Planning Committee 4-29-21

001ready when you are you know all right good all right good evening everyone thank you um for attending tonight's planning committee meeting of the whole today is april the 29th mrs jaczynski could i have a roll call please sure mr gripper here ms hallen miss ham here miss harrigan here mr martelly here mr parachini here mr white here and i see miss hallen joined mr chairman you have a quorum hello okay please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice much better we did it in chambers last week i have to say right do we have any communication um from the audience either jeff or vin i do not have any nor

002do i nor do i all right all right first item on the agenda is update on capital projects scheduled for this summer then we turn it over to you okay well thank you good evening everyone i'm going to share my screen and give you a quick overview can you see the screen with the words over on the left side please someone yes yes thank you so what i'm showing you here is just the high level major construction projects that we have this summer so it excludes things like routine maintenance and some of the smaller repairs but i did want to give the planet committee and the board members tonight you know some insight as to the things that we're planning first of all right here at the top the last day of school is june

00316th and then the first day back is august 26 so that's the schedule that we have to work within we do aim to get all our projects completed doing that also at doolittle and um cheshire high school those are exterior stairs uh large project that doolittle it's a continuation of the bathroom renovation that is a pvc project we do expect that to last all summer and you'll see we have quite a few quite a few projects this summer at doolittle so doodle will not really be open for any use you know outside of the repair work and the projects that we're doing we're replacing the underground oil storage tank at duluth doolittle doesn't have any other natural gas supply so we have to replace it the tank is already on site so that that project

004is teed up and ready to go we went out to bid we are replacing the two boilers at doolittle as well um at doolittle this next project the main entrance renovation this is the security project where we're installing person traps and we're doing that this summer i at doolittle at cheshire high school at highland as well as at dodd this next one classroom renovation what what that really is is that we are the board knows that we are moving two of the kindergarten grades that were at darcy over to do little so we do have some minor renovation work within doolittle to be able to accommodate that another large project and now we're on to the high school the door replacement project this one has been in the works for two years we have a

005school construction grant from the state approved for this project it's roughly an 800 000 project there is asbestos abatement that has to take place um that is a project that is very very you know detailed and requires rebuilding of a lot of the door uh frames and removal of brick to accommodate that so that the classroom doors essentially is the essence of this project will be ada compliant and wheelchair accessible we already talked about the main entrance where we're going to build a person trap at the high school this summer the act replacement you'll see that we've got a few of these a.c.t is the ceiling tiles basically those you know will be replaced in certain sections of the high school also at cheshire high school in the front of the high school not 100

006sure we're going to get this project in but there is an underground oil storage tank that we would just remove not replaced because cheshire high school does have natural gas this regenerator installation is part of the ventilation system so we'll be actually restoring some ventilation that was lost years ago at cheshire high school went out to bid we have good bids and we're going to be replacing the two boilers at highland again doing the main entrance person trap we do have some minor classroom renovations to do we're replacing several windows and doing millwork replacement this project we've been bouncing back and forth we we have 400 thousand dollars to basically upgrade the serving area cafeteria and the kitchen at norton went out to bid the bid came in at over 600 000 so we don't

007have enough funding the town council asked if we could break this project into a couple of different sections and do it over two years the pbc met last night it's not likely that we we can do that because the pieces of the project that we would have to break up are actually very closely linked and you can't do one without doing the other so i do not believe uh we'll be going with the norton kitchen renovation until the following summer but in norton we do have to do some work on the fuel lines and the pump that supplies oil from the tank which is located in the parking lot into the building and that's to make it compliant with current dep requirements again um moving out of norton into dodd this is the person trap

008we are replacing some of the 30 year old rooftop hvac at dodd we are going to also replace a couple of different sections of roof at dodd that you know we've been chasing leaks for years on these sections so those will be done this summer replacing you know quite a large portion of ceiling tiles and doing some sidewalk repairs so those are the major the capital projects that we're doing did want to just point out that you know we also have to balance the projects that we're doing with any other maintenance repairs that we're doing that are smaller scale with our cleaning schedule so this is the schedule where the buildings are essentially you know get a deep cleaning and detailing you know strip and wax all the floors and you know the gym including

009the gym floors to make the school ready for the new school year so we've got to accommodate all that we do have summer school running at highland over at camp quinnipiac which we typically run at norton we had arranged to move it to chapman because we were doing the norton kitchen so the y may wind up back at norton as it turns out we haven't verified that the only other thing that i want to mention and i'm going to stop sharing my screen is that the on the technology side we have some um you know not really large but important projects we have chromebooks for the incoming seventh graders that actually have been purchased they have to be prepped and the the new operating model we're employing starting this year is the seventh graders will

010receive chromebooks and keep those chromebooks through 12th grade instead of the swap that we did previously they would keep them for seventh and eighth grade and then we would recycle those for the incoming uh seventh graders we're not doing that we're just providing the seventh graders chromebooks that they'll keep through 12th grade and the reason that we're able to do that actually is because google is allowing their operating systems to run out you know through that five-year period we also have uh desktop pcs that we have to replace in the classrooms you know believe it or not we're on about a seven year life cycle with pcs which is pretty long so we have 160 pcs that we'll be upgrading or replacing over the summer and then the last thing which is if we can

011squeeze it in we will but our current software that we use for a food service operation where you know students essentially buy their meals and most of that is done through a card system um that is a server-based software that we are running in-house we want to go to the web-based version which provides you know in addition to more security and and better backup than we can do in-house it also has a lot more features including an app that parents would be able to use uh it's called mosaic it's by the same company that provides the current software that we're using on our server so if we could squeeze that in on the technology side we're going to give that a shot so that's the brief update on the bigger things that we've got going

012on for this summer that we're getting ready for big anna's question so then why did you say that camp quinnipiac is going back to norton instead of chapman was it because of the bear no no no no no that's a good question though it's you know what norton has been their um go-to school for the last several years um and again they've moved to chapman when needed norton's a little bit bigger um and they like it better so you know they may wind up having the option this year i just don't know how far they've gotten with notifying you know parents during registration where it will be held and the norton kitchen project is still you know until the town council weighs in i don't have a definitive answer on what's happening there thank you

013i just wanted to bring up the bear thanks thank you ann uh vin a few questions are all those projects is everything already contracted um pretty much yeah you know we have to get these things out to bid um and signed off on i mean there'll be maybe a couple we haven't signed off on yet but um but when you say bid have they already been bid oh yeah okay so everything's good vetted and now you're just finalizing contracts and purchase orders and whatnot correct okay oh yeah and natural gas the only two schools are highland and cheshire that haven't that are natural gas um the only two that don't have natural gas okay are norton doolittle and now darcy doesn't have natural gas but we converted darcy from oil to propane got it so

014we've got two schools that we do not have natural gas nearby um and i just want to mention chuck warrington and john copeland from collier's just joined great good evening gentlemen welcome good evening questions for vin based on the upcoming capital projects over the summer uh tim then faith thanks andrew yeah vin with regard to high school you're pulling out an oil tank do we have another oil tank there no so we are going we're going strictly to gas because all the other schools i think are don't they have dual fuels they they do what we've been doing is pulling out the tanks and not replacing them if they have natural gas all right so the interruptible supply you're not really using that rate anymore it doesn't it didn't make it worth it but i

015do have a bigger question which is um you know we have we have these uh spikes these peaks in gas demand in the winter is are are schools like first [Music] are they uh given first priority in terms of availability of gas or if the gas gets shut down for some reason then we're just closing the schools i'm just trying to understand that well the i mean the reality is we've been running primarily on natural gas where we have it for you know the last few years you know we just keep running oil just to make sure that you know we're running out the supply in the tanks and to keep it fresh you know if we and so the supply of gas has not been an issue you know the one thing that you

016know we did do as as we're where we still have the dual fuel capability right which is just you know the burner um we're not removing the burner you know and shutting off the dual fuel capability so if we got into a pinch what we have to do is bring in an oil tank and make the connection just okay don't see that as an issue though um the reason that we take these tanks and don't put them back where we can is because the tank you know maintenance and the requirements from the department of energy and environmental protection you know are pretty onerous and it's not really worth spending the money anymore not to mention the environmental risk of keeping that oil tank no no no and i unders i i understand i think i

017can understand and appreciate the reasons why you would remove it and not replace it the concern i have right now is you mentioned this about the high school and it is a critical facility that could get used highland i think also is um so it's almost like to me that's an issue that the count of which the council should be made aware in terms of like funding i just as long as you are comfortable that you on like at a moment's notice you could get that back up oil tank but literally what i'm thinking about most recently is texas everything was fine with their electric grid until it wasn't and and i just want to highlight this that there if if these are critical facilities for the town there is a question that goes beyond

