chapman uh cost there being about 75.5 million and this number is based on estimates from uh from colliers it's derived from their numbers is about 12 million 13 million dollars less than the current preferred uh two too large elementary school plan and then the second

196phase it's also about 20 million or so less on an overall scenario is about 26 million dollars less the uh obviously the middle school plan includes a a modern six day middle school curriculum um the uh the capacity uh point i'm making there is that with this with this plan we're at by the end of the decade we have a capacity of about 92 percent in elementary schools rather than uh with the current preferred plan would be about 97 um i've raised this many times and it seems like we really haven't kind of discussed that um that challenge or that issue um you know obviously when we once we build the new schools we don't want to be in a situation where we're already near capacity um you know what that 97 means and for

197example with uh with the new chapman you'd be looking at um at least at this point based on what's in collier's the the student number there would be i think 640 or 653 students at that new school and the um you know obviously the state preferred size is about 700 so we're really bumping up against that um you know that high end there you could you could imagine that if we're going to grow potentially 13 or so over the next decade um growing a few more percent in a few more years beyond that is pretty reasonable and also in the case of norton i think the number we have for norton is about 669 students for the new school so they were even we're even at a kind of worse situation as far as being

198at the high end so that's why i point out that it's a the proposal that i'm making is both a short term and a long term solution uh it's district wide the impact is district-wide because the middle school 68 middle school is part of the plan and then also it's incremental meaning that we can address the short-term population challenge uh over the next five to six years that we kind of know is coming for sure and then kind of have the have some flexibility in the out years to determine what else needs to be done what schools need to be done after that my proposal also has a hummington resolution which the uh the other two proposals don't really have at this point um and then obviously with the um with my uh the cass

199atomic fields campus we have that we're well within the preferred school size uh you know the state had commented that they didn't want the school to be over 900 students but my proposal one school is about 550 students and the other one's about 600 students and also my plan we have uh we're really maximizing the the cep savings as well kim where is where is hamilton going so um if you're looking at the second page now what i'm proposing is the in the second phase board of ed offices move into the renovated dot and then the alternative high school would perhaps be somewhere on the high school property in a later phase so going through again the first phase is new chapman k to five about you know max of 515 students the 32.2 million

200number comes directly from collier's estimate um the new second six state middle school about 550 students and that on that campus property is about 43.3 million one thing i point out there is that the estimate that i used uh was based on about 102 000 square foot building which is probably a little bit bigger than we might need but we obviously want to leave that to colliers to figure out for sure but the the chapman building which obviously it's a middle it's a elementary school so it's going to be smaller but that building is only about 73 000 square feet with about 515 students so it's a similar number of students i'm sure we need a little bit more space for middle school but i'm not sure if we need 30 000 more additional square

201feet it's also the estimate that i use the 421 square feet is perhaps a little high it is based on the collier's number for their um their six state middle school that they they proposed to us that the 1200 student won but um colliers did mention when they were here when i presented before that their their middle school estimate could be in the high threes rather than into the four so there could be some more savings there as well the so the second phase includes a renovated middle school as i said the board of ed offices moving in there and i'm proposing that we also perhaps move park and rec offices perhaps arts place programming and yellow house programming into into either dodd or you know perhaps the new middle school third phase is uh

202capital improvements to highland um of about 20 million dollars you know actually something that's probably going to be happening before then but um i'm just kind of showing that in the third phase and the renovated high school number is the same throughout really so it comes to about the 300 million or so happy to take questions so um jim you proposed putting arts place and um yellow house into the buildings um what would that do for our reimburse i mean what would that do for our reimbursement from the state for school construction these aren't school projects and then would the town and the board legally be able to mail their services together in a single building yeah that is an unknown um although the i think in terms of the arts place in yellow house

203i think the idea would be to um they would be using space in the building but not necessarily have their own space so it would be uh the building would be renovated to be a school um you know but it's it's a piece of this that we obviously we need to look at a little further to see uh exactly what the savings might be there uh but i think it's it's a potential um especially with the park and rec building being where it is and being that it needs some renovation now um and i think some people have recently mentioned it as a potential location for the alternative high school um if we get to the point where we're renovating the high school um you know there's probably something happening to that park and rack

