Cheshire BOE Business Meeting- 5/20/21

001no well technically shouldn't the chief operating officer technology reports to really you would think one would hope okay we're good all right uh good evening everyone welcome to the may 20th cheshire board education business meeting uh carol may have a roll call please mr grippo here miss helen here miss ham miss harrigan here mr martelly here mr parachini here and mr white here mr mr chairman you have a quorum thank you carol uh i asked that we stand for the pledge and i think jeff is going to show us the slide a pledge of allegiance under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all well again good evening uh hope everyone's in good spirits on this beautiful still spring day uh i can't believe it's may is almost over we're approaching memorial day weekend soon

002and before you know it we'll be uh into graduation which i think jeff has some news to talk about later this evening but that being said i believe we have an update from our student student representatives that will be lucy and joshua yes thank you so we're going to start off with athletics tonight first spring sports playoffs will start this weekend with many of our teams qualifying for post-season play some of cheshire's teams are currently state-ranked in the top 10. seniors pj cass and sarah compute were named the ciac scholar athletes for cheshire high school both students received this award based on their athletic performances while maintaining high academic achievements finally the high school held a third a third college signing day this past month recognizing nine seniors who signed letters of intent to play

003their chosen sport in college next up the peer health education class held a high school leadership conference at chs yesterday about 60 60 students from the junior and sophomore classes were invited to attend the day included activities a scavenger hunt various speakers and a panel some of you may have seen our very own dr solon participating in the jump roping activity so that was very fun the speakers included chs graduates steve bowman and paige remillard chs graduate sebastian little could not attend the event in person so he sent in videos to be shown to the students where he spoke about qualities relating to leadership finally the peer health class would like to thank all of the teachers who helped make the event possible specifically mrs wellspeak mrs flood and of course mr lee um in

004addition the next gen science standards testing for all juniors is the week of may 24th to 28th um the student senate is sponsoring a virtual talent show on may 26th so that should be fun on friday evening from 7 00 to 10 pm chs drama is hosting their screening of little woman and after freddie the production will be available for viewing by the public and also look for the unified theater production of 2021 with a theme of gratitude which is in the filming process right now and there is a viewing party set for june 2nd um the production will then be live streamed and lastly students are anticipating the upcoming proms junior and senior problems will be june 3rd and 4th respectfully at the aria and that's all we have great thank you lucy and

005josh uh any questions from the board seeing this aren't i thank you both for being here this evening i can let you go and so you can enjoy this restaurant oh i'm sorry tim i didn't see it oh by the way for board members i know the chats are a little different in zoom but there's a chat button on the bottom of your screen feel free to raise your hand there and if you don't get my attention just chime in on the call i'm sorry tim you you wanted to ask a question i think catherine was first oh thanks tim i just wanted to clarify so the when the uh little women is available for public viewing is that going to be on the cheshire website i mean it's obviously a youtube thing right so

006the link's going to be on our website or yeah where's he gonna be jeff be honest with you we're josh i'm not entirely certain could ask mike i know that there's a history with uh our shows that the licensing agreement prohibits us from broadcasting so i'm not sure that like i can't guarantee that it'll be on our youtube page um and so it may be a linked uh one-time view but uh i will look into that right now yeah i just right okay it'd be great to be able to see it so thank you thanks josh and lucy i have no other questions then yeah thank you sorry thanks tony uh lucy you had mentioned there were we had the third signing day it was nine students i'm just curious like do you happen to

007know how many students signed college scholarships were they full rides partial rides just curious i think it's normally 20 to 30 you told me before jeff in a given year is that i mean the pandemic i'm just curious if that affected this in any way this year i'm not entirely sure um how many students in total i know there's three signings um and i would say like there's i'm just totally estimating right now but nine is probably average to have at a college signing um i wouldn't say i would say no more than ten and the scholarships vary from student to student okay and yeah i think lucy's last point about scholarships varying i don't think people realize you know for example i know division one tennis the team full team ncaa allots 4.5 scholarships

008too and there's more than you know there's probably 15 people on the team so you know you can sign a commitment um to play some place typically it's not a full athletic scholarship yeah to dr solon's point just because um a senior has signed a letter of intent to a school to play for athletics that um doesn't necessarily mean they're going for a scholarship okay great any other questions from the board as soon as there are none lucy and josh thank you again enjoy the rest of your evening and look forward to seeing you again thank you up next uh audience public q a i should have uh said to be in the meeting so uh unfortunately we could not meet in person tonight we did resume in person meetings a couple weeks ago unfortunately

009uh mike our av lead cannot help us this evening so we're left to fend for ourselves here on zoom but that being said we are taking uh questions and comments from people watching the public via cps kova 19 at cheshire.k12c that being said uh jeff do we have any inquiries yet yes we had um two different emails one was a or two different topics i should say one was from a parent uh emily i apologize if i'm mispronouncing this but i believe it's dennis uh she was very appreciative of the work being done in the school system this year and the amount of in-person instruction we've been able to provide and um finally asked if they if we believe that the kovid 19 vaccine will be mandatory for students next year which i thought was

010a great question and i i did reply to her already but you know publicly share that i don't believe that will be the case and i want to clarify the state determines what vaccines are necessary for entrance in public schools the covid19 vaccine has never been brought up is one that would be required and i believe it takes legislation to do that unless it's through executive order and i don't foresee either of those things happening by next fall so um i don't believe that the cobit 19 vaccine will be required the other uh item was probably about 20 form letters that came in today all stating the same thing about uh the desire to have high school graduation in person i know dr gad had sent an email in april telling people that that's our

011desire obviously and that you know with the change in state guidance we'll review that well the state changed guidance yesterday and you know today was the first day we had the opportunity to know if like formally be certain of what the guidance would be we reviewed that with maura esposito and we will be holding a single graduation ceremony that will look a lot like previous ceremonies and there'll be more on that in my superintendent's report amen great thank you jeff uh moving on uh we moved to the consent calendar in our board of packets we have approval of a grant resolution uh jeffrey vincent want to walk us through that before we call for a motion um is that yuvin or do you want marlene it's yeah marlene was going to report on the grant

012activity is that is there a resolution that goes with that there is a consent calendar i'll make them i'll make a motion for it if you want yeah then we can i don't know if we want to do discussion at that point but it's it's linked in the agenda basically it says that um we authorize is the board the superintendent to apply for and accept any and all grants that may be determined appropriate by the administration it's encouraging me uh and our team to look for revenue sources associated with whatever work that we're doing and move them for the board for uh for it says for approval but i do have the authority to apply for these grants and you know it's just encouraging the superintendent of schools to seek additional revenue sources that align

013with our needs and we're we're frequently doing that marlene sent me one probably 10 minutes before this meeting yeah and for the board i just wanted to oh this is no nobody here is no longer you on the board since we're you know well into year two of some of our tenure and beyond so i know last year this came for the first time for for newer folks and some questions around how the grants are actually applied for an authority so this is the same policy it really hasn't changed but that being said tim if you want to make a motion we can have further discussion if needed uh motion that the cheshire board of a k board of education approves the consent calendar as presented is our second catherine seconds adam's distant third any

014discussion seeing as there is none the motion is that the cheshire bar education approves the consent calendar as presented all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you team moving on uh we are going to reports of standing committee starting with curriculum our faith could not be here this evening so anne will be filling in that report thank you man great so this is a report of a curriculum committee meeting on monday may 10th i would help and unfortunately i could not make that meaning so i apologize no that's okay um so we had um several informational items that we spoke about we talked about a textbook recommendation change for the personal finance course this course has a textbook that is paid for by tungsten community college and so leslie pair

015of the chs business department uh presented an update to the textbook request for the advanced personal finance course and the text covers the same essential material that tunxis community college does and they're using this textbook for the course and they continue to pay for the text for cheshire students enrolled in the course for informational items we've got an update on district-wide field trips there have been several requests for trips to places like camp sloper and uh the emphasis of many of these trips is to help foster team building and bring students together in a way that has been difficult this year so safety precautions and planning have been at the forefront for each of these trips and this really was brought to the curriculum subcommittee so that um just the the board is aware that

016uh some of these field trips have resumed this year we had an update from dr mary gab the chs principal she shared with us an update on the sketch the high school schedule for 20 21 22. uh this past school year chs moved to a block schedule consisting of 80 minute periods where students meet on alternate days and we've talked about this some already moving forward for the 2021-22 school year chs will continue to use a block schedule on a four day rotation and this schedule will allow for four lunch waves to accommodate a reduced number of students because we've increased the space between students in the cafeteria and the schedule allows for two support periods two 40-minute time slots um within one block as well as allowing for an advisory period and all of

017this without changing the schedule next we discussed the algebra ii textbook selection we had a report from lisa burnaby uh stephen defalco and john redford they gave a summary of the algebra ii textbook selection process and the recommendation i believe this is a a digital textbook the selection committee identified needs to align to the common core and the newly revised sat meet the needs of 21st century digital learners as well as include formative and summative assessment data resources so the recommendations emphasize the strong rating for the envision algebra 2 textbook through ed reports it was a great presentation actually other strengths of the textbook include promoting self-directed learners providing instant feedback for students and using data to help monitor student progress and drive instruction and then we talked about the cheshire curriculum council the ccc