018just the the the school system itself that that i think sean uh the town manager sean kimball he should be aware that that we're doing something like this that that's all okay i will you know i will follow up with that and as i said i'm not sure we're going to be able to get that in um this summer but got it thank you that's it thanks andrew faith thanks andrew um vin i was just questioning curious is this our last year for that ada project at the high school well no no there's still the the big item that's still remaining on the list will be the um renovation and ada compliance of the lockers behind the west gym there are boys and girls lockers that um you know have improvements that need to be

019made to make them ada compliant so and we actually you know do have a proposal from silver petrocell or the architectural firm to do that work but we don't have enough funding to do it however because this project they are that we are doing this summer does have a 40 um six percent grant associated with it we're assuming that when that grant money is returned because it's a reimbursement we can use that towards the funding needed for the west gym boys and girls lockers so we're not in we're doing this because we've been ordered to do it we're not at risk of being in non-compliance are we or are they just seeing that we're making a good faith effort and this is your 12th club you're 12. yes wow well 2009 was the review that

020was done and we do report to the state once a year our progress and we remain in this monitoring mode until all the work is completed so you know we haven't been in compliant there haven't been any complaints the state's been understanding as to the financial limitations that we've had so you know i would like to be complete with this project so we get out of this monitoring mode with the state but it's you know it's something that we are working towards we have made progress so be it slow is the press box uh elevator press box still uh an issue yeah that's still on the list but you know there's there's some easy ways to get around that you know one of the benefits that just waiting so long is that some innovative solutions

021have come along that other school districts have employed that the state's accepted so we don't think we'll ever have to build that press box okay absolutely make the press box accessible by building an elevator is what i should say um and then the other one that a couple months ago there was that air quality bill that was moving through the general assembly did that do we know where that stands is that going to effect i mean is the hvac project in any way going to ameliorate that or satisfy it should it go through or are we still going to be in the hole if that goes through you know faith i'm not familiar with that particular legislation um okay and so i haven't heard of any any bill that's gone through but you know it

022was just one of many but if it's not an issue and you're not hearing about it my guess is it's okay okay thanks okay adam did you have something um i i think faith covered the uh the door project that's the that's the one from last year right where you had to pull out all the brick and and do all those doors in in high school that's the one to talk about okay thanks yes anybody else all right seeing none um item number four contract extension with performance environmental again vin oh thank you i'll just talk through this one i did provide i did share with um with the committee and the board members a recommendation to extend our contract with performance environmental who's been cleaning our schools since 2014 they're currently in the third

023year of a contract we can extend for next year and the following year so we have two more con two more contract extensions remaining before we need to put this out to bid which again we did that three years ago so the couple of things i want to highlight about performance um you know during the pandemic during the early phase of the pandemic which was in march through june of 2020 they were extremely responsive to our plight we basically had a stop service we didn't need them we didn't have students and staff in the building so there was no need to do the daily cleaning and because we didn't have students and staff in the buildings we used our maintenance employees to do the summer cleaning so you know those were you know two financial

024impacts to performance environmental we didn't pay them because they didn't do the work uh and again they were very understanding you know despite the fact that you know we did have a contract you know we didn't pay them because they they weren't doing the work and when we bridged into the 2021 year you know which the fiscal year begins in july we needed a couple of things from performance environmental so i'm talking about the current school year one to really step up um to meet the guidance required by the state for you know cleaning and sanitizing and disinfecting obviously because of covid um and so they had to take on different types of uh in particular disinfecting supplies that were effective against covet you know and that was at their cost um and then the

025second thing that they had to do was we asked them to provide intraday during school days intraday porters that would continually go through the school disinfect the high touch surfaces disinfect all the bathrooms at least one additional time during the day this is in addition to their nightly cleaning and they were able to provide porters in all our buildings that were you know very reliable and very diligent and the dayporters became you know part of the the team of each school so they did a really really great job and i know a lot of school districts struggled to find you know dave porter services and that was within the state's guidance when we started this school year you know i know that this seems like it's it's ancient history but you know it was only

026the beginning of this school year that we needed this service so you know i i would just generally say the performance environmental in addition to being a good contractor you know over the years has really stepped up and performed very well you know for us throughout the pandemic um so the recommendation that i'm putting forth tonight is to extend their contract for an additional year we negotiate negotiated with them pricing wise they've got a couple of things that they brought to the table you know number one the additional cost related to cleaning protocols for covid and the additional cost of the disinfecting supplies that are effective against covert that they'll be supplying that they supply this year that they'll be supplying into next year's contract so that's a cost you know for them and then

027the second and probably the larger issue that they have is that the minimum wage is increasing another dollar per hour as of august 1st of 2021 so that increases their labor cost what they've um they've requested and we negotiated down to is a 38 000 increase in the contract which is about 5.3 percent um the dollar amount that we're talking about if um if approved that base contract would increase to 757 784 however and i think the um the good news here is that's a 38 000 increase but we expect to receive billing credits from them of 56 784 from this contract year so the credit stat will offset credits more than offset the increase so the reality is for next year the total amount we would pay them is 700 hundred ten dollars um

028and then we've budgeted seven hundred eight thousand dollars for the contract year for our cleaning services so from a budget point of view we actually have a little bit of a of a pick up here um so that's the that's the recommendation and the explanation of the financial portions of this and again we we can extend them you know this year and next year if we so choose okay adam do you have a question yes thank you um vin what constitutes the credits and is the um value of the contract renewal built into uh the budget that the council is considering yes so to answer the second question yes we have 708 000 built into the budget we would need 700 000 based on this recommendation um the credits come primarily from work that wasn't

029done um early in the year july and august because we didn't need it done because you know we were closed the prior uh period so that's primarily where those credits are coming from and we you know we'll apply them into next year and uh when is this um extension run through uh would be july 1 21 through um june 30 of 22. okay thanks you're welcome are you looking for us to vote on this tonight well what we've done in the past is the planning committee would vote to put it to the full board of ed okay but we do have the full board of ed here so we could save a step if there's a you know if there's an inclination to approve it and get it done so we don't have to put

030it on the next agenda um i'm okay with that if my colleagues okay with that i'm good with it see some head mo all right so um yes i guess i just need a little bit of help as to what the motion would be are we talking is the what is the dollar amount uh i will get his his the um the motion would be along the lines of the following to um extend the contract with performance environmental llc for the period from july 1 2021 through june 30th 2022 with a base contract cost of thousand seven eighty four okay so moved look does the planning committee get to vote on or does the full board get to vote on right now well i'm assuming the full board can vote because it's a meeting it

031is a meeting of the hall okay do i have a motion for approval yes discussion seeing no discussion all in favor no no oh faith that's a question sorry there's you were frozen go ahead you're on youn still frozen and muted really slow computer tonight there you are um okay so we have one more year to go to extend this contract right after this year is there any way to [Music] set the price for next year also so we at least know what we've got um to do a two-year do a two-year extension i can ask and perhaps you know if nothing else we get um we know what we're budgeting next year and i don't know i open that to the others to see if that makes sense for anybody tim yeah i i'm

032not really i'm not really inclined to do that when is that we did the bid what we did an original bid in 2014 we went back out to bid 2018. right correct i i mean i i think it'd be worthwhile just to go out and do the rfp again i mean every you know every few years just to see where the market is and hopefully they keep providing a good service and they give us the best price again but i don't i don't want to do this in perpetuity particularly the kovid i'm totally you know comfortable with this they've been doing it and we still have the cleaning um they know the cleaning routine but i i don't like doing i don't want to just extend extend them in perpetuity any of these contracts not

033that one year not that one year is but i'm just saying there should be some i just feel like there should be a moment in time when we do go back out to bid no i understand the contract ends in two years but do can we negotiate a rate that covers those two years so we have some constancy in our in our budgeting that's all i mean when we went back out to bed then what was the savings well and they won the bid they underbid themselves correct they did and they actually lowered the price by about forty thousand dollars when they bid this you know for the next they it actually was two years that they bid on that's what we asked for in the bid so they lowered the price by 40 000

034because after serving us for you know four and a half years at the time they went to bid they realized that they could make some internal changes for supervision and so they lowered our price when we got the the next two years they they did they give us a two year price lot the first two years of this current contract and i guess that's what i'm asking if they'd be willing to do it again i can ask you know what i what i would offer is you know you rather than hold this up you know if we approve it this evening i could still ask i mean it doesn't necessarily mean we can't go back and change what we've you know agreed to tonight if they come back with a good two-year price and the

