001miss helen here was him here the sheridan here mr martelly here mr garagini here mr white mr chairman you have a united states quorum america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all good early morning everyone um before you get into any uh any audience at this point there is that kind of surprise so finance there's nothing about book transfers your accounts who wants to get started on that mr sienna i guess i'll get started yes uh unless jeff okay so jeff's comparable he did uh did you know compared by a year-end you know really it's a summary memo and i'll i'll just walk through the memo quickly that there are questions about the details of those but this year's budget was 74 million
002593 926 we did meet that budget in a few minutes we'll ask the board members to consider approving the final transfers you know in accordance with foreign policy and state law the board is responsible to complete transfers and we have five transfer categories salaries employee benefit construction expense support services operations and maintenance and so at this time of the year we just need to pass past some offsetting entries to balance the uh the budget down to zero um real high level i mean obviously this year we you know we it was a full year operating under the pandemic which presented some some financial challenges but as i look back you know we were able to navigate through them pretty successfully there is a summary on page two we incurred about 1.3 million dollars of costs
003you know that i'll say i'm directly related to pam damage and this includes the high dollar items were that we had to do intraday cleaning all our schools we had to provide people for students and staff we provided tents at our schools in the fall in the spring so that we could spread the students out in the beginning of the year we had isolation real monitors and bus monitors those were recorded so it stayed tight it's mostly what we did last year you know was in accordance with state guidance um and you know the other thing that we did was a fairly high price was to remove all the furniture from the classroom and equipment that we could put it in storage we'll be putting that equipment and furniture storage back actually so you know
004if you look at that as a total block it was about 1.3 million dollars of you know direct costs um but the good news is that we received about 790 000 of you know state and federal aid you know directly offsetting those costs we had the 200 000 unexpected education funds account which was money from last year that was rolled over to this year that the town council had approved so we use that and then to make up the gap we had 326 thousand 275 that came out of our operating budget um there were some savings though that were associated with endemic issue for example in student transportation we did not have any sports during the fall season so we saved on those costs we also didn't have field trips so those were all cost
005savings that helped offset 326 000 that came out of our operating budget but we also had lower utility costs our building was not available for use after hours so we have gold building use cost special education not placement this year was under budget um you know which also helped and then you know a big component this year too was our classified staffing costs were lower we did have a lot of open positions we did see quite a bit of turnover especially in the instructional assisted ranks um those positions were not quickly filled just because of the pandemic i think there was you know uncertainty about you know taking a job so that will help offset the increased costs you know related to the pandemic um and when all was said and done this year we
006were able to take the essentially the final balance was 121 000 four dollars and we just moved that to the medical benefits trust so that's how we did the final balancing entry and that's what this morning and then the last high-level point that i want to make is that you know we did board knows that we were very conservative as we started the year and we went through the year we had a 40 percent cap on non-payroll expenditures um but as we got you know into april and we saw that we were going to be in relatively good shape financially we were able to make all the year-end purchases that we needed to make for the schools equipment furniture some musical instrument replacements um you know replacement of equipment for p e and r so
007all that is is reflected in the year end balance and also um on the maintenance side you know we were able to allocate the funding that we needed to do the maintenance projects outside of the capital budget projects that were great i did provide a memo that detailed some of the maintenance items that we're doing this summer i won't work with those details right now but i'm going back to page one so the fiscal year and transfers um i'll just highlight a couple of things if you look at sharp salaries were under budget in salaries and primarily that's from classified salaries employee benefits we were also on the budget part of that is savings from the cigna fees but also we got pretty significant reduction in our workers compensation rates um of about 54 000
008so we were under budget and employee benefits we were over budgeted instructional expense by 131 000 again these are all you know less than one percent variance in those budget categories uh 000 under budget support services that's mostly from transportation savings as i mentioned and then the 734 thousand will over budget and operations of nature and we'll explain that what we did is we had these coveted expenses this year we charged them under one of the maintenance supply accounts and that's about a half million dollars of that 734 000 so that one that's why that one looks a little a little bit high and so those are the two you know balancing entries that that need to be made and i'll pause there for questions it all seems in line with what you've been telling