018the business executive summary presentation and again ms leslie payer shared an executive summary of the business presentation to the ccc on april 6 of 2021 some key points of emphasis included how business classes support complex thinking and social emotional learning through real world experiences business experiences three courses in the business department will be offered for college credit through tungsten community college as we stated earlier and additional goals for the next five years include researching and other dual enrollment opportunities with another community college exploring opportunities to work with the mastery-based performance assessment student experiences and collaborating with colleagues to update curriculum and appropriate resources for each course i believe we had some nice discussion on how far this business program has come at chs over the years um and i would add that we also we

019had a brief discussion when we were talking about the high school schedule um i brought up the idea of revisiting um high school start times and i so that i just wanted to put that out there because it's probably coming down the line and we'll talk about it in curriculum committee and and discuss how we can start to educate people on the importance of physical and mental health of our teenagers and what what it means you know start start to investigate what that means for cheshire public schools specifically the high school um so i would ask that maybe a line be added to the minutes on that and then yeah exactly thank you and that wraps up my report so any questions for ann on the qriket report uh tim thanks tony yeah um i'm

020not sure if this is for anne or for jeff or marlene uh so ann mentioned uh we're gonna stick with the 80 minutes for the block schedule and you've generally gotten a positive reception maybe not everybody but generally you've gotten a positive reception from students with that this year yeah the this year was uh an anomaly in the sense that you really didn't have a choice and so i think there was an adjustment period and as i mentioned i think in our last meeting that i'd be willing to bet things are going to be better in the fall and that it'll be more normal than it has in the past but we've been focusing on the benefits of adjusting the time period no student can just sit there and listen to the lecture for 80

021minutes but you can really leverage 80 minutes of instruction differently than you can leverage 50. and so uh we have found that to be very beneficial okay okay so that's what that's why i think we're enthusiastic about making this transition into an 80 minute block schedule next year it follows suit with a lot of our peers in durgby have made similar moves okay correct me if i'm wrong but our discussion also uh centered on our our faculty at the high school really like those bigger block times so that they can incorporate more um i don't know hands-on kinds of things in the classroom yeah there are a myriad of um positive benefits from an 80-minute period that are harder to derive in a 15-minute period so there is application more opportunity for application time where

022you know if you're familiar with a model of i do we do you do uh to stretch that over 80 minutes is much easier to facilitate and when you get to the we do part i don't know about you when i got home with my homework it's like damn i knew this in school yeah and so now when you're engaging in some of that work it it in the class there's a better opportunity to make sure that you know you you have that clarity of understanding and can follow through on it in the application component okay and you think and your your belief right now is that is even a positive because what i realized even though i kind of knew it in the back of my head seniors are very different from freshmen so

023you're thinking across the board the four years for all yeah i think 80 minutes okay absolutely there are developmental differences between students but um you know i think as ann was was getting to we're trying to engage students differently with movement with application in classes and that's going to look different when you're 14 than when you're 18. um and the other thing is too with an 80-minute block opportunities like you know i know you're familiar with our portfolio-based assessment for graduation requirement there are more opportunities to do engagement off-campus on those things later uh in the show i'll be talking about uh richard chevrolet and some of the stuff they've done with our kids and how you know these extended blocks of time provide us more opportunities for really uh deep and engaging work that

024you might not be able to cover in 50 minutes okay thank you again i think it's quick i think these are really quick um the four days versus five days you're gonna move to a five day schedule you're not yeah okay and you're just gonna rotate it like abcd like you do in the elementary schools it's okay it's gonna it will be a rotating schedule yeah we will maintain that there are some quirks in the sense that we have shared staff with the middle school so it's it's not you know they're gonna be injured easy to describe i was a principal there for four years i still couldn't tell you the schedule but it was a little sophisticated for me and i'm wondering about you mentioned uh the business department giving credits at tungsten is

025it like how many cr how many credits could a student get and is it possible to like get to the point where you even had nearly have an associate's degree by the time you graduate high school right we have go-getter yeah we have a number of students who take what's called dual enrollment courses so uh we're excited that you know we had previously only leveraged uconn for those classes and really this started to um come into favor right as i was uh leaving my tenure at cheshire high and mary was was becoming principal we realized that you know a student could take an ap class and those are incredibly beneficial we really believe that every student should take one college style class before they leave cheshire high school and for some that ap is the

026best fit for that but ece is an incredible early college experience opportunity through uconn where you can take a three-click credit class for i want to say it's like a hundred dollars it's incredibly cheap it's i think it was nice uh yeah it's my daughter took a few dozen yeah i think it might even be less than that two years yeah transferable credit so that's really powerful but not everybody is going to be appropriate as a high schooler to take a yukon level course and nor might they not have those interests and so we're really excited to be uh to have a community college partner to provide us a broader range of courses with more opportunities for our kids to take collegiate level class so yeah i mean we have kids that graduate with at

027least a full year of credit uh in some cases it's rare to get credits in a year but over your high school career but at least a semester i should say of credit that's not uncommon thank you i if i could just add i think these relationships with the community colleges are are just they're perfect that they're perfectly suited uh to be working with these high schools and um i just give a lot of kudos out to uh leslie pair and you know the business department because um cultivating these relationships and it's really to great benefit for our students yeah mary in our guidance department there are a lot there's a team of folks that have really been trying to provide these options for our kids and i'm excited that we're expanding thank you andrew

028did you have a question yeah i just when you were talking about the change of the schedule at cheshire high school has that been decided for next year or is it still being yeah we are making that change and i i know mary was sending out information i i apologize i'm not positive if it went out already or not uh i know like we've been pretty well caught up in graduation stuff and guidance uh changing but uh it i know she's discussed it with the pta at least thank you it hasn't gone out formally yet any other questions for ann on the qriket committee report thank you very much you're welcome uh see here i got too many documents open on the next uh we have finance uh starting with the financial report uh adam

029and vincent i assume you're gonna tag team this thank you mr chair i will graciously uh hand the meeting over to mr maciana thank you mr grippo good evening everyone i am about to share my screen hopefully you can see we're good yep okay so i'll walk through the financial report uh first and this report will be rather brief um you know we've completed 10 months of the fiscal year uh you know i would say that we are in very good shape to meet our budget i don't foresee any issues now that we've got 10 months completely down you know during the month of april may and early june what we will be focusing our energies on and it's already started in earnest is you know looking at any open purchase requisitions reducing those or

030closing those that we will not need for the remainder of this fiscal year we're also end entering new purchase orders for the purchases that we do need to make between now and the end of the year also in may we open up the supply bid and release that to all the schools so all the schools will be entering their supply needs for next year we also make um all the arrangements for purchases of equipment uh quotes are being obtained for you know maintenance and summer projects that we have to do that we fund out of our operating budget with the funds we have also summer curriculum work is being planned and encumbered for purchase of textbooks technology so all that activity you know culminates over the next several weeks and then um that leads us

031to look toward june 30th when we will you know work with the board of education to make the final entries to close our books for the fiscal year um but what i do want to leave the board with is that we are in very very good shape for a good close to this this year's budget um which starting the year we really didn't know what to expect but you know we got through the year in really good shape the medical benefits report i'll i'm not going to touch on from this report i'll i'll come back and i'll present the report and there's a problem loading the page so three of the four pages load of course the page that i need isn't loading so bear with me just one second let me see if i

032can bring that up and if it's uh part of our financial reported packet we have those pages we can look into what you're doing yes it is i had the same problem i i just refreshed the document it seemed to come back yeah you can also just down you can download it from the buttons up there yeah that's what i did okay so you could see this one that's got the purple columns to the right yeah yes okay so what this is it's an update on the sr2 um and the rps or grant funding that we um did get approval for the requests we made for the so2 funding which is 439 559. uh what i do want to point out to the board is there's been a change to the amount of funding we'll

033receive under our esser the original estimate we had was a million ninety one thousand and if you could see where my cursor is that amount after being passed by the senate um our final approved amount was 898 0147 so it came down about 190 000 over what we um were originally advised it would be not the end of the world but it is a lower dollar amount and again as we explain to the board we intend on using these funds you know next fiscal year and as much as we can over the following two fiscal years the top section is really what i wanted to just focus on for a second so um a grant application was submitted to the state for the um original 439 559 and you'll see that these top eight or

034so categories are all labeled learning laws they total the full 439 thousand 559 and again i know the board members have this in their package but what we'll be covering in 2122 you know with that learning loss category is everything from the summer transition program that we'll be conducting in august for those students that were remote that will be coming back to school in the fall you know as well as additional tutoring time we expect to need you know the addition of the administrator uh and coaching supports that we have planned for next year that jeff presented at last at the last board meeting the certified math tutors at dodd and cheshire high school additional teacher and staff training to address learning laws administrator training certification for english learner needs as well as some home

035school support so you know we've identified the state's approved that grant funding for those particular purposes and again that that's part of esther ii the rest of the items that we have on this list you know they're really kind of early estimates at this point and i'll point to the just the first one you know we have 150 000 of that grant identified as possibly being needed for tent and table rentals whether or not we'll need that in the fall we we hope not to need it um but depending on how the infection rate goes over the summer comfort level you know of parents and students and staff we may need to to use that and if we don't need it then that 150 000 obviously becomes available you know and we'll use it for