204building so i'm trying to think of a way to address that sooner rather than later i i could tell you that the park rec building arts place yellow house would not be reimbursable by the state because the way state does this calculation on square footage is based on a number of students so to kind of put in perspective because i've heard this from the community even five years ago when we're looking at the the sixth grade middle school could we build a bigger auditorium than that goes beyond the needs of the physicals kids in the building to accommodate more community events and we knew back then that that cost above and beyond certain square foot in size is the burden on the town not the state now there's a it's a not bad idea uh

205but i like the fact that you're trying to address you know the buildings are around the area at the same time because i think those also need help work as well but that that can answer beyond that i don't know if we can keep that in the same space as the educational programming that you're asking me right yeah you're the expert so yeah i um i just wanna i guess i could first directly answer your question and then i had a couple of thoughts the including them having a little bit more intimate knowledge really about the yellow house than arts place or or the park and rec building i know how that facility is used during the day actually it's it's often used by us during the day for special education support services over there

206i think it would be very difficult to house additional components of our town programming without having significant modifications to the building for security so park and rec are its place yellow house i would expect individuals to be coming and going from those locations throughout the school day and we're we're currently if you've driven past chs and other buildings taking great space taking great pains to provide enhanced security so i think that would would have to be done i but you know more uh generally speaking i want to reiterate my appreciation for what you've done mr jenks in the sense that it underscores i think the uh importance that as a as a town councilor you um have been so invested in this process from the beginning and our entire town council acknowledges that we really

207need to do something to move forward and the fact that you've taken a lot of time to creatively effort to solve you know what i think are the biggest challenge here like the financial component plus how do we enhance six through eight because there seems to be a very strong voice for that as well uh is is definitely commendable i think when you know i talked to marlene and our teaching staff about that proposal there are real reservations about creating two six through eight buildings uh there are a lot of benefits to uh from an instructional perspective of keeping people under one roof um of course the competing challenge there is the the state has said you need to have a really compelling argument for having a middle school of that size and i think

208that's actually an easier hurdle to clear for us than the instructional uh challenges and a lot of that is also in in ongoing fiscal costs for us when we add those six through eight programs and mr peregini also trying to solve that same problem you are had asked me what can we do about you know what if we were to move some of these programs into our existing elementary schools we could i mean there's always you know if there's enough money you could make anything happen but it's just uh in our opinion just not long-term cost effective to create two elementary schools when we started to look at shared staffing the additional staffing that would be required to offer that programming that we're seeking in the two buildings but you know i think the campus

209thing is a really interesting idea i know adam had brought that up too and i think the more that we can all continue to collectively you know take you know hits at this to try and get to a solution that really works for our town is is the way we're going to get there in the long run just thank you sure tim you had a question earlier i'm sorry yeah thank you uh so thanks for doing this jim i appreciate it um uh first point just on history talking about the park and rec building the harman j leonard um that was originally created uh per my per the can my mom telling me the story she donated money to it back in the 50s or whenever it was built army j leonard killed himself he

210was a student he accidentally killed himself with a hand grenade and his dad went out and um you know raised money and made that youth center happen so i just want to mention that i don't like history to be forgotten um but i do have one real question here which is um scalability of this you the number you put in here was it 400 421 dollars per square foot for the middle school i'm just curious in general i mean is that the reason it's reasonable to say you could scale that number from the building they were talking about at 421 down to a smaller school i believe so yes okay although like i said when we were when we had the meeting uh with collier's in the council he mentioned the middle school rate in

211in like 350 to 365. so he was saying it was lower um but this is based on the number that was in the proposal from colliers that we got from the smc okay thank you thank you ann yes please jim thank you for bringing this up i think it's really important because we have been hearing a lot of support for a six through eight middle school for various reasons and i just really want to say i also appreciate your efforts and going out there and and trying to problem solve another another scenario that um is intriguing uh so i just have a simple question that i'd like you to answer just very as simply as you can um what do you think is the biggest benefit and the biggest detriment of your proposal over the

212new six through eight middle school over the news you mean over the like a single six to eight minutes yes well the i mean the reason why a big reason why i'm suggesting we obviously got the two schools it has to do with the uh the what we kept hearing as far as the uh the challenge of the the size of one school um so um you know i guess having the the two schools um was is the biggest benefit i suppose uh i mean obviously there's a significant cost difference as well um at least in terms of the upfront uh capital costs um you know i i'm not sure as far as what the biggest detriment is i mean it sounds coming from from what dr solon says it sounds like that that's you