035board wants to consider it i'll bring it back to the board next month a point of order um we're in the middle of a discussion on a motion so we need to either vote it up or vote it down before we can think about uh a two-year extension so or all right so we have a first and we have a second the other option if i get another point order you can also choose a table and definitely take the motion off the table not going on at all yes that can also happen okay um i'd like to have a full vote so can we as the chairman i'm gonna say all in favor for the for the one year yeah for the one year for the motion yeah okay so that's all right fine all

036right okay okay i'm the one who passes what's that i'm the opposed the opposed faith yeah okay anything else in on that do you want me to go back i appreciate the you know approval but do you want me to go back and talk to performance about just give me a two year price you know we we agreed to one year what does the three-year price look like i mean i think i think you should do that yes yes okay right it can't hurt um but the idea is that you would be going back out to bed after after this contract year correct yeah i think it you know i think it is healthy to do that on on this this contract i mean and that is what we're required to do it's either put

037it out to bid or ask for a bid waiver um so the plan is to get it catherine i'm sorry i have a quick the plan is to bid it after this extension not if we go out two years it wouldn't happen until after the second year second year right right right and we couldn't go more than two years with that right right i just i was getting confused yeah we're allowed to go five years okay you know you can get a base contract and extend up to the five years and then it has to either be re-bid or bid waiver grant got it okay thank you you're welcome got it anything else that's it thank you okay thank you all right now we're on to the uh main reason for tonight's meeting item number

038five school modernization plan um we have a couple gentlemen here from collier's tonight um before we get into it i just kind of wanted to give a little kick off to it so school modernization put forth the report um we had the joint meeting between the town council and the board of education back in the beginning of april i hope everyone's had a chance to really digest that report um i know that i'm getting questions i'm sure a lot of people here are wondering what the next steps are and where we're going with this um i think the last thing we want to do is after all these months of work and studies um put this on the shelf and kind of wait to see what happens next um so hopefully what's going to come

039out of tonight we'll come up with some next steps have a discussion see where we're going to be moving um because i really think it's time to move the project forward we have a tight time frame um i personally haven't heard from any members of the public so what i did was i there are a couple things that i see as next steps i could be completely off base but i know the superintendent has a couple ideas also um but i think as a board we need to come up with how we're gonna get our this project either moved to the town council for november for a referendum um or go back to the drawing board so it's either we have to go in here or we're gonna just kind of be stuck in this

040holding pattern um so that the the first thing that i think that needs to happen um is the osdgr was pretty adamant that they wanted to know how the community felt about the different scenarios that were developed um i think that it was to schedule a series of public outreach campaigns or public forums community type meetings um i was discussing with vin the other day and we have these great circus tents at all the schools um so in this current world that we're living in with social distancing requirements etc cetera it might be nice to hold some outdoor type forms we have the tents through graduation i believe then so at least through mid-june until it's the end of april so we have about a month and a half i'd like to and i could

041be off with this but i'd like to have like two or three forms at various times have like a a daytime form for some families you know some people that are home with their kids that they can come and listen different scenarios are what the school modernization findings were um an evening type setting maybe at the thorpe auditorium if we could use cheshire high school um and then another one at another elementary school kind of give various options at various times to get that public input i think we need to hear what everyone else has to say because you know there's little bits on the community forum we've got some emails here and there but i think having everyone in one place where we could field some comments and questions to really get a good

042um barometer as to you know where we're going with the school modernization um secondly um i think that we need to issue another rfp i think we need to come up with a idea as to how we're going to you know we're saying two new elementary schools one in the north and one in the south um i think we need to figure out where these schools can be located where they can't fit can one fit on an existing school site does that make the most sense we have some information on that but we don't actually have geo tests borings we don't have you know the capacity for the water and sewer and where these it could best be schools could best be located whether it be the new elementary schools or the new 63 middle

043school depending on which way we go also as part of that our conversation continues to go towards hummuston school and what we're going to do with that um i think that we should have some sort of feasibility study done on hummuston school um i don't think it has to be like complete in-depth but i think that we need to see what the programming is in that school where we might be able to relocate it and actually come up with a menu of options because um things always kind of like fall back to hummuston school and so i want to kind of get that discussion out there and come up with some real data and facts about that building um third and maybe most importantly is education specifications um i know that they were done uh

044by the last consultant for the new six through eight middle school i don't think they've been done for the new elementary schools um so i think that we need to i'm not sure if we can do all of that internally we might need to hire a consultant to help to move that along um so those are kind of my ideas just you know i've been thinking about this a lot lately because i don't want this to just kind of it's kind of got quiet for a little while the school modernization committee is done the reports are out there i hope that all of you had a chance to read that 68-page document because a lot of information in there um and it was a lot of the question here and read on the community forum

045if people just take the time to read the report um i think that it would answer a lot of those questions um a lot of people don't have the time that's why i think that the forms might also be good in order to get a lot so that's kind of my spiel i'm you know i appreciate everyone having the time or putting the time away side to come here tonight um and then with that i think adam has a question but what i'm not going to do i'm not gonna go back through all the scenarios i mean i have a slideshow but hopefully we all know what the scenarios are at this point um i think if we have specific questions we can ask um the folks here that are here from colliers but um

046with that adam your question i think catherine was first or no maybe yeah no captain there you go catherine go for it yes yeah so um i just as a matter of like the timeline so we are as the board of education um are we saying that we're not going to make any real decisions about what we think the right answer is before we do these community forums and um you know get get public input i i i guess i was thinking that we would be a little more proactive or getting you know making some judgments about what we think is the educationally you know optimum um proposal and you know at the same time that we're getting feedback but it feels like now you're it's you're saying that we would go through this uh

047forum process and then start figuring out what we think educationally makes sense am i getting confused by where we're going which is definitely a possibility no i mean jeff did you wanna yeah i think you know if you don't mind me jumping in here thanks andrew that the the timing is such i think catherine that it it's okay to do things concurrently this is a fluid process and there are a lot of variables that play into this decision and so i don't think it's a problem for people to articulate where they stand today with the understanding that we're reasonable people and that it's it's not we're not at the starting line we're midway through the process and that there are going to be a lot of variables that we kick around to ultimately come to

048that conclusion uh i think anybody who says this is the only way that can be done today is a fool that there's just you know it's it's premature to come to you know conclusions i think we have opinions based on um information shared to date tony had asked me to kind of share my perspective as it stands right now with the board and i i wanted to just take you through real quick um where that is i i'm hopeful that i can do that in like 10 minutes um so i'm just going to present my screen real quick uh well jeff before you do that do you want to andrew do you want to attain adam's question in my comment before we get into it sure adam um i'm guessing probably uh jeff's presentation will

049probably answer a lot of my questions but i guess but my comment really is my vision for for me personally is if we're gonna invite the public to come and ask questions that we should have some answers like where do we think maybe these schools could be built and how much do we think that it's going to cost the taxpayer do we have an idea of how much their taxes are going to go up if we pursue project a or project b um i think those are that's some good information that we could have and i don't know if like the test fitting that you mentioned um if those if that could happen in a month i don't know if it could happen that quickly or not or to have some kind of idea because

050even like there were questions from smc if there was even um you know talking about the sixth grade middle school if there's even 30 acres available to build a school that large in this town that that was a very big question and the one that wasn't really answered in all of the meetings uh that that they had so i think that's an important question because even you could be an advocate of six to eight but if you can't actually build it anywhere then then what do you do so even if perhaps that's the best option for modernizing our educational system what if you can't build it somewhere what happens next um so i think that's kind of the questions that maybe we need to have some preliminary answers for before we go to the public

051or else we're just listening to people give their opinion and that's great but they should also have some facts to base their opinions on yeah i i i'm i'm gonna admit jeff thanks for chiming in about doing things in parallel i i have no issue getting public input before we make a decision but damn's point and catharines we need some details um you know um you know i know the preferred option for him to see he's at two elementary schools that that is the way to go you know is that gonna be the same model we have today there's any different programming is that an opportunity to do things differently you know where would they be located you know how does it impact my kids if i'm in northern cheshire right you know the whole

052region so and we have a lot a lot of facts around that and i think by the time we begin engaging our stakeholders they'll there'll be more details to share i think that jeff will talk about some specs tonight a little bit um but yeah i i will tell you and i did talk to uh chairman orris earlier to see in atlanta that we are meeting tonight and i say one of the things that we all asked and was lingering from smc is what land is available for any of these options and all right well they truly fit and the last time we did this um you know we had a design done at a school and then i don't know if we got as far as a test fit uh but it would be