036the needs that we have over the next two fiscal years so i just wanted to point out to the board that there have been some adjustments made on those two grants that we have use of so i'll pause there i'll stop sharing my screen for a moment and see if there are any questions on the that portion of the financial report are there any questions i can't see all of you let me see hold on a second let me change my view catherine and andrew in that order oh here we go i see the chat okay looks like tim go ahead thanks adam then you had mentioned if i caught you caught it correctly there was some funding in there for uh teaching in relation to english not as a first language correct how many

037students do we have in town who the english is not their first language is there a number you can give maybe marlene or jeff can i would say we're at least at about 84. i don't know as what it is as of today but the last time i checked really okay thank you sure um were there any other questions uh andrew the in the 20 classrooms that are going to be outfitted with the technology have those rooms been identified they have not yeah they have not um you know and that's something that we would you know make a determination over the summer you know and try to get those installed for the start of the new school year but um you know we may have some variations to how we originally designed those rooms and

038you know i know that marlene has been gathering feedback you know from the teachers um that have been using them to see if we make some tweaks to the next round of installs to make it better got it thank you are there any other questions on this section of the presentation seeing none then continue on brace yourself i'm going to bring up the medical benefits report so for um the month of april the claims were about well not about a million 32 000 so you know we did see claims drop january and february is expected but unfortunately they've come back up in march and april to the million dollar level this month we did receive an additional seventy three thousand one hundred twenty two dollars in stop loss reimbursement so the total stop loss reimbursements

039we've received for the year are four hundred sixteen thousand dollars just under that um and so the net decrease to the trust fund balance in april was two hundred twenty eight thousand nine thirty six as of month end in april the medical reserve fund balance stood at just lost my screen there on second um 996 706 dollars so we've got you know around one month's worth of you know total reserve left we have two months remaining in this fiscal year um you know the the claims they are what they are we're we're hoping that they they do subside um and we know that as we enter the 21 22 fiscal year you know we've we work with the board and the town council on increasing that budget line so that we're funding um our claims

040you know and our contributions are in line with the claim funding for next year there's been discussion of although the town council hasn't approved their budget yet you know the plan is to uh essentially contribute 1.5 million directly to that reserve fund balance to shore it up so that as we go through next year you know if claims you know our meeting budget or above budget you know we will have an adequate reserve to work against um and you know we we are having some analysis done at year end uh by cigna and by usi our um broker um to take a look further into you know what what drove the claims this year we knew you know from the analysis that i've done and presented to the board that we've had an inordinate amount

041of claims over 25 000 that didn't meet that 175 000 threshold where we would get money back and stop loss reimbursements so unfortunately it was another million dollar month and we just hope it subsides and i'll stop there and see if there are questions um tony you had a comment yeah uh faith couldn't be here seeing i did talk to her today i was covering you know some things for me tonight one thing that uh i discussed i don't know if it's a political here vincent i know several years ago when the affordable care act was passed that the then board and town council got together and we uh with you and i believe our actuaries i don't know if it's the actuaries but our insurance broker potentially they want us through the whole myriad

042of fees and potential future costs that is there anything is there something similar that we can do with them to kind of walk us through this analysis uh so we have more detailed questions for example faith was asking about cpi percentage being utilized and other things i know it's um it'll keep bombarding you on this i uh i think the board may feel a little better you know hearing from them and you know taking them to task on on that but if it's an option we take it offline but this one put it out there was some an idea that faith and i had tossed around sure we could certainly bring you know a representative from usi's tom qualcek and i can actually bring um anna from cigna who's the account representative as well so

043you know we can make a presentation you know either directly at a board meeting you know or finance committee meeting that's easily arranged you know i would suggest we wait till we get to the urine numbers this way we have a comprehensive look at you know where we wound up for the year compared to last year and they'll identify and they they do this for us every year they do it internally you know to myself and you know the hr manager here angela latch we work with the town we do that together there's no reason we can't share that information yeah and have a presentation for the board i think it would be helpful yeah thanks for i didn't mean like anytime soon i'm thinking after the dust settles you know the uranus there's some

044questions for cigna um based on my healthcare background and um you know a few weeks ago you know the town council on budget we had a lot of discussion on this and we've seen the focus in the reserve amount but you know the reserve not not being touched the reserve amount is not driving these million dollar claims so eventually it's gonna get depleted so uh i know i'm talking to some colleagues in the town council you know still a little concerned about the the trend you know and uh as i understand that i think the town side is seeing a different trend i think might be slightly lower if at all so it's you know seems very applicable to us only not sure why yeah i know that i was talking to sean kimmel the

045town manager and you know there they started the year off in in very rough high claim territory and their reserve balance dropped to somewhere you know around two months but they've had you know very very good claim experience and their reserves are back up to five months now now they are smaller in terms of total employee size and claim size but they're in they're in really good shape right now okay that's all i had thank you vincent okay and you had a question yeah thanks um and before i forget then i would really appreciate some sort of presentation on that because i find this information a little convoluted sometimes but um also i know it's been mentioned several times but i'm a little uh unclear on how that infusing fifteen hundred dollars and taking it

046from where and and taking it out of our budget so i guess my question is so what does that do to our budget process next year okay so as as discussed at the town council what they want to do and i'll kind of make the numbers high level so we've requested two million dollars to be used to increase our our contribution for claims next year what the council is planning to do and they're going to reduce that by one million dollars i'll just put the caveat out there that you know the council can't control any individual line item so what they would ask that the board to do is when they reduce the budget that one million dollars that they are reducing our budget by for medical benefits that the board of education follows their

047lead so they're going to reduce our 2 million 2 million dollar request down to one million dollars so the impact of that is to make it easy we're funding a million dollars less than we need to keep up with our expected claims next year to offset that what the town council is going to do is take 1.5 million dollars and contribute it right to the reserve fund so our operating budget is going to go down from what our request is and so we won't be funding contributions to equal claims we're expecting claims of 900 000 per month next year we'll be funding about 825 000 a month but the reserve balance will increase by 1.5 million dollars so to the extent that the contributions don't cover the claims we're going to be dipping into the

048reserve that's been increased so the fast forward in the following year if claims are 900 000 per month again we're going to have to ask for an additional million dollars in next year's budget request so that contributions will equal claims so we're going to have pretty much the same discussion next year if the council does it this way it's not a bad solution but it does force us to have the same conversation again next year i know one of the things that the council expressed is you know they're hoping that our claims don't come in at 900 000 per month next year if they come in at 825 000 per month then we won't be eating into any of the reserve so they're basically buying a year to see what happens and that 1.5 million

049dollars you know is being funded um through the use of the funds that the town is receiving for you know all the different grants which is about eight and a half million dollars related to covet that was my next question so what's the advantage of doing it this convoluted way and you just answered that right well it's not convoluted if you think about it two and a half two and a half million dollar infusion in one year is pretty large so i think they're trying to fuse over two years but you know you know basically when asked is i'm thinking as you were talking about hey if we stayed in a hundred thousand dollar level which i'm skeptical of that until i see a trend we may be talking middle next year and with town

050counts about hey the trend hasn't changed we're still dipping to the reserves um you know finding that money sooner or later hopefully we'll get there but if we're gonna if the town sticks the course of fully funding the reserve for two years that's great um i i think we gotta get the root cause and these claims to really be sure of a ultimate plan that's my opinion yeah and and tony now you know add some information the town council did acknowledge that you know if if the 1.5 million dollars you know isn't sufficient and there's an additional infusion that's that's needed you know there you know there is the town's reserve fund balance that can be tapped hopefully we don't need to do that you know and then and to answer your question part of

051the the strategy is you know by doing it this way it does enable the town council to keep you know the budgets down on the mill rate lower thank you van you're welcome seems like catherine's question has been answered sounds like good um your question was convoluted or are you still would you still like to ask a question kevin you're also that's from ann that's not from me oh i'm sorry i'm sorry bye my apology uh for me uh i i'll just say that i'm i'm sad that uh the the claims continue at the million dollar level there was there was hope for a moment there i'm not sure how much hope there is now and um and i'm in agreement i think with with the rest of the board that uh we really need

052to get to the bottom of this to find out what what's going on if this is gonna continue if there was some sort of uh substantive uh change to the the demographics or to the cost structure um that we are completely unaware of and that the actuaries have not acknowledged or something uh to find out what uh our uh new normal will be for our our medical benefits so um i think that'll be great uh since it appears that perhaps our um uh cost allocations may ha may be determined already for next year but i think we'll come to that final determination um uh but to really get a handle on it um tim you had a question thanks adam do we so the new the new uh teachers contract which is what 350 400

053out of 6 or 650 so maybe two-thirds of your staff right yeah okay so that starts july 1. the other union contracts are they're not changing on july 1. right or administrators would so it's another 20 people something like that would adam just mentioned the cost structure do you have any do you have any sense right now does should is there anything you can anticipate based on the new contracts relating to changes in the cost of medical benefits no in any significant way no in fact you know the new contracts you know do call for an increase in the contribution that the teachers and the administrators make for the purchase of their medical benefits there is no there's no change in the core benefits we provide they have an increase the only thing that's changed

054is the contribution the employees make to have their insurance and what is that what does that multiply out to it's if it's even if it was 100 000 which would be on the high side times four hundred ten bucks a month or something it's a million seven for the year across all our employees that's the money that we will collect from them that offsets you know the cost of the medical benefits that we provide okay so two-thirds of that would be a million and then you're talking about going from what 13 to 14 for the first year yeah i'd have to look up because i don't want to call you the wrong percentages but it's it's 14 or 15. okay so it'll probably be in my mind i'm thinking that's probably somewhere in the ballpark

