001meeting your order uh carol roll call sure mr white here mr paragini here miss harrigan here mr chairman you have a quorum thank you very much uh pledge of allegiance and we are going to use the flag behind the superintendent i pledge allegiance to the plan of the united states and to the republic for which it stands one nation [Music] thank you so the agenda let me see um the item on the agenda is the uh edition of an administrative position i'm not sure if that really is a good way to describe it as an addition so much as a change um yeah jeff i give you the floor to speak to this i mean let me just uh for the for the background someone has left and an administrator has left the the school
002system retired last year basically and now this is uh sort of a tweaking of the position um to better align with what uh we could use going forward into the next year yeah that's a yes and a no i you're absolutely right in the sense that you know we have a retirement kelly lens who's dedicated a lot of years in service to the cheshire public schools uh was not a member of the administrative union she does hold the teacher certification but she wasn't in the teachers union um and she worked 10 months a year uh and has done a lot to contribute to uh the communication and engagement of our school community and business community in particular uh unfortunately she or fortunately for her i guess she's retiring uh effective october 1st and when marlene
003and vin and kelly and carol and i and you know our administrative team started to look at her retirement as related to the goals and objectives we have and the needs that we have as a school system we felt that um you know using that the money from her pay but also a cup some other resources would um you know be could be used to address some of the things we consider to be shortcomings so a few years ago or excuse me a few months ago i know i had shared this uh overview with you well that's for tomorrow this is for today the uh new position proposal would be a member of our administrative union some of the things that we see at the at the top are things that kelly was responsible for
004um and kelly you know it's it's hard to boil down her responsibilities into a neat like page because she really was uh you know the swiss army knife and responsible for doing a lot of seemingly disconnected things um but you know certainly uh significant contributions to the organization so she oversaw adult education um in you know teacher evaluation it was in there but she didn't evaluate the teachers because she wasn't certified marlene went and had to evaluate the teachers she would be responsible for grant management for adult education grants overseas student teachers and interns what that means is um like university of bridgeport or uh quinnipiac or southern sacred heart whoever would contact us to seek placement of a student she would then screen the applicants uh work through the contract with them because i
005know that it was a shock to some of our board members that we actually have to pay the university for an intern um and it is kind of crazy the intern also pays the university but uh that's the system in place universally and we bring them up it's cheaper than hiring a substitute for the year and we have a one-on-one relationship with a teaching candidate that's always really valuable for us so we do engage in that quite a bit um the this new position would coordinate school business partnership committee which i know you're you're all familiar with um and these are all things that kelly had done um some of the things that we thought would be valuable to include in the in the position that would be a member of the administrative bargaining unit
006was a liaison to open choice our open choice program is you know very successful it's growing but you know really there are unique challenges when you have 50 students in your system who don't live in cheshire and there are unique challenges related to um transportation uh event participation academic needs and we want somebody to to follow that more more closely the building principles do that now but again that's growing in addition to the fact that our english language learner population is growing substantially so in 1617 you can see we had 38 students that were identified as english language learners this past year we had 75 students so it's doubled in that short amount of time 75 is still not a tremendous percentage of our our student body that's a little almost nearly closing in on
007two percent but it's uh still the needs of those students and their families are very unique and there's a lot of data that says the better that parents are engaged in their child's education the better that they perform the better that the students do and so we recognize that we have a an entire administrative team dedicated to supporting family engagement for student success but there are unique needs to open choice students and english language learners that we felt it would be really beneficial to have one person focusing on making sure that they're working with the building administrators to ensure their success and engaging those families into into the school system not that they're not engaged now again i don't want to you know say that suggest that but with the growing population we feel like
008it's important to address that this person would be able to evaluate teachers with an 0.92 certification that's a big part of the inclusion in the administrative you bargaining unit so now they can not only coordinate adult education but also evaluate the staff there that they would look to more globally parent involvement and engagement which is a component of you know what we're looking at overall as a district what our communication goals but also uh you know as we we move down the the path of hopefully a protracted period of engaging families for school modernization efforts somebody to help us coordinate that work and then finally managing summer school which is more of a you know a short-term summer effort that would need to be made so timmy brought up the component of uh excuse me
009the last site in there serving a title nine capacity was something that we had in the original draft that went before the board a couple of months ago that we've subsequently removed is we have more training in title ix that's a pretty sophisticated item unto itself and we would want a more senior administrator managing that uh that issue with the new law and again that may change the the law uh or the way that it's interpreted but um you know at this point we don't think that's a an appropriate effort for for something somebody that's probably an entry-level administrator this position itself requires an administrative certification to evaluate staff and we want somebody that will work 12 months hence the inclusion in the administrator's bargaining unit the salary schedule is one that does not currently