009us all here right and i'm not shocked that there aren't questions given the fact that we i mean i certainly reflect if anybody has a question but you know we've been closely closely monitoring because all your eyes with the unique financial yeah for those that are watching or watch this this is not the first time we've seen this little detail i appreciate the details about the year then you answer the question about the expansion so on this overall page where you have the five categories where um where does the transportation an other support services okay so that's probably the bulk of that that is involved with it so the contribution to the medical benefits reserved so it shows up in in the employee benefits line okay okay so we take 121 000 recharge it to
010employee benefits and then it gets deposited to the medical benefits to reserve which you don't see because the reserve on this outside of the operating budget okay so is 998 845 just curious what happened to that massive shortfall in fruits so it was reduced to 000 we were expecting when we started the year was 500 000. um so it was reduced to 275 but the good news about the food service is as we got through the second half of the year more students returning increased participation rates you know essentially we're running you know back to break even or better last few months of the school year and so next year i don't have the concern that we have this year assuming nothing changes assuming that we have normal school start and overall learning so we
011did contribute 275 000 and that is reflected in here to the to stroke the food service account right which is good so that you know they're in good shape for the next year i do get asked that i i boil it down to most performance so start a school year we had planned for this many kids in the process and so we have staff supplies ingredients bulk orders of food you know that you don't do day to day kind of kind of advance so if you i'm just making things up here if you have order of 500 pounds of cheese for a year freeze it to do it right now and the participation didn't come in as high as we planned for first so we're carrying that overhead and i i don't know if there
012was anything was there any and honestly if we're not certain meals we're not getting reimbursed against part of the program so that's a big part of this so is there any any reduction in force with labor and health assessment throughout the year and yeah the question i have is that what the folks had earlier off because that will be coming back this fall well we didn't have delay so you know we what we typically do in food services we reduce hours as needed you know that's the easy to do and obviously you know it was hard to hire people's open positions so there was some offsets there that as people did resign which did happen you know we weren't able to fill those positions quite as quickly but the real the simplest way to really
013look at why is participation off 25 of our students were remote as we started the year across k through 8 and then the high school since it was in hybrid mode 50 of our students were home monday tuesday thursday friday and we had no students in the building on wednesday hall so you know that combined with student reluctance at the beginning of the year to take lunch you know or breakfast from us and then a reduction in the total number of students in the building also earth apollo card sales water and those types of things that you know do add to the revenue stream so really tough in the beginning of the year got really much better by the end of the year and then you know even at the end of the year we
014were still in a in a partial hybrid role at the high school so next year we're expecting fully open five days a week at the high school so all yeah ironically one of the other issues is that the federal government paid for every meal but they only paid for let's say a medium you know right a lot of our students participate in high school order a large meal typically and so we weren't being you know we weren't able to sell that higher price meal which is slightly more profitable i mean we're not turning profit we're making sure that we break even which is why we're you know in spite of the crisis only off by 275 000 we don't have a huge profit built in obviously so can none of our funds step for getting
015her code to be applied towards weak service well you can't apply directly directly against the laws what we what we could have done and i talked about the districts that they've done is the additional cost of packaging to you know something that's extraordinary because of the pandemic right so we're not serving the food like we normally would we have to package everything those packaging additional costs could be you know offset against related expenses and we use every penny of the of the ester one and the corolla virus were relief funds that we had initially so descending from the packaging costs containers you know which are used exclusively extensively in food service you know i forget what the price increase was like portfolio increases in global so you know i'm looking at your person you know
016your percentages and um and you know most don't like your budgeting was but there are a couple of them that i just maybe forgive me if you've already discussed this but like with unemployment compensation i guess that kind of makes sense getting what we've just been through but at 209 percent of what is budgeted it's not a huge amount of money but but then also replacement equipment new equipment and instructional programs that's where we purchased you know in place of furniture pe music over intentional at the end of the year okay and then i can see obviously under support services why we would be so under utilized just because of nature of the year but are there any other areas where we're either way above or way below that give you concern that we if