213know the ongoing operational cost of probably what the the biggest detriment is as well i just don't know what those costs are exactly um so another way to put that might be what do you think is the biggest benefit of the scenario 2a yeah i mean the biggest benefit of the singer 2a is i think is is having a single having a single middle school um that is i mean the the reasons for my falls are similar to the reasons for scenario 2a you have you know we're addressing the short-term uh the short-term population bubble we have coming and still having flexibility down the road you know a big one of the biggest concerns i have and why i tried to manufacture another scenario was because i had this concern i'm sure other people do

214as well as far as how big our elementary schools are going to be when we're done when they're going to be you know chapman the new chapman based on the current preferred scenario is going to be 653 students which by the way is 104 larger than our current chapter the new norton would be like 40 or 50 bigger than the current norton new doolittle is going to be i think it said six well it says 612 students in the colliers report that we put together and the capacity of doolittle right now is 606 students so it's going to be bigger than highland is also going to be near 800 students so we have um we're supposedly trying to address a population issue where in very near future we're probably going to be having that same

215population issue which so if we get to the point where at the end of the decade again where we have to maybe add on to those elementary schools again and make them even bigger is the state going to reimburse that since they're so big um are we we're going to be trying to do that and still have not touched the middle school still not touched the high school and i also just think that i mean the community prefers smaller neighborhood schools and i just don't see that i just don't see it i don't think it's going to pass and we don't have time to be failing for the wrong project when we're trying to get to the right project um you know so i just i really think we need to think hard about the

216size that these elementary schools are going to be um and it's they just don't leave us a lot of flexibility down the road thank you so much jim thank you man any other board members adam yes hi jim um thanks for this plan it's a very interesting and unique um i'm just curious as to why you chose to phase uh the second part the renovation of dot into phase two when you're when we would be expanding you know we would be transitioning from the uh k through six through k through five model and then building a smaller six through eight brand new school and potentially not being able to renovate a uh dodd and so you'd be cramming in a sixth grade into a school that already you know potentially has some deficits already and

217adding an additional grade um i know the population would drop but um i was just kind of wondering what were your thoughts on why you were phasing it that way is it just cost rather than have it all in the first place yeah i mean yeah i think that the um you know we we want to have i think we want to have an initial project that gets gets us a long way down the road um but is also reasonable cost-wise i mean this is even at 75 million it's the largest project largest referendum that the town will have i think will have ever approved so um knock on wood so it's it's a significant project that's you know if you were to do obviously if you're to do the renovation of god at the

218same time then you're you know you're you're pushing up to the same cost as the scenario 2a at that point um and it seems pretty clear that that's a cost that you know council seems unlikely to move forward with right um and and how would you envision the casatorno campus to be arranged because we know that there are some constraints there in that property if you had a second building did you have any thoughts of that or is it just like your no i mean it's i think the property is is we've looked at it for uh a you know a 1200 student middle school so presumably we could fit um a thousand or so students on that property um but as far as the design you know that's that's well down the road right

219but i mean you you're envisioning some sort of sharing of field use and that sort of thing i would think so yeah i mean i think that the the property would probably demand that uh it's it's not that big um but uh and i would think that there would be some some savings in in constructing the two buildings in the same lot and having some shared uh parking and and um and field usage i i would hope that that would be a savings there okay thank you sure oh i'm the last one thank you jim and and just folks like they reach out to jim you know as soon as he talked to jeff and yeah you know invited him to come out and talk to us because he put a lot of work into

220this and i do appreciate the different take you put on this in fact uh you're trying to solve not just the cost but you know you're trying to get around that 1200 student uh population at the middle new middle school it's narrow 2a which no cgr is going to give us a lot of issues with as they told us a number of times what i don't like is that there's two six to eight schools and that poses a lot of overhead for us and for the administration in fact i'll tell you after you get that presentation the other night i get emails from teachers saying please don't do two sixth grade middle schools if you're gonna do it do one um but i love the fact that you're looking at the constitutional property in different