053good to know if it is option six with the two elementary schools is a norton property chapter and you'll accommodate that yes or no i wouldn't assume if it's six or eight you know so we can do all that stuff in parallel but the only thing i want to say is android disagree by no means are we any type of holding pattern nothing slowed down we're not dragging our feet maybe you feel that way but i certainly don't the presentation was given to us april 6th lots of information and discussions had since then with the administration here we are tonight so i don't think that's the case at all uh that being said though uh with town council i can tell you that they're finishing up their budgets so they'll be actively engaged in this

054in a couple weeks uh so some of them so by time they get engaged maybe we have some answers uh especially if they do test fits we'll probably need their help so that being said let's get cracking i think that was my introduction um so uh let's see [Music] okay so everybody can see the powerpoint okay yes yes all right so you know actually the previous slide preparing for 2034 the relevance of that is that's next year's kindergarten class it sounds like a science fiction date but you know that's what we're building buildings for students who are going through starting our school system now have to be relevant then i wanted to share these pictures they're not out of a magazine or some faraway place this is on the left guildford high school on the

055right depaolo middle school or jfk has the exact same design in southington on the left that's eli terry elementary school in south windsor on the right that's the auditorium at hampden middle school and i share this because you guys are all familiar with our buildings our communities familiar with the buildings i i can pick any districts almost in the surrounding area and pull up pictures like this to illustrate again just providing the importance that we have to move forward a very quick recap i know andrew talked about where we've been but for the community you know there's a strong agreement across the board that we have to move forward uh the committee put forth two um preferred recommendations first of all they have a primary recommendation i think andrew said it was 9-3 i think

056that's that's what it was uh in the vote on the committee to move this forward as the primary two elementary schools one located at the north end one at the south end possibly at the norton site uh the existing norton elementary school site so basically taking trees down in the rear of that property building a new elementary school and then there are subsequent uh phases that you see at the bottom there renovations to the other schools basically so the cost of that the primary cost option the estimate was that it would the the total of all of the work to be done on the high end would be 329.76 and that's you know so the way that it was uh priced out for the average taxpayer was that we do all of this within a

05710-year window which i think is ambitious probably isn't even the right word insane might be a better word um so i i really don't think we're gonna do that in a 10-year window but for the sake of argument that's what it was phase one only which are the highlighted items on the sheet new elementary school north and south cost the average cheshire taxpayer 3256 a month and it services uh 1332 students at the peak between the two buildings that's the enrollment peak between the two that it would be servicing at one time the secondary option called for a new six through eight middle school and a new k through five elementary school to replace chapman uh potentially on the existing site based on a test fit similar remainder to phase one and similar in phase

058two and three where we're renovating all the other schools the cost there is 340 million on the estimated district share on the on the high end uh in this case if we were to do both a new six through eight middle school and the new chapman uh in that first phase that cost would be an average of uh 46 a month to the average taxpayer it would serve 300 more students at 1687 total students so what are the next steps we've got all that information where do we move from here and you know i'm just echoing i guess a lot of what andrew suggested earlier that you know we have to identify what additional information is necessary to move forward and that's something you know that that um chuck had um shared with me you

059know in a phone call before too that this is what we we really need to consider that so would a new school fit on the chapman or norton property is a question you know what impact does swing space have on on future costs so um if we were to renovate buildings and not have dot available there's a fiscal impact on that versus um if we had dot and we're able to put students there while we renovate other buildings it's safer faster more efficient cost wise but i don't know the net on that and that's something that we would need help with how does the community feel about preferred options obviously that's a critical piece that and brought up that we need to to kind of vet out what are the available options for the hummuston

060building again like andrew said identify the educational benefits and the preferred option i think that's something that we all hold particularly in this body to be quite critical um what's the merit of that and i'm going to speak to that momentarily i mentioned further engaged stakeholders in the modernization review process whether it be through forum survey more how do we get feedback on these different ideas that we're pursuing to make sure that it works for the town and then ultimately you know extending our relationship with colliers to make sure that we're talking about ed specs that's not something that we have the professional capacity to fully facilitate and we did that previously on the middle school with the help of another firm um and you know we would need that sort of similar help here

061to spec out elementary schools and for me as i thought a lot about this and talked to ben and marlene a bit the it comes down to those three terms at the bottom the logistics of these things is it even feasible is this does this mix how does it impact learning and then what's the cost um and as i mentioned before there's not really there's no magic bullet out there there are there are different ways that we could go about this and still meet the needs of our community and our students at a cost that makes sense so we just have to you know identify those areas so my perspective on the two different proposals on the primary proposal learning in essence it's a status quo certainly the buildings are updated but we look a

062lot like we did before with six uh k through six elementary schools again that's that's not a bad thing this is that's a good thing um logistics uh it's it's pretty straightforward and the fact that students remain in their home schools and the cost significantly or excuse me slightly less than secondary preference before consider considering um swing space or for hummus to needs on the second one i mean that's um a much different animal and the fact that we're building a new six through a which is different than the configuration that we have today so uh the logistics of that like the elementary proposal it's pretty much students are in their home district still the difference being in sixth grade now you go to a middle school as opposed to the elementary school that you

063were in previously again slightly more expensive cost with the construction of the new chapman before we consider swing space i don't know what that does to the cost but i think it brings it down based on previous conversations over the over the long term i mean it brings it down so the configuration conundrum this has been something we've been talking about for uh probably four four years or so five years in the district you know what about six through eight versus seventy and really the the research and i've i've read through a lot of information on this in terms of what's best right so in terms of the academic progress of students most researchers agree the quality of the school and classroom instruction are more important than grade configuration we talk about this a lot

064just in terms of our professional growth the bottom line is what happens in the room with the students um and you know that we say that really district-wide but certainly in terms of configuration it's the most critical thing is what happens in the classroom um and then there's you know other research that say mixed results it's just really about the instruction that students receive the state did say that uh on one hand you know they're concerned about a very large middle school um even though i think there is more of a trend toward that with like uh hampden adding on to make their but their sixth grade in hampden middle school and that'll make it over i think 1300 students and they're all on on one hand and then on the other hand the state

065is also saying more communities are shifting through to a six through eight model so when i think about the learning component of this i went right to the classroom in cheshire to get our information and i pulled the sixth grade teachers in this seventh and eighth grade department chairs and team leaders about you know what is your preference on the inclusion of sixth in the new middle school and we kind of had known that there was a preference from this from the listening tours that were done at the early stages of the smc process but this is um to me a fairly strong visual that 90 percent of our staff either strongly prefer prefer the sixth graders in a middle school environment um with only you know three of the respondents in the neutral category

066there was nobody that didn't prefer it which i found quite interesting we there was an open-ended component as well so what are the challenges of the six through eight do you think none was the most frequent response which you know i asked them to can you elaborate here a little bit but um larger building in student body we recognize that um and for most of our elementary students when they make the transition it's a larger building now um with the exception of highland uh additional ua and counseling staff would be necessary to ensure that we're providing continuing to provide a high quality experience to our sixth graders if we want them to have that middle school style experience with more unified arts offerings then we need to be able to support that that there's not

067recess i think two people had said that and then you know the question people were raising is that instead of growing up too fast issue when i asked when i pressed them for challenges on the benefits that they identified they indicated and we talked about this that in many cases the educational standards are clustered around a six through eight uh environment a lot of the resources are structured that way i i can speak on a first-hand knowledge of being the assistant principal and principal dodd for seven years that it is a challenge that students are either coming or going you're either you know induction with kids just getting them into the middle school or you're prepping them to leave that there's not a sustained time period there that we can have a little bit more

068depth with our students obviously you know people identified more opportunity for specials and extracurricular activities and then you know many people cited the fact that sixth graders are developmentally ready for a middle school environment that 11 to 13 cluster as opposed to being in elementary school with four and five-year-olds they're much developmentally much closer to that you know thirteen-year-old than they are the early elementary student now just like in elementary school you don't put a sixth grade class next to the kindergarten room um you don't do sixth grade next to the eighth grade classroom either we'll talk a little bit about that but i think you know the fear that some parents and you know i have a sixth grader right now who's in a six through eight middle school it's easy to get that

069oh my god you know my baby's going to middle school they're going to come home with a biker jacket and marlboro's wrapped up in their sleeve or something with a tattoo it it doesn't happen that way but i i appreciate of course you know obviously i'm being a little bit more colorful and facetious uh but there is that anxiety that occurs and i i understand that but developmentally really it's an age group where students are ready to make that transition so middle school teachers also hold specialized certification so rather than um the the really tall effort we make our uh sixth grader sixth grade teachers go through now where you're teaching multiple content areas often um here are their specialists within the one content area and i thought this quote was interesting from one of