010exist in the administrators bargaining unit you know contract there's uh there are several steps on the bargaining unit um that they start at step one and go to step five uh our proposal was in this upcoming year to cap to the cheshire administrative personnel that step one be a hundred thousand step two be 102 104 106 108 and then in subsequent years the individual would receive the whatever the percentage raise is for the that the bargaining unit had negotiated in terms of funding this position in the immediate future uh the kelly's retirement would appropriate like sixty thousand dollars um she will receive some of her pay this year because like again she's working up until at least october first we had an additional teacher retirement which saved money the summer school stipend is eight thousand
011dollars what's not included in here is that there is an increase in uh our open choice reimbursement so we receive three thousand dollars per per student for open choice additionally there are bonuses that are paid out by the state based on the number of students that you have and given the number of students we have so first of all we're increasing the number of open choice students plus the fact that schools like cheshire high school will have enough students to qualify for a substantial larger payment i couldn't quote on what that payment is today i would want to guarantee enrollment after september 1st but we know for sure with just the items i've identified that we will be able to cover this in the budget without making other reductions this year and in subsequent years
012the money that we have through open choice between that and kelly's salary will pay the vast majority of this position so it in some respects we're we're gaining more through the open choice enrollment that we have so this is you know we the other thing is you know at the time that i met with you guys to discuss this position i think there was a question of you know the diversity of skills that are required for this position so we collectively kind of decided well let's let's post and see who applies see what sort of pool we get we had over 40 submitted applications vin and i wanted to make sure that we didn't just look on paper and believe that we had a qualified pool and have interviewed 19 people to date with two
013more scheduled for tomorrow and we feel very confident that from that pool there is somebody that we could add that would really uh increase the the the experience for the students in our school system and uh add contribute to our administrative team so that's kind of the the unique thing is here that typically we would move you know to um create this position into the the administrator's bargaining unit but this position doesn't exist it's lower than the lowest assistant principle we have right now and so when you guys uh you know approve the position we'll finalize that into the contract but i've asked on multiple occasions over the last couple of weeks and they're they're finalizing and once you approve the position they'll finalize the the um [Music] collectively with me it's not just their
014decision but determine the salary schedule but i didn't have any objection on the several times that i've had conversations with them so that's where we are at the moment seeking your approval of this of this position but again it's again like tim said it's not really necessarily a new position as much as it is a different position um of an old position with some new things for 12 months you're on mutant thank you jeff uh tony in did and i know you might have to run did you have any questions or comments no i i feel great explanation jeff so thank you for all of that it answered all my questions yeah thank you tony anything uh no not really i mean we informally discussed this during one of the finance meetings to see if
015there was any money uh so i'm glad you're moving forward i i i might have said in the past i i know we talked about in some of our finance meetings i i know central office needs more help more capacity to say the least right so i know kelly's done a lot and i hope we see her at the board before she leaves but uh i look at the positions of necessity but but also seems to free up some of marlene's time rightfully she's not doing uh teacher evaluations it gives them more time to focus on curriculum other things so i i see this as a win i i think [Music] as you know we as the board moves forward on modernization or next year or two i think the outreach and the communication and
016that's gonna be you know pretty huge so i have no no problem seeing you keeping this well very busy i think it's good i think budget wise it's okay i just i kind of wandered off a little bit halfway through i was just looking up um some emails that you sent out the attachments on this and so you mentioned the open choice money are we using any open choice money towards this or not if you're you're on you if you're talking sorry this year we wouldn't have to all right so there are other ways to fully fund it and my my last thought on this is i know this is a uh like you said it's not really it's replacing existing in this position plus like expecting the next budget there's going to be something
017uh still in there for his position and you know have to find funding for it but i don't think it's a huge hurdle to overcome but anyway i don't know and i've certainly you know considered that fact tony because you're absolutely right that in subsequent budgets like 40 000 of this is from a teacher retirement that came very late however i also recognize that you know our unbudgeted open choice money would more than cover that in subsequent budgets so i think we're we're gonna because for me i i really have been sensitive to like with our esser spending and things not setting ourselves up for a major fiscal cliff and that would be the same thing if we didn't have a way to pay for this moving forward and i didn't want to do that
018so you know looking at our open choice which has been unallocated will you know it's addressing open choice needs to so i think it's a great way to pair that if i'm still lucky to be on the board next budget cycle i would expect in that budget proposal you will make the case to keep this position and you know try to find funding for it even if it requires the board to ask more money right for the on budget and i there's an open choice question but tim probably has it i was just curious uh if open choice money is used and i think tim might have answered asked this question a while ago but you know what in what does that do to the open choice students i think we have what 31 seats
019open this year for high school yeah i mentioned one point time well uh initially i think we had 31 district wide but we have about 50 uh seats that you know we've tried to part of the issue when i contacted aces and asked them you know what time are our open choice students getting on the high school bus right the answer was 5 45 a.m and i said that's absolutely insane um and what can we do to change that and by the addition of like eight or ten students uh they could move it to 6 15 to 6 30 pick up and so i mean that benefits those students benefits our students financially there's certainly a significant incentive for us to do that too that's not why we're not doing it in the morning no