221light because my concern is not which scenario gets gets passed six or two ables they're both great options and don't detriment our kids whatsoever it's just that if we have one large property at 30 acres and we put a small monthly school there and in the future as you said if we do run into our own problem norton because that has not been proven by colliers yet in their moment study where do we put that new building if we need it we're kind of locked into a big piece parcel with you know no space to grow so i like the campus approach idea um i i think we're better served if we really want to push a sixth trade middle school i i think i would ask you to take that same analysis and try

222to get clever with the cost savings in scenario 2a one of the things that gets lost has gotten lost in this process and man we could spend days talking about the history of this stuff but in 2016 we looked at this and the board of ed not only chose to move forward to sixth grade middle school that was the only option scenario ever discussed was you do sixth straight middle school you're running all the other schools as is so they didn't push it forward just for the education value it was the fact that it acted as a swing space so that for example and you have to think in the con in the context of the entire long-term plan all the schools all the schools need work it's it's evident the plan we've been through

223that i know you see you're trying this a lot of buildings so the idea was if you did a new sixth grade middle school then if you have to run into highland of doolittle uh chapman maybe even parts of chs we can move those kids to a swing space renovate the school faster than if they were in school and get that project done sooner and i remember asking colliers you know informally you know what was a time saving something like that you know off the cup it would be like hey if you were going to do that yeah it's quicker if the kids are not in school you're probably shaving maybe four or six months off the timeline debatable costs we don't know but there's i think there's an angle at this scenario 2a and

224i would like to see the town council look at that scenario uh after six is finished with the analysis is is there any value any cost savings to that what i just said about using the swing space tools that might be something that falls into whatever could be afforded and probably get that done i don't know but i think i like how you broke this down i also like the fact that you're looking at the other town buildings because throughout the modernization committee meetings in fact even in 2015-16 we always talk about what happens to parks and rec if we can we use that space for something for cheshire high school expansion if we were to do that where would that go um but i i think there's a there's a lot of good here

225i think there's a lot of challenges in here too i i don't know i'm not sure what to do with it um i want to do something i mean yeah we we talked a lot in the smc process about how how the dodd would make for great swing space i mean it made it makes total sense um because the uh you know something that that parents i don't think you're necessarily thinking about and and um you know as this goes on there's a lot of disruption going to be a lot of disruption with the new construction and that's you know what is that going to do to learning environments and what is that going to do to uh just the the experience for everybody and it it's going to lengthen the whole process that's going

226to and i know colliers had made a lot of um you know they said they can kind of section off buildings and work on one part with but our schools are so small now it's i i i struggle to see how that's going to really work really well um renovating as they're occupying the space but um i agree so um you know but we're i don't know we're not we're not talking about these things anymore until now and it's it's it's a little bit concerning to me that we're we're kind of moving so far down the road and in scenario six um and again uh not really thinking about things beyond the next decade and obviously well see jim i gotta disagree with you on that i mean it's concerning for you but you know

227and i mean there's an all sincerest you don't serve on the board of ed and you haven't been here as long as ann and catherine and myself have so the board members and this goes back a long time this this started for me in 2010 when we were it's a town debating when i do a turf field and over the course of those few years between 2010 2013 through all these piecemeal projects are popping up right there's a turf field there was a boy's locker room with the high school there's debates about the field house and was never a long-term thing so it i i can't say that anybody that's worked on this effort uh it's not about a short-term solution these two plans are long-term they're long-term every scenario six options down to two

228uh we've had many discussions debates over the years i think too much focus is my personal opinions being put on the sixth grade middle school and now looking at the big picture i think you're trying to do that that's important because the worst thing we can do regardless what option moves forward is we put all our eggs in one basket in one phase a partial phase and we build either two elementary schools or one through six middle school and we do nothing else we just left every other school building in worse shape that we can't get to i don't want to be i know the board feels the same way too we don't be constrained financially that you know we we do one or two buildings we can't address the rest until the money's freed

229up so i i you know again and uh so i again i i love this i i just i don't know what to do with it you know especially if our administrators are you know concerned about the two sixth grade middle school operation or where the city emphasis put on 2a if that's the direction if the town council gets that scenario but i don't unless they had is there anything else from up here so i'm not sure what to tell you i was like i i wasn't expecting an up or down vote don't worry about it no i know i i just want i i i there's just something here i know that we can build upon i i'm just trying to figure out what that is and but i just want to make sure