055of 100 to 150 000 in a year 10 000 bucks a month okay so it's it it's different it's better from our perspective from management's perspective but it's not in the hundreds of thousands of dollars okay thank you you're welcome um i see no other questions in the chat um let's see uh vin were you going to report there's an agenda item for grant activity well did that we go through that already no no we didn't but the next item on the agenda is the town audit report um student activity operational review and then report on grant activity so yeah i skipped over all that stuff oops uh leah let's let's stay in order van let's stay in order all right so i'll give you an update first on the uh result of the town

056audit uh which is annual um this year though we do have new auditors the uh previous auditors for the town rsm um when we went out to bid they actually did not submit a proposal they're exiting the municipal audit business so bloom shapiro were appointed as the new auditors and they're auditing or they audited the 1920 fiscal year boom shapiro is is now called clifton larson allen cla for short so we'll start talking about cla in upcoming years um the town council met on may 11 and voted to accept the audit report for the 1920 fiscal year and i also wanted to mention that the town council also on may 11th voted to appoint cla as auditors for the 2021 fiscal year uh which was which was fully expected the first year audit um you

057know whenever you change auditors it usually takes a lot more time because the new auditors are not familiar with the procedures and the practices you know that occur on the town and the board of ed side so quite a bit of staff time you know on both sides was expended to complete this year's audit next year's audit should be more streamlined again that that was all expected overall you know the town did receive a clean audit opinion there were no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies identified you know which is great news there were two findings that i did want to mention to the board members in the federal grant audit that was completed on the board of ed side the um and there were two recommendations that came out of it one has to do

058with the audit of the idea grant which is roughly a million dollars per year that we receive to provide services to our students with special needs the way that grant is allocated for the most part is it's used primarily to pay salaries of special education teachers staff the secretaries who provide special ed support which we have in each school so one of the findings was that the allocation the formula that we used for the allocation needs to follow some universal guidance they didn't find that we were not compliant but they wanted us to look at our procedure have a periodic review done by the special the director of pupil personnel just to confirm that you know the employees that are providing services are providing them based on the allocation percentage special education secretaries 50 of

059their salary is allocated to this grant so the auditors are just looking to confirm that we review that periodically and sign off on it so that's one thing that's easy to implement and we've we've already you know essentially you know prepared google spreadsheet so we'll be able to comply with that and the audit is will look for this in next year's audit and the second item had to do with procurement procedures that have followed there was some new uniform guidance that was passed which frankly we weren't aware of um this applies both to the board of ad and town side so we've received a list of you know the guidance rules that we need to follow so we'll be implementing that you know working with the town staff as well and then the management letter

060that was issued there was some additional recommendations that were made by cla one is to have a fraud tip hotline um and we're working with the town on establishing that it's actually there's a company called frogtip hotline that provides you know a service um and it's it's pretty moderately priced so we'll be implementing that they also recommended a fraud risk assessment across the town and board of ed and the development of an accounting procedures manual you know so all three of those items the four tip hotline whether or not we're going to do a fraud risk assessment and the accounting procedures manual we'll be working with board board event and town staff you know to determine what we're going to do and how to do it so that is the update on the 1920 audit

061and i believe if it's not already posted the um the comprehensive annual financial report for the town you know which which includes the findings um and the letter of opinion from the auditors you know is posted annually on the town's website and that is the update on the town audit thank you mr massiana are there any questions about the uh audit itself the town audit not seeing anything here um we can oh today sure go ahead yeah vin you had mentioned that you were uh unaware of new procurement guidance yeah there were uniform guidelines that were passed that took effect in 20 20 19 20. so you know we we got some of the base details on what it is they they advise that this is a common finding you know as they're as they're

062doing reviews of towns and boards of that yeah it's i mean that you missed it i mean i i get that but i'm just wondering about um who would normally give you like give you a heads up on that guidance because that's the bigger issue from my perspective yeah and normally you would we actually probably would get something like that from the audit firm um okay so it wouldn't you it'd be more from the auditors than from cave yeah most something like that most likely it's just like compliance with you know gasby rulings um you know and i i attribute some of the findings to you know a new auditor new set of eyes so there is you know logic in and changing auditors and this in this case oh yeah no absolutely priority firm

063didn't engage and you know i don't think the i don't think there's anything that we're doing that's incorrect in fact there's you know a lot of language about micro purchases that might streamline the procurement process for us so you know as as we delve into the details we'll be um you know incorporating that so that you know we are compliant yeah no i mean i'm confident that you're gonna figure this one out it's just going forward you know whatever we can do to try to get better guidance so we don't miss things because something could be a bigger deal that we miss yeah so yeah that's it thank you okay um seeing no other questions uh then um i guess uh could you move on to the student activity operational review yes so at the

064board's request um i did speak to um with jeff sullin jeff ziplow from cla so this is the audit firm although it's not the auditor partner it's an a partner that does more consulting and does a lot of internal control and review consulting work so we talked to them about the scope of of what a student activity review would look like and just to remind the board when we went out to bid they did provide a quote of twelve thousand dollars not to exceed twelve thousand dollars to complete a student activity review here for the cheshire public schools so what they explained that they would look at it would be a review of policy and controls they would review the controls on how we do our bank reconciliations you know they would look at the

065school size the size of the bank balances the number of transactions they'll confirm how funds are collected tracked and monitored they would test some transactions as part of the review um they would estimate that it's about a four week process to complete the review the first week would be you know basically interviews you know walk-throughs you know at the schools with the individuals that are responsible for the student activity management um and then the the balance of the engagement would be to do you know testing and further review so in terms of their availability they said that you know they can be engaged and start within a couple of weeks after they're engaged to do the internal review um jeff ziplow was the lead but also from cla was lindsey donato and you know the

066two of them would be the individuals that would be conducting this internal review so you know that kind of gives an overview of what the discussion was and really it's a question to the board on on how you want to proceed at this point in time okay um that's great news um so uh vin do you know do we have the authority to engage the auditors to do this audit or do we need to approach town council to get them to engage the auditors to do the audit i believe that the board of ad can you know conduct can arrange to have this done and and the report would ultimately go back to the board of education this doesn't have to be a town initiative at all great so um uh mr chair i ask

067you um do we uh do we need to can we make a motion or what would be the there's no motion on the agenda for this so um two things so here's what i suggest uh so vince thank you for following up on this i just want to refresh the board and and those that are watching very briefly what this is so i know for board members recall last school year just before the pandemic and the finance committee meeting were talking about this and moving it forward it came to a full board for a bulk to move forward but we didn't know what was going to cost or to scope the services covert hit and you know this was put in the backbone or some other things about some porn it's not that important here

068we are um trying to get this resurrected again and the the question of who pays for it's come up we can certainly pay for it certainly if money is available um so my question would be do we have the budget to do this it seemed to me that well we being the audit firm do this as soon as the summer months may be the best time because there's less noise going on and you know less impact and if we don't have the funds i have no problem asking talent if they can give us some but i don't know if that's necessary and ultimately it's not not a forensics transaction you know it's process because we have policy number 3453 which is 25 years old if any board member actually read that policy you know why

069we have to update it so the sooner we do this the better we can address this next school year and get that policy refined so i would suggest you know um maybe have a their next meeting or maybe a year-end meeting or whatever is coming up next let's have a vote on this and get it done and the question i have is then do we have to vote on a 12 000 expenditure you don't have to vote on the expenditure right you know i'll what i will what i could do is just encumber the twelve thousand dollars and we do have that availability so you know i would suggest that i know our next business meeting is actually june 3rd um you know i i would think that you would want to vote on the

070engagement of cla to provide the uh review of student activity and i didn't mention this but you know one of their starting points will be to take the current student activity policy and regulation and that they will use that to determine are we compliant with the regulation and then they'll give us what are the best practices that aren't included in our current policy and regulation yeah and that's the whole point of this um again i we we judge ben and i we've talked a lot about the school year there were deficits we're going to approach it timing but um so let's plan for the june 3rd meeting i'll when agenda is being drafted i'll remind us to have it on there and uh get it done and we can head into the next school year

071with if there are any recommendations we can modify that policy and be done with it because that is the very last policy i believe um that has to be revised and hopefully that stops us from touching policies for a while the one thing i will add on this is i have a long history relationship with bloom clr jeff in particular in the private sector in fact uh uh many assessments uh financially and technically so uh when it comes to a vote i'm gonna have to stay myself now i don't support it but just for uh but i will say that they are more than capable yeah it was a good conversation with with him um and lindsay and you know i've certainly felt comfortable that they have the wherewithal to get through you know this

072review good i'm sorry and that's that's all i have thank you mr chair i appreciate the enlightenment there um it's good to see that we'll be able to move uh uh at least attempt to move forward uh on this and uh i i did have the opportunity to read that policy um and it uh it feels very familiar to me of course my finance degree was from 1996. uh right around the time that policy was made so i'm guessing there's probably a lot of changes since then so i'm happy to hear that um we have the potential to to have the firm come in and really uh do a great assessment on that so that we know for the next uh 25 years that uh we'll be uh uh have a great set of uh