017we need to um there's nothing getting a concern all explainable like if you look at support services we were under budget like 396 557 000 of that is from transportation and another 100 57 000 is is transportation supply so we wanted less buses with less fuel um so it's um no concerns just kind of all you know things that as they occurred watched it you know we managed through it you know and there certainly was you know savings in areas that were offset by cost increases in others you know and i think really the good news is that as we got to the end of the year you know we were able to make some of the purchases you know that we needed to make if you remember too we really backed up our you
018know our purchases and our maintenance because last year during the pandemic we had about 1.2 million dollars that was unexpected that we turned back to the town so you know i think this year financially was much much better you know for the district he's worked with our team like marlene and the technology folks and certainly our maintenance team this year with all the ppe and everything well there are some budget lines that are kind of escaped from what we initially budgeted all the way back last january really initially and following up in the spring everything here is really intentionally managed this year to get to these places i you know it's kind of unique in the fact that we saw a lot of things we never dealt with before but there weren't any like major
019curve balls like maybe at the beginning of the year the food service was a real curveball but you know outplacements which can be a real curveball special ed cost and you know be volatile um you know everything kind of fell into place pretty well for us this year so we were able to at the end of the year make purchases that were probably past due art tables music equipment you know that's been a peck jones request in the past and just feathering it this year we're not putting forward peck jones requests really because we were able to manage things to the point at the end of the year where we would have a lot of those needs met and we wanted to try and reserve that resource for when we have a need that's being
020unmet so i think right now i mean in my five years as superintendent we're fiscally in really solid ground uh relative to anywhere we've been in the past and we feel really good about transitioning into next year and a lot of the things that we're doing the finals forward thanks the only other thing i'll add to that is that we do have the estro2 and the officer funding you know we've allocated the extra two funding for some of the additional you know supported administrative staff next year but that is 400 000 available you know next year and our professor is 1.2 million those grants run for the next three years essentially so that will not necessarily give us a cushion as much as you know it'll help offset an academic related expenses whether that's learning
021loss or some of the direct costs like you know purchasing ppe or doing intraday cleaning and we're only planning to do that first you know four months in the new school year so hopefully those direct pandemic safety and health costs you know participate next year but and i agree with you next fiscal year we feel pretty confident which starts tomorrow back at zero all those groups and never resolve the issue of uh you know the costs related to that because they get a upcoming finance or i want to visit that topic because i would imagine you know whether or not we can't do anything less than the cost but i'm not concerned the costs go up because it's decoded and things like that but i'm hopeful they're in randolph city interestingly i did speak to
022um you know steve phone yesterday about that very topic about taking a look at you know the overall program the fees that we charge you know we're going to take it up next week [Music] different topic another time i looked at it is a budgeting challenge uh almost every time i know whether or not they're charging for use of the buildings we pay for accomplishing someone right so i think uh but it's been it's been a year and a half and what's going on most complain about it i just know that what's going to happen is by this time by late fall people are using them and oh my god we're getting these bills let's go i don't want to avoid all that [Music] but let's get into it we'll take it up you know
023i guess for the budget for for next year um you had mentioned the like the esser concept um and there was a line item about purchasing uh additional virtual classroom equipment is that still a plan well it's like it was obvious this yeah there's a lot of research that talks about and we would do this with our administrative team in the fall to really enforce the ideas that wearing the microphone is valuable to all of the students in the building but any any student in the classroom it's not just for kids at home because the audio system in the ceiling amplifies everything in the room which is why i thought that the high schoolers came up with a nickname for the uh room ramplified so like that it's really beneficial for everybody in the room
024for attention for um and then certainly comprehension of what's being said so we also marlene and i kind of had an epiphany that really as we read through the research the the place with the greatest white noise is chapman on route 10. and we never really necessarily thought about that and so we're prioritizing some of those classrooms for the audio system and um have you begun to examine more collaboration between schools and virtual capability is that is that a possibility yeah i think it's a possibility but it wasn't hasn't been the primary focus yet to be honest with you we haven't gotten quite there yet um in terms of sharing this seemed like very powerful technology right yeah yeah i mean i know at the high school level even when i was principal there we