070the people that responded i currently work in the largest elementary school and have always felt despite its size that we're a close community i think the benefits of moving the sixth grade to the middle school outweigh any concerns and you know i can tell you again quite personally from my experience that the middle school is also a tight community and the high school is a tight community though that it's not always predicated based on size it's based on relationships and that's all about uh organizational structures and supports so what did the teachers it i asked them if the community were to move forward with the six through eight middle school what would you recommend and they said you know separate wings restrooms hallways by grade is feasible we do that now um so seventh grade

071is all on the the top floor at dodd middle school and eighth grade's on the bottom floor i'd do the same thing i worked at moran middle school in wallingford six seven eight uh sixth graders were on the bottom floor seventh and eighth on the top floor it's just that's uh generally by design how you would do things the same way as at the elementary schools they're kind of clustered by grade levels there as well that we maintain teaming pods or houses we have teaming now at the elementary earth excuse me at the middle school if you're familiar we'll have math english science social studies together in one little group the students travel really predominantly within that one little group they may see kids on other teams when they go to unified arts maybe when

072they go to lunch but it's an intimate environment and that's by design to make sure that we continue to have that close-knit community and then ultimately they suggested that we have to ensure there's adequate staffing so you know we'd have to have another counselor at the middle school in order to to do this well for our kids stuff like that so what is my position you know tony was asking like and again i i i i'm not casting this in concrete i'm saying like as of today where would i fall uh and you know certainly through a lot of conversation with vin and marlene we're a very collaborative effort here that there's unanimous agreement excuse me i wasn't going to sneeze this is just so emotional for me no i'm kidding i um but anyway

073there's unanimous agreement among central office administration right now that based on what we know today from feedback from our teaching staff again i don't have community feedback around this issue we don't they're logistically is there even space for these things but based on what we know right now we have the strong recommendation that both options be pursued for logistical cost and educational merit and of course community support but we feel like the six through eight uh is the best option and back in in february the three of us had written a letter to the smc kind of outlining that now at that time uh it was six through eight middle school or seven eight middle school in new chapman um and you know i'll share this with you you can review the letter that the

074three of us wrote um that outlines you know basically why we came to this conclusion but i i think you know certainly everybody on the board in the community cost is one of the three variables that's an important consideration and so you know i am conscious of and i think this is again something that we would have to vet out a little bit more clearly does um if we build a new six through eight middle school and siphon off all the sixth grade and then i i do realize that chapman needs to be addressed sooner rather than later um is that an enrollment requirement in phase one could that be a phase two how does that impact uh financing over time i don't but again i mean this is one of those things where i

075had thrown out there are a lot of variables that have to be chased down um and so i i share i'll share this with you the powerpoint presentation which has the letter uh and you know this is the kickoff for us as far as i'm concerned but i know tony you had a question i think you know chuck and john they want to weigh in too yeah and i noticed this earlier but in regards to hummuston um last time around uh the sixth rate middle school back in uh where we landed back then we definitely were looking and even post that looking at the building the former lexington building you know we saw opportunities to weave in the alternative high school and board of education offices in a building that size and if it is

076a sixth grade middle school i would like to see that incorporate into the design and see if it fits again you know parcel and all that but even at two elementary schools would it would it also be feasible i think the board we need to conserve this too is as an opportunity that there's two new elementary schools there's an opportunity to you know move both alternative high school and board of soft offices to one or both those two new buildings may corvette the design and um you know jeff and i were talking a little bit about that a few weeks ago and there's some maybe perception issues between the author of high school and elementary school but you know if you separate things by grade levels you know that might be feasible um and unless

077you want to add on this uh a couple months ago if it was not three months ago vincent shared a detailed outline of thoughts he had around hummuston and i think this was spawned by jim jinx when he did some research and found that hummuston was uh in historic district that there might be some grant available potentially um to help offset renovation costs and i think at the time vincent was i think i forwarded just a few members of the board i think andrew might have this too but uh it was maybe having the planning committee either as part of this process or in parallel do some research on hummus and see if that's even viable um not that i want to muddy the waters here with hummuston but just something to consider there are

078options to do something with the hummuston function in any of these scenarios so if there's an opportunity to uh weave it in this part of design i would encourage us to to look into it that's all now adam thanks um if the uh as i mentioned before if there's even if there's not even a parcel that exists that could uh build a sixth grade middle school we do have new technology um and this might be something that's not even been considered could you in essence create a virtual middle school with the technology we have for because i don't know what what you know the interactivity between all of the sixth grade classes um but it seemed like the technology that we saw that with the microphones and cameras that you could have at least an

079alternative view where you could still um you know achieve your educational goals through the use of technology if the you know the physical middle school was on oh and they was unable to be built is that an option or something that had been considered um yeah i think i think that would be um really i don't know that the experience of the middle school at this time could be replicated through technology as much as we're able to um you know synchronously learn that is a very tall order but just having access to unified arts classrooms you know we'd have to decide if world language you know would receive the same amount of instruction in sixth grade as it currently does in seven and eight uh the extracurricular activities couldn't be replicated um you know the

080the certifications i mean we could probably address that now and have people strictly teaching one content area except you know from maybe a chapman where you just don't have enough teachers under the one roof to be able to pull that off um so there there is benefit to pulling our students together and that we do gain some efficiency um i know you know many of you on the board have heard me talk about you know if you have um let's say 52 students you know 54 students it in fifth grade at chapman now that's three classrooms that are really small because you're not going to do two classes as 27 in fifth grade there and not have that so now you have three classrooms that are really small the when you increase the pool the

081number of students it levels off the classrooms much easier so there is some efficiency to it but to try and offer sixth grade and elementary schools on a middle school scale would just be really inefficient because you'd have to bring in more ua teachers and things like that it wouldn't make sense for only that one grade level right so then essentially when you write the when whoever writes you write the ed specs then that consideration would need to be written for when you do if you do the k through six as well two so you can sort more modernize perhaps the requirements in those new spaces true faith thanks um so what i'm taking away at the most basic point jeff is the fact that educationally whether we go k i'm k six or six

082through eight it all depends on the instruction and really ultimately that's the determinant of success the quality of the instruction and and configuration you know it's um down the list whether it's a six eight or a k five i'm not arguing either way against it but it's what goes on in the classroom regardless of where those classrooms are right for academic success um really it's about instruction at any grade level any configuration primarily um and at the end at the end of the day that's our responsibility is to ensure that the best so my point is you know where i stand i i am favorable to the k-6 but you know if if if the board goes with the 6-8 and and it that is our ultimate goal then you know clearly i can be

083persuaded but i am concerned um you gotta persuade the parents because they're they're babies you know and and i it's great you did the teacher survey but um i think if you are going to make the case you have got to get to the parents and ask their opinions um just as thoroughly as you ask the teachers yeah i i yeah i wouldn't uh suggest otherwise okay um and you know it probably sooner rather than later so we also have some guidance as we're trying to make this um as we're trying to make this decision as well yeah but i think it's important you know to also have the professional perspective from the people who do this uh so i think you need them both um but uh you know i wanted to make sure

084we had i wanted to make sure before i suggested from my professional perspective what i felt was best in this particular situation and again it's not slam dunk no-brainer this is the only way you can go but i wanted to make sure that i wasn't out on a limb with uh the people who educate our kids in the classroom every day thinking something else well i totally concur with you and i'm not trying to undermine the teacher's survey no no i know you know the state is also pushing the standards to that you know k568 configuration that is something to keep in mind um yeah my fear is that you know 10 years down the road they're going to go back and another some model and and we'll be doing this again but um just

085my recommendation is make sure the parents are on board if you're going to make that recommendation that's all yep tim thanks andrew uh a few things um first point is just to help people at home who are watching this sort of visualize what we're talking about when we uh discuss hummuston what what's the size of vin you might know it what's the small the square footprint of our smallest school chapman 50 000 square feet i'm thinking the high school is over two hundred thousand we've got about eight hundred thousand square feet total i still can't hear vin at all you're on mute yeah i mean great i need an auto mute unmute button um yeah well i'll check on chapman as we're talking here i know the high school is 275 000 square feet approximately

086okay uh yes and then so we've got another 500 000 square feet divided up among seven schools that includes hummuston which is 15 000 square feet split in half half administrative half uh the hummus in school so it's 75 you could take 7 500 square feet in relation to say 100 000 square foot building it's it's something that uh i mean hummingston has you know its own uses that need to be addressed thoughtfully but at the same time in terms of like land space uh i think it's probably something that would be able to fit in just about any of these options um jeff you had mentioned in your slide deck you had a slide where you had 27 teachers i think who were the what was the what was your group of people was