073of policies and procedures uh for our uh our our student volunteers and parent volunteers who who do a lot of the work in those student activity accounts so based on my experience i'm hopeful that what's gonna come out of this is it'll give the board um facts and um facts to potentially help vincent and his team perhaps upgrade software and put things that help make their jobs more efficient and could be an impetus to for our budget next year so i think there'll be some good that comes out of this um are there any uh comments or questions on this section tim i say you wrote comment but i don't know when that was in reference to just now just now yeah no i just i i think this is really important uh this review

074of the financial accounts what is it a million dollar balance typically that's in there a million or a million a half or something like that across all the schools it's about a million dollars yes okay yeah and it's from what i recall what you said is the board has no responsibility for this i don't know if that's the right wording but i just however whatever the right wording is it's important to me because i have a feeling that if something ever did go wrong the voters would look at the board and say what's going on i think we should i think we should have a better idea and then also i just want to add um the uh the sports part of it and coaching permits that's something that jeff had even mentioned i think

075was last september just keeping that sort of in the same conversation in terms of the audits not to get into a discussion about it but just to mention that too so two different things that the i don't talk about tonight but the other audits on their policy so that's probably forthcoming i just want to clarify something um as board members i encourage you and we always have professional development opportunities but it is the board's responsibility to adhere to the policy concerning student activist accounts we are the ones responsible for the upkeep of those accounts to meet the policy the what i think what the not responsible means is we don't dip into those accounts to pay for operational other that's controlled by the administrators in schools but cave state regulation our policy we're responsible ensure

076that those processes are being followed first accounts we don't spend the money as we should just so we're clear thank you mr chair um if there's um no further comment um then i guess we can move on to the report on grant activity actually marlena's going to cover that marlene if you want i could share my screen to show the information it's up to you sounds good and everyone has this in their linked agenda as well so this is the grant report for this current year the total grant awards last year were 1 million 591 276 this year is a little over 2 million so i'll start with the consolidated grants and just sort of give you an overview of what we use some of this funding for so title one we use that to

077pay for can everyone see it so everybody i don't don't want to rush ahead too fast um this these funds cover reading and math support personnel some instructional assistance and materials to support struggling learners in title ii that pays for salaries and supplies for reading teachers and reading support personnel title three that money supports the things that we do for our english learners that includes professional development for our teachers we typically although it changes from year to year work with a consultant at aces to provide professional development for our teachers who have english learners in their classrooms title four that this year is paying for the summer curriculum writing training that about 70 or so of our teachers will be getting at the end of the school year and has also um will be used

078next year to pay for ngsspd that was unable to occur this year due to substitutes and just the whole covid pandemic our ability to do that uh title let's see the perkins grant i think you are familiar with that we've had sean mcewen a report on some of the ways in which we use that money um the enhancement grant is used to purchase some manufacturing equipment its training its equipment etc the career and technical education department which includes business um and our um i'm losing the name but our family consumer science and and tech ed departments uh really supports a lot of their curriculum changes etc the idea grant then has alluded to before and he spoke to a little bit earlier about special education pays for a lot of staffing needs and helps with

079supplies open choice grant is typically used for ia support adult education pays for both training publicizing materials applications and supplies you've heard us speak a lot about the peck jones grant which this year paid for reading texts and previously had paid for ngss training smart start the smart start preschool that pays for salaries and employee benefits and then really went into some detail earlier about the esser money and how that's used with the cares the cares act and also the sr2 funds that we're using that's the thumbnail sketch if you have any questions are there any questions i don't see any anyone in the chat here okay marlene uh thank you uh well actually i'll ask one question um the idea grants are those state grants federal yeah federal okay is everything basically federal that

080that were federal and managed by the state oh uh through block grant or some other form okay thank you sure oh i lost my microphone there we go um okay seeing uh no other questions or comments um and marlene i don't think you had anything additional to add then that concludes the finance committee report mr chair thank you adam up next is planning committee uh andrew good evening um since our last meeting we've had two planning committee meetings i'm going to do a recap for the benefit of all of us and a for those who are home who have not heard and did not watch the meeting uh we had a plan coming to the hold on the 29th at the meeting the first item that was discussed were capital improvement projects that are scheduled

081for this summer i'm going to run through these quick for those listening at home over at doolittle school there'll be bathroom renovations underground storage tank removal and boiler replacement as well as main entrance and step replacement outside of the school gymnasium and some classroom renovations site-wide over at cheshire high school the ada door replacement project that was put on hold last summer is going to go get underway this summer as well as some security upgrades and the thorpe auditorium trophy play trophy showcase replacement as well as underground storage tank removal um that's about at cheshire high over at highland school boiler replacement security various classroom and select window and millwork replacements nor in school there was going to be the kitchen modernization project which was scheduled to take place which was reported at the meeting

082but has since been put on hold until next summer by the town council at dodd hvac replacement roof repairs acoustic tile replacement and some of the sludge classrooms and sidewalk enhancements in the exterior i mean all these projects were previously approved capital projects by the district any questions by board members on the first part of that meeting i know we heard all this collectively but for those listening at home they might not have seen this so seeing none second item that was discussed which was the extension to performance environmental contract for 2021 2022 performance has been in our school system since 2014 um they performed excellent service throughout the pandemic as reported by vin and others in the district um the increase for the contract is a 38 increase or a 5.3 percent over the

083existing contract um and this is reflected by because of minimum wage increases as well as the increase in cleaning supply costs to the company because of some savings there though the net increase the district will be the net contract will be seven hundred thousand and nine hundred and ten dollars um that motion did pass six one there was one abstention which was faith um and tim and faith both asked vin to go back to performance about potentially doing instead of it being a one-year contract extension being a two-year contract extension or potentially going back up to bid so i think vin has um has reached out to performance and has an update on that just very quickly yes i did speak to um president of the company and i do expect to bring forth a

084proposal at the june 3rd board meeting so we are negotiating if there will be some kind of a price break if we extend to uh the second year so it will be 2122 is already approved by the board if we extend to 22 23 what would that look like so more information to follow next business meeting all right great thank you ben um the third item that was discussed at the planning meeting on the 29th was the school modernization and what those next steps were to be or should be we talked about having a series of public outreach to kind of gauge the community to kind of explain to where we are with the process um i have more information on that under the school modernization but essentially since that meeting there's been an approval

085of a contract extension for colliers by the town council for an additional 25 000 um to help guide the next steps for school modernization but more under school modernization later on in the agenda any questions on the meeting on the 29th by any of the board members before i move on to the may 6 meeting seeing none on may 6 we had a presentation vin actually ran the presentation from ecg engineering who's our consultant unfortunately michael michael sam who's been working on assessing the district and potential solar installations fell ill was unable to be at that meeting um so catherine tim and i as well as vin and um mr clavette and mr bambero from the town were all on that call um essentially we walked through the different sites a potential ground mount installations

086no roof mount on at any of the sites any of the buildings in the district um focused mostly on we looked at a lot of different ones but the ones that we really focused on were carports over at highland school essentially along the border between the police station and the front of the school and then also doolittle along the driveway coming in off of oak avenue i have my own opinion on it we went through and looked at the different potential installations and then from there um it was decided that we would look at to see what what installation we can do and what would have the greatest benefit to the district um catherine had suggested potentially putting on rfp just kind of take a look into that and then vin actually had a site

087walk yesterday with um our energy consultant so vin do you want to touch on how that turned out yesterday yes so the week following the planning committee meeting at the direction of planning committee i did contact jk energy solutions and they've done you know two you know pretty significant projects in our schools to upgrade the led lighting you know and so we're led lit now in all our schools um and i reached out to them and as it turns out they do have quite a bit of experience with solo projects and so the upshot of the site visit yesterday we walked at the site at highland where we would potentially install a carport solar array and also at two little school they're going to come back to us very quickly within the next week or

088so with a total cost to install those solar arrays again solar car ports so they will cover a portion of the parking you know and provide some protection from the elements they will show us how much electricity would be generated from those solar arrays and also more importantly they will show us what a 20-year power purchase agreement would look like and what our cost you know per kilowatt would be if we entered into this 20-year agreement which is important because you'll know financially what that array at highland and what that array at doolittle you know would generate in terms of electricity and you know either electricity savings because the cost is lower than we could buy on the commercial market or if the cost is higher than the commercial market you know what the investment

089would be you know to have those arrays installed so you know the good news is we'll we'll have a financial sense you know within the next week or so and you know whether or not we'll go forward with a an application through the z-rec program uh will be something that the planning committee will determine so what i envision happening is when i get the information pass it along to the planning committee and the planning committee can decide if they want to have a meeting to take it to the next step and that application is june due june 14th correct due june 14th and the these gentlemen from jk energy explained that they could certainly do all the prep work submit the application there's no cost to submit the application there's also no obligation with that

090application being submitted so you know again i think it's a question of what do the financials look like and do we want to go this route there's also as tim and mentioned during the planning committee meeting that's only if we do a an installation that's over a certain size um that june 14th date applies if it's smaller than a certain size then you actually don't have a deadline if they're they're taking application there's not really a process it's on a rolling basis so it's a lot more complicated than i could articulate but we're you know following the request you know that came out of the last planning committee meeting great thank you and i think we look we look at the aesthetics of what's installed along with the finance and does it fit the character