020i just want to say no i remember that but the point was i hope that by using open choice money we're not taking anything away from that money being applied to open choice or things supporting that that's all no actually i mean i think that's it's the opposite that we're dedicating services and supports to open choice and el family tim that's all i have thank you okay yeah thank you yeah no i'll say this this is kind of catching me off guard because what i just basically heard you say is you're moving from a one year durational to a permanent position which is okay i get it that's basically my take on my immediate take on it um i do think that these responsibilities are are important and i mean one thing that i think
021is very important particularly at the high school level is you know education is critically important throughout our lives but i don't believe a formal education is necessarily more valuable than an informal education going to college is great being an apprentice as an electrician a plumber or something like that is great too um i think that the role i do is it fair to say that kelly lens the the role and the internships and stuff like that kind of could fit into that helping some students find ways into that into not necessarily going to college finding a job that that works for them where there's opportunity and growth for them um yeah it's funny you say that tim because a number of the people that we interviewed have experience with that sort of connecting students into
022internships uh job placements um you know kind of non-traditional educational experiences yeah so we were looking to broaden our horizons there as well yeah i think i think that's great um so i think it's i i you know if this becomes if it's a permanent position and it's not a one-year duration that's okay with me i do i am wondering on the mechanics of it let's say you don't you only did have the funding and you might not want to discuss it and you're confident you have the funding year to year but if you didn't have the funding a year from now um what happens in relation to the union i guess i'm wondering so if it was an external hire it doesn't really necessarily make that much of a difference i'm thinking if a
023teacher got promoted into administrators position and then the position is eliminated and they left their teaching union and so that's all a risk that's just out there and and owned by somebody yes and that that risk exists for any position um yeah you know is a member of the administrators union you have seniority rights to bump a teacher uh is part of that on track oh okay yeah okay okay but again i you know i intentionally worked with vin and marlene to ensure that we were creating a position that was sustainable now uh yeah i got it now you know that's where we are with it with that open choice money we are certainly in a sustainable position to manage this moving forward and then you know the budget process is always about you know
024priorities yeah as you guys have experienced sometimes painfully and sometimes not but you know uh we're always trying to identify what's the greatest return on all of our investments whether they be curricular supply related tents for covid whatever the case may be you know we're always always testing those things out okay yeah yeah thank you i mean that that all makes sense to me um you did mention you did mention that you've interviewed about 20 people give or take i'm just curious in general are there any internal possibilities no okay um let me see uh with regard to um and that actually was a concern for me more when it was a durational thing so maybe i didn't even need to ask that question but uh language learners um i'm curious do the of the
02575 english language learners generally speaking do you know if the parents speak english it's mixed but generally not they they that's probably not that they're acquiring the language i i can't imagine if i was dropped in a country that only spoke your do um where i would fit in but like so they're trying to acquire the language in most cases no no no i mean i i've knocked on doors where the um that's actually the kids answer the door little kids elementary school kids they speak perfect english and the you know the parents or the grandparents open the door and i can't speak a word to them i don't know what the language is the kids are great the kids are easy um anyway but yeah so i get that and that's important too to
026be able to communicate with the kids and it's not the easiest thing because you can't have one person who can speak a particular language because it's not spanish or you know a dialect of chinese it's urdu and every other language around the world that how many languages do you happen to know how many languages you have in the cheshire schools right now as a first language i don't know off the top of my head but you know i think that's one of these things about this position that when you look at it superficially you might say ell and adult ed what's the connection there well a lot of our adult ed students are acquiring english they're the parents of our ell students and you know making connections with them and engaging them is powerful and
027that's why two things that superficially don't look connected in this role can be very deeply connected and you know kelly was pointing that out to us as well so you know that's um i think we're in a place to add a position that adds a lot of value for a lot of our students and families and i'm excited about the pool that we have and i i you know look for hopefully you know you guys create this position this evening we we shortly thereafter have union approval along these lines if if there was anything at all different the if the union was pushing back obviously i would come back to you but um and then you know after the school year begins we would seek to appoint somebody okay and so just the last note
028for me that the bottom line i'm assuming in the hiring in in the new job description is going to say and other job duties as required yeah pretty much everything has that uh so i'm i'm happy to move forward with this if somebody wants to make a motion i know ann has to run but i do not have it in front of me so carol what you wrote is what i mean oh hang on let me read it where is that i thought i had it here somewhere i got it right here uh i do is it okay if i make the motion i'm assuming it is yes you can make it all right um the personnel committee recommends to the full board of education that the position of family and community engagement coordinator be
029added to the contract between the cheshire board of education and the cheshire administrative personnel oh sorry and seconds the motion all those in favor or tony hann's got it carol you choose all those in favor aye aye all right okay unanimous thank you everybody thank you jeff thanks carol i'm gonna hop out oh sorry i i need to just that yeah you can leave in if you need to stay for a second oh yeah sure um thank you ann yeah so the uh where is the agenda i'm looking for the agenda we do i have not taken public comment yet i'm assuming uh so um tell me if i miss anything here jeff but basically have you gotten any public comment from anybody about personnel meeting or anything like that no not at all about
030this uh all the public comment is about covid these days yep and masking we'll cover that on thursday okay bring your pills all right um all right so uh motion to adjourn i moved to adjourn this meeting second i was in favor hi meeting adjourned thank you very much everybody thank you guys good night everybody everyone thank you