025had looked at different things like providing a virtual access to maybe a language taught in another district not taught here or vice versa the biggest problem you always have with that is scheduling how to line those things up and rotating schedules and other buildings make it really impossible for students to leverage that so but we do explore things like that it reminds me of something so first of all um but there's lessons learned from this right here hey and i i think we mentioned as a some point i think would be good for us to review what worked what didn't work as few things we learned the cameras in the classrooms that seems to enable a whole new dimension of possibilities you know how flexibility help kids possibly later school start times but you know
026how this can help that place i think we just needed that just that briefly yeah yeah i'd love that i'll just add that our leader our teacher leaders starting in march we also bring our administrators to that same activity we kind of refer to it as keep stop change what are the things as a workforce that we want to keep which things do we want to absolutely never and then what things do we like but they need to be changed in order to sort of get us into the future and they were really good we came away with a lot of good insight from that work mean maybe as part of the opening of school next year we could you know kind of take a look at that because it it shapes how we move
027forward um what we've learned yeah yeah if you feel the board needs a back-end certain area actually one more question um i remember last year we were talking about the smart board upgrades is that something that's built into our budget for next year any of that or is yeah is this model still appropriate you know yeah actually there's no point there's a large system yeah on the computer yeah we've kind of gotten away from the smart board projection style um they're really expensive to update and maintain and we you know it was probably about what 12 15 years that we had gone through that yeah so then uh now we are shifting to this led as a matter of fact they're installing a whole bunch of them today um so yeah we are moving in
028that direction what's that is that 75 or 80 the ones that jeff just mentioned um and if you want to see one they just installed one in conference room eight downstairs here but they're 75-inch and they're smart which is the john it's not just all right that's not a dumb tv there's a special it's an interactive tv yeah well you know i'll answer the question by saying what some of the issues that we're having with the technology that's 10 years old is the actual whiteboard itself starts to delaminate over time and a lot of the replacements we're doing now either delaminating or failed projectors um but a unit like that i would expect to get at least 10 years out of it there's really no you know moving parts it's not mechanical you know it's
029all until the technology gets better yeah oh even the lds but i think there's a lot of expensive leds themselves but it used to be ten thousand dollars yeah and so these 75 inch they're just under three thousand dollars installed now they're way cheaper than the other one so even if we were to replace you replace three of these for one smartboard and i suspect they're things not here's off ass slightly more energy-efficient but they're seriously honest you know what i saw the electric muscles because i saw that on the news about they want to bring in 2 300 electric buses over the next round what year we have now or something like that is that if if that is something that we wanted to approach that that has to be something through or whatever
030company where because we are the the district is not going to purchase those right that would be true correct okay just so we're clicking already i have a presentation on my desk that i received we've already talked to echo initially about that was fully supportive of it but you know until i understand what the structure would be and yeah financially yeah i mean they would need their own solar docks right to plug those buses into something right well we would certainly if there are electric questions that you have to recharge right so there would need to be a power charging station and so it's going to take some understanding of what the mechanics are and also what the financials are the more credits that that we get from state or federal the more feasible it
031will be but yeah we don't buy the buses right back home buys the buses but we pay for everything yeah right so that goal right it's all yeah which is great because the state's making one priority makes enough credits then it becomes you know much more feasible for us and it's a feasible technology like they've tested these things in the winter like because i know a lot of stuff that you know works you know down south is not the same when you get to 20 degrees you know those batteries they've been on the market for a number of years probably probably at least a decade i just don't know if there may be the type one size yet you know the type twos or the smaller buses but which you know we've run sometime too
032certainly but it's the type ones that's the bulk of the wiring of our house and everything else and he gets you know i in the average power will get 40 miles to the gown whereas the gas version so are those available can we make that suggestion too hybrid certainly makes somewhat more sense i'm not sure that they've had hybrid you know buses to speak of though yeah so unless there are any other questions on the butt transfers it's going to make a motion i will make a motion from then too or to them i would do the twos and then okay okay like when you read something in a regular way okay um move that the board of education approve line item transfers for the 20 2020 2021 fiscal year end as follows to end