091of the school and the environment you know these are all there's a lot to obviously be evaluated in that process absolutely um see adam question yeah um so i'm guessing in in all of this analysis that had you chosen uh this uh maybe you mentioned already that the sites where these solar panels would go these carports would go it was was it along that like i'll call it the for highland would it be the property that that lines up along the police station that's kind of where they built theirs yep so up here you go so here it is oh yeah so this is the yeah this is highland that's the front of highland right yep yep that's the cafeteria right where you're cursing yeah and then so there's the array now again this is

092not final this was what our consultant from ecg had put forth so that's that's highland and then let me just show you do a little [Music] yeah there you go okay so this is this is cornwall right yes and this is the sidewalk there's a sidewalk beneath this you know array so it would be from somewhere as you enter the driveway to do a little moving towards the school so this array we talked about would cover the sidewalk as well as the first row of car park car parking along um that sidewalk um so just from a practical point of view two two questions uh firstly just looking at where the one for doodle is uh do we know would they be impervious to uh foul balls uh coming off of the uh the baseball

093fields i'm sure quite a few come down uh over there uh and then the second we did i'll just answer that we did talk about that you know these are designed to withstand you know impact like they'll they'll survive a hail storm um you know the way a ball would typically travel it would just skip right off the top of the solar cell so that you know the power purchase agreement essentially would mean we don't own these a third-party company owns them and would be responsible you know for the maintenance you know and if one breaks then they'd be responsible for the replacement yeah they're they're essentially sort of leasing our land right um so the second question is uh in your estimation uh vin if we were to say do renovations on doolittle school

094um which uh uh area would you estimate that heavy equipment would have to enter from from the same area or where we would put those up or from the the drive that comes off of oak you know i mean listen that's certainly one of the key considerations that the planning committee talked about you know the planning committee can speak to it but that is you know concern you know are these installations these sites were selected because we think it would have the least impact um you know right now we do believe based on discussion that we would keep to a little school and we would keep highland so but that is you know certainly one of the questions that's a great question i think we could still get heavy equipment into the site if we

095installed this one at too little but there's plenty of consideration and thought that has to go into making the decision ultimately and adam so this is we're looking to see what this is going to cost and what the benefit is going to be so we we've reviewed several larger installs one note notably in the back field of highland elementary school and we decided although it would generate 80 of the power for the facility it we would lose the rear field and it would encroach on the outdoor classroom and take away from the aesthetic of the pond and there's just so many other issues that you know at what point are we at what point are we encumbering so much of the property for power generation and will it make sense financially right so sure and

096also notable and tim don't don't kill me it's um it's a 20-year deal um and if you watch how much things change in 20 years um like me i graduated from high school 20 years ago um you know there's no you did it no way um what we don't want to be stuck with is 20 years from now people pulling into highland elementary school saying what the heck is that thing and what was that put there as well as for doolittle school um so we're on it we're assessing see what's going to come out and the next planning committee meeting we'll have another report to report back to the full board so looking forward to it thank you um tim yeah i just wanted to say i so i i've tried to do a little

097bit more uh research on this and i in the when we met the planning committee met we [Music] my view is that if we can save that we need to consider i said that um the incentives are different smaller the incentives and the ultimate cost savings for the schools would probably be better with smaller arrays when i say a smaller array just so people at home can visualize this it's 100 kw 100 kilowatts of power and you could sort of say that's like 300 solar panels so it's a big stretch but you could probably you probably could do that in that stretch along highland uh adjacent to the police department um what i've come to realize based on the last conversation with the that we had we probably would want to have decking more raw

098materials for the solar array because snow lands on it it melts it falls through cracks we don't want that that turns into ice and it may not go away vermont's anyway that decking costs more money so that increases the cost of these of any installation but it's borne out or uh better distributed in a larger array because there are certain fixed costs as an example you have to have a cement truck come to do a con to a construction site the cost of getting the truck there is a fix it's basically a fixed cost it's not the cement going in the ground but getting it there for a day is basically a fixed cost so to a certain extent it may actually make sense economically to do a larger array with lower incentives that may

099ultimately give us a bigger price that may not work for uh any of the locations of the schools um nonetheless i i do think getting more information about it besides just what i'm saying here i think that could be i think it'd be good i think it'd be worthwhile to just continue exploring this without admit and without making any commitments right that's exactly hopefully we'll have that information back from vin um from ecg shortly correct they're from jk energy i mean yes they've committed to do this uh very quickly for us great and what tim's for those of you who didn't hear the planning committee meeting um there is an array at cheshire police station and it is not a continuous deck and so what i've heard from friends who are on the police force

100is they're very unhappy with that install because what's happening is the snow is melting off those solar panels coming down the sun's not hitting it and it's just creating an ice skating rink out there in the winter time so they wish that they designed that one a little bit different so what we're trying to do is avoid that if we are going to do an install of a carport at highland or do little school so with that that concludes my update on the planning committee unless there's any other questions and had a comment i believe in yeah i really love the idea of solar i just think that we really we're trying to get a what a 20-year school modernization plan going and it really it just seems to me to make the most sense

101to incorporate the solar part of it as we are working on the schools and updating them in general but i'm really glad that we're doing um the research now and getting some idea of what could go wrong and it just it strikes me looking at those maps and and the blue swatches where the where the solar panels are it's it's a lot of area and you know i'm concerned with how it's going to make all of the properties look aesthetically so i'm i'm glad we're looking into it carefully yes we you sure are well thank you that concludes the planning committee update thank you thank you everyone um i'll just add that the you know as part of uh sms as far as memorization plan um i think when we do designs we're starting to

102incorporate green energy and solar so there's opportunities there at the very least so keep that in mind that being said we're gonna move on to policy uh adam it is back to you again thank you mr chair um we had a policy meeting on may 4th uh 2021 um [Music] where we uh for a first reading reviewed our student health services policy policy number 5141 um where we where dr solon noted that this policy would need to be reviewed and again reviewed again in the future because of recent rulings regarding mandatory vaccinations and the elimination the religious exemption but also that our uh nurse district nurse coordinator um boy i'm missing the entire thing let's see hold on uh i'm missing the change hold on a second dr song can you remind me because i

103am i'm missing it here why are we oh the budget yeah uh um this is for sports physicals right okay so we discussed many weighty issues that uh that could also be uh uh that could also be affected that could also affect this policy but the main reason why we were reviewing this policy was that we were going to uh change the policy so that you uh students could have a sports physical for i believe up to 30 was it for 13 months was that correct yeah the marquee piece of this is that we're you know yes but we're requiring sports physicals uh that last the entirety of the season so a student would have to have a physical that would last them to the entire season oftentimes we were finding not often times but

104there was a concern about physicals lapsing in the middle of the season and then that not being caught which creates problems uh a medical potential liability for the player uh a legal liability for us and a real headache for the parent mid-season or problem for the team if the child's got to sit because they don't have a physical so we're really just trying to make sure that all of our student athletes have been evaluated for the full season yes and um and so we had a discussion about that and uh we uh it was unanimously moved uh uh for a first reading um next we um moved policy number 6159 instruction individualized education programs slash special education program for a second reading and this is where we are we changed the the age according to

105state statute of students receiving special education from um up up until their 21st birthday to up and up until their 22nd birthday and we move that for a second reading with no changes um finally we moved many uh policies to a for a third and final reading and i have a uh i'd like to make a motion for that if i may um move that the cheshire board of education give a third and final reading to policies 3170 budget implementation 3300 expenditures expending authority purchasing guides policy number 33 3326 paying for goods and services policy 3326.1 business dash payroll procedures and authorized signatures uh policy 3541.45 student transportation insurance and and directly superintendent to put said policies into immediate effect um do i have a a second on that uh anyone yeah i got it

106i missed the who who was the second on there uh cat who was the second thank you tim okay um is there any discussion on those policies uh perhaps just for uh review i believe that was uh just uh changes in titles uh there there are antiquated titles um for i believe the business officers uh especially uh vin massiana's title and some other uh titles that work in his office is there any other is there any other further discussion um seeing none uh all in favor of the motion as read it is unanimous thank you um let's check the rest here um i believe that concludes my report mr chair thank you adam and i just want to thank the policy committee for helping get the third and final reading of the policies uh done

107this this year and uh actually all the work the policy committee does and um i'm sure just about everyone well pretty soon without certain policy but for those that have you know that folks may not know a lot of work happens there uh between the administration and legal teams just keeping up to speed with changes state regulations which seems to be endless and the work this committee does it's a lot of work so thank you uh that being said we're moving on to another very important committee which is the school monetization committee update all right thank you so much um so big thanks to the town council um obviously they know how important this is to the to the community and they extended coliers who is our consultant's contract by an additional 25 thousand dollars

108that was approved at their meeting on may the 12th so we're waiting for a date to have a kickoff meeting as to next steps with that um it's going to be a joint meeting between certain members of this board as well as the town council one of the major items that we need to do is the test fits for the properties as we discussed at our planning committee meeting back in april um so that needs to be done that will not be done by coliers but that would be done by another consultant but overseen by cole ears with collaboration between all parties um i did just receive some late breaking news from superintendent solon that coliers is going to be scheduling a series of community engagement events or sessions rather about school modernization the process