230you had a chance to talk to the board members directly because you know not everyone was at the town council meeting last week and sometimes you know things get lost in translation and paper but now that we have this and we're gonna chew through it further so probably reach out to you for questions for sure okay yeah just like i said i just want us all to kind of work toward a a proposal that's going to be successful so do we referendum first first time out yeah um yeah but we can't get through all the analysis completed though so i know town council's working the financial side of things right and uh and i don't even know yet if any of these numbers even your 75.5 million in your scenario if that were you know

231gonna happen is you know is that something the town can afford i think we're gonna begin to go to town council last week of august i didn't speak to chairman ours this morning he's gonna try to get a meeting together that week so uh so town council can hear from board members dr solomon the feedback and hopefully when we have test fits have a better idea i hope you know i want to pressure town council but it's kind of hard for us to even do a survey at this point because when we did the other survey while folks were very uh behind doing something it's how much what am i getting right and what's it worth to me and we don't we don't quite have those three variables yet so we need that if we're

232gonna have a successful referendum so but we'll be there last week august with some more dialogue okay thanks guys thank you thank you jim have a good night thanks for sticking out sure there are no other standing committees we have up next is approval of minutes in our packets we have minutes from meetings how june 3rd june 10th june 23rd and june 30th uh do members have any changes to those meetings or updates tim none nobody has any would someone like to make a motion then andrew move that the board of education improve with minutes from meetings held on june 3rd june 10th june 23rd and june 30th is there a second 10 seconds all in favor be unanimous thank you board correspondence uh we do have a lot of correspondence not all of it

233was asked me right into record uh however um i do have of course my pc is freezing up on me i do have a few letters i will try to read in their entirety i'll paraphrase where i can and by the way the the entire contents of these emails will be in the minutes how can i lose mr paddles packet thank you so uh i know mr papado's not here but he was kind enough to send us an email today and also give us a print out by the way this entire letter will be in the pack i'm not going to read through all of it but uh his email uh pretty much if he weren't attention earlier summarizes uh his family's thoughts on the mass effectiveness and why they're ineffective and the ways that

234they harm he cites several references including a 1950s paper on anthrax that show the bacterial spore count you know again very thorough analysis on his part um you know essentially it comes down to you know they were like parents choice um at least give them the option of having their kid not wearing or not wear masking in class we saw earlier and again i can't read all this into the record tonight but it will be in our minutes tonight so please look out for if you have one for more information mr brocado and olympia and especially your daughter thank you for being here tonight and i'm not here right now to see this but i also have we really have a lot of emails it's uh it's interesting and while i look up the next

235one from mandy sweet she had asked uh her letter to be read tonight as well uh mr piragini uh this is manny sweet i'm writing to request our children have the option to wear not wear a mask regardless of their vaccination status that is the only way to appease all parents of the cheshire school district uh she goes on to cite the alarming evidence she's found that make madison effective she's also included linked in the email that contains all the actual peer-reviewed researchers able to find she had summarized that she will not spend another dollar on a face diaper that promotes bacterial growth putting a child a risk of infection uh you do not pay for medical bills until you do you have zero authority to force my child to do anything i birthed to

236them i raised them he is my child and i'll make any and all medical decisions for him thank you mandy sweet thank you mandy and this entire letter will be in the record we also have kristen d francisco who's the other one i believe carol yeah one second i got it at least the wi-fi is working time uh i'll summarize this as well miss miss stefan d francisco emailed the board a few times and and had some responses by dr sullin but she isn't strong this agreement to wear the mask to children's school this should be the parents choice not the school's choice she states that the children are not state's property or nor are they schools property she cites several references in email she includes several points on research and science that's proven some

237of her points here on cover 19. she references cdc about the k-12 monterey rate what code is point zero zero zero three percent among children uh she lists uh a report that she found that has five to six mass contained dangerous pathogens it's very thorough uh and in that sense she does not support the mask she also supports parents choice uh she's respectfully christian d francisco thank you kristen uh and thank you for your free correspondence that will be in our minutes the other thing i i didn't get i just want to before i wrap up correspondence uh normally captain helen our board of secretary would do that she couldn't be here tonight so if i don't sound like her that's why i was i'm doing it um what i couldn't say earlier i thought