033the year in balance move two instructional expense one hundred thirty one thousand nine hundred seventeen dollars eight cents moved to operations and maintenance seven hundred thirty four thousand five hundred twelve dollars and twelve cents for a total of 866 429 92 cents um move from salaries 297 thousand four hundred seventy eight dollars for tonight cents moved from uh employee benefits 172 896.62 to move from support services 396 000 oh 50 uh 54.71 uh for a total of 866 429 92 cents with a remaining balance of zero it's very second catherine's with any discussion of this one all those in favor it is unanimous of course good job [Music] we received correspondence from brian lopez at 44 ridge good afternoon i've been following the process for the possibility and necessity of building new schools and cheshire
034closely for quite some time i am a science teacher god coach and parent of three cheshire students i have made my opinions clear throughout with the hands to the town council and smc that cheshire needs to start this process with the construction of a new 68 middle school i was highly disappointed when the smc chose the other option and would like to again request and urge the boe and town council to advocate for the new state middle school option that would be more beneficial to our community and more importantly to our students moving the sixth grade to the middle school will alleviate the private elementary schools provide another year of growth at the middle school level where that age group belongs and provide a campus that will have new theater space as well as new
035fields for all of our students to eventually use as well as our residents the six state design would also ensure that sixth graders will have certified social studies and science teachers with five hours of class a week in each of those classes which currently does not happen i believe that there is a sonic majority of voters and potential new cheshire residents that would surely agree with plans for an exciting and modern new middle school i heard that the major concern with this project was the size of the school but i do not see the issues as we would have the correct step student ratios and size of building necessary to serve the students the key would be to present the state present to the state that the six to eight design is the wish of
036community and educational experts which i believe to be significant to influence the decision and get approval i will spread the word to family and friends to stay involved and email you with the same request thank you for your service to the time in the schools thank you for having us and that is the correspondence thank you madam secretary apologize i think we have one yesterday uh it was sent to sean myself uh rob morrison jeff songs from michael donald i did forward these minutes and actually had a wrong email on history but uh it's a shawneer notifying the conditions of baseball field high school highland highland school my sons had a men's adult softball game on sunday at highland midfield dirt was being taken over by clumps of grass which also repulsive taken unexpected balances
037to the players the first place bag was so torn that was curl up causing contributions for players luckily no one was hurt while playing on sunday but as the foundation better uh please check into this asleep before someone does get hurt looking forward to hearing from you and uh sean they replied i just went to the board this morning again i hope that was their own supply backs but i know the town's working out feels anyway we've been talking about the need to generally upgrade the fields that are used these are also used by wreck dublin know we don't have enough fields at parkland or mcnamara so the school field you know highland is one new zealand's another chapman is also used they really need to be you know upgraded and maintained i do we
038share services with the town yeah we do and then generally we don't use those ball fields for or just general public you know use as needed that's me and sheldon so i i apologize because i have to put the school conversation i think that's about it but on their own business um i'm not allowed to report and then there's meeting tomorrow night attending um well also um dig into the third and alternation for the school's test fits we had a couple different consultants who submitted proposals for test fits for different options and some of the review and then hopefully somebody get that moving um collier country was extended a month ago or so um to help facilitate that process so they're [Music] hardly extend their contract not just for their use but also arms and
039field things that they have to check for camp and test fits uh 4g affordable emails yeah if there's a number of firms or great ability update for all of them uh i think the price of 45 hundred dollars which is very reasonable i see no issues with the ones they recommended i i said as long as uh council's address they're done so hopefully we'll talk about it tomorrow yeah so town council uh committed to at least having special meaning on this topic every two weeks i started talking so we are discussing it uh i noticed the costs uh when i thought they're out about this about a month ago say if you guys support me there it's great you know it's all up here tomorrow but i do expect us to have a joint meeting
040soon probably uh after fourth of july both bodies talked about earlier so stay tuned for that as soon as i know more even more but you'll be here tomorrow night i have no other business i very much would like us to do some kind of retreat this summer before it started school here it's everybody's like shaking here not on their heads i'd say only have some stuff for us to chew on but really it's really good for us to kind of gear up for next school year and talk about more errors and he's going to focus on because there's so much to do so i would certainly work with jeff and team to figure out days and times but you know the weather's nice can't do a lavish retreat this is not like a spa
041retreat all right so that being said do i have a motion to adjourn so i'll send you send it out and emotions uh captain seconds all those in favor all right is unanimous is