109where we are today um before school gets out which i know is something that we all desperately want to do before people start going on much-needed vacations after the pandemic um so those are going to be on evenings on june 7th june the 8th and june the 9th um that's the only details i have on that jeff i don't know if you have any additional information um on those i do um i have them here in the my update for a little later all right do you want to just hold on to it okay um i guess most importantly is is that cole ears is working we're on it um to get this to keep the momentum going and moving forward um i don't know if anyone has saw on monday i've started a series

110of facebook posts cross posts on all the different social media outlets called modernization monday um where i'm going to be sharing the 68 page document and every monday around noon time putting it out there paragraph paragraph and a half just touching on various points to try to get some interaction i could post a picture of my daughter playing the trombone and get 300 likes i posted it i got about 13. um so feel free to share that feel free to reach out to me i'd be happy to have anyone's assistance on that um to try to get some people talking i mean we're talking a huge potentially the largest capital expenditure ever coming to the town um so i'm thinking about next time leading off with panera's coming to cheshire and see if maybe that

111will start more people being interested in the post um it's just a little bit of a joke but andrew just tag each of us on the board will do yes that's it i should have done that the first time anne and um that's a great suggestion so i'm gonna do that and i'm gonna just keep it very simple in these posts and so this one it was just school modernization what is this all about and it's just a paragraph and a half about what we where we were and where we're going um and then next week i'm gonna just highlight the preferred option and then the following week i'm gonna do secondary option and then just kind of keep it like that so hopefully people will read that and so when it comes down to

112um a few months from now people don't say they know nothing about it so don't get me wrong andrew i'm all about um using your children as let's get some puppies and kittens too whatever you get the word out there you know and i've seen people and i've talked to people in the community um at the wonderful band concert that they held outside of dodd the other day i was talking to a group of parents and they had no idea and i said i know we're friends on facebook go on there and click on the link um because it is a 68-page document but really there's about 15 to 16 pages that you have to actually read read read and then all the backup is there for any questions so anyone's home listening to this

113i know it's you know it's late and you have a lot of things on your plate but just please take a minute to read the report thank thank you andrew uh we're all chuckling because in the comments uh dr solomon post to be fair savannah is an excellent trombone player so i appreciate it uh the golden retriever does not agree but i i do um yeah and again this is just an attempt to get the word out there uh some board members asked hey we have a communications committee uh we rarely use we can start up throughout the course of this as we move forward and of course we'll look at that the other thing i just want to be careful uh you know we're maybe tagging these posts whether you're mindful that can't turn

114to legal meaning by commenting so we get a quorum on there could be an issue but certainly you know hey chime in if you see three or less board members and you know share where you can i try to share them and you know i was quitting earlier maybe you know andrew you guys start off with you're putting a new medical building on route 10 or another drugstore or yeah so i said panera said panera's coming to cheshire and then put the link for the school modernization you know a school closing tends gets people attention um i i quit but thank you for for being proactive on that yeah definitely i think tim has a question yeah this is probably a question from marlene or vin i don't see jeff here right now do we

115have um so i i mean i want outreach to the whole town everybody votes on this timewide referendum but at the same time a smaller subset uh i'm thinking uh preschool do you have a connection with any of the preschools where it would be appropriate to let them know about the meetings we will definitely make everybody in the community aware of the meetings these are just the locations scheduled for the shootings um and to be fair darcy's probably not space-wise and location-wise the best location to hold it but we will definitely notify everybody so to be clear i don't mean i'm not talking about preschool darcy i'm talking about you know doodlebugs oh yeah certainly yeah we have great connections with all those uh private providers we will definitely we can get information out to

116them no problem okay i think that could be that could be a good thing okay yeah that's a good suggestion thanks thank you um adam oh yeah i i was just wondering if we had a twitter account or instagram you know to get to get to all the folks of all different ages and all that stuff for we were just uh going on facebook because if i don't if i recall your your post was on the education forum which i don't think is shareable i it's on the education forum my personal one cheshire community forum and cheshire unplugged oh okay so all right so if you do tag us then we can share in our personal accounts at that point right if we get tagged in it okay okay facebook lesson yay i know the

117district does i don't know i mean i'm happy if you guys want to put it on the district's social media i don't know how all that works um so so so jeff i just realized part of your job role now is influencer your social media influencer it's like stupid human tricks from david letterman now available online we'll do what we got to do there's no other questions that uh concludes school modernization update thank you angel i i i do want to add a chance to talk to andrew and ben and jeff and a couple colleagues of town council i the town council is wrapping up their budget i think i think this week if not tonight i forget the timing of it so i know they're going to start ramping on bringing them back up

118on this next week starting with the preferred option and they're doing some analysis there and we're doing our analysis so you know we all thought it makes sense if we got together um a small group and talk about how you know how to move forward i think we all recognize that um as we talk about last time kind of be good to know what land is available and that may actually dictate how we proceed forward so uh and then we'll have a broad broader combining meeting with both bodies right after that as we move forward so uh thanks jeff finn and team for helping move this forward and hopefully we keep the community engaged as june comes in the summer summer days are here but thank you moving on we are going to correspondence madam

119secretary do we have any correspondence we do not have any correspondence mr chairman thank you thank you catherine uh seeing there's no correspondence we're gonna move on to the much anticipated superintendent's report again thank you tony i know this is the highlight of every board members month uh in their service to the board my my uh report uh we may not have correspondence but we i did receive an email uh through the covid hotline trisha rowald was asking about the 80 minute periods at cheshire high school whether or not that would eliminate need for science labs it will you know an extra period scheduled for science labs and the answer short answer is yes dr gatt i know we'll put that in her correspondence out to the community in most cases the answer is yes

120for ap and some advanced ece coursework there will be additional lab periods but uh thank you for the great question and we'll get that information out i hate to start on a solemn note uh but this uh past week or two we saw the passing of two prominent cheshire public schools former educators one is judy d dimizio she was a cheshire public schools teacher of the year actually in 1991 and dr jim trafon uh was a long-standing biology teacher who i had the pleasure of working with at cheshire high school and uh both of them lost their battle with cancer recently and i know our hearts and our deep sympathies and prayers go out to both the trafona and the dimizio families both also residents of cheshire so um shifting gears uh to our our

121usual uh more enthusiastic presentation i will try and be uh as quick as i can with you here there we go let's see uh to just run you through the report uh you've seen this before kovit it's it's kind of a lands long-standing slide for us going through the process but you haven't seen numbers like this in a long time these are our current uh covet impact on the school district of course the vast majority of our staff are vaccinated so limited quarantine issues now more of our students are corn excuse me vaccinated not fully yet so we anticipate that number to come down once they are fully vaccinated but even now the student quarantines are quite low on that bottom line relative to what we had seen well we acknowledged uh in a meeting

122a couple of months ago the emotional impact of coving 19 and my real trepidation that we had 700 students who could potentially have not stepped foot in a school building for 17 months if they didn't return before next year and so in january if you recall we had a thousand remote learners 25 of our student body in april when i recently was reporting we had 740 and our our team was very diligent about reaching out to families encouraging them to return we're down to 497 or 12 percent so uh kudos to our administrative team and for reaching out encouraging families to come back and they they've done so and i'm excited that uh the the more students that we can get to kind of reacclimate to school before they return next year i think the

123better off that they will be spring events i know you know we've heard about a variety of things from our our student reps and whatnot uh uh the dodd trip will be departing next wednesday i'm very excited to be going on that trip with the the minor reservation about cicadas but other than that i'm excited to go um sports have been fantastic this spring as you heard from our student reps the promotions k8 will be slightly scaled back a little bit different for example uh then marlene and i typically travel to each one because of the scheduling and being a little bit different i'm looking forward to doing a video for our sixth grade promotions our eighth grade promotion i will be in person for the morning of monday the 14th i believe it is

124of june um and that will be held at cheshire high school the high school graduation ceremony i did mention earlier uh in the meeting that we are we met this morning with maura esposito from chesapeake she reviewed our plan and gave us the endorsement it'll be held outside 6 p.m june 16th uh one ceremony for all students everybody will receive four tickets every graduate and that will provide seating on the field there will be additional seating in the stands but you can't have access to the field without a ticket if you're not a graduate masks are required for the event unless you're on stage so students walking across the stage will not be required to wear a mask um in the event of inclement weather we will be holding a ceremony inside uh with details

125to follow and then you know the all-night grad party will follow that event or the graduation whether indoors or outdoors so just to provide a quick visual on how this uh ceremony will look this is the stage at the north end of the field where uh our teams generally enter that north end this is closest uh to the high school with the baseball fields being over here so our students will enter this is the stage these are 12 foot aisles uh that you see the 12 feet in width and our students here in red are graduates these are all parent seats with a jumbotron here for enhanced viewing behind the stage this will be musical performers students and then our staff are aligning on either side of the field so more to come on this

126uh we're very excited to be able to go in a more traditional format what you'll notice is each seat is set about four and a half feet apart on center uh so we could have uh clustered them in groups of four or something like that uh but we didn't want to have empty seats necessarily you know if my my party only had two in it you know we don't want two empty seats just taking up space we want people seated as close to the front as we can and so that is our current arrangement cps vaccination progress uh just another shootout shout out excuse me to maura esposito and the team at jesper cot we've vaccinated now more than 500 employees we had 100 students 16 to 18 received their second dose at cheshire high