238this earlier in the conversation with our folks that were here um we received a lot of emails to cbs covert 19 from parents that are on the other side of the argument where they do want masks in school they do want their kids to be safe i don't know if we're going to be able to go through those emails tonight jeff maybe we can summarize them for the next meeting but one that i want to point out earlier uh again i just skipped my mind uh i think we're all a little emotional and exhausted earlier is that in addition to folks that showed up tonight there are a lot of parents out there that we also heard from that are asking us please follow the science follow the data follow your trusted authorities locally keep

239the masks in place until it's safe to to take them off otherwise and there's a lot of those out there and by no means am i trying to pit one against the other um but you know unfortunately those folks did not come out tonight for various reasons but we've been hearing from them too and uh you know we'll summarize some of those emails at the next meeting uh all right so as just on the topic bear with us we're trying to balance the safe needs of our students with the flexibility of parents that they make for choices for their kids it's a tough one but we do trust our our administration and our superintendent and our local health director to guide us down the right path with data and science but we will continue to

240hear your voices and continue to try to find some solution to this uh that being said that's the other correspondence yes point of order could i um make a motion to extend the meeting to 11 15. yes yes you can make a motion so that we can wrap things up thank you i didn't realize we're passing on the clock so so the motion is to extend the meeting until 11 15. is there a second second mr gripple distant second mr tim all those in favor you're using animus we need two thorns so for those that are wondering our our buyer laws don't also go past limit clock of meeting unless we vote to extend it i think it's the first time in several years we've gone past eleven i'm not going to try to make

241a record tonight uh the superintendent's report uh thank you mr paragini i know this is is usually you know always so highly anticipated i apologize that i'm gonna have to cut this short um district goal setting i'm excited to uh share that we will be moving forward this year with looking at our strategic goals it was difficult to do that last year during covid so please stay tuned tuned for that the reply to covid19 emails as you mentioned uh mr paragini we did receive several emails during the presentation tonight many of them sharing resources about the efficacy of masks and uh encouraging us to to do that like you said um and so the they're just a couple of really quick things i want to touch upon first i want to thank uh our health

242director maura esposito for being here again tonight i think she took uh some jabs that weren't really fair this evening and having worked shoulder to shoulder with her for the last well several years but last uh 18 months in particular whatever it's been i really i can't overstate how much i appreciate everything you've done for the cheshire public school system you are a big part of why we were in school every day last year and uh i'm sure that uh if people step back breathe they would recognize you for that incredible support so i want to do that here and thank you um i want to also be crystal clear that we monitor maura sends me daily or weekly at least uh information uh the board of education it's not the necessarily the the job

243of the seven individuals who sit on this board to monitor health data on a daily basis but i do um and we follow the state has daily reports of data localized data every day throughout the school year last year i posted data updates as carol will vouch on on our website that's all available on our website so we do very closely monitor that and we are incredibly prepared to support our students however we can again restating that our goal is to have our kids in school all day every day safely and so that concludes my report mr chair thank you doc for selling any questions for the superintendent's report seeing as there is none i i do have some board chair stuff that can wait till next meeting nothing critical there uh that being said

244i have no new business but other than some cunning meetings i'll read that and then we'll call for an adjournment so upcoming board meetings beginning well actually a few things happen let's start with the board meetings so exciting stuff opening of schools later this month so our first first board of ed opening of school meeting is september 2nd 7 30 pm here in town council chambers where i know we get a deep dive in the enrollment by by school and all exciting friendly uh faces we're going to see around the school campus looking for those pictures on monday september 13 2021 we have a curriculum committee meeting at 7pm in the central office boardroom tuesday september 14th we have policy committee meeting at 6 30 p.m in central office boardroom and very exciting day is

245as is every year on august 26th there's convocation which is a very uh uplifting event if i recall and i know i'll be there i think i'll be there for that one as well uh but those are the upcoming meetings uh look forward to a couple other meetings happening later this month uh there should be a joint town council board of ed meaning have a joint discussion on the modernization where we are and get some feedback from the board and share some thoughts on that that will be the last week of august the dates to be determined and i believe we're going to have a board of ed planning committee meeting on the whole with the board to also have some more in-depth discussion of the options and even some more maybe some more possible

246talk on jim's ideas teddy presented tonight so as soon as they're available we will post that on our website and i'll post that where i can on facebook but that being said i have no other business so i moved to motion to adjourn the meeting is there a second bevy of seconds all those in favor is unanimous the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone that stuck around you guys are awesome you