087it 27 6th grade teachers you said 90 of of what i didn't catch that yeah so on the slide it's a survey of sixth grade teachers there's 16 of those okay and 11 department leaders or team leaders that died and 90 of them either strongly prefer or prefer sixth grade in middle school okay in three people we're neutral okay and so the department leaders so that's not every teacher at dot it's department so it's like social studies department you have the department leader for each content area including unified arts and the team leaders so we put students in groups on teams and each team has a leader uh seventh and eighth grade so the the group is representative of our you know teacher leaders at the middle school level sure okay i just i didn't

088quite catch all that with this slide that's what i wanted to understand um let me see uh you mentioned in your slide deck that norton being if i heard you correctly you said that the recommendation of this smc was to demolish norton after a new norton is constructed okay but that was the recommendation it wasn't use the norton site and expand it or anything like that because i don't know no it was built on the norton property at the rear of the property and then demolish the building that's there okay because i hadn't caught that before that that was the recommendation i under just understood this to be use the norton site okay yeah it was a it wasn't an all or nothing recommendation i think that the idea and correct me if i'm wrong

089chuck or anybody who was on the committee was that um you know that be explored the potential for that like right but the potential for demolishing it and putting up a new one um putting up a new one on the norton site and demolishing that be you have to test fit that you you know we don't want to just say yeah why don't we do that and then realize uh wait a minute this isn't going to work yeah also contingent on a like a service with what is now in essence a unpaved service road between the north property and the neighborhood behind norton i forgive me for not knowing the name off the top my head but that would have to be expanded for legitimate traffic okay so that's another question i had on access

090i'm not sure if you're talking about sharon drive or farmington presumably one of those two roads have we gotten any have we done like a a title search nothing for okay that's one of those logistical issues that you know again i think we have to explore that if we were to find that you know this is impossible on the norton property what we're looking to do and that there's no other land anywhere to do this well that that really hinders that option or you know if we found that there's no place to build enough for a middle school that would certainly hinder that option so you know i think the logistics uh really are a legitimate factor here they have to be resolved before we can definitively make a recommendation is there anything is there

091anything holding up like doing a title search or anything on on access to norton is this something we could not play the purge i mean i'm just hoping that something like that could happen i don't know who would do it the town has uh he's talked to the folks over there you know i i did speak to the town planner there is a 50 foot something out to sharon drive you know but the town planner explained that based on the records he has he can't tell if it's a right-of-way and he's meant but we know 50 foot wide and so you know he suggested that we would have to you know basically go to the town attorney to make information on what it is so it certainly can be explored further we haven't taken that

092step and while i have before him you're right chapman is actually about 54 000 square feet okay all right yeah i mean i just think some of those logistical things hopefully we can get answers to those quickly um just going back to norton that goes empty out sharon drive yep okay yeah understood thank you um let me see uh with regard to the meetings andrew thank you for that uh going back to faith you were talking about bringing in you know getting feedback from parents kovid it's not easy to do that or hasn't been at least in the past year so yeah i i really do hope we can schedule some meetings one thought crossing my mind besides what i mentioned a week ago which is trying to make it accessible making people feel comfortable

093come to our meetings so i think outdoors would probably be good using the tents would be great just keep nightfall in mind i don't know if we've got lights frankly i think people would probably prefer to have it during the daylight um i know i would but it's just a little bit more awkward having outdoor meetings at night shouldn't be too bad you know as we approach june it's getting you know it's light pretty laid out but i'm totally open to like a week i know we don't normally do weekend meetings or anything but we want to do something you know saturday morning whatever it might be but i definitely we def i strongly believe we should have these meetings scheduled and happen before school gets out because i have a feeling school gets out

094and people are whew let me see uh and as i would i would like to um you know it seems to me that in either of these options we're looking at chapman that's something happening there so um just moving forward on that and not slowing down on i'm not saying i didn't mean to say that something would happen in chapman because the voters could reject it but in both of these options something is happening at chapman so moving down a path on that right now uh i don't see any reason if we're looking at you know locations and stuff i get that with either a middle school or with norton or a south end school but with chapman i think we should just be moving forward as quickly as possible and then one of the

095issues there tim was test fit the chapman site sure i think if we're talking about a larger chapman it's the chapman that's there now is pretty tight yep and it's a smaller school if we're talking about that we'd certainly have to test fit that through the help of an architectural firm or identify another location sure no and i get that i mean i realize that this you know i any of these discussions can be um you know with any policy decision there's winners and losers and and uh it's a sensitive it's a sensitive topic but i i'm just saying i think we should move forward as quickly as possible at least i mean at least on the chapman those discussions would have to happen those those uh with the architects and the test fit and

096stuff but i'm thinking that should be able to move forward right now um and then the last the my last point is i've said it before which is just um well yeah design for a test fit and do all that stuff um and then the last point i'll just make with regard to sort of where i'm leaning that you know i am open to either of these options but where i'm leaning right now as i've said before is uh staying with the k-6 model you know if i hear the compelling reasons the studies that sort of demonstrate that the six through eight model is uh significantly better than the status quo which is k through six then um i'm open to it i'm open to hearing what the parents say you know obviously they're the

097boss as far as i'm concerned but where i am right now uh is probably just you know k through six model and i feel like there is a you know people move here to town for the schools that's a big part of it um and there's sort of a social compact that exists it's not written written in stone but that does exist there's an expectation there so that's it thank you andrew for the time sure um so for those who have additional questions i i would like to throw it to poliors quickly i'd like to have them weigh in and kind of i've heard i think they've heard a lot of what our discussion has been here tonight in superintendent's report i'd like to hear what they think um as our experts in the field

098about what our next steps uh may or may not be is that anna are you okay with that i know you're next in the line okay i'm fine with that but i do have something to add okay but i can wait till after i hold it you're next you're up right after the uh chuck all right um yeah we'll make it quick um i i think jeff hit on a lot of good points as he mentioned we talked before a little bit about it um i think there's two components obviously and i think you had on andrew the um town council's busy with their budgeting session and so they're they're um when we left off in eight uh it seemed like a long time ago three weeks ago um they left off and it sounded

099like they had some questions they wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the financial side of things right and what's financially you know fiscally responsible in looking at those two so i think that that aspects in the town council's side of things if you will um obviously educational is in with this group and the board of ed um and just like jeff said i think the next steps are um looking at these are these test fits um you know are they really feasible whether um it's the norton site and by the way the town planner gave us four sites that they deemed feasible or possible at least town owned in the town for schools um one of them was the norton site one's the casualtano property up on um is it um what's the

100road up there marion jarvis marion jarvis yep um and that was a test fit years ago i believe um cheshire park um and then you know bartlett park but that doesn't sound like that's a possibility so they didn't mention those four but i think we just we will need to do a test fit engage with the design firm put out an rfp um probably cool chapman include norton maybe look at hummus and we put together a detailed scope of work and and test fit these we were talking about them we're talking about high level you know we need to start getting a little more granular with these options i think and that's the next step in the process like jeff's i think going parallel with doing your community outreach getting some feedback talk about some

101of the options and and and that was more for suggestion with oscgr we've done the survey but i think they want to make sure hey if you go through with a referendum does the community support and that was really the gist of their recommendation for it um i think really the next step we're kind of in this between we we had a phase two where we studied the options the next phase is due diligence i think we're like a 2b it's like we got to do a little more cooking on the two and the sex options um and and dive a little deeper on those maybe do some of those geotechnical horns that you mentioned andrew but i think the test fits the first the first part before we spend money on test bits and

102phase one environmental site assessments i think really doing a high level test fit with a design firm going can we fit a building of x amount of square feet have the vehicular circulation the parent drop off the bus drop off because these new configurations especially elementary schools they don't work like you have them now they are there's a lot of circulation so i think those are the next steps um parallels best fits and maybe some community engagement and some feedback so chuck as adam pointed out do you you don't think it's going to lead to more questions like if we go out and we start engaging the community and asking these questions we don't have a site set in stone i mean do you think that's going to be a major issue as far as

103the site i think you know and i'm just thinking out loud here i think you can i don't think we ask them what do they want to do see it's the recommendation is is you know option six for the two elementary schools which needs to be verified if if for some reason like jeff said if hey if uh through the feasibility study in the test fit it doesn't we can't support it it may lean towards option two but those are the two options i would stick with i wouldn't open the pandora's box again those were what smc recommended now we just got to figure now it's the logistics of how do we execute this plan and we have to study more it's it's it's like it's like a study you go through high level we