127today many of our 16 to 18 year olds have been vaccinated through other means by the time we were the state allowed us to run the clinic many of our students already had been vaccinated uh we vaccinated 500 approximately 500 students age 12 to 15 already last weekend and they're slated to get their second dose on june 15th and if you're curious the state has developed the vaccination website and i can show you the most interest at least to me the most interesting part if you come down here and hover over cheshire you can see that 67.9 of residents aged 15 to 44 year old 44 years old have received at least one dose of the vaccine and of our 45 to 64 year old population 76 of our population has received that vaccine and

128so that was updated on may 18th they update these things weekly generally so you can always check back for more information i'm a regular if you will on the site anyway um so some cps highlights this week uh i know lucy mentioned my jump roping there's actual proof of that uh i am a bit of a double dutch master amongst other things and then um one of the uh real highlights of the week and i appreciate andrew and and uh ann attending our school business partnership meeting uh earlier this week where we had the real pleasure uh to recognize jill silverman and jason vanes they are the leadership team at richard chevrolet they are so deserving of the cast connecticut to school schools distinguished friend of education award for their tireless work with our school

129system they are always there to answer the call whenever we ask for anything and oftentimes they they just offer but my favorite project we've done with them is a couple years ago at dodd middle school we had two different groups design vehicles from start to finish jason worked with them he usually does the design and ordering he worked with them they designed classes or designed um two different cars they marketed the vehicles and then the winner uh the group got a pizza party whichever vehicle sold first and jason made a very funny comment the other day about the fact that it was kind of humbling he's the person who desi designs and orders the vehicles and our kids did just as well as he did if not better so uh it was funny for him

130to share that with the group but uh he and jill deserve all the credit in the world uh for what they do for our kids in our community so thank you to richard chevrolet uh as andrew had mentioned we do have three engagement sessions scheduled and we will upon your blessing publicize these broadly i know that you're certainly comfortable with us um publicizing them but just want to make sure the dates and everything are okay for you uh june 7th 8th and 9th not that this is a required all of these are required for all of the board members but you know if our plan is to try and follow this we wanted to vary the locations and the times a little bit to provide some flexibility for families and so we have monday the

1317th at 6 p.m at norton tuesday the 8th at 6 30 at chapman and wednesday the night at 7 p.m at dodd middle school so that concludes my uh superintendent's report uh and certainly i'm happy to answer any questions that anybody may have andrew just on the on the forms um we don't know what the program is yet for those that are listening that's to be determined so the program will be a an overview of where we are tonight today right and what our our next steps will be basically what has the school modernization committee done in the last year and changed that they've been working and so we'll hit the real highlights it'll be a bring you up to speed so that when you read uh the monday modernization minute you're you're connecting with

132that and makes a lot of sense to you perfect thank you and i know you got a question yeah i just i'm wondering if there's a way to see those forums if are they will they be live streamed or something if you um or do you have to go in person well i know that um unfortunately you know we mentioned earlier that that mike salamini has wasn't available today i know uh mr bargini mentioned that so uh i will have to confer with him about how we might be able to record these things uh we're likely to hold them outside under tents and that's another variable that mike would have to you know manage and certainly you know being there in person is great but we want to be able to provide access to the

133same information for those who can't be thank you sure i believe tim had a question and yeah um yeah thanks for the tent possibility um and i'll say i mean if if not all three of these get televised if it just becomes too complicated i'm not that concerned about it i mean we wanna my feeling is we just wanna offer as much opportunity to the public in general i mean if they're all televised that would be great if they're not you know one would be one would be great the my goal is to just offer people we had i haven't heard from people nearly as much as i wish i had in the past year for obvious reasons and it's this is this is an important topic so i i just want to give people

134the chance to come talk yell at us if we're doing something wrong whatever it might be um with regard to uh the covid vaccines so you're basically as far as you're concerned basically any of the kids who've gotten them or their families or parents want them they've probably gotten them at this point um if the age drops uh goes further down to nine six whatever over the summer would you think you'd be doing something some outreach to parents even in in anticipation of school opening you know in september right we've been incredibly committed to working with chespercott to provide access to vaccines because we believe it it increases the likelihood that kids can attend school and it improves the general welfare and safety of our community and so that's not going to change over the

135summer the only thing that would perhaps be a bit of an impediment for us as a school system offering them in our buildings is uh construction work so if there's abatement by law under 18 you can't be in the building so we'd have to work through that but we would certainly offer uh clinics in conjunction with jesper cot if they had the capacity to do so but to your point i mean there's so much availability now through a multitude of resources that um the the state may opt to go in that direction in that case it's out of our hands okay okay um and then my last uh point grad party donations they're looking for him they didn't have much time to fundraise so that's it thank you thank you i think it's adam thank

136you um firstly um jeff was that you in the picture jumping rope i know it yes hard to believe that was not a photo shot that was because that looked like you had a good at two to three feet vertical there i can elevate that yeah wow impressive impressive um uh sec i guess secondly on the outdoor meetings um i know i've noticed just from like uh just seeing teachers in action a lot of times when they do a video stream they just use a laptop and turn the camera around uh for remote students i i saw that with my own son when he had the isolate a while back and um i don't know it could just be a simple solution of having an internet source and just doing a you know a low

137res stream because i don't know how good the audio would be but you know that could be just you know if it's a real technical challenge that it could be something as simple as that i guess i've been told the worst the resolution the better i look but that i still think it's a great idea to have mike be there if we can do it like you said for the audio sure and so we'll see what we can do yeah um and lastly um if if i recall the governor's executive orders at least this time are set to expire in july and if vaccines are extended down to potentially two years old well is there a possibility that we would have to make a decision on masks on our students wearing masks or would that

138is that just going to be uh you know we just won't have to worry about it there will be no masks next year yeah i would not rule out the possibility um you know i think right now our our intense focus is on the next you know 20 days or so for our students um but i think when we you know retool and and get ready for august we'll follow a very similar process that we did this year and that's engage our health professionals listen to the data and information from dph and collaboratively with our families and our health professionals try and establish a plan that makes sense for the school system and so the state may require them i i don't know um but like i said i we're we're committed to continuing to

139work with that group to make a decision that's best for our community great thank you uh unless i'm missing someone has anyone any other questions for dr sullin's superintendent report seeing as there are none i just want to just take a moment to record to uh to uh give the board of condolences to julie dimizio and and mr trefone i know uh since i've been on the board i've always heard great praise for them uh both and i didn't come through chester's school system but um to this day i still hear from uh past students and you know somewhere on this board on their contributions so uh please exit that condolences from the board of ed uh moving on i inadvertently skipped an agenda item i'm sure i will be uh reminded of it tomorrow

140but the agenda item was approval of minutes that was number five so i like to go back to that before we move on um in our packets we have uh meeting minutes of the meetings held april 22nd and may 6th uh does anybody have a motion on the meeting minutes let me get back here uh adam um mr chair uh i move that the board of education approved the minutes from meetings held on april 22nd 2021 and may 6 2021. thank you there's a second oh and seconded katherine you were about 10 sec a tenth behind um any edits or changes to the meeting minutes seems we have none uh the the motion is that the board education approved the minutes from meetings held on april 22nd 2021 and may 6th 2021 all those in

141favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you team um all business we have no business um audience will check one more time jeff has there been any new comments or questions come in since last update no sir thank you new business very quickly um chairperson update is very brief upcoming cab cabe webinar for board members as a legislation wrap up on june 14th this is where we'll uh get the summary of any new laws which seems to be many and regulations updated [Music] registered please do it's free um we've been talking dr solon uh throughout the course of this year of doing a board of ed retreat uh after the school year and most boards of vets do this to do a little bit of team building but also work with the administration

142team and setting uh goals for next fiscal next school year so uh i think over the next couple weeks we'll uh talk about that and try to send the date um culinary oh i just went ahead i have the honor of um going to mrs uh miss wildeman's class tomorrow chapter high school in culinary and uh doing a class on uh schnitzel uh these are the fillets of um various cuts of meat that is very famous in germany and in austria so uh if folks smell schnitzel throughout cheshire tomorrow that is why and i'm gonna be surprised if we get some visitors from in and around central office to stop by which is good because there should be plenty so look forward to that should be a lot of fun other than that i don't

143have any other updates we have no new business before we adjourn to an executive session i don't read the upcoming meetings if i can find my agenda so upcoming meetings uh tuesday june 1st 6 30 p.m policy committee will be meeting it will be virtual thursday june 3rd at 7 30 pm there will be a board of ed business meeting and now meeting and they'll be live in town council chambers monday june 14th at 7 pm is current committee meeting it will be virtual and uh tuesday june 30th at 7 30 pm is our end of the year fiscal meeting location will be uh to be determined uh that being said um we do have a motion to adjourn an executive session and just for folks that may be watching this evening if you are

144thank you for sticking around um so long uh but we will once we go to executive session we will not be coming back to this meeting because there'll be no action so you don't have to stick around wait for us to see what comes out of that that being said do we have a motion from the board to adjourn into executive session catherine makes the motion is there a second andrew uh the motion is that the meeting be adjourned into executive sessions include dr sullen to discuss discuss the superintendent's evaluation with no action to follow all those in favor thank you this meeting is adjourned we are now adjourning to executive session and for board of education members a reminder that there is a separate link for that executive session in your