104drill down a little farther we drill down a little bit more we drill a little bit more net and that's we're in that second level drilling down a little bit further now that we have the two options we're focusing on those a little bit more before we go too far into again geotechnical bourns even specs i wouldn't even draft head specs right now i'll wait until we do a test fit and go is it feasible yes no if yes let's do a diagram go to the next phase okay a little bit deeper maybe some med specs maybe some geotech refine those budgets for it but i wouldn't open up to what do they think they want to do just hey you know this is the point we have what's your feedback on on what we're

105recommending i think that's probably what you're looking for but i'm an engineer so i keep it more black and white so i think that's what we might we need that right um so from what i'm hearing from you is the next step is an rfp for test fit from an architectural firm to do the next feasibility study on the different options good next step i i think let's get a little more grailer we've been talking so high level and you've heard it from us so we you know we think that's a possibility in the northern part of the north or the northern part of um chapman let's sit now and stop talking about it and start doing it and looking at it and get something on a map and really have something for you guys

106to put your hands on and see in their concepts right they're not going to be the final product but is it feasible yes or no because it might be a check box no all right let's move on let's stop talking about it and move on to the next solution not to hold you to this but how long would you think something like that would take um we could develop you know say if we get engaged like next week and and move you know um we could put together an rfp probably in a week week and a half um and if i'm not sure it depends if it's through the board of ed body uh i know the smc is kind of done with their work so uh if it's through this body we can put

107those together that rfp uh in about a week you know probably two weeks by time you approve it and redo it get it out in the straight couple weeks to get up get get uh some proposals we would get a lot of activity um we could talk about those logistics there um but uh you're probably talking two two and a half months to realistically get a feasibility study um i think andrew okay thank you uh andrew so chuck essentially what you're saying and i appreciate the engineering point of view too you know i like the idea of a diagram because that's not actually a good thing for us was i think all of us on this board except with andrew we haven't built a new school before um or did a major renovation so it's

108it's nice to don't take for granted that we know the steps um but we're getting better at that but i think what you're also saying is we need to move in more of an agile fashion we can't be too rigid to say okay let's spend two months on xbox and then spend another two months in step c we gotta do some things in parallel uh so i'm absolutely in favor of getting a location or locations uh identified that will fit one or more scenarios right because without that we're going to be spinning our wheels on things that may not matter secondly you know as far as rfps there is no budget for the board of ed for money for rfps now it doesn't mean that we can't get creative uh but it also means when

109we get to that point i i would believe the town council would absolutely support something like this because they too we need to know okay where will these things fit do we have properties and get some sense of that so you know if we move forward with the rfps uh you know we'll certainly work with the town side to figure out how we take care of that but but i appreciate you uh trying to push that f4 i think that's critical for us to do right now yeah yeah and yeah thank you and uh thank you chuck for your assessment i also appreciate your engineering uh perspective on the whole thing and something that i really wanted to make sure that we start talking about because we were talking about it three four five six

110years ago a lot was the fact that dodd middle school does not fit where it's located and that was really a driving factor and um for me i couple that with when i listen to the public who is giving me their um their opinions of what they want and don't want in this modernization process i'm hearing loud and clear that people like their neighborhood elementary schools they like them because they're small they're intimate and they're in the neighborhoods well that is exactly the problem with dodd middle school it's in a neighborhood and it doesn't fit there and the parking is a problem and when you have special functions you you have people all over parking all over people's properties or in front of their driveways or whatever gets people upset at any rate one of

111the things that parents also need to think about it's not just a matter of do i want my sixth grader in a six to eight middle school setting or do i want them in in the elementary school setting they're really also have to weigh that against do i want smaller elementary schools that aren't bursting at the seams so that they fit in the neighborhood and that we can have traffic flow in and out and it doesn't bother um all the neighbors in that neighborhood sorry i got a pop-up and um and those things are really counter to each other so if we kept our we could keep our elementary schools a little bit smaller if we take the six grades out we also solve the problem of the fit of dodd middle school even if

112it remains a seven through eight it doesn't fit in that neighborhood where it's located and um i just think we need to talk about that more and that's part of the community input that i also would be really um interested in hearing from people parents and neighborhoods people who don't have kids in the schools but still like having an elementary school in their neighborhood and we know that the the neighborhood around dodd doesn't like having the middle school because it creates it creates problems so as our schools get bigger because apparently cheshire is growing and our elementary schools enrollment is is just bursting my i really have a big worry about our elementary schools all of them being made pretty much to full capacity sizes and still having them feel like elementary schools in neighborhoods

113without disrupting what's going on in the neighborhoods still keeping that neighborhood feel and and i'm worried about that because that's what i'm hearing really loud and clear from people who are talking to me about their elementary schools so i just wanted to add that and make sure that that's something that we are also asking um community opinions about just you know the locations and and that's part of the test fit and i don't hear us talking about test fitting um dodd anymore but i hear us pushing any kind of renovation to dodd down to i don't know how many years down the road um but it's been in a in a difficult situation for a while now and uh you know my hope is that that situation would get taken care of as well as

114the enrollment problem and as well as keeping our neighborhood schools at a size and and level that makes people happy with their with their school so that's all i wanted to add thank you thank you um my first question i guess i i guess my questions will be directed towards chuck but this may require some sort of institutional knowledge um so uh i remember early on in the process or somewhere around there you had made comments about uh chuck to chuck about how would we get heavy equipment into the norton area to do any kind of construction um and so that brought to mind i was just at a baseball practice this weekend um over there and and i'm and i'm staring at the the addition that was done in the 90s wondering well how

115did they get equipment back there in the 90s did they did they use that side road coming off of farmington avenue or did they just carefully drive things around the gymnasium and i wasn't sure if anyone knew exactly how the construction equipment got back there to build a rather large edition uh in the 90s that that would that's my first i guess like a statement question i'm not sure how it was done um secondly um and perhaps this is my own ignorance but you you had mentioned bartleum park and i thought that the parcel that we purchased was only 10 acres so i thought and an elementary school cars i thought 20 and a middle school would require 30. so is there some sort of um like thought where you would what use the fields

116that are already there as part of the equation to build a school at on the parcel that we purchased or how would bartland park work in in that equation yeah honestly adam um to that one you know we um that wasn't our recommendation i think the exercise that occurred during our process um because there was a lot of open part there's a large list that's provided by the the planner some of them had open d restrictions some of them didn't have them and we were kind of going through a lot of discussions through many meetings and ultimately i think the the thought was okay let's go back to the planner and ask them to weed down all these open these these town-owned parcels that could possibly be used um i don't think parliament was necessarily

117vetted out per se for a school like we didn't look at and go yeah we could i don't think anybody really suggested using it it just happened to be one of the four town-owned parcels for it so i i my hunch i don't think anybody's necessarily really looking at that on a realistic scale okay from what i've heard i know i know some of the folks from wesson and sampson that have worked on some of the plans there i'm i'm friends with a couple of those guys i know they've worked on some great plans for their so this is i just want to know that was for one of the four parcels they identified town owned now part of this test fit i was gonna forgot to add is um if we do a test

118fit uh say at norton site and kaiser tower property i don't know if cheshire park you know that may or may not be in the mix what it's going to do is tell us okay if they don't fit either we have we may have to purchase property and in the budgets we created we added in some budgetary values to purchase properly property what it's going to tell us is is it a yes or no if it's a no then we have some more work to do to go where do we find 17 acres for an elementary school or um i think it was twice about acres you know for um the middle school um for that so yeah barling park was never really we never really looked at it as a viable site to be

119honest at least we didn't from our side okay thank you i was like because i'm like wow that's like kind of the first time i've heard that and that kind of blew my mind okay thank you yeah no problem katherine thanks andrew um so i i thought well i know for a fact that we did look at cheshire park for a six to eight middle school when t k s p t s k whatever um thank you um so there was a test fit i thought done to place a middle school there right so we don't need to do that again if in fact you're looking at that properly i guess even for an elementary school would fit there if if a middle school would fit there right um so i just went and i

120thought maybe we'd even i know we looked at the cassertano property that property marian and and i'm just trying i'm just saying these things because right now it sounds to me like we're not even going to know where or whether we can put schools um for a couple of months and so i'm i think we're bumping up against a timetable that is starting to feel unrealistic in terms of getting to a referendum in november i mean i i maybe i'm wrong but um i don't care how many things we run in parallel if we don't know for two months whether we can fit two elementary schools wherever they're going to be or um middle school and i guess chapman at that point would be on the chapman property because one wouldn't be the new big

121chapman um i'm just curious i mean how is there something we can do to kind of expedite any of this and i may be asking the same question i asked earlier but i'm still confused about how we're going to get everything done in the amount of time that we need to actually come up with a decision that can be put to the voters does that make sense anyone yeah if i if i could maybe andrew just quickly you know i think that's a good point um catherine um we might be able to explain it sounds like it might be able to expedite selecting a firm or bringing a team on with rp process it might be able to solicit a few directly we could talk about that offline but really even getting to typically with

122most sounds of referendum we really have to have a result by the middle of august because of the referendum requirements to do explanatory texts post it you have your non-advocacy period most districts we work with for a november referendum it's typically like around an august late august time frame by the time you have to have this thing established so you're really talking about four months so i think we there are some frankly you know with the group i think there's some challenges with it but from working with the smc and hearing from town council and rob orris and others they want to get it right um if we can do it for november it sounds like they said great but if not then we'll figure out another time that sounds about right tony yeah and

123uh and you know there are so many i i do miss the smc group i really do because there's a lot of discussion i don't miss the weekly meetings which seem like i'm sure chuck you know you were a lot of those but i look back to those meetings and i just want to remind all of us that um nobody wants to drag their feet on this and again i go back to three of us you know this is year five right on this journey of long-term plan but we also do not want to push something out of the community that's not ready um i'm confident we can use these three and a half months and have things vetted but in the and if something's gonna come up it always does right if some reason

124something comes up in this process and we can't go to the referendum in november our school's not going to fall down november uh december 1st you know there you know there's not an urgent pressing structural need that if we don't go to the forum uh referendum this november with a major problem that the pressing need is the enrollment bump coming very quickly but if that means that this process goes into early spring that's okay um so you know well concerned catherine this also came up you know during the last couple months of smc 2 you know giving the timing where we are you know we we got a little bit of a break because we don't necessarily have to have that specs filed in the grant you know in june or july but that's why

125i kind of you know we want to start this sooner because august will be here before we know it so um let's see where it goes but point taken yeah and tony i wasn't really i wasn't suggesting we that we should be rushing it or not you know looking at all aspects and to get to the right answer my concern was that in fact we were going to be pressured to try to get it to referendum in november and if that's not the case that's fine the flip side of that is though i feel like the momentum's kind of you know the loss of momentum if we don't do that is a bit concerning because i don't you know um wants to see this kind of go back onto a back burner at that point

126so right right yeah i'm not sad though yeah no someone's on this board this is not going on back burner ever again so we're gonna get it out there it's just but you know i i i share your concern well i think we all do uh the momentum is on our side now so let's take advantage of it but again if this if the board feels we have to rush this um which i don't think is the case uh but let's see where it goes i i i think tony like you said before we we have to vet this out more for the town council i mean that's the other half you guys have a partner again just you having worked with you for a while now there's a partner in the town and and

127and they have to be convinced to go to november and if if we rush this through listening to all those town councillors they're they're not going to didn't sound like to me they're going to be in a rush to push it through unless it's well vetted and they're convinced and i think the steps we're talking about with the test fits those are steps we need to take to give them better information as well as yourself and the taxpayers to say we've we've looked at the path traveled we've looked at the path not travel why didn't we go there well here's why and it's the next steps and i think um the state of connecticut certainly you know is your partner uh in rough in reimbursement they like seeing a well thought out well-baked plan that

128you've looked at everything and and i think you know not making november is not the end of the world by any means agreed so hearing everyone's do you have a question tim yeah thank you yeah um catherine thanks for the comments that was kind of weighing on my mind in the past hour or two but the one point that i'll add that really i don't think anybody's mentioned is a special referendum i mean if you want to keep the momentum going totally possible to do it i'm not saying the council would want to do it um but we could we did last time we did it was the pool 11 years ago 10 10 or 11 years ago um i one question quick chuck or jeff i guess it'd be chuck really the realtors are

129aware that you're you'd be open to looking at property the realtors in town and would give you a call if something came on the market or they anticipated coming on the market i don't think we're at that point yet to be honest i i think honestly tim we you what i would recommend is you get the properties that are owned by town and if those vetting show that it's not feasible then i think there's a bigger discussion with your counterparts in town council the planner and others that go okay what's the next process the vet privately owned because that gets kind of probably scary you know people that own parcels of these sizes are probably like wait a minute you know it can be very daunting for private owners so i think i think the

130goal is to try to stay on town obviously um but i think we have to get through that first and then maybe that be the next step if that makes sense okay okay um and then the other thing and i don't think i've mentioned this in a meeting before but for me it's really important however this project move forward moves forward that we're looking at uh sustainable solutions i i think it's important that we're looking at the life cycle costs of buildings um you know from my perspective that includes things the you know renewable energies like solar electric maybe uh geothermal heating and cooling i just to me that's to me it's really important not that a project includes that but that there's a real discussion about it i just don't want to maintain this

131legacy system where you know facilities get put up and this is you know the builders model we always use so this is what we're going to keep using i do feel like it's important to have that as part of the discussion moving forward yeah the state of connecticut when you submit for grant reimbursement um it's required as a minimum um it's called connect high performance building requirements and that's equivalent to uh leed silver and the energy codes have been upgraded as such but one of you know the the the big uh say some of the hot topics recently is the net zero a lot of districts are looking to that and it's just a matter of weighing it out in you know geothermal like you said photovoltaic systems um and having a discussion with the

132state because some of those uh do eat up some of your building space your mechanical spaces for some more pumps and so forth we just did a school actually in mansfield we just bid those out had a very successful bid came in about 10 under bid um out there for a new elementary school so they're definitely sustainable um for sure but then there's additional levels like you said that you can consider and that's an important discussion during the budgeting process to make sure we're accounting for that or if a site can have facilitated g because geothermal wells take up area sure you know so that's something that's a good point we just have to think about ahead of time and what are the town's goals but it's the minimum can i get high performance thank

133you thank you and the and the um one last point in terms of life cycle costs i'm not a big fan of bells and whistles they could be nice they can also be expensive both in terms of hardware replacement and the labor associated with it in the future and you know i've heard i've heard stories where it could be in the hundreds of dollars for like uh uh an auto flush on a toilet you know it breaks and then and so not that you wouldn't do that but i think we need to have a like a real thought uh real consideration of whether certain things should be included um just because they have been included recently but that's more down when you get into design honestly yeah yeah right we're not there yet yeah it's

134down in design just quickly i want to say i'm all for having some um of these open forums under the tents but they're not circus tents andrew apologize catering tents it's not a circus we're running here that's the big top out there yeah i received jeff actually called it that thank you i just want to make a comment um that um there does seem to be a lot to do and we do need to get this right because this is um a a generational expenditure and if we need to exp extend the uh the referendum past november uh i i think that the the towns uh the citizens of cheshire would appreciate that we took the extra time to really get it right to really get um the plan locked down so they know exactly

135what they're what they're spending their money on and as far as loss of momentum i don't think uh that would be the case at all i think jeff you did a study a while back saying that i think it was like if there is any kind of educational referendum like 80 of the parents would come out to vote and i'm pretty sure that you know 80 percent of the seniors would come out to vote too uh just just because that's how it is um so i i think that uh i would even say that the the turnout for the referendum would be higher than the municipal turnout that's just my thought um so i don't think there would be any loss of momentum if the referendum got pushed out if uh we don't have the

136detail or that we would have the detail necessary for people to make really informed decisions okay so what i'm hearing next step is rfp for test fit for the schools so tony you and i could talk offline about how we're gonna move that yeah i would imagine we'll talk with jeff and vincent and you know once there's some detail i suggest uh you know we speak with members of town council on council give them a heads up all right you know if there's gonna be some funding for this um um but we all need it and it's got to be answered right away so uh and then i think the other steps andrew you identified two is and then there is overwhelming supports is scheduling some forms um yeah we'll work with we can we're

137going to work with jeff on that as well makes sense but so yeah i don't have anything else to add okay good i think faith you have a question comment tony just said it it gets get those meetings on the calendar um sooner rather than later so um even if you know we need a little bit of the rfp work but just get them on so we're all aware and we can um make sure we're all in attendance yeah and that being said you know i encourage all all of us to give um uh andrew jeff you know team ideas on the kind of topics we expect to discuss those forms you know questions you probably want to ask the public uh there should be some structure to them versus just that everybody's showing up

138and sort of conversation goes so you know any ideas can i make that productive yeah absolutely let us let everybody know okay does anybody else have anything they'd like to add before we adjourn no could have a motion to adjourn second by tim all in favor all right thank you everyone have a good night thanks everybody thanks everybody